Global Tech Security Commission Final Report

In every era of human history, civilizations, nations, and their peoples have developed technologies to secure their interests and gain advantages over one another. But the scale and pervasiveness of modern technologies makes competition today profoundly different from that in previous eras. Semiconductors are the beating heart of every device with an on-off switch, including critical infrastructure. The world’s data is increasingly stored on cloud platforms. Satellites relay signals to billions of people worldwide. Governments are reconfiguring national transportation systems around clean energy technologies and connected vehicles.

Artificial Intelligence is especially emerging as a cornerstone of modern technological and economic competition. AI is not only vital for maintaining a strategic edge but also essential for enhancing national security, addressing pressing societal challenges, and bolstering economic growth. Goldman Sachs has theorized that AI alone could be responsible for driving a 7% increase in global GDP by 2033.⁹

But AI is not without complications. For one, the rapid expansion of AI capabilities comes with significant infrastructure demands, particularly in the form of immense energy requirements. The Commission is mindful of the strategic implications of falling behind in the AI race. Ethical considerations and risk mitigation are essential. But the Commission also recognizes the danger of over-regulation in the early stages of AI development. A balanced approach is crucial, one that ensures responsible innovation while allowing for the necessary exploration and experimentation to drive progress and maintain free nations’ competitive advantage.

In the context of geopolitical competition, emerging technologies are not just a means of obtaining superior military power. They are also the most powerful tools in the world for maintaining human flourishing, exerting economic might, disseminating information, and protecting (or, sadly, abusing) human rights.

The comprehensive, “4-dimensional” nature of competition between the free world and authoritarian states will take place across diplomatic, economic, cultural and informational, and military lines—and technology is the crossroads. Given the importance of emerging technologies to these areas and all aspects of modern life, it has never been so important to ensure that the actors controlling them do not use them to do harm at scale.

As miraculous as the post-World War II proliferation of technology has been for economic growth, global interconnectivity, and quality of life, it has come with a downside. Largely because of the free world’s economic ties with China and other authoritarian nations, regimes hostile to freedom have legally and illegally acquired or developed the technologies that will shape geopolitical power.

These nations have already demonstrated a willingness to use them to expand their own military, economic, diplomatic, information and cultural power. They have also used them to erode free nations’ security, prosperity, freedom, and global standing. Russia, for instance, now deploys hypersonic missiles in Ukraine.¹⁰ The Chinese military is researching how the gene-editing tool CRISPR might be used to enhance soldier performance¹¹ and Chinese researchers have reportedly learned how to use quantum computing power to crack military-grade encryption tools.¹² Iran and North Korea have both manipulated cryptocurrency exchanges to evade sanctions.¹³

Competitive Analysis

The United States and its allies boast systems of government dedicated to protecting individual rights and ensuring participation in the political process, while authoritarian regimes concentrate power in the hands of a few.

Free Societies

Strengths: The U.S. and its likeminded allies and partners are committed to the freedom of expression, the rule of law, impartial judiciary systems, and the protection of property rights. These political features consequently undergird economic systems characterized by open markets, fair competition, international collaboration, robust capital investment, and regulatory frameworks that lead to historic accomplishments in innovation and enterprise. These features have allowed companies located in the free world to become the world’s leading innovators in key emerging technologies: think ASML (semiconductor manufacturing equipment) in the Netherlands, Palantir (artificial intelligence) in the United States, or Samsung (5G and 6G) in South Korea.

Perhaps most importantly, the likeminded nations of the free world are bound by shared values and a history of collaboration that has established high levels of trust. Many nations have their military or economic ties formalized through the NATO alliance and the European Union and have a history of cooperating to combat shared threats, whether it was Soviet communism during the Cold War or Islamist terrorism in the Global War on Terrorism. Consequently, these nations can trust that the others are generally committed to pursuing similar geopolitical ends, thereby laying a basis for eager cooperation. The power contained in these alliances is the free world’s most powerful competitive advantage in the geopolitical arena.

Weaknesses: Freedom also presents inherent challenges. Passing national security-focused legislation through democratic legislative processes marked by open and transparent debate is often a complex and slow-moving process. Coordinating efforts across sectors and countries is also difficult, given the differing objectives between public and private sector actors, as well each country’s views of what is in its own national interests. Over the last several years, for instance, the European Union’s strategic orientation toward China has been inconsistent, in part because of divisions within the bloc over allowing China to invest in or acquire European tech companies. Consequently, nations of the free world have not forged a durable, coordinated strategy amongst themselves for responding to emerging techno-authoritarianism.

