Much of modern life depends on cloud computing. From underpinning critical infrastructure, such as airports and telecommunications, to powering essential services that citizens rely on – including healthcare, banking and social security – cloud infrastructure is indispensable. And yet, despite its societal importance, cloud computing is tightly controlled by a handful of monopolistic corporations that leverage this control to entrench their dominance and distort fair competition and innovation across the digital economy. This includes the nascent AI sector, where Big Tech’s control of cloud infrastructure gives it a major advantage in the training, running and distribution of AI systems.
This concentration of power and capacity among a few private corporations poses a threat not only to competition and innovation, but also to the security, stability and resilience of our societies. The July 2024 CrowdStrike IT outage, which heavily impacted Microsoft’s cloud and IT infrastructure and inflicted over $5 billion in economic damage, underscored the dangers of our dependence on highly concentrated and poorly understood technological chokepoints. The risks that this dependence poses to state sovereignty have also become clearer than ever in today’s fraught geopolitical environment, where governments are increasingly willing to wield technological assets as a tool of economic and diplomatic coercion.
In this webinar, the Open Markets Institute will bring together leading experts to discuss these issues as well as potential solutions, drawing on our upcoming report: Engineering the Cloud Commons: A Blueprint for Resilient, Secure, and Open Digital Infrastructure. We will explore the bold steps that are needed to create a true cloud commons, from public utility regulation and structural separation to investment in digital public infrastructure.
WEBINAR SCHEDULE:
09:00 ET/15:00 CET Opening Remarks and Presentation of OMI Report
09:30 ET/15:30 CET Panel 1: The Risks of Cloud Concentration: Innovation, Resilience, and Sovereignty
Panelists will discuss the risks a concentrated cloud computing market poses to societal resilience, fair competition, sustainability, and national security.
SPEAKERS:
- Trey Herr, Senior Director, Cyber Statecraft Initiative at the Atlantic Council
- Paris Marx, Journalist and Host of the Tech Won’t Save Us Podcast
- Maaike Okano-Heijmans, Head of Tech and Digitalisation Programme, Clingendael Institute
- Solange Viegas Dos Reis, Chief Legal Officer, OVHcloud
- Moderated by: Courtney Radsch, Director of the Center for Journalism and Liberty, Open Markets Institute
10:30 ET/16:30 CET Panel 2: Engineering the Cloud Commons: Building Resilient, Secure and Open Digital Infrastructure
Panelists will explore the bold policy solutions needed to ensure that cloud infrastructure is resilient, open and secure, from utility regulation and antitrust to public procurement and industrial policy.
SPEAKERS:
- Paul de Bijl, Chief Economist at the Netherlands Authority for Consumers & Markets
- Matt Davies, Economic and Social Policy Lead, Ada Lovelace Institute
- Amba Kak, Co-Executive Director, AI Now institute
- Ariel (Eli) Levite, Senior Fellow, Technology and International Affairs Program, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
- Ganesh Sitaraman, Professor of Law, Vanderbilt University
- Moderated by: Max von Thun, Director of Europe & Transatlantic Partnerships, Open Markets Institute
