Hello, I'm Nicholas Thompson!

I'm the editor-in-chief of Wired

and it is my great pleasure to be here,

at the United Nations World Headquarters,

with the United Nations Secretary-General

Antonio Guterres.

We're gonna talk about technology and the global order.

Secretary-General.

Thank you very much.

So recently, you gave a speech in Paris

where you talked about five great threats to the world,

and you talked about the technological break.

What did you mean and why is it so in your mind right now?

I think we have three risks of divide,

geostrategic divide, a social divide,

and a technological divide.

Geostrategically, if you look at today's world,

with the two largest economies,

the Chinese economy and the American economy,

and with the trade and technology confrontation

that exists, that we might witness in the future

a kind of decoupling in which, all of a sudden,

each of these two areas will have its own market,

its own currency, its own rules, its own internet,

its own strategy and artificial intelligence,

and then, inevitably, when that happens,

its own military and geostrategic strategies,

and then the risks of confrontation increase dramatically.

So this is a geostrategic fracture that we need to avoid.

Then, we have a social divide.

Today, the internet is a fantastic tool.

For us, if one looks at the sustainable development goals,

the digital economy, the digital technologies

are a fantastic instrument to allow us to achieve

those goals, but at the same time, they have risks

and they have clear possibilities

of being used for nefarious objectives.

And we have terrorists organizations that use the internet,

you have drug trafficking and traffic of humans being

using the internet, you have even crimes of cybercrime,

you have problems of cybersecurity at different levels.

My deep belief is that the traditional forms

of intergovernmental conventions do not apply

to the digital world because things move so quickly

that the convention that takes five years to discuss

and approve, and then two years to ratify,

will come to light.

We need to have much more flexible mechanisms

in which different stakeholders come together regularly

and they adopt a number of, I'd say, protocols

of codes of conduct and create the conditions

to have a flexible mechanism of governance

that allows, as I said, to make, essentially,

the internet a force for good and to limit the risks

that we have in the cyberspace today.

And then we still have the other divide,

and that is the divide that is linked

to the divide between rich and poor.

Half of the population of the world

is not linked to the internet.

The capacities of countries are completely different.

Artificial intelligence in some countries

will, of course, destroy jobs but will create new jobs

and will allow for enormous progress and development

but other countries will face the negative impact

but they have not the capacity

to use the positive dimension.

So to make sure that we don't increase this divide,

this inequality in the world, that is essential

and we need to transform the digital technologies

in an instrument to attenuate divisions,

to attenuate inequality

and not in an instrument

that makes more and more inequality prevail into this world.

And we see the impact of inequality more and more,

not only among countries but within each country,

and we see the disquiet in so many societies

because people feel frustrated that they are left behind.

That is a profound structure of problems

with three levels.

Let's start with the first one, the geostrategic level.

One of the metaphors that people sometimes use

for this fracture between the US internet

and the Chinese internet is that we'll have a new Cold War

and countries will have to choose sides.

They'll have to choose whether they want to build

with American or western technology, or Chinese technology.

Do you think that is an appropriate metaphor,

and then how does it differ from the Cold War we had before?

The Cold War in the past was more predictable

and more well-defined.

In the end, there were two worlds

that were indeed separated,

but the risks of confrontation were limited.

The main risk was, of course, atomic confrontation.

With time and with wisdom, after some risky situations,

mechanisms were created and a disarmament agenda

was in place that, in the last decades

of last century, worked.

The risk of confrontation was much more limit.

When you look at the cyberspace, it's much more complicated.

I am convinced that, if when they would have imagined

confrontation, it would start with a massive cyber attack,

not only on military installations,

but on civilian infrastructure.

There is a general principle that international law

applies to cyberspace but it's not clear

how international humanitarian law applies,

and these are the laws of war.

The self-defense principle of the UN,

how does it apply in this contact?

What is it war, what is it not war?

