Thursday, January 20, 3:30-5pm, this on-line event requires advance registration

Join us virtually on Thursday, January 20 for a discussion with author Jacob Helberg on his new book The Wires of War: Technology and the Struggle for Global Power (Simon & Schuster, 2021).

From 2016 to 2020, Jacob Helberg led Google’s global internal product policy efforts to combat disinformation and foreign interference. During this time, he found himself in the midst of what can only be described as a quickly escalating two-front technology cold war between democracy and autocracy.

On the front-end, we’re fighting to control the software — applications, news information, social media platforms, and more — of what we see on the screens of our computers, tablets, and phones, a clash that started out primarily with Russia but now increasingly includes China and Iran. Even more ominously, we’re also engaged in a hidden back-end battle — largely with China — to control the Internet’s hardware, which includes devices like cellular phones, satellites, fiber-optic cables, and 5G networks.

This tech-fueled war will shape the world’s balance of power for the coming century as autocracies exploit 21st-century methods to re-divide the world into 20th-century-style spheres of influence. Helberg cautions that the spoils of this fight are power over every meaningful aspect of our lives, including our economy, our infrastructure, our national security, and, ultimately, our national sovereignty. Without a firm partnership with the government, Silicon Valley is unable to protect democracy from the autocrats looking to sabotage it from Beijing to Moscow and Tehran. The stakes of the ongoing cyberwar are no less than our nation’s capacity to chart its own future, the freedom of our democratic allies, and even the ability of each of us to control our own fates, Helberg says. And time is quickly running out.

Speaker

Jacob Helberg is a senior adviser at the Stanford University Center on Geopolitics and Technology and an adjunct fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Helberg is also the co-chair of the Brookings Institution China Strategy Initiative. From 2016 to 2020, Helberg led Google’s internal global product policy efforts to combat disinformation and foreign interference, including policy and enforcement processes against state-backed foreign interference, misinformation, and actors undermining election integrity. Helberg studied international affairs at The George Washington University and received his Master of Science in cybersecurity risk and strategy from New York University.

RSVP for this event by using this link.

Hosted by Mershon Center for International Security Studies.