On 8 March, the German Marshall Fund, in partnership with the British Council Germany, hosted a panel discussion in Berlin on the future of security. The event brought together senior experts and guests from a broad range of professional and young leaders’ networks, including GMF’s Young Transatlantic Network and the British Council’s Transatlantic Network 2020. Titled “Tomorrow's Security Challenges: Emerging Threats, Evolving Solutions”, the debate featured speakers Elke Hoff, Member of the German Parliament, Terence Taylor, President of the International Council for the Life Sciences from Washington D.C., and Rainer Wessel, Director of CI3 Clustermanagement, a biotechnology firm. GMF Senior Transatlantic Fellow Constanze Stelzenmüller moderated the evening.

During the debate, the speakers highlighted the need to come to a broad understanding of contemporary security, especially against the backdrop of advancements in globalization, science, and technology. Contrary to conventional threat deterrence, employing risk management approaches would allow for adapting more flexibly to challenges as they emerge, as well as viewing risk as an opportunity to innovate. Decision-makers and organizations could learn from network strategies that focus on improving resilience through decentralization local, bottom-up cooperation, as well as sharing of knowledge across sectors and disciplines. Successful examples could be taken from the natural world, public-private partnerships, terrorist groups as well as online social networks. Creative thinking about security remained especially relevant in an era when law-makers and governments were increasingly losing their capacity to protect citizens, and where there was no such thing as absolute security.