International Cooperation on Internet Freedom and Openness

1:33PM Apr 23, 2025

Speakers:

William J. Drake

Eli Noam

Anriette Esterhuysen

Fiona Alexander

David Allen

Keywords:

Internet freedom

US policy

global internet governance

multilateral cooperation

Freedom Online Coalition

digital rights

censorship

human rights

cybersecurity

international alliances

digital solidarity

AI governance

private sector regulation

global digital governance.

Health issues, and there's economic interests and geo strategic interests and so on involved in US policy, but in Naveen, with the internet's rise in the 1990s clearly the US orientation towards freedom of information and flows extended to the new medium in the decades to follow, we had a bipartisan consensus across multiple presidential administrations to make internet freedom and openness the focus of US foreign policy. And this really began with the Clinton administration and its global internet infrastructure initiative 1994 and all the work it did in setting up the early mechanisms around Internet governance in the Bush administration, of course, the focus on individual freedoms and anti censorship was amplified in the context of the whole neoconservative efforts to promote global democracy and open markets, which used to be of interest to Republicans and under secret the Secretary of State price created in 2006 a global internet freedom Task Force, and a leader in That work is with us on the panel today. What went on in that administration. Then in the Obama administration, we saw a significant expansion and formalization of the focus on freedom and openness. After Secretary Clinton's famous 2010 speech on the subject, the US had a policy orientation that had three major prongs, the provision of tools to human rights defenders living in authoritarian regimes, which you might call the operational component of this, advocacy of personal freedoms to access and use the internet, and, of course, advocacy of an open and lightly regulated internet at The global level. So today, we're not going to talk so much about the operational side, more on the advocacy side, but these are all important parts. And the Obama administration substantially staffed up this work and resourced it. Engaged closely with stakeholders in civil society, in the private sector, especially Google, which in particular, there was a kind of a revolving door the senior staff between Google and the State Department, they created a net freedom Task Force, which replaced the old bush one, adopted an international strategy for cyberspace, launched support for things like the Open Technology Fund for the operational side. All this was at the time you remember, those of us who are old remember these things when the whole notion of soft power in the internet, internet age as a new kind of approach to foreign policy was a major focus of things, and of course, it was all wrapped up with the Arab Spring and the political upheavals of the time, although the 2013 Snowden revelations threw an effort through all these efforts into a new and rather unflattering light, and led to some criticism and pushback from foreign governments and key stakeholders, which we can talk about anyway. The point is, for all this international cooperation and coalitions were key to the promotion of internet freedom and openness. It was the focus of a lot of work across administrations building coalitions, first with the industrialized democracies of the West and the Pacific, later with varying north south configurations, as well as multi stakeholder groupings. And in parallel with this, there was the creation of bespoke new kinds of coalitions that were formed, like the Freedom Online Coalition, which is launched by the Dutch government in 2011 just you know today, 42 governments involved, and adopts joint statements and advice on questions of internet freedom, and has a multi stakeholder advisory group, etc, the global network initiative created in 2008 multi stakeholder coalition of companies, civil society actors and academics with strong industry participation and guidance that has put forward self regulatory best practice guidelines for multinational companies operating in repressive countries, and has done a lot of other advocacy work around internet freedom. And we have Jean is executive director with this on panel today, and at the same time, of course, as Ellie alluded to, the growth of oppositional coalitions among authoritarian governments around the world often were able to draw to their side some developing countries that weren't anti democratic but wanted to expand state authority in this area and offset American influence so with the interplay between these different coalitions, has defined the geopolitics of global digital governance in a wide variety of international settings ever since. And you know, obviously we had the first Trump administration, which not so keenly involved, but didn't disable all this work entirely. Was more focused, though, on censorship alleged of mag and related voices than on what's going on in authoritarian countries and outside the administration. In those years, we saw the birth of a debate about whether there needed to be some sort of new coalitions, establish new alliances to support democracy. There's a lot of debate in foreign policy circles, if you read journals like foreign affairs, around the notion that we needed to have a new concert, or League of democracies, some sort of new block that would work in the United Nations and so on. And that all carried into the Biden administration, held a variety of summits on democracy, and there's a lot of debates about forming some sort of digital alliance of democracies, or tech no democracies, etc, to counter authoritarian status. Kind of proposals and internet fragmentation, ultimately, all proved too controversial and difficult. It didn't happen, but it did lead to the aforementioned declaration on the future of the internet. And the Biden administration did a lot of other things too, including having a special envoy for digital freedom who's with us on the panel today, as well launching initiatives on digital solidarity, etc. We can come back to the criticisms of all this work, and Ellie's alluded to some of these, but obviously people have had different views about the efficacy and coherence of the whole internet freedom agenda. But now it's, of course, it's all been thrown into some disarray with Trump 2.0 I don't have to go into a lot of details about this, because everybody here, I think reads the newspaper, whatever we call them now, news sites. So we all know that there's a lot of dismemberment going on. The different structures that have supported internet freedom work at the global level, and both within the government and outside the government. The US is sued for peace, the National Endowment for Democracy, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And of course, more importantly, I think, to this, and more direct to this panel, the multi faceted attacks on allies and the weakening of the Western alliance in a lot of important respects, and the ways in which countries responding to that and the proposed forthcoming cuts, some say perhaps 90% of the US funding to the United Nations and other international organizations, which could have a massive effect. So we want to take stock of what is the status of international coalitions in support of internet freedom and openness. What's the state of play today? What's the possible evolution? What are the options going forward? And to do that, as Elliot noted, we have a panel different from our usual three people who have actual hands on policy making experience in the State Department, who are now in civil society, academia and private sector. We have Eileen Donahoe, who served as the US Special Envoy for digital freedom in the Biden administration, as the US Ambassador to the Human Rights Council in the Obama administration. And between those diplomatic posts, Dr Donahue was the executive director of the global digital policy incubator at Stanford University. Ambassador David Gross is a partner with the Washington DC firm. Wiley Ryan served as the US coordinator for international communications Information Policy in the Bush administration, from 2001 to 2009 in which context, David LED board us delegations to major in international telecom conferences that anybody else in history, which is kind of an interesting feather in the cap against. And then we have Jason, sorry, Jason, who's executive director of the global network initiative. Mentioned previously, Jason was a special advisor the US Department of State from 2010 to 2017 where he led the internet freedom Business and Human Rights section in State Department. So what we're going to do, our usual mechanics, will do three rounds to the top, some broad questions that can shape the discussion, and then we'll have open dialog for about a half hour. That open dialog part is one of the things that makes this webinar series, I think, unique and interesting. So I hope people who have joined us will be up for joining the conversation when the time comes. So all right, let's begin then. So a first question, I want to post the panel. And again, these are fairly broad Gage. You know, what has and has not been done in this issue area, with respect to coalition building around internet freedom and openness, we're trying to set what's the baseline around this negotiation in this area, you know, what's been successful? What are the short what have been the shortcomings? What are the lessons learned? Let's, let's start there, and then we can move into what's going on today. So let me open it to the panel. Why don't we go in alphabetical order? So Eileen, could we start with you? Sure?

