Author:

Ambassador Asoke Mukerji, former Permanent Representative of India to the United Nations and distinguished Diplo lecturer
This keynote was delivered during the Geneva Dialogue course session on 4 December 2025.

As a practitioner of diplomacy, I should leave the emerging technologies item for our discussion today for the specialists in the audience and focus on the other points circulated for this meeting. My remarks will focus on seven points. These are national capacities in cyberspace; the adaptation of these capacities in a unipolar cyberspace; the emergence of other players; the weaponization of capacities; the impact of great power confrontation; data transmission infrastructure; and the emergence of sovereign tech policies.

1. National capabilities in cyberspace

Two broad categories may be seen from the national behaviour of states while using digital and cyber capabilities.

One prioritizes the use of these capabilities to augment conventional strategies of security and governance. For this group of mainly developed countries, many of whom are members of the NATO military alliance and its adversaries, the dominant function of cyber and digital capabilities is to protect and project their national security.

The other prioritizes the use of these capabilities to accelerate an inclusive national strategy of sustainable development. For these countries, the security of the digital and cyber domain is a necessity for the effective functioning and growth of their digital and cyber capabilities. Most of these countries belong to the Global South, which has increasingly sought to use technologies to accelerate development.

A sub-set of issues flowing out of this observation relates to the impact of digital and cyber capabilities on the individual, which is the focus of humanitarian, including international humanitarian law. For example, in the pursuit of the security of the state, surveillance capabilities using digital and cyber technologies are being increasingly prioritized and integrated into state policy. The same surveillance function of digital and cyber technologies can have a dual use, as, for example, in their convergence for national governance functions of the state.

Each of us can think of examples of such states and consider what should be the most mutually beneficial way forward for harmonizing the co-existence of the two groups of states.

2. The adaptation of national capabilities in cyberspace

Digital and cyber capabilities have emerged as a dimension in national strategy since the 1960s due to how they have been adapted.

As most of us are aware, this topic is closely linked with the United States, which has been generally considered to be the global leader in the use of digital and cyber technologies.

The widely accepted view is that the internet as we know it today emerged from the incubation and funding in military budgeted bodies in the United States, which led to the creation of ARPANET. Despite being aware of the dual nature of this technology, policy makers in the United States had to wait for the personal computer revolution of the 1990s before using computer technology for human-centric domestic governance issues. Once these capabilities began to be used across the country, the concepts of electronic interaction between the state and its citizens emerged. E-governance became part of state activities.

With the adaption of these capabilities to mobile telephones in the first decade of the 21st century, both reliance on such technologies as well as emerging risks arising from vulnerabilities led to the current focus on digital and cyber security. It is worth highlighting that these developments in communications technologies took place in a public-private partnership mode, with the private sector playing a key role in developing and these technologies.

This pattern has been followed with individual variations in most of the developed countries of the OECD.

3. The emergence of other players

In terms of priorities, the unipolar dominance of the United States government and the private sector entities licensed by it to apply digital and cyber capabilities began to be diluted when non-OECD countries, began to apply digital and cyber capabilities for development.

At the turn of the century, a parallel process was underway in countries like Russia and China where digital and cyber capabilities were primarily led by the government. However, it is also important to recall that 25 years ago, both Russia and to a lesser extent China were still part of the unipolar strategic framework. Russia was a member of the G8 economies, while China’s accession to the WTO in December 2001 had ensured its core economic interests were linked with the market access for goods and technologies it gave to the OECD countries.

Global South countries realized that they would need partnership primarily with private sector entities of the United States to optimize their use of digital and cyber capabilities for sustainable development, as well as to protect their policies from its vulnerabilities. The role of such U.S. private entities is well documented. Before the digital era, private sector telecoms entities like AT&T were prominent. Today this role has been taken by Microsoft and Google, and the other U.S. Big Tech companies.

In 2005, the United Nations adopted the Tunis Agenda framework for a “world information society”. Many of us here recall the dynamics of the Internet Governance Forum set up by the Tunis Agenda, where the priorities of state agencies versus corporate entities in national policies for using digital and cyber capabilities played out within the international framework.

The adoption of sustainable development with its 17 SDGs as Agenda 2030 by the United Nations in 2015 consolidated convergence of the Global South in terms of depending on a global commitment to apply digital and cyber capabilities for development.

4. Weaponization of cyberspace capabilities

Concerns about the security of this domain became acute after the increasing use of digital and cyber capabilities for prosecuting terrorist attacks. Ironically, this synergy owed its origins to the urban conflicts that mushroomed after the end of the Cold War in Europe and Asia. The terrorist attack on Mumbai (India) on 26 November 2008, for example, was carried out by their handlers using Voice Over Internet Protocol.

The private sector had innovated and applied these capabilities, and resisted attempts by governments to open the way their systems worked despite the growing use of these capabilities by criminals and terrorists. It was only in 2015 that a compromise was struck during the first review of the Tunis Agenda, when countries led by the United States agreed that this domain required both multiple stakeholder and multilateral cooperation to ensure its integrity and effectiveness. The backdrop to this was the widely reported case between Apple and the U.S. government over cyber encryption by private entities in the San Bernadino mass shooting case in California in 2015.

