We’re in Taipei speaking with some incredible people working to advance human rights in the digital age. One of those at the forefront of this is Henri Verdier the French Ambassador for Digital Affairs within the French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs. 

Since 2018, he has led and co-ordinated French digital diplomacy and he was instrumental in last week’s AI Action Summit in Paris hosted by President Macron.

Mohammed al-Maskati is one of the 3,200 people participating live at RightsCon 2025 in Taipei. He is a Bahraini human rights activist who worked as a digital security consultant for the Middle East and North Africa. He founded the Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights (BYSHR), and currently works with AccessNow as the Digital Security Helpline Director .

We have set up in the Media Room at RightsCon 2025 Taipei and are getting ready for an amazing few days of interviews with some of the best brains in the biz. These are people working at the forefront of human rights in the digital age.

Stay tuned to meet some amazing activists over the coming days.

We're in Taiwan where thousands of human rights activists are gathering for RightCon2025. This is a conference started by TWICS co-host Brett Solomon and this will be the first time that he's attending not as CEO of the organising body AccessNow but as a podcaster!

He and Nell Schofield will be talking with around 25 global leaders who are defending and extending human rights in the digital age, and it seems like there’s never been a more important time to work on this issue.

Satellite internet technology is go! But does it, as promised, help to close the digital divide? At least 2.6 billion people worldwide are still unable to access high-quality, open, secure internet, despite all the satellites up there. SpaceX’s Starlink has nearly 7k satellites circling the Earth with plans for another 23,000!! And astronomers are concerned because the sunlight reflecting off them is interfering with sensitive telescopes investigating the origins of the universe.

So what’s more important - connectivity on Earth, or more knowledge about deep space?

10 days to go until lift off and land down in Taiwan for RightsCon Taipei 2025. We are trialling our tech and our FACES!

Check the program list out and let us know who you want us to interview: https://www.rightscon.org/program/#list

This Week In Cyberspace we take a look at how the release of China’s new Artificial Intelligence model DeepSeek has knocked the socks off Silicon Valley’s techbros. It’s just as powerful as ChatGPT, made for a tenth of the cost and its release knocked a cool trillion off US tech stocks.

How will this new battle for supremacy in the AI space play out?

As Trump cracks down on illegal immigration, reports have emerged that the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and its Citizen and Immigration Services have dished out $7.8 billion on immigration technologies since 2020.

That's a lot of money on what the World Economic Forum reports is not the problem. So what's the deal?

 We kick off This Week In Cyberspace 2025 with a look at the inauguration of Donald Trump and how his American tech bros are falling over themselves to be part of the new world order/disorder.

It's a laugh a minute as we get our heads around what just happened with over 100 Executive Orders signed, Trumpian memecoins launched, all against the backdrop of 170 million US Tik Tok users being kicked on and off the platform as the biggest deals in history are being negotiated.

2024 was a big year, especially for elections with no less 2 billion people casting their votes. We’ve seen the impact of internet shutdowns in many countries and the influence of social media platforms, especially on the US election. In Russia Putin secured a 5th term and in Syria we saw a shift from digital control to digital freedom.
We cast our eyes back on the year that was in cyberspace.