Santa Monica, California - Deputy Secretary Antony Blinken will travel to California from November 10-12.

On November 10, the Deputy Secretary will be in the Bay Area to meet with technology companies tackling global challenges and will attend a session of Stanford University’s “Hacking for Diplomacy” course, a cooperative effort between Stanford and the Department of State to bring innovative approaches to bear on complex foreign policy issues.

On November 11, the Deputy Secretary will co-host a State Department Innovation Forum roundtable on the risks and opportunities of advanced machine learning-powered communication and its impact on our information environment and democracy worldwide. This event, including representatives from leading tech companies as well as experts from academia and civil society, will be co-hosted by the National Democratic Institute and the Institute for the Future.

This workshop is the latest installment in the State Department's Innovation Forum launched in January of this year to convene regular conversations between senior policymakers and global innovators to spark and accelerate new approaches to foreign policy challenges. Through workshops, roundtable discussions, and other events, the Innovation Forum allows the State Department to see more clearly around the innovation corner, while providing others a window into what we are trying to achieve and opportunities to join us.

On November 12, the Deputy Secretary will give remarks on innovation and foreign policymaking at the Rand Corporation’s “Politics Aside” conference in Santa Monica.