In the situation we are already see

forms of cyber attacks taking place into this world.

And then of course, artificial intelligence will develop

new kinds of weapons.

We are totally against, and this is a position

I've been stressing strongly, we are against

autonomous weapons that can have the right

to choose targets and kill people

without human interference.

And we know that the technology is there,

it's available for that,

and there is no consensus in the world

about how to regulate it.

Some countries think that they should be forbidden,

as I believe.

Some countries think that, No, that is not justified.

Would you forbid the use

of unmanned defensive weapon systems or just offensive?

That's very difficult, to distinguish

what it is defensive and what is offensive.

Our position is that autonomous weapons

that have the right to kill people,

that they choose without human interference,

where accountability mechanisms cannot be established,

should be banned.

But its opposition, there is no consensus

international community about it.

The Cold War of the past was much more predictable

than an environment in which there is no

serious international cooperation in the future,

if this decoupling takes place,

because the number of ways in which we can evoke

in the world is much bigger.

The level of uncertainty and unpredictability

is bigger, and that is the reason why I strongly believe

that an effort must be made to address this challenge

and to create the conditions, as I said,

to have a universal economy, a universal internet,

and to have a number of mechanisms of dialogue,

and coordination, and cooperation to establish

a set of rules that allow for these risks to be minimized.

Remember to see the strap, no? Mmhmm.

To see the strap can be summarized in a sentence.

It was the rise of Athens

and the fear that rise created in Sparta

that made war inevitable.

Now, I don't believe that war is inevitable,

on the contrary, history proves that in many situations

like these, there was no war,

but we need to have leadership

on both sides, and on the international community,

committed to create the conditions for this evolution

to take place in a harmonious way and to avoid

forms of decoupling or separation

that might create bigger risks in the future.

So the decoupling is proceeding

relatively quicker right now.

We've just seen, for example, that Huawei

is making phoness without androids, right?

The United States and China are splitting

further and further apart on technology.

In the near-term future, the next several years

of your term, what do you want to have happen

to reduce the speed of the decoupling

or even to reverse the process?

To reverse the process.

I think-- But how so?

Well, you need to build trust.

You need to have cooperation, you need to have dialogue,

you need to understand each other,

to understand the differences,

and to have a serious commitment,

also in relation to other areas,

that can be divisive on this, for instance, human rights.

We need to make sure that these technologies

respect human rights, respect human privacy.

We need to make sure that we don't use these systems

to fully control human lives,

both politically or economically.

And we know that, today, we are all, to a certain extent,

under the eyes of different entities

that are interconnected with us.

We have not only all our devices that we use,

mobiles phoness, but we have the internet of things

that is developing more and more.

Everything is becoming interconnected.

The cloud is there.

Everything.

So, more and more we need, as I said,

not rigid, regulative frameworks

that are no longer possible

but to bring the actors together.

And some of the actors are governments,

and governments need to understand

that they need to cooperate.

So is the role of the United Nations to convene,

get people in the same room to talk,

or is it to actually set

a new global regulatory framework?

I think, first, we need to bring people together.

That's why we appointed high-level panel

on these cooperation.

There is a number of recommendations that were made.

We have now, for each recommendation,

we are creating a group of champions,

governments, companies, and other entities

to try to push for digital cooperation,

which means in each area, and these are complex issues,

we need to bring together actors and we can be the platform

where they come together, and then of course,

we need to move ahead with other instruments.

I'm going to the Internet Governance Forum.

It is an institution that can do more, in my opinion,

can be enhanced, can be strengthened.

We have a lot of other instruments today in the world.

We need to create the conditions for this kind of,

I would say, soft, flexible regulation

to progressively be accepted by the different actors,

and for all actors to cooperate in defining those protocols

that I mentioned, those red lines, those mechanisms

of cooperation that will allow to minimize the risks.

So the UN's role will be to convene

and then soft regulations, protocols, red lines--

And in some aspects, law.

