Mark Leonard: "The connectivity wars: European security and the weaponization of the internet, trade, migration and international institutions"

 

Our world is built on links and connections. Roads, railways, supply chains, underwater cables, and social networks are thefoundation of our societies. It was the hope of the late 20th century that these interdependencies would further understanding anddecrease conflict. Like no other organisation, the European Union was based on this idea.

But now, what has brought us together is driving us apart. Instead of bringing us closer, these interdependences are turning sour, causing conflicts – and being used as weapons. The most important battleground of these conflicts will not be the air or ground but rather the interconnected infrastructure of the global economy: disrupting trade and investment, international law, the internet, transport links, and the movement of people. Welcome to the Connectivity Wars. 

 

[[{"fid":"226083","view_mode":"crop_870xauto","fields":{"format":"crop_870xauto","field_file_image_description[und][0][value]":"","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":false,"field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":false,"field_credit[und][0][value]":"","field_caption[und][0][value]":"","thumbnails":"crop_870xauto","alt":"","title":""},"type":"media","field_deltas":{"2":{"format":"crop_870xauto","field_file_image_description[und][0][value]":"","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":false,"field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":false,"field_credit[und][0][value]":"","field_caption[und][0][value]":"","thumbnails":"crop_870xauto","alt":"","title":""}},"link_text":null,"attributes":{"style":"height: 266px; width: 400px; float: left; margin-right: 15px;","class":"media-element file-crop-870xauto","data-delta":"2"}}]]

Mark Leonard is co-founder and director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, the first pan-European think tank.  As well as writingand commenting frequently in the media on global affairs, Mark is author of two best-selling books. His first book, Why Europe will run the21st Century, was published in 2005 and translated into 19 languages. Mark’s second book, What does China think? was published in 2008and translated into 15 languages. He writes a syndicated column on global affairs for Reuters.com and is Chairman of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Geoeconomics. In 2016 he published an edited volume on Connectivity Wars and is working on a future book on the same topic.

Previously he worked as director of foreign policy at the Centre for European Reform and as director of the Foreign Policy Centre, a think tank he founded at the age of 24 under the patronage of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. In the 1990s Mark worked for the think tank Demos where his Britain™ report was credited with launching Cool Britannia. Mark has spent time in Washington, D.C. as a Transatlantic Fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, and in Beijing as a visiting scholar at the Chinese Academy for Social Sciences.

Honoured as a “Young Global Leader” of the World Economic Forum, he spends a lot of time helping governments, companies, andinternational organisations make sense of the big geo-political trends of the twenty-first century. He is a regular speaker and prolific writerand commentator on global issues, the future of Europe, China's internal politics, and the practice of diplomacy and business in a networked world. His essays have  appeared in publications such as Foreign Affairs, The Financial Times, The New York Times, Le Monde, Süddeutsche Zeitung, El Pais, Gazeta Wyborcza, Foreign Policy, the New Statesman, The Daily Telegraph, The Economist, Time,and Newsweek.