“We see tech becoming increasingly relevant in military conflicts and Google has been active in Ukraine, for example, around cybersecurity. I'd love to hear your thoughts on the role that companies, which are after all private actors with unelected leaders, should or should not play in geopolitical conflicts. How do you even approach this question of the role that you can play,” a representative from the European Council on Foreign Relations asked Google CEO Sundar Pichai at the Munich Security Conference. Pichai defended Google’s partnerships with the military saying that tech companies have an important role to play because of the advances made by them in various fields like cybersecurity and AI. “If you look at the cybersecurity approach we have inside a company like Google, it is state-of-the-art. And I think governments have a lot to learn and work together and improve in terms of cybersecurity practices. And I think it's important that we create frameworks by which that can happen,” Pichai remarked. Pichai further elaborated on how advances in AI will help strengthen cybersecurity: “The people who are trying to attack just need to find one one-week part of your whole system. But for people defending the system, you have to take care of the entire surface area and make sure everything is okay all the time. So it's a large-scale problem and AI disproportionately helps the people defending.” The role that tech companies play in geopolitical issues is in the spotlight for two reasons: the role being…
