US tech leadership key to hegemony, deterrence, and global democracy.

https://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/541459-blinken-to-prioritize-us-global-leadership-on-technology-after-massive/

Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday vowed that the U.S. will prioritize positioning itself as a global leader on technology to shore up its national security defenses, particularly following the recent breach of the federal government known as the SolarWinds hack.

“We will secure our leadership in technology,” Blinken said as part of his first major speech as the country’s top diplomat. “A global technology revolution is now underway. The world’s leading powers are racing to develop and deploy new technologies like artificial intelligence and quantum computing that could shape everything about our lives, from where we get energy, to how we do our jobs, to how wars are fought.”

Blinken stressed that it was “critical” for the U.S. to maintain its leadership in the science and technology fields in order to “protect your privacy, make the world safer and healthier, and make democracies more resilient.”

The nation’s top diplomat vowed to work with allied nations to establish “guardrails against misuse” of emerging technologies, particularly following the SolarWinds hack.

The incident, first discovered in December, involved hackers exploiting software from IT group SolarWinds to compromise up to 18,000 of its customers, including at least nine federal agencies such as the State Department. U.S. intelligence officials assessed in January that the hackers were “likely” Russian.

“We must strengthen our tech defenses and deterrence. We need only look at SolarWinds, a major hack of U.S. government networks last year, to see how determined our adversaries are to use technology to undermine us,” Blinken said. “Today, safeguarding our national security means investing in our technological capabilities and elevating this issue in our diplomacy and our defense. We will do both.”