First bill, thanks for that very fulsome introduction and history table setting. And Ellie, I really appreciate your very provocative questions at the top to answer Bill's question about like, what are the advances we've seen over time and what's the current state of affairs? I think that we really do need to think about a before January 25 21st and after 20 january 2025, and so, you know, I will just take that position with with no hesitation. For me, it's just a sort of a black and white line and radical shift my most recent posting in the US government was at as Special Envoy for digital freedom, as Bill said, it just I just stepped out of the government at the end of the Biden administration. But it already feels like we are in a completely different epic of history and American history, and we are definitely on a different trajectory in terms of the potential for ongoing international cooperation, especially on that and values based internet governance, internet freedom and coalitions. Have to admit, my perspective is shaped by my identity as an American and my experience as a diplomat representing the United States, and having served in two Democratic administrations as Bill said, Biden and and Obama, I have had the opportunity in those roles to advance internet freedom in many multilateral, multi stakeholder arenas, and I have generally been aligned with my government. I've also been an advocate in civil society and worked in academia and had the opportunity to engage the US government and many other governments, as well as the private sector, on all of the broad implications of digitization for democracy and human rights. Generally speaking, I have been able to advance the same ideas and values in all of these roles, and I have seen a great deal of international cooperation on internet freedom and values based internet governance, from my vantage point, the multi stakeholder Internet governance community that has come together over the past 25 years has been relatively effective in grappling with conceptual changes terminology, terminology shifts with respect to the internet, new and emerging technologies, but has done a relatively good job in advancing the core values. I think it is useful also for context to recognize that until now, the US role in advancing global internet freedom over this period of time has essentially been a continuation of the role the US played in the world for the past 75 years. So I think to Ellie's point about you know that the history of nationalist, isolationist tendencies in the US, I think, post World War Two, we have generally been there's been bipartisan consensus, as Bill said, around the importance of US leadership In the world and the US played such a central role in establishing that post world war two international order, and has arguably been the global leader in the entire liberal democratic enterprise around the world. I think our American Internet governance and internet freedom policy has flowed from that larger vision, and at least at a high level of generality and abstraction, there has been continuity across administrations on internet freedom, protecting the global open, interoperable internet, or the global open, interoperable, secure, reliable internet, and supporting multi stakeholder Internet governance, and really in recognizing the importance of coalitions and values based alliances as key vehicles for advancing US policy. So needless to say, never perfect in practice, but or implementation but, and we've definitely seen different phases, and it shifts in thematic emphases over that 25 year period, but continuity of the core commitments, I would say, has been real. And here we are, less than 100 days into the current administration, and we have seen a dramatic reversal of that basic us stance and basic us values. I think this administration is very intentionally signaling a shift from historical us commitments, from liberal democratic values, Freedom generally, and the importance of alliances, and it seems to be retreating from the most basic concept of the need for international cooperation to protect the values based world order that the US played such a role in creating. So it's still very early days, but I do feel like we're almost, you know, it feels like a different country. And I think that is the goal of this administration. So hard to calculate, because it's early days, but I think this is going to affect many, many things for for a long time. I'm sorry to give such a negative picture, I'll save little data points about my own experience and let you go on to somebody else. But I just wanted to share my my general mood.

Got to unmute myself. Thanks, Eileen, that was very, very useful starting point. We'll get more into the current state of play in the moment and but first we want to, sort of like do a little taking stock of where we've been and how we got to where we are today. So okay, great. Let's go then to David. David, your thoughts.

