Data & Technology Politics
New digital technologies enable creativity, connect the world, and provide public goods and essential services. They also challenge conventional notions of privacy, facilitate crime, and enable surveillance and oppression. How and to which end these data-driven technologies are used is determined by political, corporate, societal, and individual choices. With two billion new – mostly non-Western – users expected to go online in the coming years, the political and economic stakes are rising. Contests over global rules for technologies and data transfer will only continue to heat up. We aim to contribute toward sound political, corporate, and societal choices through research, policy advice, and the fostering of strategic communities.
Critical and Emerging Technologies: Sharpening the Strategic Agenda in Germany and Europe
Cutting-edge technologies are central to security, power and prosperity — even more so at a time of upheaval in the global order. This project seeks to advance the German and European debate on strategic goals, policy options and trade-offs, including through engagement with the evolving agenda in the United States.
Neurotechnology: Considerations for Foreign and Security Policy
This project analyzes the rapidly developing field of neurotechnology from the perspectives of foreign and security policy. How might Germany take on a strategic position in the global neurotechnology ecosystem?
Mitigating Disinformation in Europe
What is the state of disinformation – and efforts to counter it – on the continent? How are civil society and private actors faring in their part of the fight against disinformation? And how can policymakers better support them?
Maritime Infrastructure Protection: Agenda for a Secure and Resilient Undersea Cable Network
To advise German policymakers on how to safeguard fiber-optic cable systems, GPPi is mapping the security strategies emerging at the national, regional and global levels.
Online Event: Neurotechnology, Brain-Computer Interfaces and Implications for Germany’s and Europe’s Foreign & Security Policy
Neurotechnology could soon revolutionize how humans perceive the world, process information and interact with each other, AI or robots. Why and how does neurotechnology matter for Germany’s and Europe’s foreign and security policy?
Join us in our online launch event.
📍Zoom 📅 October 13, 2025 🕧 16:00 – 17:00 CET
Experts
Funding and Contact
Our Transatlantic Digital Debates dialogue program, conducted together with New America’s Open Technology Institute, is generously supported by the Transatlantic Program of the German Federal Government, with funding from the European Recovery Program (ERP) of the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy. Additional support is provided by Microsoft.
For more information, please contact Wade Hoxtell.
Transatlantic Digital Debates 2022
The Transatlantic Digital Debates (TDD) was a fellowship program that brought together cohorts of 18 German and American young professionals to work on challenges at the intersection of tech and policy. Participants met for two week-long sessions to engage in problem-oriented dialogue on key issues such as the rapid transformation of the global economy through the integration of artificial intelligence, automation and digital commerce; increasing influence operations of authoritarian countries to steer global internet, technology and data governance policies; as well as the rise of online platform services and resulting concerns with respect to data protection, disinformation, targeted digital advertising, and corporate power, among others.
