United States Comments on the Chair’s Pre-draft of the Report
of the UN Open Ended Working Group (OEWG)
The United States wishes to thank Ambassador Lauber and his team for drafting a fair and
comprehensive “pre-draft” that will serve as an excellent basis from which the OEWG can
continue its work, and we welcome the opportunity to provide comments. Our comments here
reflect our views on how to strengthen the text and help make it an influential product that will
improve international cyber stability. We look forward to future OEWG informal and formal
sessions as we work toward a consensus report in July 2020.
General Comments
Paragraph 13 of the introduction notes that sections B-G are intended to reflect the discussions of
the OEWG and its recommendations. The current text of those sections contains a number of
proposals raised and/or supported by only a limited number of States that we would not view as
consensus recommendations. The structure of the draft does not make it clear if these ideas are
intended to be included as a record of the discussions, or if they are being proposed as possible
consensus recommendations. We would recommend using the term “recommendations” to refer
only to content with respect to which all member states could reasonably find common ground.
Proposals that have little or no chance of achieving consensus should not be included in the
OEWG report.
The pre-draft contains several proposals for repositories. Some of these ideas have merit, but
others may duplicate existing efforts. Also, States may have limited capacity for contributing to
such repositories. We should seek to prioritize those proposals that are achievable and fill urgent
gaps, such as States sharing their views regarding how international law applies to States’ use of
information and communications technologies (ICTs) or regarding States’ implementation of
norms, while also acknowledging other ongoing international efforts that could be strengthened,
such as the Global Forum on Cyber Expertise’s (GFCE’s) work on capacity building. All these
new proposals must remain voluntary and State-led, and be undertaken within existing resource
constraints.
“Supranational,” “trans-border,” and “transnational” critical infrastructure were terms used by
OEWG delegates, but it is unclear to us if delegates were using those terms interchangeably or
not. If delegates view those terms as synonymous, we should choose one term to describe such
critical infrastructure with international implications. If the terms are not viewed as
synonymous, we should explain the distinctions among the terms. We are also unsure what it
means to declare “supranational critical information infrastructure” a “special category” of such
infrastructure, with protection that is a “shared responsibility” of all States. Most ICT
infrastructure is owned and operated by the private sector and is located within the jurisdictions
of individual States.