Well, thank you very much, Bill, and I want to thank you and Emily for the opportunity to talk on today's panel, and on this what I think is an extraordinarily important and set of issues and very timely, as Alene pointed out, very, very timely. It's great to be on a panel with with Jason and Eileen. It's a great honor to do that. So thank you very much. Let me step back for a moment and sort of run through a little bit of the history and Bill you touched on a lot of these things. But I think it's maybe useful, because it seems to me, part of the question about global cooperative involvement by the US and by others is really about impact. You know, what is it that's trying to be accomplished, and perhaps showing my age, undoubtedly showing my age, I go back to the famous Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace by John Perry Barlow back in Davos in 1996 in which his view at The time, which was not a crazy view. Quite opposite. It was actually, I think, quite a well established view. Was just, you know, that talking to about the governments of the industrial world, as he called it, he would say, he said, you know, leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather. So the point there was, and Bill Clinton, President Clinton, made a similar point when talking about the internet in China and so forth, saying, you know, it's like trying to nail jell o to the wall. That is, the sense back then was that the internet so fundamentally different that, in fact, it would elude government control in many respects, including the free flow of information and the like. That view of the late 90s. Mid to late 90s didn't last, and it didn't last because it turned out not to be realistic. Was not the way the internet operated. We ended up in the world summer for the Information Society, which had it was in two phases, the UN business, as we like to call it. And the first phase was in Geneva, in 2003 the US tried very hard to establish a global principle about what we might call internet freedom now, and not surprisingly, we ran into a lot of resistance. We were able to talk about the declaration, a Declaration of Human Rights, and use that an article 19 as the basis for it. But in order to get that in, which was in paragraph four of the Geneva declaration, we were able. We had to also put in paragraph five, which basically was the other side of the Declaration of Human Rights, which reaffirms the role of governments in these areas. So we were pretty unsuccessful, I would say in trying to advance that ball. And I think it's probably worth remembering that WIS is itself was, you know, a watershed event in terms of the relationship between the international community and the internet. It was, I think it's fair to say, originally sold to the international community, including to the United States, as being a discussion about how the Internet could be used to further the human condition, how people can benefit from it. It, of course, quickly devolved, in my view, from that very lofty view to be in a fight over I would you know ICANN and the role of the US government regard to the internet, something that we jealously protected and continue to protect across administrations. But then we got to the Tunis phase two of the of with us, the tuna Tunis Agenda near I have to say, I'm a little disappointed in the sense that we did something which I thought was actually extraordinary, but we turned out not to be very important. But at the time, I was very proud of it, very, very conscious of it. In paragraph 42 while everyone was focused, including us, on ICANN and the like, and fighting the US hegemony in the area of the internet and the like, we were able to get in what I had tried to get in, basically in the Geneva phase, which was paragraph came paragraph 42 which was a re affirmation of the global commitment to the freedom To seek, receive, impart and used information and the dissemination of knowledge. And unlike what we happened in Geneva, there was no second part to it. There was other than a reference generally to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. There was no countervailing role of government associated with that from a national security so in some respects, I think it's not unfair to say that might have been from an international perspective, where we had the global community recognize the importance of what we might call internet Freedom in a fairly unfettered and UN abridged fashion, as you mentioned, you know, then in 2006 things started to change, and it was really driven by the success of China, the Great Firewall, and some of the actions that were being taken against some of the companies, including Yahoo At the time, who was very active in China, and so Secretary Rice put together what we called Git, which is the global Internet freedom Task Force, where we explicitly used the term internet freedom. And it was really a time when internet freedom became sort of a term of art that was used and advanced greatly, and that was used very aggressively for the remainder of the Bush administration, and then, as you pointed out, that ratcheted up greatly, in my view, and appropriately during the Obama administration by Secretary Clinton, who made this really a key part. And then that continued through including, I would say, through the Biden administration and the strong support for internet freedom technologies and the like. But the point I think I'd like to sort of emphasize is, and I part of the reason I started with with the borrow quote, the audience has changed over the time. It went from back in the 90s, where governments weren't supposed to be the audience at all, because they weren't supposed to be involved, to a decade or so of the governments really from a multilateral perspective, where action was at the UN, at the ITU, the International Telecommunications Union, in Geneva, regional meetings and so forth. Now my sense is that the world has continued to change, and that although there's a lot of activity in places like the UN including a review of with this every 10 years and so forth, and a lot of discussion about that. And Bill, you touched base on some of that, that for a variety of reasons, that's not where the real action is. And by action, I really mean what impact it has on individual lives, and what we've seen now, it's not abrupt, it's been changing for years, is that it is really the focus has gone to individual governments and those every region, Europe is different than the United States and how they think about the free flow of information. China is different. Russia is different, Iran is different. The Middle East writ large is different. The Americas are different. You know, there's a and so the focus, it seems to me, has shifted over the past few years from multilateral statements of common views to now a focus on individual governments and what they are doing and what they are promoting or restricting. And so I think what I see happening going forward is that we are going to, as a practical matter, evolve quite apart from who is in the White House, we're going to be refocusing. Need to refocus more on what might be viewed as bilateral discussions, of trying to convince governments one by one as to what the approach is, recognizing that the United States will probably always as we have been unique because of our first America, first amendment to first America amendment heritage, quite zealous on these issues, where domestically and therefore often internationally, but to Be more bilateral and more specific in how we interact with others and try to convince them. And I think we will see what this administration does on these questions. As people have already pointed out, there's reorganization of the State Department. There's obviously refocusing being done. One can argue that it's more isolationist and so forth. But it's another way of also saying it's more focused in certain ways, and less and less

dependent upon multilateral institutions and finding global common ground. I think that's, you know, where we have come, some respect, it's not quite a full circle, but it's certainly a big shift from where we're in the 90s and the 2000s up until fairly recently, and as we look ahead going forward. Thank you very much for that opportunity.

