YDS 2021 in Review

The road map includes eight pillars of diplomacy: digital security, essential
technological infrastructure, global digital cooperation, digital connections, digital
inclusion, digital human rights, public goods, and digital capacity building. Capacity
building across all stakeholders, including less technologically developed states, is
essential for ensuring the ongoing equality and efficacy of the UN as a multilateral
negotiation forum. Guterres placed particular emphasis on the importance of not
allowing communication technology to surpass the capacity of states and
stakeholders to effectively use them. This is because uneven technological
development, if left unchecked, could replicate issues of uneven socio-economic
development. Guterres noted with concern that embedded digital inequality could
become “the new face of insecurity” in the digital age.
Geopolitics also has its part in digital connectivity. The vast majority of internet
cables are laid below the sea floor along traditional sea lines of communication
(SLOC). If damaged or severed, the disruption would have severe economic and
political ramifications. The cables are also laid in traditional geostrategic
chokepoints, such as the Suez Canal which connects much of Asia and Europe, the
Strait of Malacca, and the Strait of Hormuz. In 2008, two submarine cables off the
coast of Alexandria were cut, impacting internet connections in both India and
Egypt, with theories of digital warfare immediately surfacing. As grey zone tactics
increasingly move into the digital space, the physical infrastructure that supports
global connections will also become a vulnerable target in states’ defences.
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