Where is the Vancouver International Security Summit held?

The Vancouver International Security Summit is held in the city of Vancouver, CAN.

What is the format of the Vancouver International Security Summit?

The Vancouver International Security Summit is a conference format, bringing together experts and stakeholders for discussions.

When does the Vancouver International Security Summit take place?

The Vancouver International Security Summit is scheduled for two days in the fall.

3rd Annual Vancouver International Security Summit

Name: 3rd Annual Vancouver International Security Summit
Start: 2026-10-28T00:00:00Z
End: 2026-10-29T00:00:00Z
Location: Vancouver

Oct 28–29, 2026Vancouver, CanadaIn-person

Registration open

The Vancouver International Security Summit (VISS) is an annual gathering focused on global security challenges, held in Vancouver, Canada. This event brings together experts and stakeholders to discuss pressing issues in international security, fostering dialogue and collaboration. It serves as a platform for in-depth analysis and strategic discussions on the evolving landscape of global threats and opportunities.

Committees & topics

Topics
Arctic Defence and Security · Cross-Border Trade and Economic Security · Data Sovereignty · Defence Industrial Strategy · Defence Procurement · Energy Security · Critical Infrastructure Security · Mis- and Disinformation

Why it matters

The Vancouver International Security Summit provides a critical forum for addressing the multifaceted nature of contemporary security. In an era marked by rapid geopolitical shifts and emerging threats, understanding the dynamics of international security is paramount. The summit's focus on diverse perspectives and collaborative solutions underscores its importance in shaping effective responses to global challenges.

Events like VISS are essential for fostering a shared understanding among nations and organizations. By bringing together leaders and experts, the summit facilitates the exchange of ideas and the development of innovative strategies to promote peace and stability. The discussions held here can influence policy-making and international cooperation, contributing to a more secure global environment.

How to prepare

To effectively engage with the discussions at the Vancouver International Security Summit, delegates should undertake thorough preparation. A key aspect of this involves understanding the various stakeholders involved in international security, as outlined in the "Stakeholder Mapping Workshop" lesson. Identifying key actors and their interests can provide valuable context for the summit's agenda.

Furthermore, delegates should familiarize themselves with different "Engagement Strategies" to maximize their participation and networking opportunities. Understanding how to effectively communicate and collaborate with diverse groups is crucial in a multi-national setting. Applying "Dynamic Analysis" to current global events will also enable a more nuanced understanding of the security challenges being discussed, allowing for more informed contributions during the summit.

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 5 countries stand on the core issues in play. Click through for the full country profile.

Canada

As the host nation, Canada emphasizes multilateralism and cooperative security approaches.

Role in topic

Canada plays a significant role in promoting international security through its contributions to peacekeeping, humanitarian aid, and diplomatic initiatives. Hosting the summit in Vancouver underscores its commitment to fostering global dialogue on security matters.

United States

The United States often focuses on counter-terrorism, strategic alliances, and maintaining global stability.

Role in topic

The United States is a major global security actor, with significant military and economic influence. Its perspective often shapes discussions on international security, particularly concerning defense, intelligence, and alliance building.

China

China's perspective often centers on national sovereignty, economic development as a security pillar, and regional stability.

Role in topic

China's growing economic and military power makes it a crucial player in international security. Its views on regional disputes, cyber security, and global governance are increasingly influential and are key to understanding the broader security landscape.

Germany

Germany advocates for diplomatic solutions, arms control, and strengthening international institutions.

Role in topic

Germany is a key European power that often champions multilateralism and a rules-based international order. Its contributions to humanitarian efforts and its commitment to international law are central to its approach to global security.

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom prioritizes intelligence sharing, defense cooperation, and upholding international norms.

Role in topic

The United Kingdom maintains a significant global presence and is a permanent member of the UN Security Council. Its historical diplomatic ties and military capabilities contribute to its role in addressing various international security challenges.

Topics & background

The background behind each topic and the actors that shape it.

Arctic Defence and Security

The Arctic has shifted from a Cold War frontier to a contested strategic space as receding sea ice opens new shipping lanes, resource basins, and military approaches. Russia has reopened and expanded Soviet-era bases along its northern coast, fielded advanced air defence and hypersonic systems in the region, and reasserted control over the Northern Sea Route. China, declaring itself a 'near-Arctic state' in its 2018 white paper, has pursued a 'Polar Silk Road' through investments in Russian LNG, Greenlandic mining, and dual-use research stations. The Arctic Council, long the central forum for cooperation on environmental and scientific matters, was effectively paused after Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, when the seven Western members suspended work with Moscow. Finland's and Sweden's accession to NATO transformed the security map: seven of the eight Arctic states are now in the alliance, leaving Russia isolated and increasingly reliant on Beijing for capital and technology in the High North. Disputes persist over the legal status of the Northwest Passage, extended continental shelf claims under UNCLOS Article 76, and overlapping submissions to the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf. Today the agenda spans military posture (icebreaker gaps, NORAD modernization, undersea cable protection), governance (whether to revive Arctic Council formats or build new ones), and dual-use commercial activity. For Canada, the host of this summit, sovereignty enforcement in the archipelago and the modernization of the North Warning System are central preoccupations.

