President Trump and Mark Zuckerberg via Canadian Affairs
Dangerous Liaisons? State-Business Relations, U.S. Tech Statecraft, and Implications for Germany and Europe
Speaker: Jakob Hensing, DAAD/AGI Research Fellow
Moderator: Peter Rashish, Vice President and Director of the Geoeconomics Program, AGI
The openly displayed proximity between President Trump and prominent tech executives has drawn considerable attention on both sides of the Atlantic. A significant development for American politics more broadly, for foreign interlocutors it especially raises the question of implications for the United States’ use of technology policy in pursuit of national security and foreign policy objectives—in short, U.S. tech statecraft.
For Europe, not only does it matter greatly how the United States positions itself in the global competition over artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies with transformative potential. Far-reaching reliance on U.S. technology providers also renders Europe potentially vulnerable to U.S. tech statecraft measures, whether over disagreements on tech policy or through linkages to other domains such as trade.
This talk explores the relations of power and influence between the second Trump administration and key tech firms and how they manifest themselves in the evolving U.S. tech statecraft agenda, with a focus on international AI policy. On this basis, it discusses resulting risks and opportunities from a German and European vantage point.
Dr. Jakob Hensing is a DAAD/AGI Research Fellow. His permanent position is at the Global Public Policy Institute (GPPi) in Berlin, where he focuses on the intersection of economic and security policy. His work explores how power and security considerations are reshaping the global economy, especially in terms of competition and collaboration on emerging technologies. Previously, he worked for more than five years as a management consultant at McKinsey & Company and at Orphoz Public, McKinsey’s dedicated public sector branch in Germany. He holds a doctorate in politics and a master’s in international relations from the University of Oxford, as well as a bachelor’s degree in integrated social sciences from Jacobs University Bremen.
His research at AGI focuses on the interplay between the U.S. government and the tech sector in shaping and implementing technology-related measures to advance national security and foreign policy objectives—in short, U.S. techno-economic statecraft. It seeks to understand how the positions and expertise of industry stakeholders feature in the U.S. policy process, also with a view to enabling allies such as Germany to engage constructively and to benefit from learnings for their own management of the public-private interface in an era of global technology competition.
Jakob’s most recent GPPi study titled “Action Potentials: Neurotechnology, Brain-Computer Interfaces, and Implications for Germany’s and Europe’s Foreign and Security Policy,” appeared in August 2025. His writing and commentary have featured in Foreign Policy, Wirtschaftswoche, and Newsweek, among others.
This session will convene via Zoom. Please contact AGI Program Associate Mr. Jack Fornasiero at jfornasiero@aicgs.org with any questions.
This event is supported by the DAAD with funds from the Federal Foreign Office.
