Helen Zhang: Hi, Minister Tang, so lovely to meet you. I have family in Taiwan actually, so I’ve been a big fan of Taiwan for a long time.

Helen Zhang: So, as you know, the ISF is the International Strategy Forum and it is a part of Schmidt Futures which is a philanthropic initiative of Wendy and Eric Schmidt. So, the whole bet for the initiative is that we solve problems… the hardest problems actually, at the intersection of science and society. And so, within that broader umbrella of other programs, one of the programs we have is the International Strategy Forum, which Kyle and Nick and Johannes and Andrew, who’s just joined us actually also works on.

Helen Zhang: So, the idea of the International Strategy Forum is to bring together technologists and people working in global affairs, public policy, national security together in a forum and doing an 11-month, non-residential fellowship where they can actually learn from each other and grow their networks. With the idea being that as our careers develop further and further, we become more and more pointed towards the things that we specialize in and there’s very little chances of going outside of these pillars and silos of technology or tech policy and geopolitics. So, that’s the idea behind it.

Helen Zhang: What the program looks like is we have an 11-month, non-residential fellowship, as I mentioned, which starts off the year in a bit of global convening. And then we gather around the world in different regions with regional convenings. And so last year, we had our global convening in February or this year rather, we’re still in 2023. [laughter] And then, we’ll have regional convenings throughout the year in North America, in Asia, in Europe, as well as in Middle East and North Africa and Africa at large. And then next year, we’re hoping to expand to Latin America as well.

Helen Zhang: And so, I might pass it on to some of my other colleagues and introduce them first, but also let them tell you a little bit about the program and the fellows that we’ve had come through and maybe about what we hope to be able to work with you on as well.

Helen Zhang: So, Johannes, you’ve introduced yourself, but maybe you can tell us a little bit more about what you work on in addition to ISF and then we’ll go to Kyle and Nick and then Andrew.

Johannes Lang: Sure, thank you, Helen. Yeah, so I work mostly on selection, helping manage selection for our program. So, we’re currently in the process of interviewing candidates and all that. I’m really thankful for your recommendation letter as well.

Johannes Lang: And part of what we’re trying to kind of pilot in this coming year is also a new form of convenings where we’re relying more on like policy hackathons to really try to like leverage the talent that we have in our community, having technologists on one hand and policy makers on the other hand to come up with different innovative policy solutions and ideas. So that’s why I think I mentioned in the email I was really interested to see presidential hackathon in Taiwan. Maybe there’ll be a chance to talk about that as well.

Johannes Lang: But basically, I think as we’ve talked about previously on the team, what we want this community to be is really one where we can sort of get outside of the State, familiar environment of policy and people or think tank types and kind of really try to come up with new solutions to existing problems at the intersection of geopolitics and technology, probably speaking.

Johannes Lang: Kyle, Nick, anything you’d like to add and what you’re working on?

Kyle Johnson: Yeah, absolutely. My name is Kyle, I am the regional lead for ISF Asia. And so, I’ve had the pleasure of being able to meet some other Taiwanese officials last year, especially over in New York.

Kyle Johnson: And I’ve been connected as well to the Taiwanese Asia Exchange Foundation too. And so, I’ve been able to get a little bit more acquainted with the work and I’m excited to just learn more about how we can incorporate some more Taiwanese individuals in future cohort years as well.

Kyle Johnson: So yeah, it’s a little bit of what I do. I also work a little bit on the programming and the community development within ISF, probably speaking, but I’ll pass it over.

Nick Cohen: Wonderful. My name is Nick. It’s a great pleasure to meet you. I think like everyone on the call, I wear a number of different hats. I’m on the ISF team, but I am largely in charge of leading some of our partnership work and our non-fellow engagement, especially our advisor network, which I know Johannes mentioned to you in his email. And I think we’re keen to talk about and answer any questions that you might have later on in the call, but I think maybe just to kind of ground you in what some of the work is that I do and how it fits into the rest of the program.

Nick Cohen: We founded this program just about three years ago. And I think we’re really focused initially on figuring out the secret to finding really exceptional people, especially from non-traditional backgrounds and figuring out how to really effectively bring them together into a meaningful community with the long-term vision of supporting them

Nick Cohen: over the course of their careers and helping them sort of accelerate into positions of leadership. And now that we’ve at least started to figure out the secret sauce to that, our goal is now trying to help them not only get to where they want to be 30 to 50 years from now, but also put them in touch with and help to leverage and manufacture opportunities for them to accelerate their impact in the short term.