Free nations, such as those in Europe, are also being forced to rethink the conditions they must set to be conducive to tech development. Former Italian Prime Minister and head of the European Central Bank Mario Draghi has noted that, “the core problem in Europe is that new companies with new technologies are not rising in our economy.”¹⁴ No company with a market cap over EUR 100 billion had been set up in the last fifty years.¹⁵ Today, notes Draghi, Europe would need EUR 750-800 billion per year to meet its existing environmental, security, innovation, and digital infrastructure goals—a figure that is approximately twice the size of GDP which Europe dedicated to the Marshall Plan each year in the aftermath of World War II.¹⁶ Europe’s self-assessment of its long-term strategic failure to prioritize its tech competitiveness pinpoints its inability up to now to achieve broader societal objectives.

Finally, citizens in the free world have typically viewed national security as strictly a responsibility for national governments to bear. But not every national security decision is one that involves deployments of troops, appropriations of money, or economic sanctions. Business leaders have the opportunity – and duty – to make decisions that serve their respective nations’ security interests, in ways that go far beyond mere compliance with government rules. As Krach Institute CEO Michelle Giuda has emphasized, “The real strategic impetus for winning the technology race will come not from government but from our enterprising business leaders from Silicon Valley to Indianapolis to New York to Austin, with help from allies in places like Tallinn, Montevideo, Tel Aviv, and Taipei.”¹⁷ Much work remains to normalize this attitude within the private sector and stop free-world companies from partnering with purveyors of untrusted technologies who are dedicated to the free world’s demise. A safe, free, and prosperous world is good for business.

Opportunities: The world’s 12 largest democracies (by GDP) and the European Union make up nearly two-thirds of the world’s GDP, giving them enormous economic leverage within the geopolitical arena—if they can act in a coordinated fashion. Additionally, free-world companies are still the world’s leading innovators of emerging technologies, giving them opportunities to secure new market shares. National governments also have opportunities to stifle technology transfers to authoritarian states and cut off the capital investments that bolster adversaries’ militaries. Where the private sector is concerned, as global geopolitical tensions rise, business leaders who limit business relationships to trusted tech partners will enjoy greater degrees of product and supply chain security, stakeholder confidence from customers, investors and regulators alike.

Threats: Authoritarians have exhibited a track record of exploiting free societies’ freedoms and economic openness to achieve their goals. As just a few examples, RT—a Russian propaganda network—operated with relative impunity on American television until 2022, and companies partnering with the Chinese military have listed on American stock exchanges. Chinese military personnel posing as innocent graduate students have infiltrated campuses in countries like Australia, Germany, Singapore, the UK and the U.S. with the intent to steal high-tech research.

Additionally, many companies and state/local/federal governments have adopted technologies produced by companies owned by or headquartered in authoritarian states (e.g. Huawei routers, DJI drones, Kaspersky Labs software, or ZPMC cargo cranes). Now spread across the free world, those technologies become access points for authoritarians to steal, spy and sabotage.

In total, authoritarian regimes have a sustained appetite to defy international norms and sacrifice the interests of their own people to achieve their geopolitical goals, thus creating pressure on free societies to decide whether, or how, they will impose costs for rogue behavior.

Strengths: Authoritarian states can compel or incentivize all aspects of their tech and business sectors to participate in achieving regime goals. Thus, even nominally private firms can become weaponized as arms of state power, especially in the tech sector. Thanks to a patchwork of national laws, the Chinese government can order Chinese firms to engineer technologies, appropriate Western technologies, and allocate personnel to serve the state’s national security imperatives. In 2022, the Russian government effectively legalized intellectual property theft, issuing a decree that allows Russian firms to use intellectual property from “unfriendly countries” without consent or compensation. According to the website IP Watchdog, “This essentially means that Russian firms can access publicly available patent databases and practice the patents to boost struggling technological production.”¹⁸

As a matter of techno-economic strategy, Chinese state planning and subsidies have greatly contributed to China becoming the world leader in the production of LED screens and green technologies such as electric vehicle batteries and solar panels. The success of state-funded support in concentrating production of these technologies inside China’s borders has inspired Beijing to attempt to achieve similar domination in other key technologies such as semiconductors and electric vehicles.

Additionally, authoritarian regimes have developed technologies purely for battlefield use, and in many cases already deployed them. Iran has shipped Shahed drones to Russia, where they are deployed on the battlefield in Ukraine, and the Houthi rebels in Yemen have also deployed Iranian drones in their attacks on Israel and commercial ships transiting the Red Sea. North Korea is well-known as a proliferator of ballistic missile know-how to Iran, and Russia has shipped its S-300 missile system there as well. Disinformation operations targeting democracies, such as those performed by Russia, can also move faster than the “speed of truth”—forcing governments to address lies at a slower rate than they can be pumped out.

