Brigadier General Launches The Digital Atlantic Charter Initiative To Fight Geopolitical Authoritarianism

WASHINGTON, Nov. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, U.S. Air Force Brigadier General Robert Spalding (Ret.), former senior director of strategy at the White House National Security Council, announced the Digital Atlantic Charter initiative, a public-private effort focused on safeguarding democracies worldwide. The initiative provides policy advice, an investment vehicle and a technology development platform to help government agencies and commercial entities counter digital authoritarianism. In addition to Gen. Spalding, the Digital Atlantic Charter team includes former White House national security, military, commercial networking and cloud-computing veterans. Initial funding of $40 million has been raised from private investors and government funding.

Created in the spirit of the Atlantic Charter and following the recent AUKUS trilateral security partnership between Australia, U.K. and the U.S., the global Digital Atlantic Charter initiative supports countries in every region of the world as they work to protect and ensure the resilience of their critical infrastructure. Threats to infrastructure have been seen in recent attacks, including the Colonial Pipeline, the closures of banks and the national postal service in New Zealand, the partial shutdown of India's electric grid and a ransomware incident that forced the cancellation of classes at a Washington D.C. university.

"Data is our most critical resource. A digital Iron Curtain has fallen across the world and personal information is being weaponized like never before, as witnessed in China and other authoritarian regimes," said General Spalding, architect of the Digital Atlantic Charter. "We must safeguard our critical infrastructure and that of other democracies by protecting data and privacy, as well as terrestrial and satellite communications. Now is the time for technology, investment and policy deliberately designed to protect our data sovereignty."

In the interests of data and privacy protection, the Digital Atlantic Charter made its initial investment in SEMPRE. Incubated for nearly three years, SEMPRE provides the first hardened, resilient, secure military-grade communications and high-performance edge-computing infrastructure for telecom operators, first responders, government and enterprise customers. SEMPRE was conceived in part to counter and create a superior solution to China's Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd., which has abused its influence over the creation of standards that govern how 5G and other networks operate. In doing so, Huawei created nearly one-thousand unresolved security threats that include backdoors and man-in-the-middle vulnerabilities through which personal data can be siphoned or modified.

Designed and manufactured in the U.S., SEMPRE's communications and edge-compute infrastructure equipment co-locates networking infrastructure and data processing in a single solution where personal data is wrapped in purpose-built security layers using a "zero-trust network" that includes encryption, user authentication, sandboxing, behavioral analytics and other protective measures.

"Authoritarianism is on the rise. Democracies are being challenged. As Australia's support of the AUKUS agreement demonstrates, digital repression can only be overcome through investment and innovation across security, military and technology sectors," said Peter Jennings, executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute and a former Deputy Secretary for the Australian Defence Department. "With the Digital Atlantic Charter, General Spalding has assembled a team with unparalleled access and experience who are committed to protecting democracy worldwide."

In addition, the effort has already identified a number of private companies at the intersection of energy, space, defense, telecommunications and cybersecurity, and is currently working to acquire and further develop their technology for global security markets.

Media Contact
Natalee Gibson
[email protected]

SOURCE SEMPRE