Nick Cohen: And a lot of that happens through partners, through our senior advisors, through senior leaders at the intersection of geopolitics and technology who can mentor, who can nominate, who point us in the right direction of talent. So that’s really a big goal for us this year. But plenty more to talk on that, but I’ll turn it to Andrew for introductions to round this up.

Andrew Sorota: Okay, thanks so much. Very excited to be here and to talk with you today. My name’s Andrew, I’m on our ISF team. I help lead our North America convenings. I should also say that on the side, I do a lot of work in the democratic innovation space, and so I’m very excited to meet you because I’m quite inspired by everything you’ve done there. I should actually say that I have been working on a piece with my old professor, Helene Landemore, on the need for global democratic deliberations around AI governance policy. And I believe she sent that piece to you at the end of last week about a potential collaboration there. So, very excited about that.

Audrey Tang: Great! John here is my speech writer and international strategist, he just offered to edit that Helen Landemore and Andrew Sorota’s piece, and so… we have all three co-authors.

Andrew Sorota: Fantastic. Yeah.

Andrew Sorota: Nice to meet you as well, John.

John Scott Marchant: Yes, you too, Andrew. And the piece looks great. I just think maybe a little bit of reorganization and it’ll be great. Perfect!

Andrew Sorota: Absolutely. Excited to see your edits and to get that out there.

John Scott Marchant: Great!

Audrey Tang: Yeah, we didn’t have your email but now, we’ll invite you to…

Andrew Sorota: No, that’s okay. Please go through Helene. She’s fantastic.

Audrey Tang: Sure. All right, so how shall we proceed? Do we talk about the advisor position first? Or do we talk about other topics such as democracy and innovation?

Helen Zhang: We would love to hear about your priorities for Taiwan, especially in the region and internationally in this very interesting time we’re living though. And then we can go into a little bit more detail about the advisor position and what that might entail. Does that sound okay?

Audrey Tang: Sure. Were there any other Taiwanese people in the cohorts that you have run so far?

Kyle Johnson: There was one that we were able to select last year, but she was not able to attend because she was in the US. And so, we were able to select her for the next year, but she was not able to attend in the end. So instead, she’s going to be joining us for 2024. And we did receive your nomination for 2024 as well, so we’re going to be interviewing them pretty soon here, I think within the next couple of weeks. I’m really excited for that too.

Audrey Tang: Okay, right. Because the program isn’t very well known in Taiwan, so I think that our main priority is just to get more young people knowing that there is such a program and it’s open to Taiwanese.

Audrey Tang: I believe in a couple of months, there’s another cohort member, Kazumi Hoshino, going to visit us as a fellow because I also chair the Institute of Cybersecurity in Taiwan. And so, he will be working on AI law, AI security, stuff like that, legal stuff, right? So, I think it’s better and better now that we’ve got more fellows interacting with the Taiwanese stakeholders and will probably make it more aware for the Taiwanese people that there is such a great program.

Audrey Tang: So, this is my number one priority - just to get you more well known in Taiwan. But I don’t know how an advisor position may or may not help on that regard, so maybe we can explore that a little bit. And you can assume that I’ve read a bio book and the partnership and FAQ and the PDF, so we can just proceed on that knowledge.

Helen Zhang: Fantastic. You’re very well prepared, Minister.

Audrey Tang: Mm-hmm.

Helen Zhang: Yeah. Well, I mean, maybe Kyle, you can speak a little bit more of the advisor role and what we might expect this year.

Kyle Johnson: Yeah, absolutely. So, I guess there’s a few things. Within our advisor role in general, we prioritize privacy for our advisors. So, what we do is we essentially say, these are the advisors who are currently available within Schmidt Futures or within the ISF. And then our fellows, if they would like to get into contact with them or if they would like to start a project with our advisor, we contact you first and we specifically ask: Do you have the availability? Do you have the capacity to be able to do something like this? Or would it just be a quick Zoom chat to be able to align, if that makes sense?

Kyle Johnson: And so, in broad, a lot of our advisors are there in the case that our fellows would like to reach out, but it doesn’t actually require anything upfront. It doesn’t require you to put in any kind of work or anything along those lines, but are there as an opportunity for our fellows who are extraordinary individuals around the world to be able to learn more and learn about the work that you’re doing as well and for you to be able to inspire them.

