In this information age, there is a commonly held presumption in favour of knowledge, truth, and the uncovering and dissemination of information. However, risks from the dissemination or potential dissemination of (true) information that may cause harm or enable some agent to cause harm must be acknowledged, discussed and addressed.
This challenge is becoming even more acute with advancing technological sophistication: information, rather than material, can be the principal object of security concern. Other fields grapple with overlapping or adjacent challenges: for example, intangible technology transfer is a primary concern in the nuclear field, and vulnerability disclosure may prove to be contentious in the cyber realm. This is a moment for creative and unifying approaches to address the issue of Information Risks.
The Future of Humanity Institute, along with Chatham House, seeks to better understand the intellectual terrain around ‘information risks’, and how this varies between fields. To this end, Chatham House will convene an online roundtable and bring together members of all international security communities, including the nuclear weapons policy, cyber, artificial intelligence, biosafety and biosecurity communities, to discuss and better understand the various approaches between security fields, and to extract common themes between them.
The discussion will seek to communicate and share this understanding widely and highlight areas which could benefit from further investigation and exploration.