Key players

Cross-Border Trade and Economic Security

Cross-border trade has become a security issue as governments reframe supply chains, export controls, and tariffs through a national-security lens. The shock of COVID-19 supply disruptions, Russia's weaponization of energy exports, and U.S.-China technology competition have driven a wave of 'friend-shoring,' industrial policy, and outbound investment screening. The United States has imposed sweeping semiconductor export controls under the October 2022 and 2023 rules; the EU has rolled out its Economic Security Strategy and Anti-Coercion Instrument; and Canada has tightened the Investment Canada Act to screen critical-mineral and AI investments. For North America, the 2026 statutory review of the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA/USMCA) looms as a defining event, with U.S. tariff actions on steel, aluminum, autos, and Chinese-linked goods already straining the agreement. Border-management questions — from precursor chemicals and fentanyl to forced-labour goods under UFLPA-style regimes — increasingly blur the line between customs, law enforcement, and defence policy. The WTO's Appellate Body remains paralysed, weakening multilateral dispute resolution just as unilateral measures proliferate. The core debate is how to preserve the gains of open trade while protecting critical sectors (semiconductors, critical minerals, biotech, AI compute) from coercion and dependency. Middle powers face the sharpest dilemmas, balancing exposure to the Chinese market against alignment with U.S.-led export-control coalitions.

Key players

Data Sovereignty

Data sovereignty — the claim that data is subject to the laws of the jurisdiction in which it is collected or stored — has emerged as a central fault line in the digital economy. The EU's GDPR set the global template for extraterritorial data regulation, while the Court of Justice's Schrems II ruling invalidated the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield in 2020 and forced negotiation of the 2023 Data Privacy Framework. China's 2021 Data Security Law and Personal Information Protection Law, and Russia's localization regime, represent a more assertive sovereigntist model. India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act (2023) and Brazil's LGPD reflect a growing middle path. The debate is sharpened by cloud concentration: a handful of U.S. hyperscalers host much of the world's commercial and government data, raising concerns about the reach of the U.S. CLOUD Act and FISA Section 702. Counter-moves include 'sovereign cloud' offerings, EU initiatives such as Gaia-X, and rules requiring critical data — health, financial, government — to remain on-shore. The G7's Data Free Flow with Trust (DFFT) initiative, now housed at the OECD, attempts to reconcile openness with trust, but progress has been slow. For security policymakers, the questions are practical: where can defence and intelligence workloads be hosted; how to prevent foreign access to bulk personal data on sensitive populations; and how to share data with allies without ceding regulatory control. Recent U.S. executive orders restricting bulk data transfers to 'countries of concern' signal a securitization of what was once a commercial regulatory field.

Key players

Defence Industrial Strategy

The return of large-scale conventional war in Europe exposed the hollowing-out of Western defence industrial bases. Stockpiles of 155mm artillery shells, air defence interceptors, and long-range munitions proved inadequate to sustain Ukraine, while Russia mobilized its industry onto a war footing and procured munitions from North Korea and Iran. NATO members have responded with multi-year procurement contracts, the EU's Act in Support of Ammunition Production (ASAP) and European Defence Industry Programme (EDIP), and the first U.S. National Defense Industrial Strategy, published in 2024. Key structural issues include workforce shortages, single-source bottlenecks (solid rocket motors, energetics, rare-earth magnets), and the difficulty of scaling production lines that were optimized for peacetime efficiency. Allied governments are experimenting with longer contracts, sovereign loan guarantees, and co-production agreements such as AUKUS Pillar II and the U.S.-Japan DICAS forum. Canada's 2024 'Our North, Strong and Free' defence policy update commits to rebuilding domestic capacity, particularly in munitions and shipbuilding. The core debate balances speed, cost, and sovereignty. Pure off-the-shelf foreign procurement is faster but cedes industrial capability; pure domestic build sustains jobs and surge capacity but is slower and more expensive. Allied governments are increasingly converging on a model of integrated allied production, but disputes persist over ITAR restrictions, intellectual property, and fair work-share.