More broadly, authoritarians, unconstrained by complex and time-consuming democratic processes, excel at rapidly exploiting geopolitical opportunities. They are comfortable to operate outside of international norms, create economic dependencies, and bypass ethical standards in areas such as human rights, labor, respect for the environment, and application of the rule of law. Authoritarian regimes seek to exploit the technological vulnerabilities and resource wealth of developing nations, thereby leveraging financial dependencies to impose their own interests. These tactics have helped countries like China and Russia gain substantial tech-economic footholds in developing countries throughout Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The Chinese Communist Party’s now-famous Belt and Road Initiative and Digital Silk Road have expanded China’s global influence.

Weaknesses: Authoritarian regimes are not without their own dramatic weaknesses. Lack of political and economic freedom stifles a culture of innovation and drives aspiring entrepreneurs and thinkers overseas. From October 2020 to January 2021, Jack Ma, the ordinarily high-profile Chinese founder of Alibaba Group, was nowhere to be seen in public view. Speculation persists that the Chinese government forcibly detained Ma or ordered him to keep a low profile after he gave a speech criticizing China’s regulators and banks.

Authoritarians’ broken promises and aggressive behaviors on the world stage have shattered trust within the international system and curtailed the free world’s willingness to share certain technologies with them, creating their own dependencies on foreign technologies and hindering them in their race to catch up to the leading companies of the free world. Finally, while China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea have increased geopolitical and military coordination with one another in recent years, these nations’ aggressive behaviors have substantially alienated other countries, and hence they lack true allies globally apart from other unstable and often impoverished authoritarian regimes. The world’s worst authoritarian regimes maintain only partnerships of coercion, convenience, and transaction, rather than true alliances.

Opportunities: Authoritarian regimes have strategically embedded their technologies with widespread global adoption such as TikTok, Huawei cell phones, or BYD electric vehicles. Besides the potential for these items to serve Chinese or other authoritarian state interests through theft, surveillance and sabotage, the economic activity associated with the production or importation of such items leads to political leverage for Beijing. Authoritarian regimes routinely exploit free societies to launch legal and illegal influence campaigns, manipulate public opinion through misinformation and disinformation, and co-opt business leaders.

Additionally, authoritarian nations continue to seize the opportunity to grow influence in poor nations with weak democratic norms or resilience. Developing nations in Africa, Asia, and Latin America with growing populations and increased technological capabilities will be home to a significant portion of the world’s future workforce and consumer and innovator base.

Even as diplomatic, tech, business, and civil society leaders strive to ensure that technology advances freedom, deciding the priority battlegrounds of effort can be overwhelming even for experts. That is why the Global Tech Security Commission identified five high-leverage areas in which the Global Trusted Tech Network can dramatically accelerate the innovation and adoption of trusted technology—provided that we take action in the next one to five years.

Imperative #1: Education and R&D

In the course of its analysis, the Commission recognized that public and private sector leaders consistently lack refined understandings of how emerging technologies work, their place in the broader tech ecosystem, and their role in influencing geopolitical dynamics. The world’s most powerful people—and decision-makers at all levels—need trusted and comprehensive information on the topics that will shape the future of geopolitics. Without it, they will be in the dark as they attempt to make good decisions, develop their workforces, and position their nations for economic success. As a result, the Commission identified several critical lines of effort for building knowledge and technical capacity on emerging technologies and their implications:

Bolstering tech diplomacy proficiency: The hyper speed and scale of tech innovation is daunting, not to mention the specialized knowledge required to understand even the basics of large language models, quantum physics, 6G wireless networks, satellite communications, semiconductor microelectronics, and synthetic biology. The complications inherent in understanding these technologies and others is compounded by the intricacies of the export control policies, global data regulations, industrial policies, and regulatory policies that govern the creation and proliferation of tech.

Using Higher Education as a Strategic Asset: While the U.S. and other free nations are blessed to have many high-achieving immigrants graduate their institutions, most of whom go on to add value to tech companies, unpredictable immigration policies and the intensification of global tech competition call for greater K-12 and college-level achievement in STEM disciplines. The time is now to invest in this strategic asset. Higher education must be viewed as a strategic asset in tech competition. The nations that can produce the greatest number and most talented high-level STEM graduates will have an advantage in leading every aspect of the tech innovation race.