Kyle Johnson: And then maybe for them to be able to inspire you as well. I think outside of… oh sorry. Yeah.

Audrey Tang: Okay. Sorry, just one clarifying question. So, in the frequently asked questions, there’s two expectations, right? One - nomination for next year, which I believe I’ve already fulfilled. Second is engaging by this kind of ad hoc basis that you’ve just described, but there’s also another one that said, you know, attending convenings and providing strategic feedback, so I’d like to hear a little bit more about it.

Kyle Johnson: Yeah, absolutely. So, as Helen kind of mentioned earlier, we have quite a few different convenings that happen throughout the year, our global and our regional convenings, and periodically we’ll be able to bring in advisors as counselors as a sort. So, it is a typically two to three days on the ground. It’s all Chatham House Rule and it’s all off the record kind of a thing. Nothing is public facing, but it’s an opportunity to simply engage with the next generation of leaders in an informal way. So, that’s typically what we do in terms of inviting advisors to regional convenings.

Kyle Johnson: Now, outside of that, we also do virtual programming throughout the year. Those are one-off events usually related to just simply an expert speaker coming in and talking about a very specific topic, although we are going to be potentially expanding our menu of options in the future. So, maybe something a little bit more targeted and a little bit more educational and education-based.

Kyle Johnson: So those are the two different ones, right? Either the virtual programming where we might be able to invite you to come and speak or in-person at our convenings themselves.

Kyle Johnson: That being said though, all of it is up to both your availability and whether or not it’s something that’s of interest to you too. So, we always gain your availability prior to you and make sure that this is something that you’re comfortable with as well before pursuing forward.

Audrey Tang: Excellent. So, maybe I can interest you in bringing one of the regional convenings to Taiwan? Because we have been running Presidential Hackathon for five years now. And between Presidential Hackathons, which includes the International Track. There’s also Ideathons, also the social innovation summit which is next week actually, and so on. So, there’s a lot of energy for social innovators. We’ve hosted Minerva for a semester and they loved Taiwan, so that is another possibility that we can explore together.

Kyle Johnson: Yeah, we heard about Minerva as well actually, just recently I came across it. I find it quite fascinating.

Kyle Johnson: Yeah, absolutely. Happy to open up this discussion.

Audrey Tang: Great. Anything from Helen or other folks?

Helen Zhang: No, I mean, just to say that we are very enthusiastic to have you on board and particularly your technical skills, Minister. I know that there’s a lot of people who talk about translating… how do you sort of digitize the process of democracy?

Helen Zhang: And I think Taiwan has had such an exceptional example that I don’t think as many people out there realize the impact that you’ve had in recent years. So, I think we would love to hear in that capacity from you as part of our digital programming in particular and maybe have a sort of one-off series to hear from you to have you run workshops if you have the capacity and if you’re interested.

Helen Zhang: I think, you know, in terms of regional convenings with this year, unfortunately we are quite locked out in terms of our timing and scheduling because this starts planning a year before. But for future cooperation opportunities, I would love to talk more about what other capacity we could potentially bring a delegation to Taiwan in a more limited capacity perhaps.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, which is why I mentioned this annual thing, right? It’s guaranteed to happen next year. We just submitted the budget.

Helen Zhang: Yeah.

Audrey Tang: So anyway, and to your invitation, yeah. I’m happy to host or participate in online workshops. This is essentially what I do.

Audrey Tang: The only thing I ask, which may be a little bit unusual, is that my part, like the presentation, the delivery, and also my answers to your questions are made public. But I do not, in such settings, record anyone’s voice or anyone’s identity, so it stays Chatham House Rule. And when the organizer asks to, for example, to de-identify even the question themselves, usually I just paraphrase the question as part of my answer so that only my part is recorded.

Audrey Tang: And yeah, so that’s the arrangement I’ve had with, I don’t know, security forums, with Microsoft leadership, right? This is the right transparency principle. So, if you’re comfortable with that, then we can explore such settings together.

Helen Zhang: Yeah, I think we’d be comfortable with that, especially if we’re able to anonymize it and not attribute, so that’s great.

