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Chosen to fill what his country's foreign ministry has dubbed
the first "techplomacy" posting on the U.S. West Coast,
Denmark's Casper Klynge will be tasked with building direct ties
between his country and the likes of Facebook, Apple and
Alphabet's Google.
"We are to continue doing traditional diplomacy with countries
and organizations, but we also have to start looking into what
relation you can have with these big tech companies," Klynge
told Reuters in an interview.
The aim was to help Denmark understand the impact of rapid
changes in digital technology while promoting the country's
interests and values - setting up a channel of communication
that would also benefit the companies.
"If you look at these companies' involvement and significance
for you and me, many of them have a much greater degree of
influence than most nations," he said in comments cleared for
publication late on Friday.
In economic terms, the new partners are comparable.
Denmark's 2016 gross domestic product was 2.06 trillion Danish
crowns ($310 billion), sitting between Facebook's current $437
billion market value and the $185 billion of Oracle Corp.
With tech companies under growing pressure to share encrypted
information to prevent terrorism, Klynge also identified the
ability of radical individuals or groups to exploit online
platforms as a key issue.
"We saw what happened after the terror acts in London when
Facebook came forward and said they are ready to discuss how we
prevent terror organizations using its network to promote their
actions," said Klynge, who takes up his new role on Sept 1.
In May, Facebook was fined 150,000 euros ($166,000) by France's
data protection watchdog for failing to prevent users' data
being accessed by advertisers.
"If you look at what impacts us in our daily lives and how much
data they can pull on all of us... (the firms) are truly
influential players," Klynge said.
Technological diplomacy is one of Denmark's five foreign policy
priorities alongside national security; Brexit; the Arctic
region; and migration, instability and terrorism.
(Editing by Terje Solsvik and John Stonestreet)
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