America’s outgoing cyber ambassador has a warning for his successors in the incoming Trump administration: Stay engaged with tech and digital security debates on the world stage, because otherwise, Russia and China will fill the void.
“An increasingly isolationist United States creates or amplifies a lot of problems that we're not going to be able to turn our backs on,” says Nathaniel Fick, who has spent almost two and a half years as the US’s first ambassador at large for cyberspace and digital policy. “We may not be interested in the world, but the world is interested in us.”
The warning from Fick comes as foreign diplomats and cybersecurity experts nervously await indications of how Donald Trump’s second administration, stocked with “America First” conservatives, will handle issues such as foreign aid, digital security norms, and the tech competition with authoritarian nations.
Speaking to WIRED a few days before he’s set to step down from his post—one that still lacks a Trump nominee—Fick says he’s proud of the work that his relatively new State Department bureau has done and hopeful that Trump’s team will see the value in building on that legacy.
Staying in the Game
The Biden administration has spent years trying to convince “middle ground” countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America to embrace the Western approach to technology and cybersecurity over China’s and Russia’s authoritarian visions. But it’s an open question whether Trump—who has disdained international institutions and insulted a host of foreign countries—will continue this diplomatic campaign.
To Fick, the persuasion strategy is a no-brainer, because it’s on the cusp of bearing real fruit. He’s confident that more and more countries investing in cutting-edge technology like 5G wireless networks will ultimately pick Western vendors over Chinese businesses, for two big reasons: the privacy and security risks of hiring companies that are subservient to China’s authoritarian regime and the lure of foreign direct investment (FDI) by Western governments looking for new supply chains free of untrustworthy electronics.
“Every country in the world is competing for this FDI by big global technology businesses, or tech-enabled businesses, and countries are going to be able to carve out an advantaged position for themselves if they're using trusted technology,” Fick says. “I think that's an argument that this next team is going to be all over.”
One of the strategic shifts that Fick oversaw involved knitting together US campaigns to promote Western 5G vendors and to spur the construction of new undersea internet cables. “We need to think about the full tech ecosystem,” he says.
Two examples show the opportunities in this area. In Costa Rica, US support after devastating Russian cyberattacks helped convince San José to become a regional leader in promoting Western 5G technology, making it a hub of foreign supply-chain investment. And last month, the tiny South Pacific island nation of Tuvalu broke ground on its first undersea cable, financed by the US and Western allies. In Tuvalu, Fick says, “we preempted a generational buildout of fundamentally untrusted [Chinese] architecture.”
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Fick sees a chance for Trump’s administration to focus on these kinds of investments, with the strategy mirroring military-equipment sales to foreign governments, where diplomats arrange deals that improve partners’ security and benefit US businesses. “These are things that I've talked to the next team about,” he says.
A Delicate Dance
As China has become America’s preeminent cyber adversary, burrowing deep into infrastructure like water facilities, power plants, and telecom networks, experts have wondered—and worried—about the consequences of Trump’s bombastic approach to countering Beijing.
“Societies like ours are more vulnerable because we're more open and we're more connected,” Fick warns. “The next team is going to have to be highly sensitive to our vulnerabilities in those areas.”
Fick has discussed China’s cyber aggression with Trump’s team and predicts “some consistency on this front,” including “a shared sense that we need to extend deterrence into the digital world.” Mike Waltz, Trump’s incoming national security adviser, recently called for a cyber version of mutually assured destruction. “If you’re putting cyber time bombs in our ports and grid,” Waltz warned China, “we can do it to you, too, so let’s both not.”
Imposing costs on China is imperative, Fick says—including, “if necessary, military costs.” But as Trump embraces the madman theory of international relations, Fick worries that China, too, is becoming increasingly reckless.
“We fear that they are mis-pricing the risk associated with” infrastructure intrusions, says Fick, who has been deeply involved in the US response to the attacks.
US officials are also concerned that Beijing isn’t in full control of its hacker teams. “We’re concerned that their system is not acting in a coordinated, unified way,” Fick says. “We really need the Chinese to ensure that the cyber actors on their side are operating fully within the authority and under the control of senior political leadership.”
