UN Secretary-General António Guterres speaks with WIRED's Nicholas Thompson
Released on 11/25/2019
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.
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