David, that was very helpful. Okay. Jason, P

Thanks, Bill, yeah,

and thanks to you and Ellie and the team at Columbia for inviting me and putting this on. I've had the privilege to listen into some of your earlier webinars, and they've all been really informative. It's a really great audience. So very pleased to be here with you, and especially with with David and Eileen, who are real kind of role models and pioneers in this space. So just to kind of give a little bit of my perspective, so I am, at the moment, the executive director of the global network initiative, and I will be speaking here in a personal capacity. But Jean is story as you as you situated at Well, Bill is part of this kind of historical narrative, and so I'll try and bring the perspective of kind of, this multi stakeholder coalition that I work with into the conversation. I think, you know, I don't have a ton to add to the really great sort of historical timing that you started with, and Eileen and David have have built on, I guess I would just say, you know, from my perspective, as someone who sort of came into this world in the sort of 2000 10s when I joined the State Department, I initially was working on other issues, including sort of normative development around business and human rights, and development of the UN guiding principles on business human rights that then shifted, and that was the time that Eileen was the ambassador at the Human Rights Council, and when the first internet freedom resolution was passed there, which was a big deal, building on Secretary Clinton's speech, which you referenced bill, which, of course, had built on the work of the previous Bush administration as well, and then setting up the Freedom Online Coalition I joined right as the Snowden revelations were sort of shifting the narrative a bit, and had the privilege of trying to continue to defend the concept of internet freedom, and notwithstanding those revelations, which was, which is, of course, challenging, but we managed to nevertheless Continue, I think, to do important work to build on those concepts and build those, those sort of continuing diplomatic and multi stakeholder networks in support of, you know, Freedom Online. I think, I guess, to me, I think of the development of the internet, there's obviously the kind of early r, d phases before it became sort of more more popular technology. And then the libertarian era, you know, most associated with John Perry Barlow's declaration, and kind of the early years of sort of grassroots, you know, use and use cases. And then that kind of commercialization that that began in the in the 90s, and kind of coincided with the multilateral phase that David described really well as the UN the ITU, and sort of other multilateral conversations. We're trying to sort of figure out, well, what there does need to be some sort of international coordination here. How do we do that? You know, do that through our existing multilateral venues, or do we do that in some kind of different, unique way? Because this technology is special and different, and I think again, thanks to the good work of David and others over time, we were able to kind of navigate that in a way that did identify roles for relevant UN agencies, but also recognize what was unique about the internet and and sort of accommodated a more open, more stakeholder driven set of governance discussions and processes, a crucial inflection point. You know, you can really either pinpoint it with Snowden, or perhaps a few years later, with Cambridge Analytica. But you know, there was this sort of tech lash that began in the 2000 10s and really led to a lot more assertions of domestic control, not just the sort of authoritarian model that China had been pioneering for years and was being picked up in other places like Iran and Russia, but also democratic rule of law abiding governments beginning to regulate much more aggressively, in particular around content on the internet. And so the Digital Services Act in Europe and online safety acts first in the UK and then in several other countries, really marked an important, I think, pivot, and that, you know, was something that what didn't necessarily contradict the broader principles of internet freedom. And in some ways, I think the ultimate approach that the European Union took, which you know, to be candid, we were very involved with as the global network initiative of focusing more on the kind of processes, centering fundamental rights as the kind of baseline against which companies should assess their content moderation and should build their content moderation processes and sort of due process that that had to be applied consistently as they enforce those rules was was a good way to kind of knowledge and address the fact that there Were real harms that were that people were experiencing in the online world, but without imposing too much government control and exposing the internet to the risks of kind of, certainly approaches to content management that would be inconsistent with with human rights principle. With human rights principles. That, of course, is now sort of brings us to kind of where we are today, and to some extent, the Trump administration's most articulated positions on what we might think of as internet freedom have been on the topic of what they refer to as censorship, and actually pointing to those very efforts in Europe, rather than the more authoritarian, more sort of less subtle efforts to control content that we've seen for many years in other parts of the world. And so that's a really interesting shift. I think, as Eileen pointed out, I think that's very significant. It's, of course, in line with broader tension, to use a diplomatic term, that that we see between transatlantically, at least, is interesting. I think that the Trump administration has also been so consistently to date, defensive of American internet corporate interests. So they have not just pushed back against what they see as over regulation on the content side, but also it's notable that the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, sent a letter and made public a letter to the UK in response to a secret order that was leaked from the home office to Apple to effectively disable encryption on cloud data that that was sort of a notable early sort of position that was articulated by the administration more as a defense of US corporate interests, less as a principled defense of encryption as technology. But but that, to me, is sort of the through line that I see in the at least the international posturing from the Trump administration is defending us corporate interests against regulation by other governments, especially democratic governments, and so I think that's going to create some real interesting tensions US companies Were already seen with quite a bit of suspicion and or resentment overseas, and this will likely make some of those tensions more serious and harder for them to navigate. Meanwhile, the administration has effectively reduced significantly. It has not completely eliminated its support for internet freedom, multi in the kind of multilateral sense, Bill you mentioned that what you called the operational support with the State Department, we called programming, but there was, there is a very significant amount of funding that Congress has or has authorized with a soft earmark every year since the early 2000 10s for internet freedom, which goes to both the development of anti censorship tools or censorship sort of convention tools, as well as supporting digital rights organizations around the world and many of those programs have been cut, not targeted for what they do, but just cut as a result of the broader re evaluation of foreign assistance that's been happening and dismantling of USA ID, but that's had real, material impacts on civil society around the world. I think to me, one of the things that I was most proud of in terms of the work that we did at the State Department when I was there, was the sort of helping to incubate and sort of fertilize a global sort of movement of civil society, digital rights organizations in different parts of the world, who, some of which were media freedom or human rights organizations that, with support from the US and others, began to focus on digital issues and develop expertise and capacity to engage, not just domestically, but regionally and even globally, on those topics.

I always found that it was much more effective to have messages around the importance of free and open online spaces, free flow of information, pushing back against over broad censorship coming from those types of organizations, than from US government or US companies, or even us civil society organizations. And I worry quite a bit many of these organizations are members of GNI now, so I know from talking to them that many of them have had to furlough staff, lay off staff, significantly reduce their activities, and I think that will not only impact their ability to push back against, you know, over broad government regulation in their domestic context, but potentially have significant knock on effects regionally and globally. And so it's had a real impact on kind of the the global majority component of this small, this loose multi stakeholder sort of Coalition in support of internet freedom. So I think I just wanted to put my finger on that as well. I'll put in the chat a recent report that tech Global Institute, which is one of our Jean members, recently put out on that trying to kind of document to the extent possible, through surveys, the impacts that those funding cats have had so far. I think that's, it's a bit oblique still, because there's no sort of official reporting on which grants have been cut. And so I expect more of that story will become public over time, but anecdotally, it's, it's having a really significant impact. And so I wanted to make sure that was kind of another point that we added into the conversation before

we move on.

Thanks, Jason, that report is useful. And I indeed, as I just said in the chat, I think that the impact is so easy for people living in the US to get all debating. They're all focused on what are the budget cuts and which desks are eliminated and which programs, but we should be talking about how this impacts in the real world, on the ground. And I think that that's a dimension that often gets lost. I do want to open it to the to the group, whole group for conversation in 10 minutes. But before I do, you know, we sort of blurred between past, present, and you know, the kind of trajectory, but I'd like to hone in if we can just briefly, if people can just a couple of minutes each reply on this point, on the specific issue of like coalition building. I mean, you guys are all diplomats, so you know what was involved in bringing other parties on board, some of whom may have been reluctant, who had different domestic political considerations, legal traditions, whatever it may be, or geopolitical orientations, V the US. So what does it take, really, to build coalitions around these issues? What are the challenges in doing that, and how you know, given what's happening now, does that change? I mean, that's, that's the dimension I'd like to really just get on the table if we can, before we open it up to the whole group. Eileen, could you maybe speak to that? I mean, you, you, you had to work with a lot of not just governments, but stakeholders around the world, and trying to build support for this kind of agenda. So what? What's the lessons learned from that?

