Last week - after a cybersecurity startup event in Zurich and then one Bern, we were invited to present TRUSTLESS.AI and the Trustless Computing Association to Digital Sovereignty: how sovereign could Switzerland be? event in Zurich, participated by the new Swiss Federal Cybersecurity Delegate, Florian Schütz, top Israeli cybersecurity official, Rami Efrati, and leaders of the Swiss cybersecurity research and investment community.
Thomas Duebendorfer, president of SICTIC and prominent cybersecurity startup investor, presented (pdf) the past and present excellence of Switzerland companies advancing Swiss digital sovereignty. We were honored to be profiled on par with Swiss historical leaders, such as Crypto AG and ID Quantique.
Find here below, our speech about how our Trustless Computing Certification Body and TCCB-compliant Seevik Pod Service will enable top Swiss private banks to position themselves and global leaders in client-side cybersecurity, while helping Switzerland increase its digital sovereignty and promote economic development:
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Digital Sovereignty, Switzerland and Trustless Computing
Sovereignty is a measure of the freedom and civil rights of citizens. Digital Sovereignty is that same measure, in Cyberspace and through Cyberspace.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau explained 250 years ago how and why a social contract is necessary to maximize personal freedom. He explained how the maximization of personal freedom, and that of democratic effectiveness and public safety of our democracies, are not a “trade off” or a “zero sum” game, but a joint maximization problem. We all know today that you cannot have one, without the other.
Yet, since the Internet revolution, most people have been (willfully) deluded to think that those evident truths do not apply Cyberspace because of a wild overestimation of the power cryptography alone to solve IT security problems. This has lead to a great loss and risk of digital sovereignty as well as personal.
On the one hand, most western security agencies and center-right parties have taken a cyber-securitarian approach, believing that citizens should sacrifice personal freedom in order to maximize public safety, in an inevitable zero sum game. Yet, we learned recently how such sacrifice has greatly damaged the functioning of our democracies, and in turn public safety, rendering them vulnerable to powerful unaccountable hacking entities.
On the other hand, most civil rights activists and center-left parties have taken a cyber-libertarians approach, believing that citizens can rely on new cryptographic protocols and open source software to self-provide meaningful freedoms without building or relying on existing or new trusted third parties.
Such idea is not only technically flawed - because the complexity of supply chains make it impossible to self-provide meaningful digital freedoms without relying on a trusted third party - but it would have tremendous public safety consequences if it was possible, with extremely dangerous abuse by criminals.
So far, therefore, most people have believed personal freedom and public safety in Cyberspace to be an “either or” choice. We believe instead that it is a “both or neither” challenge, that can and must be solved.
Switzerland is rich enough to be able to allocate a tens large funds to radically increase its sovereignty at least for the most critical societal use cases of citizens, governments and private banks, reaping huge economic benefits.
It could do so by applying an uncompromising zero trust approach to ALL critical technologies and processes in the entire supply chain and lifecycle - down to CPU design, fabrication oversight, and ultimately to certifications, whose governance makes them radically more trustworthy than current ones.
But then, most powerful nations have been breaking all techs and certifications (in a plausibly-deniable way) for very concrete and solid reasons to preserve public safety, to retain legitimate cyber-investigation capabilities.
So, therefore, a radical increase in security and privacy needs also to somehow ensure that legitimate cyber-investigation is not significantly diminished.
At TRUSTLESS.AI and Trustless Computing Association, we are building a new Trustless Computing Certification Body that reconciles the need for radically more secure IT and legitimate lawful access - and a compliant IT service and standalone 2mm-thin personal computing device. it is carried in a custom wallet, and will eventually be embedded into the back of 5mm-thin custom phones, building a private digital sphere seamlessly for all citizens.
Read here about our vision of how an uncompromising pursuit of digital sovereignty can become a great economic development opportunity for Switzerland.
Join our 7th Free and Safe in Cyberspace conference and pre-conference, next January 29th 2020 in Zurich, to learn more and join us as partner in this mission.