Helen Zhang: Anything else from the team? Because otherwise I think I might also… I’d love to hear and learn more about your networks and also your priorities in the region, Minister. Because I think one of the things that we’re trying to do is trying to diversify our reach internationally, but especially in Asia, where we have been partnering with. We want to sort of expand the love around the region and make sure that we are engaging with all the right stakeholders. And so, if there are any other players in that space that you think we might benefit from knowing, please feel free to let us know.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, as I mentioned, the Social Innovation Summit which is next week, is the flagship annual gathering for our network. And so, you can, of course, check out the website, APSIS.TW, but more importantly, we have a minister at large, Minister LEE Yong-Te, in charge of social innovation and I think he’s also in charge of the colleagues attending, for example, Social Enterprise World Forum and so on. So, all the social innovation stuff.

Audrey Tang: And I was in that position for six years, but then, well, Ukraine happened and now I’m head of cybersecurity. But I still retain connections to the social innovation circles, so I think, yeah, you will find a great ally in Minister Lee and the social innovation national plan, because that seems like the same sort of things we do. And the Taiwan Asia Exchange Foundation has been one very good partner for social innovation.

Audrey Tang: We have this incubator for social innovation in Taiwan which used to be Air Force Headquarters, but now converted to a really good co-creation space. So, you’re also welcome to… that used to be my office. I work in the open, so everybody can drop by and have an office hour with me every Wednesday, so that’s a network that I can introduce you to.

Audrey Tang: We also have a cabinet level youth advisory council, which I also used to co-chair. Now it’s co-chaired by minister with a portfolio LIN Wan-yi. And then, there we have a network of what we call reverse mentors, people younger than 35 who work as mentors to cabinet ministers, and the cabinet ministers share most of the meetings that are not top secret with those young advisors. And then, they propose stuff and summon ministers actually, to their locality to answer to the local people’s needs and so on. So our cabinet-level youth advisors — I think you’ll be interested in connecting with them.

Helen Zhang: That’s fantastic. I love the pioneering spirit of the radical transparency. As somebody who used to work in government, this is all very fresh to me. I used to work for the Australian government as a foreign service officer, so this is… it’s all very new, which is great.

Helen Zhang: I would love to know also, Minister, if you have anyone else who you could recommend as potential advisors from Taiwan. As you know, we’re still trying to expand our network and we would love to hear your recommendations. Maybe, you know, the um… This is… I mean…l you’ve just preempted my question.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, the two other ministers with our portfolio, Lee and Lin, would be good advisors to you.

Helen Zhang: Fantastic. And I mean, would it be helpful if we also talk through a little bit more about Schmidt Futures and the other programs that we have outside of the International Strategy Forum?

Audrey Tang: Sure, go ahead.

Helen Zhang: Okay, sure. The Schmidt Futures was only founded in 2017, so it’s a relatively new organization. It’s largely divided between Talent Engine and Talent Ventures. On the Talent Engine side is sort of where we have these more traditional networking-based talents that we invest in. So, like our fellows in the ISF as well as the Quad Fellowship, as well as RISE, which is for young and emerging teenagers, basically high schoolers who are going to go on to do amazing things. And then on the other side with Talent Ventures that’s the more sort of time bound, problem bound venture that we fund. So, these include, for example, AI or synthetic biology and other issues within STEM that don’t necessarily touch on critical technology, but touch on the more traditional STEM topics.

Helen Zhang: So, I think we had done a little bit of brainstorming beforehand to see whether you might benefit from seeing where there might be more overlapping interest. One of the ones we wanted to draw your attention to was actually also the Innovation Fellows, which falls within the first pillar that I mentioned, the Talent Engine side. And the Innovation Fellows are a little bit further along in their career and they have a very sort of… they have funding to solve a very big policy problem or a moonshot problem, which can range from, you know, how to transform immigration issues to things like how to resolve lead in water systems.

Helen Zhang: So, that’s something we wanted to draw attention to, but we can also send you more information about all this as well, depending on which programs, which stream takes your fancy.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, that… like mid-career is also what we are targeting for the international track of our presidential hackathon. What we offer in the hackathon is actually not necessarily money, but rather a guaranteed audience with not just the president herself, but also the business that may provide the resources that makes their ideas come true.

Audrey Tang: And we have an interesting selection process. If you open the link, you will see it’s open, digital and green. So, it needs to, like a Venn diagram, have to hit at least two of the three topics, so it could be open-digital, digital-green or open-green. And so, democracy, digital transformation, and then zero has always been the international presidential hackathon topics.

Audrey Tang: And so, if any of your fellows work on actually the intersection of all three, that is to say, democratic participation with digital transformation toward mitigation, then they have a very large chance to win audience, to our ministries and also through our ministries, the private sector, the children, the folks who actually make the hardware that enables such possibilities.