Our

important lessons learned about how to build coalitions. I happened to be in a multilateral setting, and so the key insight was everything we did had to be multi cross regional. We had to get partners from all over the world to make it work and to succeed. And that was always our first that our modus operandi on every resolution. I want to though, go back to a couple of points. David's point about the Trump administration is less focused on global coalition building and more focused it nationally and internally. That is descriptively accurate, but I think it also has normative implications when you're thinking about the internet or internet freedom. And it brings me back to the that first resolution on internet freedom was based on the concept of universally, universal values, international human rights law. And that was relevant because of something Jason said, which was this recognition of the internet as a a unique resource, a global resource, that required thinking beyond national sovereign borders. You know, back to the John Perry Barlow idea, and we needed a normative foundation for thinking about governance. And then that idea was brought into global multi stakeholder Internet governance, which is how we ended up with the multi stakeholder idea of different coalitions coming together, different stakeholder groups. There. I'd also bring out the point. This was sort of the Vint Cerf writing about internet governance when you're talking about hardware, software protocols that the global open interoperability protocols that facilitate global connectivity. So sort of governance of the internet at the technical layers, as distinct from, or in connection to what governance of what happens on the internet, and I think it has been somewhat easier to hold on to the global multi stakeholder commitment when it comes to the technical layers, even. But there are challenges there as well, and less less support for this global, universal idea when it comes to content and that. And I'll just say you, when you think about the point Jason just mentioned about the Trump administration, the number one thing that they've underscored so far is the concern about censorship in ways that ultimately undermine, you know, arguably, thinking about it and enacting policies in ways that actually undermine free expression, the core universal value that we started with. So we have a lot of challenges in terms of rebuilding coalitions, certainly with respect to what happens on the internet.

Yeah. Okay. David, your thoughts on coalitions and the diplomacy of it?

Sure. Thank you, and I agree very much with what Arlene was just saying. Way I think about these things is I first asked myself the question to what end? Why are we doing this? Why does it matter? And that was part of the reason why, you know, I went through sort of the history piece more, because I think in each of those times it the focus was correct in the up until a couple of years ago, it was very reasonable to think that the best way to have impact on people's lives was through the multilateral process. I'm not convinced that that's necessarily the way it is going forward. You know, you can ask the question, and I'm not suggesting necessarily the answer. If there is a UN resolution today on most of the types of things we're talking about, does it really have an impact on people's lives? It certainly has an impact on the perception of the country supporting it or not, and where coming from. But what true impact does it have? So that's why I always ask to what end for my sense is that we see a world that has changed and multi and moved in this area, away from multilateral importance of multilateral discussions, and they're not unimportant, but in terms of having an impact on people's lives, and much more towards, you know, what is the position of governments, bilaterally and for their own domestic audiences. The rise of sovereignty in the globally has been enormous over the past just couple of years. And we see this even within Europe, where, you know, once you just had to talk to Brussels to some degree on these things. Now you've got, you know, divisions within Europe as to what the appropriate, appropriate approach is. And of course, you know, you had the UK having left the EU. So how you go about it depends a lot on what it is you're trying to accomplish. We used to spend a lot of time building coalitions, finding the least common denominator of language, and so forth, because it was important to be able to speak collectively. Question night I pose is, how important is it really to the world and individuals in those were in our world for that to happen, as compared to speaking clearly and focused in a focused way that have impacts on individual governments and their people.

Steve, that's interesting. Well, I think certainly the time, I would assume the dynamics of doing this were very different, also within the industrialized world, versus the more north, south kinds of things and that that's interesting challenges too. But Jason, go ahead.

Jason, maybe just,

you know, coalition building is important, clearly in multilateral settings. And Eileen made good points about the importance of having to cut across regional groups, which, at the UN are sort of the way everything is negotiated. And I think, you know, we very intentionally built the Freedom Online Coalition, in a sense, to provide scaffolding to these un processes. So the idea was, let's find those countries that are willing to commit, at least, you know, articulate a commitment to internet freedom principles, and then use the FOC to coordinate, sort of around those multi lateral processes, whether it was the Human Rights Council, the ITU elsewhere, and I think there was, there has been some positive impact of that sort of multilaterally focused coalition Building. But I think there's another important element to coalition building

that is

a little bit harder to maybe measure, but just sort of anecdotally, you know, I remember being in Tallinn for the 2014 Freedom Online Coalition meeting. And, you know, this was, you know, they kind of as Estonia was kind of coming out as a leader on these topics before they had, they had even yet, I think, fully integrated into the EU. I don't think they were on the Euro yet, but their particular experience dealing with cyber threats from Russia, really, I think gave them some critical insights, and being able to put them sort of at the helm of this, this Freedom Online Coalition, and give them the perch of, kind of hosting, not quite heads of states, but secretaries of states and other important sort of diplomats and other stakeholders, critically, I think, was really valuable to them. You know, a few years later, Mongolia chaired the Freedom Online Coalition. I think Eileen, you were there. Might have been there as well, at a personal capacity. At that point, I was there with the US government, and it was really poignant to be there, literally sandwiched between the two most authoritarian governments in the world, helping to support a government that was standing up and articulating a vision and supporting a kind of consensus around freedom that was very disfavored by those very powerful neighbors, right? So there are kind of experiences and opportunities like that, which, you know, I think Moldova is another member of the Freedom Online Coalition. I remember their government has sort of gone back and forth over time in terms of its Pro and anti Russian leanings, but at one point they had a government that was less pro Russian, and we did some work to try and sort of support them through the Freedom Online Coalition with the cyber coordinators office run by Chris Painter at the time, the predecessor to this predecessor office to the cyber and digital policy office that Eileen then worked in under the Biden administration. So that kind of coalition building a little bit more bilaterally and a little bit more kind of on the margins of multilateral engagements, I think, is also important. And I think we're not going to see that from the Trump administration. I mean, everything is very clearly transactional now, and so multilaterally, the positions they've taken on, on the SDGs and the CSTD, it's clear that, as Andrea was pointing out in the chat, you know, there's going to be some very different dynamics multilaterally, but I also think kind of bilaterally, there's just going to be less support for those countries that are trying to sort of hold on and kind of continue to push human rights more broadly and sort of internet freedom more specifically in their regions. So more pressure on Europe, for sure, to kind of step in and fill those fill those gaps, whether it's, you know, capacity building, you know, training, or just broader diplomatic support, more pressure on the multi stakeholder community as well to try and kind of hold the line, I would imagine, both multilaterally and otherwise. So it's it's going to be tough, but I will say this work, as this conversation has illustrated, didn't just start a few years ago. It's it's really got a pretty deep legacy, and there's kind of rich tradition and through lines and people, many of them on this call, who've been involved for so many years. And I think that gives me a bit of hope that you know, even though the US is a very powerful actor and its role is going to be fundamentally different, at least for the next few years, I think there is strength in networks like the Freedom Online Coalition. It's been interesting where as Jean I sort of part of this advisory network, the Non Governmental Advisory network, and just to see those governments are just continuing on right, the US has not been participating particularly actively, because I don't think the people who represent the US government to the freedom of Land Coalition have gotten any instructions one way or another. So we'll see how that evolves. But you know, the coalition is moving on. Estonia is chair again, stepping up and doing a great job. And so I think there's still room for good things to happen. You know, we'll see what happens with wi sis later this year. I think that is going to be an important sort of opportunity to see where the rest of the world wants to go, if the US is going to sort of effectively remove itself from those negotiations. So, so, but I do still have some hope that not all of this great work that's been done over many years is going to be lost.