For example, I think that

what would be a law? the reason

I would be in favor of banning autonomous weapons.

In some aspect, if there is consensus in the world,

international law.

In other aspects, as I said,

forms of more flexible governance

that, in any case,

adapt better to something that is changing

very quickly, as you know.

Lemme ask you a big question that troubles me.

If you look at the last five years,

maybe even the last ten years,

the number of democracies in the world

has been declining,

and the number of authoritarian states has been increasing.

And there are lots of causes for this

but is it possible that technology is one of the causes

in the way that technology, as you said earlier,

can increase divides within countries,

in the way that it can distort democracy?

Do you think technology is having the opposite effect

of what we all hoped?

First, technology can help democracy,

can connect people, and we see that many social movements

in favor of democracy have been boosted by technology.

But it's also true that the way we are now interlinked

is sometimes by tribe.

And different tribes tend to have their own systems

of interconnection, and that generates divides.

And this is not only true about social media,

it's also true about, sometimes in some countries,

traditional media that also tend to stimulate

this tribal environment in which a group of people

listen always to the same kind of things,

and then other group of people

listens to different kinds of things,

and they not only have different opinions,

they see facts differently.

That is reality, we need to take into account.

More dangerous than that are the mechanisms

that exist today that allow for the control of people.

And we see how they can influence elections.

We have seen examples of that.

We can see how they can influence,

companies might be able not only to offer me

the products that they, because of the information

they have about me, they think I will be interested,

but at a certain moment, they can even try to push

for changing my tastes to be able to buy what they want.

And there are mechanisms that allow

for the political control of people

that are extremely worrying.

And that, if applied in a society,

can fully undermine democracy.

So indeed, I believe that our democratic systems

need to be able to evolve to preserve, entirely,

the democratic values, taking into account

that the technologies now have a potential

but have a number of risks, too.

So we cannot just blindly move ahead

as if nothing is happening.

Things are happening

and they are real threats to democracy.

I'm not pessimistic about that, I have to say,

because let us not forget, today, we are seeing

an evolution into some illiberal democracies,

but at the same time, in the last decades,

we had a huge number of countries that move

from authoritarianism to democracy

so we are not witnessing a long-term trend,

and we are seeing reactions of people

that are very interesting.

We are seeing a disquiet of people,

we are seeing people wanting to make sure

that their voices are heard,

that political systems become more participatory

because they became, sometimes, as you know,

even democracies, very closed and very oligarchic.

I have an enormous faith on human beings,

and I think that human beings will be able to overcome

these difficulties and to preserve the democratic values

that are so essential for our societies.

And do you think that access to the internet

should be a human right,

and that there should be international law,

say for example, forbidding the government of Iran

from turning off access to the internet

as they did just recently?

I think internet should be a right.

There are situations, I'm not talking about any country

specific or any situation specific, I can imagine,

as we have in all constitutions, states of emergency

that can be declared in certain circumstances,

by the democratic bodies of the country.

So in the context of a full democracy that can happen.

But what we shouldn't, in my opinion, is use

the digital technologies

as an instrument of political control.

So you've given some ideas for how the world order

can be shaped, but for people watching this or reading this

who care about the future of democracy,

and who care about the world not splitting apart,

what can they do?

What should they be thinking about?

They are doing.

Look at the streets in so many parts of the world.

People are doing, people are assuming responsibility,

people are saying, Our voice must be heard.

The idea that a very small group of people can decide

for everything is now being put into question

very seriously.

In each country the trigger is different.

In some case it's a economic revendication,

in others is a question of the political system,

in other it's corruption, people react.

But I see more and more

people wanting to assume responsibility,

wanting their voices to be heard,

and that is the best guarantee we have

that political systems will not be corrupted.

And technology is often at their service.

Technology can be used against people

but can be used by people for a good cause.

Thank you so much, Secretary-General Guterres.

Thank you very much.