Quantum Technology, National Security and Defence Spending

“What if Canada could simultaneously develop cutting-edge technologies, prepare for new national security threats and make progress on its North Atlantic Treaty Organization target of two percent of GDP defence spending? A new generation of quantum technologies may provide this opportunity.”

In this op-ed first published by The Hill Times, Tracey Forrest, Paul Samson and Raymond Laflamme argue that Canada has an opportunity not only to become the world leader in many aspects of quantum technology and regulation but also to bolster its own economic productivity and military capability through building secure cryptography and quantum technology.

“Claudia Sheinbaum’s landslide victory in the recent Mexican presidential election owes much to her promises to deepen incumbent Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s welfare programs. Yet she will also be inheriting a fiscal imbalance equivalent to 5.9 percent of Mexico’s GDP, the highest since 1988.”

In this piece originally published by the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum, Hector Torres says that if Sheinbaum holds to her electoral promises, Mexico’s fiscal deficit may worsen, confronting the International Monetary Fund with a dilemma: accept a reputational cost or trigger a regional crisis.

“When the UK election was…called for July 4 by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, few were prepared. Following months of speculation about a possible November election, and concerns about the potential for parallel US and UK campaigns to fuel global polarization and disinformation, the date allayed those fears. Yet there remain significant concerns around the lack of transparency and regulation online in the campaign.”

Half the world’s population goes to the polls in 2024. This commentary by Kate Dommett is the sixth in a series from CIGI created in partnership with the Centre for the Study of Democratic Institutions at UBC to explore the intersection of technology with the most pivotal among these elections.

The Digital Policy Hub at CIGI is a collaborative space for emerging scholars and innovative thinkers from the social, natural and applied sciences. Here are the latest working papers from the winter 2024 cohort of Hub fellows:

Badriyya Yusuf: “Sustainable Data Governance Frameworks in Africa”

Dana Cramer: “Assessing the Near Future of Multi-stakeholder Internet Governance”

Madison Lee: “Forgotten Web3 and Metaversal Technologies in the Wake of AI”

Follow the links on the Hub webpage to learn more about the Hub scholars and their work!