How do diplomats work with technology?

The earliest traces of diplomacy go back several thousand years. Since then, the topics discussed and negotiated between countries have grown steadily in number and become far more complex.

In recent decades, technology has pushed its way more firmly onto the diplomatic agenda. One of the clearest examples is the way cyber diplomacy has developed into a distinct branch of diplomacy. This has created opportunities for diplomats, but also challenges.

In a new research article published in the prestigious journal International Affairs, Senior Research Fellow Lars Gjesvik from NUPI and Associate Professor Ole Willers from Copenhagen Business School write about diplomacy in the age of expertise.

When diplomats set out to discuss new technologies, a range of new problems arise. Technology affects every area of society, it can be hard to understand, and it develops quickly. So when digital technology became a diplomatic issue in earnest, a series of questions surfaced: 

• Should diplomats or technical experts lead the negotiations?
• What exactly is being negotiated?
• And where should the negotiations take place?

The way these challenges were resolved for cyber diplomacy tells a story in itself. But it also points to how today's pressing topics, such as artificial intelligence (AI), should be approached. 

That is the argument of the two researchers behind the article “Diplomacy in the age of expertise: the case of cyber diplomacy”.

Read the article for free here. 
 

Extensive interviews

The researchers had good reason to take an interest in precisely this subject.

– It was interesting to see how digital technologies properly broke through onto the diplomatic agenda in the early 2000s. But we had also seen some similarities with the way states are trying to come to terms with AI, and that inspired us to look at this more closely, says Lars Gjesvik.

To examine the development of cyber diplomacy as a distinct branch of diplomacy, Gjesvik and Willers followed a now-concluded UN process called the GGE (Group of Governmental Experts). This was the centre of diplomatic work on cyber for many years. Through this process, a new way of working was established for diplomats.

Gjesvik and Willers drew on several different sources to reach this conclusion. Among other things, they conducted interviews with former diplomats, gathered interviews with former diplomats carried out elsewhere (podcasts, seminars and newspapers), and in addition found whatever documentation was available on the actual negotiations and agreements in the UN. 

Finally, they mapped who the diplomats were, what their professional background was and where they came from. These methods allowed the researchers both to follow how the subject of negotiation evolved and, just as importantly, who was in the room conducting the negotiations.
 

Diplomats became bridge-builder

The researchers had several clear findings. One of the most important concerned how a new diplomatic field actually emerges.

– It is striking how much development takes place in a relatively short time, and how long it takes to find a structure for the negotiations, says Willers, adding that it was also very interesting to uncover the significance of decisions taken at the very beginning.

Because digital technology did not fit established diplomatic ways of thinking, people tried to find areas that resembled in order to have a starting point. In the end Russia prevailed with its proposal to begin the discussion in forums that traditionally dealt with disarmament.

– In many ways it was a strange choice, and it has had consequences right up to today because it creates path dependencies and institutional constraints on how one works with technology, says Gjesvik.

This particular finding is especially relevant to how we think about AI diplomacy today.

– Today, diplomacy around AI is also at the very starting line. People are trying to agree on how to approach the topic, and our research shows that the decisions made today will set the course for several decades to come, says Willers.

The cyber researchers' second key finding concerns how diplomatic work developed over the years. The study shows that diplomats with a background in disarmament and the technical experts collided. They could not reach agreement and did not find a common language. The result was that the negotiations stalled and went nowhere.

When the United States eventually invested more resources in the issue, they achieved a kind of breakthrough. They found a new way to take ideas and concepts from Cold War disarmament and adapt them to the technical realities of cyber.

– Here we believe we saw the beginning of a new way of working as a diplomat. Diplomatic skills were just as important, but now the task was to apply them across different fields. Cyber diplomacy emerged when diplomats mastered both the technical “language” and the diplomatic craft. As cyber grew into a larger field and complexity increased, it became crucial for diplomats to be able to “talk” with experts from increasingly varied backgrounds. The diplomats then became translators and bridge-builders, which in turn allowed them to retain their important function, Gjesvik explains.
 

Losing good people

The third finding follows from the first two. Because cyber diplomacy now relies so heavily on communicating across different experts and fields, it creates new challenges for foreign ministries and others working at the intersection of technology and foreign policy.

– They have to think carefully about how best to organise themselves to operate in the new diplomacy. It is a question of what you want to achieve, but also of how you organise yourself to achieve it. Countries choose different approaches on both counts, which is a challenge in itself, Gjesvik adds.

For a small country like Norway there is an added challenge: maintaining expertise across so many different fields is resource-intensive, and it is easy to lose talented people to well-paid jobs in the private sector.

– It then comes down to a question of organisation. How do you ensure that the knowledge does not walk out the door with skilled people who get better offers elsewhere? Norway, and other small countries, will probably have to choose a few niches if they are to have any chance of making an impact, says Gjesvik.

 The new research article tells us a great deal about how Norwegian diplomats can think about and work with AI going forward.

– AI is high on the agenda in Norway, and that is very good. The story of cyber diplomacy is also a story that smaller countries really can make an impact. But it is far more common for high ambitions to fall short because the organisation is not in place.[TL1] 

For AI, the lesson is that being self-critical and honest about your own organisation is just as important as having high ambitions.

The article is a deliverable of the EU-funded project NAVIGATOR, which aimed to give us a better understanding of how to protect and renew multilateral institutions at a time of growing geopolitical unrest and great-power rivalry.