Imperative #2: Technology and International Standards

Whether railroad track gauges in 19th century America, the battle between VHS or Beta home video formats in the 1980s, or electric vehicle charging configurations today, standardization has helped guide the secure adoption (or decline) of certain technologies. When companies, governments, or international bodies have the power to set technological standards, they have the power to shape how technologies are deployed and adopted. The Commission realized that in our globalized era, the often-universal nature of standards makes them among the most powerful tools for protecting freedom, security and innovation. Therefore, it is recommended that the establishment of trusted technology standards must be one of the Global Trusted Tech Network’s highest priorities.

Governments and tech companies alike thus have an interest in defending emerging tech regulations and standards that spur their own business successes and national prosperity. It is obvious to state the risks presented by authoritarian states that don’t respect human rights, transparency, privacy, or laws to set global technical standards that favor their companies and countries, and disregard freedom. Unfortunately, private sector companies have not to date advocated aggressively enough before international standard setting bodies. It is time for them to advocate for the foundational freedoms that make these companies prosperous in the first place.

Lack of engagement has opened the door for China and Russia to try and rewrite the rules of the digital road. In 2011, the Shanghai Cooperative Organization—a grouping of Eurasian nations including China and Russia—submitted to the UN Secretary General an International Code of Conduct for Information Security which, according to Kristen Eichensehr of Just Security, “seemed to deny the applicability of existing international law to cyberspace, advocated increased government control over the Internet, and legitimized limitations on freedom of expression.”²⁵ More recently, China’s 2021 five-year plan openly called for “promoting advantageous and special Chinese technology standards to become international standards to serve Chinese enterprises and industry going global.”²⁶

The China Standards 2035 initiative also envisions a greater role for Chinese tech companies in shaping international tech standards—and China has already made headway in setting three internationally-recognized 6G standards under the jurisdiction of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU).²⁷ Beijing has also vigorously lobbied the ITU to create rules that favor its own tech companies and enable greater online censorship. China has pushed a plan called the New IP—which also enjoys Russian support—which essentially seeks to give governments more power to control a user’s internet access and track his or her online activity.²⁸

Fortunately, the U.S. and its allies scored a win for tech freedom when American Doreen Bogdan-Martin won the ITU’s October 2022 leadership election over Russian candidate Rashid Ismailov—an ally of Beijing’s efforts. Similarly, in 2020, U.S. diplomats worked to defeat a China-supported candidate and elect Singaporean Daren Tang as the head of the UN’s World Intellectual Property Organization—a global body with power to define norms surrounding intellectual property protection.²⁹ These successful diplomatic efforts to protect tech security and freedom—to include voices from the private sector—should be replicated whenever elections for personnel leading international standard-setting bodies are held. Standard-setting also presents a golden opportunity for private sector and public sector leaders to work together to set tech standards that will reinforce the leadership of free-world companies and international security objectives.

Imperative #3: Technology Supply Chains and Infrastructure

The production of modern technologies depends on components and minerals sourced from various countries, and authoritarian regimes have repeatedly demonstrated a willingness to weaponize that dependence:

• In 2010, China restricted exports of rare earth minerals to Japan after Japan detained a Chinese fisherman who ran into Japanese coast guard boats in disputed waters.³⁰
• In 2020, China placed import duties or restrictions on Australian products such as barley, cotton, coal, timber and wine after the Australian government demanded answers on the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic.³¹
• In 2023, China imposed curbs on exports of gallium and germanium (used in the world’s semiconductors) and graphite (used in the world’s EV batteries). China produces 90% of the world’s gallium and 60% of germanium and refines more than 90 percent of global graphite.³²

While the world’s focus on cybersecurity has often appropriately centered on software or 5G networks, the potential to create “Trojan Horse” vulnerabilities in the world’s tech hardware products has been sorely neglected. Imagine circuit boards or power supply chips embedded with a “kill switch” that could be remotely activated in a crisis. It is not fantasy. In 2018, Bloomberg reported on how Chinese operatives surreptitiously inserted unauthorized chips onto Super Micro circuit boards that created opportunities for malware insertion into corporate and Pentagon servers.³³

Trusted technology demands secure supply chains and infrastructure. Companies must reconfigure these value chains, manufacturing practices and supporting logistics systems toward maximum transparency, reliability and fair labor standards. The U.S. and its partners must develop alternatives to incentivize companies to keep production in, or return it to, the U.S. or trusted tech partner nations. A key part of this is addressing regulatory environments, tax structures and permitting systems to make it easier and more profitable to locate manufacturing in these countries, rather than in China or other authoritarian states. This extends to energy supplies and transportation networks without which companies cannot survive, much less thrive.

