Accessing impartial and independent information in Sudan has been a decades-long challenge given how the state has generally extended control over all domestic communication and media.
Women in conflict-affected and fragile contexts face an online ecosystem of gendered threats and attacks, and an offline context of gendered insecurity.
AI is becoming enmeshed in our society at a rapid rate. It’s more important than ever that we pause and take stock of where we stand with this technology.
Some weapons’ functions, including target selection and engagement, could soon be shaped by the incorporation of AI.
Ethnic Chinese communities are not the only diaspora groups in Canada subject to influence operations.
The dramatic expansion of space capabilities has transformed space systems into critical infrastructure for many aspects of human society and for national security. With opportunities for global societal benefits come risks. The global governance framework remains weak and contested. Vulnerabilities now exist with space systems, and these are especially pronounced in the face of cyberthreats. We now confront a volatile “space-cyber nexus,” which this essay series explores across a diverse and wide range of perspectives. The series is organized around three themes: space security and risk; international governance challenges; and global perspectives and the pursuit of inclusivity.
The most complex international governance challenges surrounding artificial intelligence (AI) today involve its defence and security applications — from killer swarms of drones to the computer-assisted enhancement of military command-and-control processes. These essays emerged from discussions at a webinar series exploring the ethics of AI and automated warfare hosted by the University of Waterloo’s AI Institute.
In the span of 15 years, the online public sphere has been largely privatized and is now dominated by a small number of platform companies. This has allowed the interests of publicly traded companies to determine the quality of our civic discourse, the character of our digital economy and, ultimately, the integrity of our democracies. This essay series brings together a global group of scholars working in four distinct domains of the platform governance policy discourse: content, data, competition and infrastructure.
The late Canadian diplomat and commentator John Wendell Holmes believed that the best public policy emerged out of an appreciation of history and context. This essay series, sponsored by the Holmes Trust, reflects on six contemporary themes in Canadian foreign and security policy, with historians considering the background of each issue and practitioners responding with a view to the future. Together, the essays demonstrate the value of history to a decision maker’s analytical calculus and offer practical suggestions to inform Canada's response to the challenges ahead.
In November 2021, the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) joined King’s College London (KCL) to host a virtual conference as part of KCL’s Project for Peaceful Competition. It brought together an intellectually and geographically diverse group of experts to discuss the geoeconomics of new digital technologies and the prospects for governance of the technologies in a multi-polar world. The papers prepared for discussion at the conference are collected in this series. An introduction summarizes (in heavily abbreviated form) the principal analytical conclusions emerging from the conference, together with the main policy recommendations put forward by participants.
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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.