Session II of the Aspen-ECFR Program on “European Technological Sovereignty: Human Values and Geopolitical Challenges”

Aspen Institute España is organizing, in collaboration with European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), a new program on “European Technological Sovereignty: Human Values and Geopolitical Challenges” with the help of Aspen Digital, Aspen Germany and Aspen UK.

The second session will be on “Market Power: Instruments, Strategy, Will” and will take place online on Wednesday, February 11 from 4:15 to 5:45 pm (CET).

As speakers for the second session, we will count with Carissa Véliz, Associate Professor at the Faculty of Philosophy and the Institute for Ethics in AI as well as Tutorial Fellow at Hertford College at the University of Oxford, and Mehreen Khan, Economics Editor of The Times.

The program consists of 3 online sessions, one a month, in January, February, and March. The sessions will be online with in English with around 30 participants. The speakers will share a few opening remarks, followed by a structured discussion among participants. The discussion will be held under the Chatham House Rule, followed by a paper highlighting the key insights while preserving confidentiality. The paper will then be presented at a final in-person session open to the public. The idea is to share the online sessions’ findings with a larger audience to increase the program’s reach.

Carissa Véliz

Carissa Véliz is an Associate Professor in Philosophy at the Institute for Ethics in AI, and a Fellow at Hertford College at the University of Oxford. She is the recipient of the 2021 Herbert A. Simon Award for Outstanding Research in Computing and Philosophy. She is the author of the highly-acclaimed Privacy Is Power (an Economist book of the year, 2020), the forthcoming Prophecy (Doubleday 2026), and the editor of the Oxford Handbook of Digital Ethics. She is a member of UNESCO’s Women 4 Ethical AI. She advises companies and policymakers around the world on privacy and the ethics of AI. She is a board member of the Proton Foundation, along with Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Proton’s CEO Andy Yen.

Mehreen Khan

Mehreen Khan is the Economics  Editor at The Times of London and an Aspen UK Rising Leaders’ Fellow since 2023. She has a weekly column in The Times and reports on the global economy, trade policy, geo-economics, and financial markets. Mehreen is a regular contributor on economic affairs on BBC Newsnight, Times Radio and The Story podcast show. Mehreen was the Brussels correspondent for the Financial Times from 2017-2022, covering the European Union, the political economy of the eurozone, the rise of populist parties, and climate and environment policy.  She authored the FT’s daily Brussels Briefing newsletter during the EU’s Brexit talks, budget negotiations, pandemic policy response, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Her more recent coverage focuses on the tumult in the global economy this decade, including trade protectionism, de-globalization, US-China relations, and financial stability. Mehreen has a BA in History and Politics and an MPhil in European Politics from the University of Oxford. She began her journalism career at the Daily Telegraph and has written for Bloomberg and The Guardian. She is co-host of the Humans and Heroes football podcast.