Diplo Blog

The marketing industry has become a data-driven realm. It uses data to predict consumer preferences, to anticipate their needs, convince them about the utility of a new product, shape their shopping habits, and to target advertisements. Some ad technologies such as collaborative filtering, smart-search systems, public segmentation, and other forms of consumer targeting, used by companies such as Facebook and Google, strongly depend on third-party information.

'Locked units, dead stock, no sales, demanding vendors, uncollected payments and mounting expenses – COVID-19 has been the last nail in the coffin for a host of MSMEs.'

Welcome to the second episode of our new podcast series The Diplomat’s Sofa where we speak to diplomats about their craft and the latest developments in international diplomacy. 

In our second episode, hosted by Diplo’s Vladimir Radunovic, we spoke to Mr David Koh, commissioner of cybersecurity and chief executive of the Cybersecurity Agency of Singapore (CSA).

A cyber detente between Russia and th

Two weeks ago, the second cyber Open-Ended Working Group (OEWG), which will be active until 2025, held its first organisational session to determine how and when it will conduct its work.

This second cyber OEWG started less than three months after the first one finished. Its chair was elected with no objections from other delegates (in UN-speak: by acclamation).

Welcome to the very first episode of Diplo’s brand new podcast series The Diplomat’s Sofa, where we speak to diplomats about their craft and the latest developments in international diplomacy.

For our inaugural episode, hosted by Diplo’s Dr Jovan Kurbalija, we were joined by Ambassador Jürg Lauber, permanent representative of Switzerland to the UN in Geneva and former chair of the UN Open-ended Working Group on Cybersecurity.

Despite the recent cyberattacks on SolarWinds, the Colonial Pipeline, and the meat producer JBS, there is plenty of room for optimism for a cyber deal at the upcoming summit in Geneva between US President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin. It could very well slow down – if not bring to an end – the cyber tensions between the two countries.

The Biden–Putin summit could also turn the page from these protracted hostilities towards a more stable and cooperative global digital policy with the active participation of governments, businesses, and civil society worldwide.

An interview with Prof. Jonathan Shepard

The UN Group of Governmental Experts (GGE) was declared ‘dead’ after it didn’t produce a consensus report in 2017. The last, much-lauded and often invoked report was adopted by the GGE in 2015. Yet in December 2019, 4 years after the GGE’s last success, the General Assembly (GA) decided to extend the process and establish another GGE (2019-2021).

If the authoritarian regime of Alexander Lukashenko in Belarus will force down an EU civil airliner in order to seize and imprison an opposition journalist, it seems to me that we are entitled to ask: To what lengths will this and any regime of a similar nature also go in using their embassies to pursue their opponents in the diaspora – to engage in what is now known as ‘transnational repression’?