5. Great power confrontation and cyberspace

A review of the cyber domain during the 10 years since 2015 illustrates the growing polarization of cyberspace due primarily to confrontation between the great powers. This began with the expulsion of Russia from the G8 following its takeover of Crimea, and the leading role of the United Kingdom in coordinating the Western response, including in the cyber/digital domain.

Simultaneously, in 2015 China launched its Digital Silk Road (DSR) policy, which was designed to create both physical infrastructure such as the laying of undersea cable, and less-visible exchanges of software and technological knowledge, including the latest in AI or smart city technology. The DSR was rolled out on China’s national terms without international consultations. The DSR involves investment both by private Chinese companies and state enterprises. It is strongest in the Asia-Pacific, a key strategic region for China, but has expanded into Europe, Latin America, and Africa. The concerted move against the Chinese company Huawei’s 5G rollout in many Western and some Global South countries may be looked at in this context.

Thus, probably without conscious coordination, by 2015 at least three different groups emerged to contest the international digital and cyber domain.

Which of these groups will influence the contestation the most?

6. Data transmission

This question brings in an aspect of cyber security that is not widely discussed by the public. That aspect is the infrastructure for transporting data through cyberspace.

The dominant trend in cyber infrastructure is the increasing presence of private sector entities in constructing and maintaining cyber infrastructure across the world. The most important segment of this infrastructure is undoubtedly the fibre optic cables that transmit data, which use the original 13 “root” servers computers to transport data to the correct IP address. Today, with new anycast transmission technologies, the 13 original root servers have hundreds of “mirror” servers that cater to the massive increase in data flows through cyberspace.

Yet, it is worth recalling that out of the 13 original root servers, 10 are dominated directly or indirectly by the United States. While 3 root servers, (the “e”, “g”, and “h” roots) are controlled directly by the United States government, the remaining 7 are licensed to operate as U.S. companies. Three original root servers are in Sweden, Netherlands and Japan. None of the original root servers are in the Global South. This results in the potential dominance of transmission of cyber data by a small group of countries and their licensed private sector entities.

Most of the international fibre optic cables are underwater, laid along the floor of the world’s oceans, aligned with the sea lanes of communication. 99% of these submarine cables are owned and operated by private sector companies, working together as conglomerates. The international use of these cables is regulated by the UN Convention on the Law of the Seas or UNCLOS. Interestingly, the United States is the only major technological power that has not ratified the UNCLOS.

Most of the world’s major cable system owners and cable ship operators came together to form the International Cable Protection Committee (ICPC) in 1958. The ICPC has 239 governmental administrations and commercial companies that own or operate submarine telecommunications or power cables, as well as other companies that have an interest in the submarine cable industry. It provides a forum in which relevant technical, legal and environmental information for the security of submarine cables can be exchanged.

Terrestrial fibre optic cables and their management/ vulnerabilities influence the international domain in cases where terrestrial fibre optic cables cross or link contiguous national jurisdictions. Cable systems often emerge from public-private multilateral collaboration. In these cases, international cooperation begins with technical and economic decisions taken by elites in the private sector, which then make political coordination by governments more likely or even unavoidable.

Space based transmission of digital and cyber data, initially limited to military and scientific applications, has spread due to the increased number of satellites in space, including the prolific launches by the private sector Starlink company of the United States. Starlink uses thousands of low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites providing high-speed, low-latency internet to residential, business, and mobile users. Starlink is known for its ability to deliver service in areas with no ground infrastructure.

Future infrastructure technologies for transporting data include laser communication (lasercom) for high-speed, secure inter-satellite links. This is a key technology for creating a space-based internet backbone and is being implemented by companies like Starlink and Amazon Project Kuiper of the United States.

This overview illustrates that the two major states active in the infrastructure for transport of digital and cyber data today are the United States and China. If both these states cooperate to ensure the seamless transportation of data, then they will dominate the use of this infrastructure and control the movement of data. If they confront each other, then the potential for a fragmentation of cyberspace, due to differences in technologies and norms for transportation of data, is a real possibility.

For the Global South, the determining factors for which of the two major players they will choose depends on their international policies. Currently, it appears that these states will prefer to have both the United States and China in their cyber infrastructure framework. If pushed to choose, then the price factor and related access issues will play a determining role.

7. Sovereign Tech policies

Sovereign tech strategies of some countries in cyberspace revolve around the access to, and use of, data in cyberspace. It is known that sovereign tech strategies aim to achieve technological autonomy and control over critical digital infrastructure, data, and emerging technologies like artificial intelligence (AI). These policies seek to reduce reliance on foreign technology providers to enhance national security, protect citizen data, and drive economic growth. The key components of a sovereign tech strategy include data sovereignty including data localization; infrastructure control by building and operating national cloud computing platforms and telecom networks; the development of indigenous technology in AI, quantum computing, and semiconductors nurturing local talent and startups; legal frameworks like the EU’s AI Act; and strategic partnerships with selected international partners.

A key aspect of sovereign tech strategies is data privacy and protection through domestic laws, to offset challenges of mass surveillance measures.

Two well-known examples of sovereign tech strategies include the EU’s GDPR and Chips Act and India’s Digital India policy. However, given the interlinked character of cyberspace, the effectiveness of a sovereign tech policy remains open to question.

Thank you.