This past weekend, the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy hosted the Inter-Policy School Summit, a policy conference conceived and run entirely by students that brought policy students from sixteen universities in five countries together to explore innovative strategies to address the interrelated issues of cybersecurity and trade.

Across the world, countries are struggling to find a balance between upholding trade priorities and strengthening cybersecurity protocols. While those who engage in trade are increasingly incentivized to digitize components of their business to increase efficiency, hackers are finding new and innovative ways to disrupt and profit off of the increasingly automated trade sphere. More than 30 students from sixteen different universities paired up with fellows from New America, the think tank and civic enterprise, to analyze, debate, and propose their own solutions to these challenges facing governments and private companies around the world.

“The sort of essence of being a policymaker is needing to assimilate a large amount of information in a short period of time, to organize those thoughts in a coherent way, and then present them and defend them, and I think those three groups of skills have been amply demonstrated here,” Ian Wallace, co-director of the Cybersecurity Initiative at New America, said in his closing remarks at the Summit. “I’ve been very impressed by the expertise you’ve brought to this.”

“Our job at Harris is to equip students with the tools needed to rigorously analyze policy challenges and propose solutions,” said Jeremy Edwards, senior associate dean for academic and student affairs at Harris Public Policy. “Conferences like the Inter-Policy School Summit give promising students from around the world the opportunity to take what they’ve learned in the classroom and apply it to a timely policy challenge. The IPSS is a tremendous example of student-led impact on real policy issues, none more important than cybersecurity and trade.”

“New America Chicago is grateful for the opportunity to partner with Harris and our New America Cybersecurity, and New Models of Policy Change colleagues to add perspective and expertise to the important conversation on cybersecurity and international trade. We look forward to working again with the Harris School and its excellent student body,” Harish Patel, deputy director of New America Chicago, said.

The students, who represented fields as diverse as economics, policy, cybersecurity, and law, were grouped into teams to address six different aspects of policy relating to the intersection between cybersecurity and trade. One group of students grappled with the role that botnets play in broader trade negotiations and developed a framework for thinking about the issue. A second group mapped global trade avenues and presented recommendations on appropriate avenues to pursue substantive change. A third group built an economic model and built out a cost-benefit analysis to better understand the factors at play.

“The Summit challenged me with an innovative discussion about cybersecurity and trade,” Luis Gonzales, an MPP student at Harris, said. “The analysis we did inspired me to for future research and action.”

“The Inter-Policy School Summit was an awesome blend of big ideas and practical work in the nexus of cybersecurity and trade,” Ranissa Adityavarman, a Master of Public Affairs student at Cornell University, said. “I really appreciated the frank dialogue that students had with experts on these crucial, yet often under-discussed, issues in cybersecurity. I think we all left the event having learned a great deal and are even more eager to tackle these wicked problems that will only become more pressing and important in the coming years.”

“The Summit was an amazing experience,” Caio Mansini, a Master of Public Policy student at the University of California, San Diego, said. “For the first time, I had the chance to discuss my passion for cybersecurity with other brilliant minds who shared my passion for the subject. The presence of seasoned professionals in the field was fundamental to the flow of ideas and the results achieved at the conference.”

The Inter-Policy School Summit is the only student-run, graduate policy conference in the country. This year, more than thirty students from sixteen universities and five countries participated in the event.