Speaker: Zak Kallenborn (PhD candidate, War Studies at King’s College London)
Date: 1 April 2025
Speaker Session Summary
Certain infrastructures are not only important to individual nations but also entire regions and the global system. Globally critical infrastructure (GCI) can be located within, across, and outside state borders. Specific examples of GCI include the Panama Canal, which facilitates around 5% of global trade annually, and the Svalbard Seed Vault, which stores seed samples essential for agriculture in the event of a global catastrophe resulting in the mass extinction of plant species. Mr. Kallenborn stated that this type of infrastructure is becoming increasingly important and could even become a geopolitical battleground between global powers. Other examples of GCI include the Swiss banking network, geodetic observatories, and vaccine production facilities. Barriers to state-level cooperation on GCI include the political nature of defining what constitutes GCI and the fact that much of this information remains classified, as states are reluctant to expose potential vulnerabilities.
Mr. Kallenborn recommended developing a more formalized approach to identifying globally critical infrastructure and to fully characterize and understand dependencies and risks. Extraterritoriality means state-orientated regulation and legislation impact can be limited; fostering public-private partnerships and developing interagency and international structures are needed to mitigate risks.
Speaker Session Recording
Briefing Materials
Biography: Zak Kallenborn is an MPhil / PhD student in War Studies at King’s College London studying global catastrophic risk, drone warfare, WMD, and apocalyptic terrorism. He is also affiliated with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the Schar School of Policy and Government, the National Institute for Deterrence Studies, and, until recently, the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START). His extensive research, writing, and analysis occasionally receives global news coverage, and influences a broad range of state, federal, and global security policies and strategies. Zachary appeared in Netflix’s “UNKNOWN: Killer Robots,” is an officially proclaimed U.S. Army “Mad Scientist,” and is on the board of advisors of Synthetic Decision Group, Inc. and the Michael J. Morell Center for Intelligence and Security Studies at the University of Akron. Previously, he spent eight years in homeland, national, and global security consulting, providing research, analysis, and writing support across the US interagency and global governments.
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