Breaking the Transatlantic Data Trilemma: the EU Must Step Up Its Approach to EU-US Data Flows

The Euro-American data relationship is deeply troubled. In fact, it now faces an impossible "trilema" among three core policy objectives: bulk intelligence collection, open transatlantic digital commerce, and the EU’s fundamental rights. The EU needs to take action if it is to protect the economically critical transatlantic data corridor and maintain the tech leadership role Europe wants

The Digital Technology Environment and Europe's Capacity to Act

This monitoring study explores the EU's capacity to act in digital technology across five categories: 1) how the EU defines the problem it is attempting to address; 2) how the EU sets an agenda; 3) how the EU formulates policy; 4) how the EU implements policy; and 5) to what degree European policy has an impact at home and globally. Ultimately, the EU's policy success will be determined by its ability to shore up areas where it is weakest and establish constant and interactive benchmarking to create honest performance assessments. The EU must set out clearly defined objectives that confront the tough questions of "what is essential" and "what is nice to have.

Germany's Economic Security and Technology: Optimizing Export Control, Investment Screening and Market Access Instruments

Technological development and increasingly fraught US-China competition have geopolitical consequences for technology access. The erosion of post-Cold War multilateral dual-use technology export control regimes, such as the Wassenaar Arrangement, and investment and other control frameworks have led to national, EU, and ad hoc measures, such as the restrictions on Russian semiconductor access following the invasion of Ukraine

The Geopolitics of Digital Technology Innovation: Assessing Strengths and Challenges of Germany's Innovation Ecosystem

The COVID-era public and private investment influx into Germany’s digital technology R&D is reversing amid inflation, fiscal consolidation, and geopolitical pressures coming from the Zeitenwende. Germany's future in an EU that is among the top-tier technology powers requires a profound and rapid transition of the country's R&D strengths into data-intensive, systems-centric areas of IoT and deep technology that are linked to the domestic manufacturing base. New policy approaches in three areas - money, markets, and minds - are needed. New technologies such as robotics, artificial intelligence (AI), advanced material science, biotech, and quantum computing tend to have broad general-purpose applications. But uncoordinated funding vehicles, universities' civil clauses, and restrictive visa and onboarding guidelines for skilled foreign workers slow innovation in these sectors and hamper German techno-geopolitical competitiveness

Ethical and Operational: Emerging and Disruptive Technologies, the German Military, and the Zeitenwende

Germany's future contribution to European and allied security depends on the Bundeswehr's ability to harness emerging and disruptive technologies (EDTs) such as artificial intelligence, 5G/6G cellular network technology, Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite connectivity, and quantum communications and computation. Even amidst Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine, Germany continues to be mired in siloed conceptual, institutional, and ethical thinking that results in disconnections between the military and the technology sector, and even between ­Germany and its allies. The Zeitenwende should catalyze not only a defense budgetary increase but a reconciliation between ethics and military requirements regarding EDTs if Germany is to look beyond immediate needs and ensure the Bundeswehr's future ­operational readiness

Europe's Capacity to Act in the Global Tech Race: Charting a Path for Europe in Times of Major Technological Disruption

Technological leadership has become a central dimension of geopolitical power. In this development, the primary front in the emerging tech power rivalry is between the US (United States of America) and China (People’s Republic of China). The European Union (EU) has fallen behind and needs to catch-up. The stakes in this race are high and will have an impact on economic competition, national security and broader values-based notions of political order. This study sheds light on Europe’s approach to technological mastery. This study looks into the progress of the EU and its member states across selected technological fields and their global entanglements with other nations and technology actors

Technology and Industrial Policy in an Age of Systemic Competition: Safeguarding Germany's Technology Stack and Innovation Industrial Strength

As one of the world's most globalized economies, Germany is confronting a challenging international environment characterized by aggressive subsidies, a global race for control of key technologies such as advanced chips, and vulnerable supply chains for critical components. Increased energy costs - induced by Russia's war on Ukraine - are also straining Germany's industrial model. Germany's industrial economy is simultaneously undergoing a fundamental transformation from precision-based engineering to systems-based manufactured products. With this shift, a competitive digital technology stack is becoming a key repository for future industrial competitiveness. Yet, the country struggles to capture value in fast-growing markets like that for cloud and edge infrastructure. It also faces risks from its exposure to untrustworthy technology vendors and potential geopolitical disruptions to fragile hardware supply chains

Germany's Role in Europe's Digital Regulatory Power: Shaping the Global Technology Rule Book in the Service of Europe

Four elements help to map the strengths and, at times, the limits of German power in digital rule-making. First, Germany anticipates EU ­digital regulation and attempts to establish facts on the ground. Second, Germany has outsized influence in the formal stages of EU digital regulatory policy­making. Third, the EU, in turn, provides ­Germany with a launch pad for influencing worldwide regulatory norms. Fourth, a belated reawakening of the capacity of the German private sector and affiliated technical standard bodies to influence global technical standards is occurring

Germany's Global Technology Diplomacy: Strengthening Technology Alliances, Partnerships, and Norms-Setting Institutions

The fusion of technological, geopolitical, and ideological ambitions is straining internet governance discourses, cyber norms diplomacy, technical standard-setting, and the global connectivity infrastructure. The German government has made support for global, open, and secure digital connectivity a centerpiece of its foreign policy. However, it has yet to make the shaping of a corresponding international technology agenda a strategic policy priority. To shape a global technology order that reflects Germany's interests as a high-tech industrial economy and democratic society, the government should focus on realizing synergies with EU international digital policy, strengthening coordination with like-minded partners, and engaging with the Global South on an inclusive and democratic ­global digital agenda

Social Influences of Error Monitoring

Adolescence is characterized by dramatic hormonal, physical, and psychological changes, and is a period of risk for affective and anxiety disorders. Pubertal development during adolescence plays a major role in the emergence of these disorders, particularly among girls. Thus, it is critical to identify early biomarkers of risk. One potential biomarker, the error-related negativity (ERN), is an event-related potential following an erroneous response. Individuals with an anxiety disorder demonstrate a greater ERN than healthy comparisons, an association which is stronger in adolescence, suggesting that pubertal development may play a role in the ERN as a predictor of anxiety. One form of anxiety often observed in adolescence, particularly among girls, is social anxiety, which is defined as anxiety elicited by social-evaluative contexts. In adults, enhancements of the ERN in social-evaluative contexts is positively related to social anxiety symptoms, suggesting that the ERN in social contexts may serve as a biomarker for social anxiety. This dissertation examined the ERN in and its relation with puberty and social anxiety among 76 adolescent girls. Adolescent girls completed a flanker task in two differen