Bracing for Change
Trump’s election has inspired a wave of concern about the future of US tech and cyber diplomacy, given the president-elect’s views on emerging technology issues and his controversial foreign ties.
The Biden administration, for example, launched a global effort to crack down on commercial spyware that authoritarian regimes have used to suppress dissent. But Trump has close relationships with the countries fueling the spyware industry, including major customers Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and major exporter Israel.
Fick sounds uncertain about the spyware crackdown’s future, though he says Trump’s team includes “some very strong advocates for human rights online and digital freedom” and hopes “those voices will carry the day.”
Biden has also tried to marshal global support for restrictions on AI to prevent both existential and everyday harms. Trump is unlikely to back similar AI safety regulations, but Fick argues that Biden’s team “staked out a strong pro-innovation, pro-American position here that I would urge the next team to continue.”
In his global travels since Trump’s election, Fick has heard from foreign counterparts who are deeply concerned about the future of US tech and cyber diplomacy.
European governments wonder if Trump will continue US support of Ukraine and NATO in a conflict with Russia that has partly played out in cyberspace. Fick’s team was instrumental in establishing a process for rapidly delivering cyber-defense aid to Ukraine’s battered government.
“I was in Ukraine right before Christmas, I was in Poland, I was in Estonia, kind of up and down NATO's eastern flank,” he says, adding that he sensed “both a deep desire for the United States to stay engaged and a recognition that European partners are going to need to do their share—which they, by the way, increasingly are doing.”
More broadly, Fick has heard “a strong desire among many allies and partners” for the US to continue going toe to toe with China and Russia in tech and cyber discussions in international bodies like the UN and the Group of 20.
“Without the United States deeply involved, you're going to see the Chinese more deeply involved, you're going to see the Russians more deeply involved,” Fick says. “There's a pretty broad view [globally] that the US needs to, for its own interests and for the interests of our allies and partners, stay engaged in multilateral organizations.”
Fick sympathizes with Republicans who consider these multilateral organizations too slow and timid, but he wants Trump’s team to “recognize that the alternative is not diminished influence of these organizations; the alternative is simply that they become playgrounds for our competitors and our adversaries.”
Celebrating “a Sea Change”
Looking back on his time as America’s cyber ambassador—which saw him spend a total of more than 200 days traveling the world on nearly 80 trips to visit key US allies and partners—Fick is proud of how his team launched an entirely new bureau inside the State Department, grew it to around 130 employees, and delivered results that he says are transforming digital diplomacy.
One of his biggest accomplishments was the launch of a foreign cyber aid fund that will support programs to deploy security assistance to hack-stricken allies, subsidize new undersea cables, and train foreign diplomats on cyber issues.
The security-assistance project saw an early test in November when Costa Rica faced another major ransomware attack. “We had people on a plane the next morning, Thanksgiving morning, with hands on keyboards alongside Costa Rican partners that night,” Fick says. “That’s amazing. That is a sea change in how we do this, and it’s going to strengthen our hand in providing support to these middle-ground states.”
Fick has also focused on preparing the Foreign Service for the modern world, meeting his goal of training at least one tech-savvy diplomat for every foreign embassy (around 237 total) and successfully lobbying to add digital fluency to the State Department’s criteria for career ambassador positions. He has also helped State counterbalance the Pentagon in White House discussions about foreign tech issues—putting “American diplomacy literally back at the table in the Situation Room on technology topics.”
And then there’s his team’s support for US cyber aid to Ukraine, from security software to satellite communications to cloud migration for vital government data—work that he says offers a template for future public-private foreign-aid partnerships.
One Final Warning
Fick has shared his thoughts about China, 5G, AI, deterrence, and other cyber issues with Trump’s transition team, and he says there’s still more to do to keep cyber diplomacy “front and center” at State. But as he prepares to leave government, he has one major piece of advice for the incoming administration.
“It is essential to have a bias for action,” he says. “We end up admiring a problem for too long rather than taking a decisive step to address it … That decisive step may be imperfect, but indecision is a decision, and the world moves on without you.”
Put another way: In an era of rapidly evolving technologies and intensifying geopolitical competition, massive bureaucracies like the State Department sometimes need to be jolted into action.
“The job of the leaders in these big organizations,” Fick says, “is to move the org to change a little bit faster than it would on its own.”