Audrey Tang: And so, I think this would work very well with Schmidt career innovation.

Helen Zhang: Well, this is fantastic. It’s a very exceptional. I think Johannes has been behind and Kyle who have been behind the design of our hackathons, we can take some inspiration from this, certainly.

Audrey Tang: Yes, and it’s still open for submission, right? Until end of the month. So, feel free just to, I don’t know, join through one of your innovation fellows and see how the process feels like.

Johannes Lang: Yeah, we’d love to share that with our innovation fellows and our ISF fellows, I think might also be one… a couple that would be really good to pitch for this.

Helen Zhang: Nick, Johannes, Andrew, Kyle, do we have anything else that we want to share? Anything to add?

Helen Zhang: No? I think this was really, you know…

Nick Cohen: I think that actually covers it.

Helen Zhang: Yeah. This was really… a really introductory meeting and so, we were really, really chuffed that you actually responded to us when we reached out. And it’s such an honor to meet you in this forum. So, thank you very much for taking the time at such short notice to connect with us.

Helen Zhang: We will follow up with more information about what convenings later this year might look like. And maybe we can set up some time to talk about the programing element of you know, what kind of workshops you might be interested in doing for us in September.

Helen Zhang: What would be helpful for you going forward?

Audrey Tang: Well, so clarifications that I received today include advisors is not a paid position. It’s not a staff position. It’s not a contractor position, which would be like the showstoppers for me to accept because as a public servant, especially in charge of national cybersecurity, I cannot engage in such positions.

Audrey Tang: But it sounds like actually everything is on an ad hoc basis and it’s not a traditional position at all. It’s more like agreeing to be on a mailing list where I will receive requests from time to time.

Audrey Tang: And the only obligation, so to speak, is actually not attending board meetings, but just nominating for the next year, so that I’m absolutely comfortable with. So, if we don’t build it as a position, but rather just me joining the advisor network, I don’t need cabinet approval for that. So, I’m happy to continue my engagement to you in the role of an advisor to your fellows, and we can just see the volume of the mail list to determine how much time it would require for me, or maybe John will help to sort through the requests.

Helen Zhang: That’s right. That sounds fantastic. And if you ever have any concerns about the details, we can also provide things in writing to make it clear for you on your end as well.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, that would be excellent. Yeah, we booked for an hour, but it seems we’re so all very effective and efficient. I don’t know how to reverse it.

Helen Zhang: That’s right. John, do you have any questions? I’m not sure if there’s anything that we can help with as well on your end.

John Scott Marchant: No, actually it’s really clear. Just observing and I was researching what the organization was and what you do and it looks great. It looks very interesting. A lot of potential.

Helen Zhang: Yeah, well, fantastic. Well, I mean, I’m going to be in Copenhagen, actually in May for the Copenhagen Democracy Summit. So, if I don’t know if you are going or if there’s anyone from your team who is going, I’d love to meet them in person and get to know… and introduce them to ISF and Schmidt Futures.

Audrey Tang: Okay, we have a department, the Department of Democracy Network dedicated for this sort of thing. And so, I will ask them because they’re all very independent and some of them are more interested in, I don’t know, the arts electronica.

Audrey Tang: Some of them are interested in, I don’t know, like Ethereum Taipei and things like that, so there’s many arms in our democracy network people. But I think it’s quite rare for a government ministry to basically have a department of people working on decentralizing the government itself.

Helen Zhang: Yes, it’s incredible.

Audrey Tang: Right, so I would just circulate the fact that there is such a summit in Copenhagen, and if anyone would like to join from Taiwan, or actually we have two people in London as well, which may be a shorter trip. Then maybe they can meet you there.

Audrey Tang: Here is the link to our democracy network, which is a brief introduction and also contains description for other departments in our ministry, which you may find interesting. And if you’re interested in connecting to any of our DGs and so on as part of your innovation fellow or other fellow programs, just let me know and we can make introductions.

Helen Zhang: Okay, that’s very clear. Thank you very much.

Audrey Tang: OK, awesome. Thank you!

Helen Zhang: OK, thank you. Have a great day!

Kyle Johnson: Thank you, it was wonderful to meet you.

John Scott Marchant: You too.

Andrew Sorota: Yes, talk to you soon. Bye.

John Scott Marchant: Bye.

Nick Cohen: Bye.