Great. All right, excellent. Thank you guys. So we've reached the top of the hour. I want to open it up to everybody who's who's joined us. There's a number of people who are here with us today who have a lot of interesting ideas and experience in this area. I'm looking at the chat, and I see a number of comments and questions from Andrea Esther heisen in South Africa, Yannis Kirklands in Latvia, Alex klinberg In Austria, on and on and on. So I hope some folks will want to raise their hand, otherwise, if you don't, I can also read questions to Fiona here in DC. So, Andrea, okay, great. So when you when you speak, could you please just introduce yourself? People know who you are. Okay? Andrea Asser, heisen,

and thanks, Bill. Can you hear me clearly? Yes, but I'm actually in a sort of remote area, so I'm not putting my camera on, and I'm was for many years, Executive Director of association for progressive communications, US based international civil society organization, working in the space. I've been involved in the IGF in many capacities, including I chaired the IGF multi stakeholder advisory group for a couple of years some time ago. I mean, I was also at the CSD last, last two weeks ago, as Bill mentioned, I think that we should also look at other scenarios. I think it's really interesting when the seed CSTD is obviously

sorry, the CSTD, you should say what it is, Adrien commission

on science and technology for development, where, as Bill said in his intro, the the 20 year World Summit on the Information and society review was was voted on, and where the US, I think, for the first time in this internet governance space, made it clear that it's assuming a very different position. And I think that, you know, there was this moment when the US made its stance clearly, where I think all the other particularly the European governments and Canada, were holding their breath and thinking, what next. And the US played it very nicely. Actually, they also presented an alternative resolution. They supported the multi stakeholder process. You know, there was a moment when I think other governments actually considered going with the US, but they absolutely did not. And the reason they did not is because of what's happening in other spaces, in terms of US relations with Europe. So I think, you know, what's really interesting with this is that, I think it is there was a great sense of, I think, among the the Europeans, in particular, a sense of loss and a sense of concern. But got over it, and they started negotiating with African governments on submitting text, something I have never seen at CSTD, and I've been going there since 2007 and you saw some of the European governments who are not such big players in the space, Poland, for example, Austria, submitting text and getting away with it. You know, there was a bit of looseness. It was maybe a lot of, you know, not particularly relevant text. But the fact of the matter is that when the US exits from the room, it creates space for other players, and I think we're just beginning to see how that's going to play out. It could amount to nothing. There could be insufficient collaboration between G 77 states, or between pro multi stakeholder, pro Human Rights states like South Africa and Brazil, you know, in the space working more with Europe. And there could be nothing, you know, it could all fall apart. But I think it could also be quite interesting. And I think ultimately the loser here is going to be, in my view, maybe not at a national level, but in terms of influence in what ultimately is a global medium, which whether the multilateral system deals with it effectively or not, it's not going to let go of it, and with the US stepping back from being influential in that space, I don't know what would happen. I think it's quite interesting. I think the other thing that we that we see beginning to happen is more liability for US companies. I think it's beginning to happen a little bit. Someone mentioned content regulation earlier, and that's also going to shift, I think, how states elsewhere in the world collaborate in terms of trying to replicate what Europe has been doing with with with regulating us, companies, you know, which has been, which is also, it's evolving. And I think there are all kinds of challenges around that, including human rights challenges. But I think it's definitely a trend which initially, I think people in other parts of the world, felt a little bit frustrated by it, but I think increasingly they see potential in collaborating with the European approach to regulating the space. So I think that's going to be interesting as well. And then David bill, I just had a question specifically for Alene. I mean, another scenario that I think one can look at is what happens if there are new multinational binding treaties, such as the one on transnational corporations, for example, without the US. But even if the US is not a signatory to those treaties, US based companies will have liabilities. I think that's a scenario that we should think about. And I wanted to ask Alene specifically what she thinks about this endless negotiations on the transnational treaty on the human rights obligations of this treaty on human rights obligations of transnational corporations, whether she thinks there's any, any anything to play with there.

Thank you, Fiona. Before I come to you, let me give people a chance to apply to this, because omnibus put a lot of things on table. And one point in particular, that this notion of other coalitions that may be formed, I think, is important. I mean, you remember for years people were saying, well, Europe is the new normative superpower. Europeans would say this all time. When I lived in Europe, the Europe is the new normative superpower. Will the Europeans or others be able to step into the void created by the US? What other kinds of coalitions might be created? These are pretty pressing questions. So, and there was a specific point to you, Alene, so go ahead.

So I'll take the the treaty point first. This was this. It raises a very controversial subject that many of us dealt with at the very end of the Biden administration on the cyber crime treaty. Which is they the this is not a proud moment from my point of view. And one of the ideas was, the United States is not going to join the treaty anyway, but other countries will my concern, other countries will proceed. And you're right, US companies will need to comply. And so I think that was a bit of a blind spot in the US approach on that subject. And I think we're not winning that argument right now, I also want to go to the larger point you made that bill just referenced about how Andre you said, you know, former allies in liberal democratic countries Europe especially, are just plain angry about lots of subjects, and maybe They could have gone along with the US texts, but they chose not to, just because of that sentiment, and yes, it may create other spaces for different new coalitions and other players. I think the key question is whether those coalitions end up advancing what you said was a pro multi stakeholder, pro human rights, universal values, sentiments, or whether it really just empowers authoritarians and leads to a strengthening of China, Russia and others. One last point going back to David's key idea about, you know, the impact of multilateral fora, I think well taken. And I think that idea that multilateral resolutions not clear exactly what the impact is in the real world and in the lives of people around the world. However, Henriette noted in the chat, I will say, in the last over the last year, especially even actually since the release of chat GPT two years ago, there was an explosion of interest in multilateral fora on international AI governance, and the global majority, Global South, very much yearning to be in that debate and part of the international governance conversation, as well as seeing it as the linchpin of their development and furtherance of the SDGs. And you know, the China, China and the US were competing over who would get more support for their UN resolution on AI and the SDGs AI and development. And it very much is a battle over gaining, having the optic with the global majority that that one side or the other is more interested in your development and inclusion in AI governance and AI technology development. So, you know, it's not, it's it's not a clear shift away from all multilateral fora that subject the UN is still it's been very important up until very recently.

