Supply Chain Regulation in the Service of Geopolitics

Supply chain regulation can be a formidable tool to protect a country’s resilience against unexpected disruptions of trade, investment and the supply of skilled labour. In his latest paper, Dieter Ernst examines the implementation problems and the unintended consequences of a new supply chain doctrine in the service of geopolitics, with a focus on US President Joe Biden’s Executive Order on America’s Supply Chains to protect US technological leadership and national security against China.

Former Canadian ambassador to Afghanistan Chris Alexander draws lessons from the failed strategies that the United States, the United Nations and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization deployed in Afghanistan and points to seven actions Canada and the international community can take to better protect vulnerable populations from proxy war, despotism and abuse.

The federal government believes that foreign interference is a significant enough threat to issue two reports on the topic this year. As Stephanie Carvin writes, spies and election officials have always been strange bedfellows, but concerns that our democracy may be at risk from malicious actors sighting their attacks on the legitimacy of elections has resulted in new collaborations between Canada’s government and intelligence community.

The purpose of the proposed legislation to amend the Broadcasting Act was to bring the web giants into line with other Canadian broadcasters in their obligations both to help viewers discover Canadian content and to nurture its ecosystem. But discussion around the bill quickly became polarized, with criticisms including accusations of censorship. With an election on the horizon, Dale Smith asked experts about what might lie ahead for the bill formerly known as C-10.

Human rights and civil liberties attorney Jameel Jaffer has been involved in some of the United States’ most important free speech litigation of the past two decades and was also a part of the Canadian Commission on Democratic Expression, whose report informed some (but not all) of the current online harms bill. Taylor Owen reflects on his recent conversation with Jaffer on the Big Tech podcast, during which Jaffer shared his views on a debate that can sometimes seem irreparably polarizing.