Professor Madeline Carr

Professor of Global Politics and Cybersecurity, University College London

Professor Carr is the Director of the UK-wide RISCS Institute which looks at the human and organizational factors of cybersecurity. She is also the Director of the Digital Technologies Policy Lab which supports policy making to adapt to the pace of change in society’s integration of digital technologies. Her research looks at the implications of emerging technology for national and global security, international order and global governance. Professor Carr has published on cyber norms, multi-stakeholder Internet governance, the future of the insurance sector in the IoT, cybersecurity and international law, and the public/private partnership in national cyber security strategies. Her book US Power and the Internet in International Relations is published by Palgrave MacMillan. Professor Carr was the Co-lead on the Standards, Governance and Policy stream of the UK’s £24M PETRAS research hub on the cyber security of the Internet of Things. She is now the lead on the Economics and Law lens of the new PETRAS National Centre of Excellence in Cybersecurity of the IoT. Professor Carr is a member of the World Economic Forum Global Council on the IoT. She is also the Deputy Director of a new Centre for Doctoral Training in Cybersecurity at UCL which focuses on the interdisciplinary nature of these problems.

ABSTRACT

“The Geopolitics of Industrial IoT”

Discussions and debates in forums like the UN ITU, ENISA the IEEE and the IETF have become important sites for the global governance of the Internet of Things (IoT). The industrial IoT (IIoT) as a domain with significant safety and security implications that receives less attention than consumer IoT. Indeed, the IIoT is an area where ambitions of increased productivity and efficiency very much outweigh security concerns and this makes it particularly susceptible to the vulnerabilities that emerge in the IoT generally. In this context, standards are increasingly understood as a powerful mechanism through which IoT governance is enacted. The governance and security of IIoT infrastructure is regarded by states as linked to national security, national interest and state power. Consequently, understanding how different states are engaging with standards negotiations, which states are taking newly assertive roles, and which states are forming powerful alliances in standards forums is critical to understanding how technology and geopolitics will intersect in the coming decades.