Article by Stefaan Verhulst: “Last week, at Jesus College, Cambridge University, the inaugural cohort of Digital Statecraft Fellows gathered — alongside a diverse group of policymakers, technologists, scholars, and practitioners — to grapple with a deceptively simple yet profound question: how do we govern in the age of AI?
The convening offered a highly needed space where theory met practice; where geopolitical realities, technical architectures, and governance responses were debated not as abstractions, but as institutional design challenges.
The discussions, grounded in the principles of the Digital Statecraft Manifesto, revealed a field at an inflection point. Digital statecraft is no longer just about digitizing services or regulating platforms at the margins. It is about rethinking the state itself as a coordinator in a world where AI systems, data infrastructures, and global platforms increasingly mediate social, economic, and political life.
Below are my ten high-level takeaways from the convening — signals, perhaps, from the frontier of digital statecraft. In keeping with the spirit of the convening — held under Chatham House Rules — I will not attribute specific remarks to individuals, but instead reflect some of the collective insights that emerged across the discussions…(More)”.
