The gang's all back together again! After a week apart as the KU Leuven students enjoyed the rest of their Easter holiday, the students are "back" in the classroom together, some in Belgium, some in DC, some joining virtually, for the next to last meeting of the semester!
For today's class, the theme was Technology & Data in the transatlantic order. To open the class, the students heard a brief presentation and Q&A with Raluca Csernatoni, a visiting scholar at Carnegie Europe, where she works on European security and defense with a specific focus on disruptive technologies. Dr.Csernatoni talked about the current state of technology and Data from an EU perspective, focusing on strategies like the new Strategic Compass, and other ways the European Commission is legislating the ever-evolving technological world. Csernatoni's work and research looks at the future of emerging and disruptive technologies, tactical approaches to data protection and privacy, managing and policing the world of illicit technological activity and those acting within it, whether they be non-state actors, state-backed groups, or the state itself.
Dr. Csernatoni says the conversation on disruptive technologies needs to be broadened to include non-state actors, those who are actually creating and developing these new technologies and then deploying them in the digital and cyber world. This not only includes civilians and government organizations, like the Department of Defense, the Pentagon, and their transatlantic counterparts, but also terrorist organizations that can harness these technologies, and use them in increasingly harmful ways.
To prepare for class this Tuesday morning (we changed things up for the Easter weekend), the class watched the pre-recorded Transatlantic Policy Memorandum presentation, "Data Privacy: A Transatlantic Priority." For the second half of class, the group gave a brief recap of their memo, and then the rest of the students and the professors asked questions and discussed the memo with its authors. The memo itself talked about what defines "data," an abstract and rather intangible concept, and what different types of data require when it comes to regulation and protection. Data Privacy is a particularly contrasting topic in the transatlantic space, as the United States and the EU now have considerably different levels of data privacy and protection, the EU taking a far more extensive approach, the US going for a more hands-off approach. The group recommends that the US government create a patchwork of legislation to fill the gaps within state-by-state legislation, and use that to craft a standard framework for all data privacy cases.
To close out the class meeting, the students broke up into small groups to discuss the following quote:
"Between the imperative of building EU digital/tech sovereignty and protecting European values on data privacy against US companies and others, and the second goal of cooperating with the US to counter China when it comes to regulations, which do you see as most likely to prevail and why?"
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