Thanks, Eileen.

I agree very much with Eileen was just saying, and I think that illustrates very nicely. She did a great job of illustrating it depends on what the it is that we're talking about and what the impact is and what the right forum is, because of the way in which either governments or other groups come to the discussion and what they find most useful. And I certainly hope Adrien is is is right about the importance of the multilateral process in the global south and developing world, because it makes me feel much better that all the time I spent in those negotiations really benefited people. I certainly hope that's the case. And it makes you feel better to know that others may feel the same way, and I'm really looking less about the past and more as we look ahead. And what is effective in that way, with regard to the comment about, you know, Europe having the regulatory lead, you know, that's certainly been the case for the past couple of years. I think, I think, without out, but it'll be interesting to see if that is true going forward. When I was in Europe, just a couple of weeks ago, much of the conversation I was hearing was of a shift within Europe about the regulatory nature, including about AI and a variety of other areas, the impact of the drog report, for example, and as a practical matter, as many of The European governments are finding that they need to spend a lot more money on defense than they have been in the past. They need to find the money somewheres, and although Brussels is allowing for some flexibility on deficits and so forth, nevertheless they realize that they've got a new additional imperative to grow the economies European economies have not been growing in the past few years, and there's as a result, there's a real view now going on, and there's going to be some announcements coming up about perhaps Europe being less regulatory in the way we think that has been in the past. And if that's the case, we may see some real sea change going forward. Thanks. Thank you.

And could people who are not speaking Please mute? Okay, just Jason, and then we'll go to Fiona.

Yeah. I mean not, I wanted to make the point that David already made, that Europe is reevaluating its approach to corporate regulation. Certainly we see that. I mean Henrietta, I think you were asking specifically about the business and human rights treaty, which is not an internet focus treaty, but will sort of create a permission structure for more effectively regulation and potentially liability over human rights impacts of companies, including for things that happen outside of their jurisdiction. It is astute that you note that the US retrenching broadly on the multilateral scene is more likely to ensure that that resolution moves that process, which is pretty close to being finalized, as I understand, it, will move forward pretty quickly. Europe is already engaged in the negotiation whether or not Europe will ratify that treaty, and sort of how quickly that gets to the minimum number of ratifications to go into effect, is another question. But if I were a US company, or companies, multilateral company, more generally, I'd be pretty concerned about sort of that kind of development and the broader kind of normative permission structure that it will create. And I think you can draw parallels to as Eileen did the cyber crime Convention, which, interestingly, I think we're more likely to see perhaps the Trump administration back away from than the Biden administration was wasn't willing to back away from, despite some good efforts, both internally and externally, to point out the challenges. So yeah, but and then, you know, at the Internet governance level as well. I think it'll be interesting to see to what extent companies see what happened at CSTD and decide that they need to be a bit more vocal in their engagements with the Trump administration about wi sis and what they hope to get out of whistles, or what they hope to not happen at wissus.

Thanks, Jason, all right. Well, Fiona, you have years of working in a decision making role in US government around these issues, so it'd be great to hear your views too. Go ahead.

Yeah, thanks. And hi to everyone. And I was just put in the chat a little bit in sort of responding to what I heard from my amazing former colleagues that I'll give you great versions of what's been happening over the years. But my take on this is that I think the US has sort of stepped away from its leadership role, not in the last three months, but honestly in the last eight or nine years. And part of the challenge is that, at least from where my I sit and my perspective is that sort of the fundamental principles that guide us, tech, internet, cyber, whatever you want to call it, policy or from 1998 and they've never been updated. And there's this reluctance and reticence to look at the issue as a big picture set for a variety of reasons. And until Washington decides what it wants in this space, it's hard to figure out how to lead in other venues, whether it's the UN or other international organizations and that kind of stuff. And, you know, as David gross mentioned, the First Amendment, you know, is amazing, but I think it definitely challenges the ability of the US to lead. It's fine if you're trying to get to least common denominator and high level principles. And we spent a lot of time doing that, and that's really important to do. And I think the US has, historically, until recently, a big and big champion of that. The challenge is that when you go to the next order, which is, how do you maintain your commitment to free expression and still solve the problems that people have? So I don't know if it was Eileen or Yamas talked about governance of or on the internet use issues, the US doesn't have a consistent policy or a consistent approach, and until it does, I don't think it can lead the solutions, and that's why you saw Brussels step in. And I think the Brussels approach, to my observation is over regulation, and it isn't particularly effective. So we'll see how that unfolds. But I think it's important to understand that part of the reason that the US is unable to lead is we don't know what we want, right? And this particular Trump administration, I think that started several cycles back.

It's an interesting provocation. Fiona, I think before we we go to the panel again, because we're going to run out of time, let me just try and see if there gather, if there's any other people who'd like to take the floor and make an intervention. Or I can, I can read a couple of the points from the chat too, and try and get them on the table. But if anybody would like to raise their hand, please go ahead. David Allen, go ahead. Thanks, Bill.

I'm ancient. I go back to wish this enough of that strap.

How Eileen

has pointed at content instead of what goes on bits and byte, I think correctly. I'm particularly struck then how we find ourselves trying to sort out, as Jason led us to hear, there are harms that come from Freedom of Information. I want to suggest is we will find a path forward when we can sort out the difference between what the totalitarian states would do in controlling what their citizens and can't do, and Trump is trying to do, sadly in this country as well. I want to suggest when we can sort out the difference between those totalitarian maneuvers and what we as communities insist upon. Even in this discussions, there are tacit rules that all of us know, things we cannot say, would not say, would not be permitted to say, would be run off if we did say. They're about the successful operation of community. If we can get our hands around a picture that describes how community operates, well, we'll see those things that indeed are not allowed, and despite our commitment to freedom, are not acceptable when we can make that explicit and we can contrast that with the way that totalitarian pave and we might begin to see a path forward to what real freedom looks like with community constraint.

