Canada at Economic War

The global threat environment is increasingly complex and unstable, with hostile states using all instruments of national power to launch attacks on foreign governments, industries, research labs, civic groups and more. They are especially active in the economic domain, where they are using illicit, unfair and illegal economic practices to corrupt the global order that underpins stable interstate relations; weaponize economic interdependencies; and aggressively target the foreign assets and technologies essential to modern military power. In our highly integrated world and 360-degree threat environment, economic attacks are the essential first phase of full-scale war, and Canada is a high-value target.

In this policy brief, the first in a series as part of CIGI’s Canada at Economic War project, Raquel Garbers writes that securing our future against growing pressures from allies and adversaries alike requires urgently changing our outdated foreign policy mindset and resetting how we engage in the world. Developing a Canadian Defence Industrial Strategy will be a key part of defending Canada in the current threat environment.

Ever since humankind first launched objects into space, counterspace capabilities (also known as “space weapons”) were developed to disrupt or destroy them. Now that space is increasingly being used for both civilian and military applications, space technologies have evolved to meet these needs, but regulations to protect space have lagged behind.

In this paper, Almudena Azcárate Ortega and Victoria Samson look at how the international community is addressing the threats posed by these technologies through multilateral efforts and regulatory mechanisms to enhance space security.

The emergence of large constellations of small satellites has disrupted the field of space safety services and changed how we think about the risk of collisions in space. The risk from space debris is compounded by the growing congestion from operational satellites in low-Earth orbit, particularly between 300 and 700 km above the Earth. These satellites have created an opportunity for commercial operators to assume roles that were once the exclusive domain of military or other state actors.

Ruth Stilwell argues in this paper that while increasing commercial interest in providing the essential safety functions of space situational awareness and conjunction alerting may increase the pace of innovation, and emerging technologies may enable new approaches to reduce collision risk on orbit, there are associated core governance issues of safety, sustainability and security in outer space that must be considered.

Copyright has become a tool for privatizing everything — the opposite of what it was designed to do when it was invented in the eighteenth century to protect published works. In their book Who Owns This Sentence? A History of Copyrights and Wrongs (Penguin Random House, 2024), Princeton professors David Bellos and Alexandre Montagu provide a lively account of that turnaround, to the point where “the bulk of American culture is in copyright prison,” the world’s largest companies earn their revenue from intellectual property, and creative rights to everything from wallpaper to computer code, choreography, a “vibe” or a banana costume can be disputed, claimed and monetized.

On this episode of the Policy Prompt podcast, join hosts Vass Bednar and Paul Samson for this engaging tag team with David and Alexandre as they discuss both historical and contemporary examples of the power of copyright and where we might be headed with new technologies such as generative artificial intelligence.

The Digital Policy Hub at CIGI is a collaborative space for emerging scholars and innovative thinkers from the social, natural and applied sciences. Here are the most recent working papers published by Hub fellows from the summer 2024 cohort.

Reanne Cayenne: “Pathways to the Sound Use of Border Security Technologies in North America”

Badriyya Yusuf: “Harmonization of Data Governance Frameworks in Africa”

Madison Lee: “Locating Canada in Industry 4.0: Barriers and Opportunities”

Follow the links on the Hub webpage to learn more about the Hub scholars and their work!

“Since the November 2024 US presidential election, trade and tariffs have become a global topic of discussion. While tariffs have dominated the chatter, other aspects of President Donald Trump’s economic policy, especially digital trade, have received far less attention.”

In this opinion, Burcu Kilic takes a close look at how digital trade rules may develop in the Trump 2.0 era. Kilic writes that “a new narrative and fresh thinking around digital trade, moving beyond the ‘making rules for China to disregard’ argument, are essential. Time will tell how Trump’s digital trade agenda will evolve. Ideally, it will carry forward the US break from neoliberalism, rather than revert to outdated paradigms that empower tech companies and cover up their monopolistic practices.”

“Much political and media attention has focused on US President Donald Trump’s threats to impose tariffs on Canadian goods. But Canada should also be concerned about the US president’s plans for big tech.”

In this opinion, Natasha Tusikov assesses the likely impact of Trump 2.0 tech policy on Canada, noting “we should not rely upon a second Trump administration to work within established political process or respect political norms.” Amid many other potential impacts, Trump’s selections for the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission “have the potential to fundamentally reshape existing tech policies, and Canadian policy makers should be prepared to respond.”