On May 5, 2017, the Richard C. Holbrooke Forum hosted a workshop entitled The Global Triangle Project: Power, Innovation, and Order in a Networked World.

The workshop looked into what happens when traditional geopolitics collides with the digital revolution, and what this means for diplomacy and statecraft. It was comprised of two dozen participants from academia, the private sector, and the foreign policy community—among them the China Daily, Mercator Institute for China Studies, Chatham House, Nokia Networks, Stanford and Fudan universities, the Council on Foreign Relations, SWP, and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

They gathered for a daylong discussion about global digitalization and the changes it is bringing to the postwar transatlantic order and traditional structures of geopolitical power. Topics centered around the movement of China into the sphere of global digital network-building, the rise of blockchain technologies and their increased use by governments and businesses, future 5G technologies and cloud-optimized connectivity, IT sovereignty, and attendant concerns about privacy in the liberal West—a concern not shared by the massive market of Chinese internet users.

The results of the day’s discussions will be used to sharpen the focus of this project on a few key themes and to invite several participants to contribute a paper on their respective area of expertise. These papers will be published on this website in the coming weeks and will also be used as the basis for future Global Triangle discussions.