Reconnecting the Transatlantic Digital Economy – The Role of Trust in 5G

In this AGI-BIGS webinar, Stephen C. Anderson, Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Communications and Information Policy in the Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs at the U.S. Department of State, and Stephan Mayer, Parliamentary State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of the Interior and Member of the CDU/CSU Parliamentary Group in the German Bundestag, discuss the respective U.S. and German government approaches to 5G network security, offer their perspectives on economic, technological, and geostrategic competition with China, and examine the implications of policy convergence and divergence in these areas for the transatlantic relationship.

Ultra-fast 5G broadband cellular connectivity will advance a host of the technologies of the future, including Industry 4.0, autonomous vehicles, virtual reality, drones, and telemedicine. But the commercial opportunities offered by 5G are accompanied by security concerns about dependencies and vulnerabilities if new networks are built using proprietary technologies from potentially untrustworthy vendors, such as telecommunications equipment providers from China.

Both the United States and Germany are strengthening their IT security, but opinions in Washington and Berlin diverge over how to shape digital policies in the context of economic and strategic competition with China. As both countries chart their 5G policies to support a widening array of future digital transformations of societies and economies, they have important opportunities to cooperate but will also need to carefully manage their differences.

This public webinar “Reconnecting the Transatlantic Digital Economy—The Role of Trust in 5G” on Wednesday, June 16 is hosted by the American-German Institute at Johns Hopkins University (AGI) and the Brandenburg Institute for Society and Security (BIGS). It is part of the Wunderbar Together 2021 Initiative supported by the German Foreign Office.

June 21, 2021
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AGI

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