Wired magazine reported on the State Department’s training for diplomats who will specialize in cyber issues in Washington and at embassies abroad. The training will be done at the Foreign Service Institute in Arlington, Virginia, where the State Department has trained Foreign Service officers in foreign languages, culture and other more traditional diplomatic subjects. Wired says:
“We really screwed up governance of the previous generation of tech platforms, particularly the social [media] platforms,” [instructor Ambassador Nathaniel] Fick said. “The US essentially unleashed on the world the most powerful anti-democratic tools in the history of humanity, and now we’re digging our way out of a credibility hole.”
Restoring that credibility and expanding American influence over digital issues will require tech-savvy diplomacy, and the State Department is counting on Fick’s training program to make that possible. To pull back the curtain on this program for the first time, WIRED received exclusive access to the February training session and interviewed Fick, the initiative’s lead organizer, five graduates of the course, and multiple cyber diplomacy experts about how the program is trying to transform American tech diplomacy.
From Russian election interference to Chinese industrial dominance, the US faces a panoply of digital threats. Fighting back will require skillful diplomatic pressure campaigns on every level, from bilateral talks with individual countries to sweeping appeals before the 193-member United Nations. But this kind of work is only possible when the career Foreign Service officers on the front lines of US diplomacy understand why tech and cyber issues matter—and how to discuss them.
This leadership is important on high-profile subjects like artificial intelligence and the 5G war between Western and Chinese vendors, but it’s equally vital on the bread-and-butter digital issues—like basic internet connectivity and fighting cybercrime—that don’t generate headlines but still dominate many countries’ diplomatic engagements with the US.
“We are in competition with the authoritarian states on everything from internet standards … to basic governance rules,” says Neil Hop, a senior adviser to Fick and the lead organizer of the training program. “We are going to find ourselves at a sore disadvantage if we don’t have trained people who are representing [us].”
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