David, that's a very interesting observation before we go to the panel, then we'll do one round, and then we'll wrap up, just to put a couple other points of the table for people. So Toshiya from Japan, spoke about AI governance and suggested that there may be multiple kinds of regulations that will impact the industry and constrain private sector. And again, this goes to the point to how private sector players will be affected by these things, even if the US is not really engaging in the discussion about what's to be done. Andre had multiple observations. I can't read through them, unfortunately. And Alex glinberg also raised this question about the distinctions between content and infrastructure and the roles of different kinds of norms, particularly speech. Yannis spoke to something similar. So I think those this kind of distinction that you know, obviously, we all recognize that the the mechanisms pertain to the infrastructure raise a different set of questions from the ones having to do content and what goes over the net, and that nexus, obviously is much more difficult and much more difficult for democracies and ill, liberal, ill, liberal countries to come together on a shared position on those latter kinds of issues. So okay, so let's go back to the panel for a final round through all the different kinds of points of raised.

Eileen, go ahead.

Okay, so I will take up Fiona's two points, and the second one joined David, I think you are correct that the fact is is the US. I think the US has distinctively stepped back on our core values, universe, commitment to universal values. You international human rights in the last three months, but the US has stepped away from global leadership in international fora over the last eight or nine years. And you, you are correct that part of it is some of our ideas are very dated, and we're stuck in policy articulation that stems from, you know, 1998 or whenever I saw this firsthand, very much in the Bureau of cyberspace and digital policy, where we were, we were trying to respond to a clear signal from the community people want to talk about digital public infrastructure, and my entry to that subject was, let's develop universal safeguards that are baked into the technology design, so that we are continuing to pull this thread of universal values, regardless of the technology. There was so much resistance because the United States doesn't really have dpi. We don't have our own infrastructure that we can export externally, on the, you know, in the full stack, so to speak. So there was, it was just a lot of internal resistance to engaging in that. And yet the international community is absolutely there, and in at UNGA last year, UNDP, OSAT, the Office of Science, no office technologies, common, deep, whatever his role is, the Secretary General came together along with Many other multi you know, foundations co develop different players to develop to launch this universal safe guards proposal. So that's fair on the freedom of expression point that you hit, and several others. David, you hit this too. I also agree that until we settle our views about how do we address harms and how that syncs with our approach to free expression, we are not going to be in a leadership position, and we are at risk of playing into the other alternative, which is a totalitarian alternative. I will say, Secretary Blinken tried hard. He used his speech at the summit for democracy on, you know, a whole new approach to strengthening information integrity as a proactive effort, rather than a restraint on content, as you know, like advancing the quality of content, and also the notion of building civic resilience to digital information manipulation. And we published a democratic roadmap for building civic resilience to this simple idea being that freedom of expression entails the freedom to seek, the freedom to receive, and the Receive freedom to impart information, and also the ability to form opinion. And if everything in the information realm is just taken over by whatever you want to call it disinformation, people's ability to form opinions is being impacted, and that goes to our commitment to protect free expression. So, you know, we tried to develop a more nuanced position. We got support from the secretary. Was anchored in Article 19, but in ways that was consistent with the First Amendment, not antithetical, and trying to bridge that gap and emphasize the ability of the private sector to choose to protect free expression, and, you know, exercising their own free expression with what they put out on platforms. But I agree, we've gone backwards. That is another area. We've definitely gone backwards.

Thanks, Eileen. Unfortunately, the clock is ticking away and we're going to run a time. So if I could just ask the other two people to make quite, quite, quite concise, because we want to wrap to four minutes. So thank you.

Well, let me start by just thanking you for organizing. Obviously, the fact that we're bumped up against the deadline shows you how important and interesting this topic remains. And I thought today's comments were really terrific. And appreciate the opportunity. I like to look ahead on these types of things, and I would recommend that one of the things that we're experiencing is a shift and a change from where we've been. One of the changes I always had, especially when I was in government, is that talk, my talking points, change more slowly than the reality around it, and that's always a challenge. And so I would suggest that this is an opportunity for all the players, governments, civil society, others, to spend some time thinking about what the realities are today and going forward, and therefore what the vehicles to achieve the common goals that we all see should be in the future. Preparing for the future by sort of clear eye views of where we are and where we should be going, how best to get there will serve us, I think, well, going forward, thanks again.

Thanks, David. A great point, David. And I think just building on that, I will say and to some of on Riyadh's comments as well. Like, you know this is going to be a very disruptive moment. There's no doubt about that. But I think there is an opportunity silver linings. I think, you know, I What, what we heard from Fiona resonates with me as well. You know that, you know, things haven't been great for a while, and so we're going to have to think creatively as a community, as sort of actors who have important perspectives and experience in this space about what the future we want to build looks like, not just how to put things back together the way were. So that's that's the opportunity. I mean, there's going to be a lot of pain, a lot of challenge in the near term. I would recommend the book that Audrey Tang and Glen wile recently published, plurality, which actually kind of does a good job, I think, telling the story of how what we're seeing as kind of mutually reinforcing forces between technology and democracy became untangled, and they're, I think, pretty interesting ideas about how to put it back together again, but again in a new way, without kind of just reverting back to things, making things work the way they used to. So hopefully we together can can navigate these job PCs. I really appreciate bill and Eli putting this together, and hope to continue to engage with all the folks here in this space and others going forward.

Thanks Jason and thanks everybody in the panel for great contributions. This was, I thought, a really interesting conversation, and very just indicated from the perspective of people who've been involved in decision making as well. So all right, I want to thank again, everybody who for joining us. I want to thank Jason Buck whites, the executive director of Citi, for managing the meeting. As always, we expect to reconvene in four weeks on May 21 and so there will be an announcement for that. And again, anybody wants to be on our mail list, please shoot a note to us and we'll get you on there. All right, I turn it back to Ellie for closing thought,

yeah, just just for saying this, we dealt with really, very fundamental issues, Liberty versus control, national versus global, us approach versus European regulatory approach, internet in the past versus internet in the future. And I could go on. So I thought we kind of it was not a kind of what happened last week type discussion, but much more, kind of deeper going into ways the Internet, what are liberties on it and where is it going? So thank you to Eileen, David and Jason. Thank you also to our Jason. Jason Bucha, Executive Director, thank you Bill Drake for organizing this session and the past ones and the future ones, and thank you the audience for your interest and engagement and so I will say goodbye to you from New York. See you next month. Bye,