Maintaining the spotlight on the challenges of the digital age, Wolfgang Ischinger, former German Ambassador and currently Chairman of the Munich Security Conference, argues that the coming of the digital era has brought with it transformative changes of both positive and negative nature.

For Amb. Ischinger, the development of new information and communication technologies is radically changing the nature of today’s conflicts. While digital developments have allowed democracy to become more transparent, more accountable and more participatory, the rise of populist political forces can also be traced back to the same progresses. The availability of social media and digital access to information is a double edged sword, and the easy spread of fake news through the web shows how with relatively little resources a lot of damage can be done.

Pointing to the possibilities for addressing these challenges, Ischinger expresses his belief in the need for an institutional solution, and the creation of an institutional body to guard the implementation, verification and revision of a convention regulating the cyber world.

Ambassador Wolfgang Ischinger, a German diplomat and the current Chairman of the Munich Security Conference, started his long diplomatic career in the United Nations in the cabinet of the UN Secretary-General and continued in the German Federal Foreign Ministry.

He was appointed State Secretary (Deputy Foreign Minister) of the Foreign Office in October 1998. Between 2001 and 2006, he served first as German Ambassador to the United States, and then, from 2006 to 2008, to London. In 2007, he represented the EU in the Troika negotiations on the future of Kosovo.

  Read Amb. Ischinger's biography

  Watch video of debate

   video of Interview for Council of Europe TV Journal