Imperative #4: Capital Markets and the Funding of Emerging Tech

Investments are the lifeblood of capitalism. Money builds firms up; lack of it forces them to close. Free nations prosper when their visionary companies can raise funding in open markets and outpace tech developers in authoritarian countries. But global capital markets can also contribute to the growth and development of authoritarian nations’ tech sector, and China especially has already exploited the free world’s open system to bankroll its way to tech dominance. The Commission sees highest-order strategic value in establishing “trusted capital markets”—investment climates in which investors do not fund innovations that can later be weaponized against them, their nations, and their freedoms.

Approximately 5,000 Chinese companies are listed on U.S. securities exchanges, giving them access to hard currency financing and income. American investors supplied as much as $3 trillion of capital to Chinese companies from 2013-2023, much of it buried in passive investment vehicles like bonds and index funds.³⁴ As then-Under Secretary Krach stated in a letter to U.S. universities in 2020, “the majority of the U.S. university endowment fund portfolios own PRC stocks listed on American exchanges either directly or indirectly through emerging markets index funds.”³⁵

Listings on U.S. exchanges give “China, Inc.” companies an American “seal of approval” that gives other global exchanges confidence to list Chinese companies. But letting “China, Inc.” list as publicly traded companies sends the wrong signal to the world. Chinese companies are infamous for stealing technology, using it to compete against the U.S. and its partners and allies in the free world, and then putting their competitors out of business. Many Chinese companies are also complicit in human rights violations or render services to the Chinese security state. In January 2021, Under Secretary Krach listed 44 parent corporations and more than 1,100 subsidiary companies as Communist Chinese Military Companies from which American investors by law must now divest.³⁶ But there are undoubtedly many other unidentified Chinese companies traded publicly with opaque ties to the Chinese Communist Party and the People’s Liberation Army. Not to be outdone, Iran has also exploited cryptocurrency exchanges to skirt sanctions. In 2022, Reuters reported that Binance allowed Iranian firms to trade approximately $8 billion in crypto, largely using a token with an anonymity option.³⁷

Furthermore, American capital funding Chinese tech firms creates financial incentives for free world business and finance leaders to lobby their governments against accountability, transparency, and sanctions on China and Chinese companies. In this way, China has captured global financial elites. Reforming capital markets to prevent adversary nations from strengthening their techno-military power ensures that financial industry leaders, wealth managers, and investment advisors fulfill their moral obligation and fiduciary duty to protect U.S. investors.

There are additional problems with public listings of Chinese companies beyond the risk of investors funding a buildup of Chinese national security capabilities. Approximately 95% of Chinese companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq are structured as Variable Interest Entities (VIEs), shell company substitutes domiciled in offshore locations.³⁸ This sleight of hand, wherein investors do not own actual Chinese shareholdings, deprives investors of adequate legal protections and minority shareholder rights.

Chinese firms also do not adhere to free world standards of rule of law, risk disclosure, or corporate governance, making them riskier investments than they may seem on the surface. They’ve managed to get around the financial transparency laws required of companies in the U.S., Europe and elsewhere to enjoy capital market listings.

In the geopolitical competition for the commanding heights of emerging technologies, free world investors should not be funding untrusted technological developments for our adversaries or their militaries. What the world needs is “trusted investments” in its capital markets, pension funds, university endowments, foundations, mutual funds and bond portfolios.

Imperative #5: Board Governance and Its Role in Trusted Tech

In the course of its work, the Commission recognized a dramatic problem: Most people consider national security as the responsibility of national governments exclusively. For example, a poll conducted by the MITRE Corporation and the Harris Poll in 2024 discovered 78% of Americans think the federal government bears full or partial responsibility for fortifying critical infrastructure, but only 49% believe it’s the responsibility of both public and private entities.³⁹

The Commission believes that boards of directors are a key underleveraged force to motivate private sector companies to factor national security into their decisions.

Business leaders are the free world’s superpower in what is ultimately a technological race for the future between free societies and authoritarian regimes. Just as business leaders spearheaded the Arsenal of Democracy in World War II, their role and responsibility in upholding national security, prosperity and businesses have never been greater. At a minimum, they should work with their CEOs to identify and prioritize China and other authoritarian state-related risks, develop a contingency plan to address them, and execute it in partnership with experts. Business leaders can begin the process by forcing themselves to answer hard questions such as:

• “Who are we really dealing with in China?”
• “Are our proprietary technologies and our confidential information safe?”
• “Do our relationships in China actually threaten our long-term business model?”
• “How will our China-related choices affect not just our company, but our country more broadly?”
• “If we claim to take corporate responsibility seriously, what does that mean for our engagement with Chinese companies and supply chains?”