Speaker Bio
José Ignacio Torreblanca (Madrid, 1968) is director of the Madrid office and senior researcher at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR). He holds a PhD in Political Science from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and teaches Political Science at the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED) in Madrid. He is a member of the Editorial Board for the journals Esglobal, Política Exterior, and Ethic, and serves as a trustee for the Felipe González Foundation. Additionally, he is part of the Advisory Board for the Elcano Royal Institute and he is a member of the Hermes Institute, which is committed to the promotion of digital rights.
His academic and research activity is complemented by a public communication dimension as a weekly columnist for the newspaper El Mundo, being as well a regular contributor to Radio Nacional de España (RNE) and Radio Televisión Española (RTVE). Previously, he was editorial director of El País and a member of its Editorial Board. He has interviewed Anne Applebaum, George Soros, Paul Collier, Ivan Krastev, Felipe González, Javier Solana and Josep Borrell.
Torreblanca regularly advises European institutions, governments and companies on technology and geopolitical issues. Recently, he has collaborated with the European External Action Service (EEAS) and the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the design and analysis of the contents of the EU-LAC Digital Alliance launched in Bogota in March 2023, as well as in the design and contents of the EU Digital External Strategy approved by the EU Foreign ffairs Council (FAC) in July 2022.
Some of his publications on technology and geopolitics include: “Big tech, Donald Trump, and “techno-imperialism”: How Europe can avoid becoming a digital colony” (January 2025); “Innovate, protect, and influence: The EU’s technology trilemma and how to solve it” (June 2024), co-authored with Giorgos Verdi; “Critical material: The EU’s and Chile’s new relationship in the multipolar world” (December 2023), co-authored with Lucía Dammert; “Onwards and outwards: Why the EU needs to move from strategic autonomy to strategic interdependence” (August 2023); “The EU: A force for (digital) good?” (in Tech4Democracy, IE University, July 2023); “The EU and Latin America: Convergences and divergences” (EUISS, July 2023), co-authored with Carla Hobbs et al.; “Digital diplomacy: How to unlock the Global Gateway’s potential in Latin America and the Caribbean” (May 2023); “Insights from an AI author: ‘The geopolitical consequences of ChatGPT”, co-authored with Víctor Muñoz” (February 2023); “Ukraine one year on: When tech companies go to war” (March 2023); “Byting back: The EU’s digital alliance with Latin America and the Caribbean”, (October 2022), co-authored with Carla Hobbs; “The geopolitics of technology: How the EU can become a global player” (May 2022), co-authored with Julian Ringhof; “The US-EU Trade and Technology Council: State of play, issues and challenges” (Esade EcPol, January 2022), co-authored with Raquel Jorge; “The Power Atlas: Seven battlegrounds of a networked world” (December 2021), edited by Mark Leonard; “Geo-tech politics: Why technology shapes European power” (July 2021), co-authored with Ulrike Franke; “Democracy, platforms and foreign agents’ in ‘Europe's digital sovereignty: From rule-maker to regulatory superpower in the age of US-China Rivalry” (July 2020), edited by Carla Hobbs; and “The geoeconomics of the digital”, co-authored with Andrew Puddephatt and Carla Hobbs, in “Connectivity Wars: Why migration, finance and trade are the geo-economic battlegrounds of the future” (ECFR January 2016), edited by Mark Leonard.