World's first tech ambassador: 'We're grateful' to big tech for the crisis
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Career envoy Casper Klynge has assimilated into the world of Silicon Valley, living in Palo Alto and managing his team of 20 who are dispersed across northern California, Copenhagen, and Beijing, similar to many chief executives of tech startups.
Except Klynge is a Danish diplomat who took up the post as the world’s first “tech ambassador” in August 2017. The idea for the role was actually borne out of a brainstorming session involving his younger colleagues who were searching for a new and exciting way for the Danish government to interact with the world.
“Diplomacy has always been about putting people into hot spots or at the center of transformation. And in today's world, the epicenter is Silicon Valley, Seoul, and Shenzhen,” he said.
‘It has actually changed the narrative’
Klynge, 46, took up the newly created role a few months before March 2018, when the Cambridge Analytica scandal imploded after news emerged that the political consulting firm illicitly harvested data from up to 87 million Facebook users. It was arguably the single biggest turning point for Facebook, which is now embroiled in controversies surrounding its decision not to fact-check political ads and blistering scrutiny surrounding Mark Zuckerberg’s ambitions to create its own digital wallet.
“We’re grateful to the big technology companies for the crisis they put in front of us in the last two years, because I rarely get the question anymore, ‘Why do we need a tech ambassador? What do you actually do?’ It has actually changed the narrative, the discussion and also the perception among ordinary people [regarding] what role can technology play?” Klynge told Yahoo Finance in an interview this week.
According to Klynge, a mere 42,000 Danes were affected during the Cambridge Analytica scandal (.05% of the entire set). But he says the actions of Silicon Valley are reverberating in his home country, especially when it comes to sentiment.
“If you ask people on the streets of Copenhagen, ‘How do you look at a digitally driven economy? How do you look at a technology-driven future?’ they will be slightly less positive and less optimistic than they were two years ago, because of the leaks of personal data that we've seen the last couple of years. So I think in that sense, it's a more mature discussion we’re having today,” he said.
“If you want me to be a little less diplomatic, I think the honeymoon is over. Very few people today would say that these companies that are not too far away from where we're sitting right now, that they only work for the better good of humanity, that they're just neutral platforms, that they're they're just bringing technology that connects people. I think that was how we saw it two, three, four, five years ago. Today, we have a better understanding that there are fantastic opportunities, fantastic aspects of new technology. But there's also a dark side that we need to be very, very attentive to and make sure it doesn't break our democracies and that it doesn't hurt you and me,” he added.