President Rohinton P. Medhora considers the think tank’s evolution — from the formative years focused on international relations and the global economy, to its arrival at the edge of the “next frontier,” examining issues at the intersection of technology and global governance: data, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and digital platform regulation.
Regulators and law makers do not have the information they need to understand what is happening behind the walled gardens of the digital platforms. And the social media companies refuse to share this most important information — apparently, because this might impact their profits.
Much of what the WTO is considering is already well-trodden turf. Fully fleshed-out e-commerce trade facilitation regimes have already been developed in regional agreements such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the recent Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement.
Analogies have their limits. But history can help to disentangle the unprecedented from the historical. It can help to point out where phenomena really are new, such as the scale of internet usage.
The stresses on global democracy over the past 15 years have coincided with the rise of new technologies for information-gathering, communication and surveillance. Autocratic leaders have learned that regime survival can depend on such techniques.
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Autonomous systems are revolutionizing our lives, but they present clear international security concerns. Despite the risks, emerging technologies are increasingly applied as tools for cybersecurity and, in some cases, cyberwarfare. In this series, experts explore digital threats to democracy and security, and the geopolitical tensions they create.
The impact of COVID-19 both globally and in Canada has raised important questions about best practices with regard to global and domestic health surveillance, early warning and preparedness. Critical to an understanding of these issues is a clear-sighted appreciation of the interface between health security and national security. As the world embarks on an intense effort to explain the onset of the pandemic and to learn lessons from the global response, it will be vital to develop and sustain a public policy debate about the role of security and intelligence institutions in protecting societies against pandemic outbreaks. This essay series — designed to bridge academic and practitioner knowledge — aims to make a high-impact contribution to that debate.
We are in the midst of fighting the first phase of the COVID-19 crisis, but it is already clear that the impacts will be manifold and enduring. It is not too early to reflect on the lasting impact that the outbreak is sure to have on global cooperation, globalization, faith in public action and in science, social cohesion, and the trade-off between civil liberties and personal privacy.
An essay series on the World Trade Organization's response to rapid economic, political, social, technological and environmental change.
Despite growing calls for global platform governance, no solution has been found. To begin to address this, CIGI has convened leading thinkers to explore new models for governing digital platforms. Given their unprecedented influence on democracy and the global economy alike, a cohesive framework for platform governance is crucial.
The 2017 Buenos Aires Joint Declaration on Trade and Women’s Economic Empowerment emphasized the key relationship between trade policy and gender, and World Trade Organization members are beginning to take steps to improve transparency, share best practices, gather data and include gender considerations in trade negotiations. But there is much more to be done.
On one hand, technology has led to convenience, efficiency and wealth creation. On the other hand, this great push to digitize society has meant building inherent vulnerability into the core of the economic model. This is all taking place atop a deeply fragmented and underdeveloped system of global rules.
Indigenous lands are under ever-increasing pressure from governments and extractive sector corporations that are eager to encourage economic development and foreign investment.
At the December 2017 World Trade Organization (WTO) Ministerial Conference in Buenos Aires, 118 WTO members joined forces to conclude the Declaration on Trade and Women's Economic Empowerment.
In this series, international law experts from Canada, the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States, comment on Brexit’s international and domestic law and governance implications.