Microsoft, PSIA and cyberdiplomacy

On the 10th of november, Sciences Po’s Paris School of International Affairs welcomed Brad Smith, director of Microsoft, for an exceptional conference on cyberdiplomacy. The students gathered in the Boutmy amphitheater had the opportunity to discuss cyber security and numeric sovereignty issues our globalized world is now facing with this leading figure in the Tech industry. 

The evening was marked by Brad Smith’s call for international cooperation between governments and businesses, which he believes is essential to fight cybercrime and guarantee digital sovereignty. 

Cyberspace is different from the land or the sea, for example, because in many ways it is not really controlled by governments. Much of it is owned, operated and managed by companies, in data centers or on servers […] and it is companies that are the first line of defense. However, the international laws of the world are still made by governments, they are made in part […] through new multi-stakeholder diplomacy that has become, in some ways, the essence of multilateral diplomacy.

This conference is part of a collaboration initiated in 2021, when Microsoft became the exclusive official partner of the 6th edition of the Sciences Po Youth & Leaders Summit. As a key annual meeting of the School of International Affairs, supported by the New York Times, the event brought together some fifty leading world figures and PSIA students around the theme “Wars & Peace – Solving conflicts and Building Human Security”. 

In 2021, Microsoft has decided to make a more lasting commitment to Sciences Po. The digital giant will finance a series of four lectures on the issues of cybersecurity, cyberdemocracy and cyberdiplomacy. 

We would like to warmly thank the Microsoft teams for their trust and support, which allows Sciences Po to feed the reflection and the public debate on our world’s deep technological changes and their political, economic and social impacts.