Key players

Defence Procurement

Defence procurement systems across allied states are under acute strain. Programs routinely run over budget and behind schedule — the F-35, the Canadian Surface Combatant, the German FCAS, and the U.S. Constellation-class frigate are emblematic — even as threat timelines compress. Lengthy requirements processes, risk-averse contracting, and fragmented oversight have produced what U.S. defence officials call the 'valley of death' between prototype and program of record, particularly for non-traditional and software-centric suppliers. Reform efforts have proliferated. The U.S. Replicator initiative seeks to field thousands of attritable autonomous systems within two years; the UK's Integrated Procurement Model promises a 'spiral' approach; Australia's Defence Strategic Review reorganized acquisition around priority capabilities; and Canada is standing up a Defence Procurement Agency. NATO's DIANA accelerator and the NATO Innovation Fund aim to draw dual-use technology into the alliance pipeline. Lessons from Ukraine — where drones move from prototype to front line in weeks — have intensified pressure on traditional cycles. For delegates, the core tensions are familiar: speed versus oversight, domestic content versus best value, exquisite platforms versus mass, and the integration of commercial technology subject to rapid obsolescence. Procurement choices also drive interoperability with allies and shape the industrial base for decades.

Key players

Energy Security

Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine ended Europe's reliance on Russian pipeline gas and reordered global energy flows. The EU cut Russian pipeline gas imports by roughly two-thirds within a year, replaced volumes with U.S. and Qatari LNG, and adopted the RePowerEU plan; the G7 imposed a price cap on Russian seaborne oil. At the same time, attacks on the Nord Stream pipelines, Houthi strikes on Red Sea shipping, and Iranian threats to the Strait of Hormuz have underscored the vulnerability of energy infrastructure and chokepoints. The energy transition adds a second layer of security concerns. Demand for critical minerals — lithium, cobalt, nickel, rare earths, copper — is concentrated in a small number of producers and refiners, with China dominating midstream processing. Western governments have responded with the Minerals Security Partnership, the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act, the EU Critical Raw Materials Act, and Canada's Critical Minerals Strategy. Nuclear power is enjoying a policy revival, with COP28's pledge to triple capacity by 2050 and growing interest in small modular reactors. Near-term debates focus on stockpiling and resilience (strategic petroleum reserves, gas storage mandates), protection of LNG terminals and grid substations, and managing the geopolitics of OPEC+ production cuts. Longer-term questions concern how to finance a transition that is both decarbonizing and de-risking from adversarial supply chains.

Key players

Critical Infrastructure Security

Critical infrastructure — power grids, water, telecoms, ports, pipelines, financial systems, and undersea cables — has become a primary target in modern grey-zone competition. The 2015 and 2016 cyberattacks on Ukraine's grid, the 2021 Colonial Pipeline ransomware incident, the 2022 Nord Stream sabotage, repeated severing of Baltic Sea cables, and the U.S. attribution of the 'Volt Typhoon' campaign to Chinese state actors prepositioning in U.S. critical networks have all reshaped threat perceptions. Roughly 95% of intercontinental data traffic moves through some 500 undersea cables, most owned by private consortia. Governments have responded with new mandatory regimes: the EU's NIS2 and CER directives, the U.S. Cyber Incident Reporting for Critical Infrastructure Act (CIRCIA), the UK's review of the Network and Information Systems Regulations, and Canada's Bill C-26 establishing a Critical Cyber Systems Protection framework. NATO stood up a Maritime Centre for the Security of Critical Undersea Infrastructure in 2024. Yet most critical infrastructure is privately owned, creating persistent gaps between regulatory expectation and operational reality. Debates center on baseline cybersecurity standards, supply-chain restrictions on high-risk vendors, information sharing between intelligence agencies and operators, and the legal threshold at which sabotage of infrastructure constitutes an armed attack under international law and Article 5.

Key players

Mis- and Disinformation

Foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI) has moved from a fringe concern to a core national-security issue. Russia's Internet Research Agency operations around the 2016 U.S. election, the Doppelganger campaign cloning European media, and Chinese 'Spamouflage' networks targeting diaspora communities have demonstrated how cheap, scalable, and persistent state-linked influence operations have become. Generative AI now enables convincing synthetic audio and video at marginal cost, as seen in deepfake calls impersonating political leaders in Slovakia, the United States, and elsewhere. Policy responses are fragmented. The EU's Digital Services Act imposes systemic-risk obligations on very large online platforms; the EEAS publishes regular FIMI threat reports; the U.S. State Department's Global Engagement Center (whose authorization lapsed in 2024) coordinated counter-disinformation work; Canada operates the G7 Rapid Response Mechanism out of Global Affairs. At the same time, content-moderation policies have become deeply polarized, and several platforms have rolled back trust-and-safety teams. Key debates concern transparency requirements for political advertising and AI-generated content, the role of intelligence services in public attribution, protection of journalists and election workers, and how to defend democratic discourse without empowering governments to define 'truth.' The 2024-2025 global election cycle has provided extensive new evidence on both the reach of foreign operations and the limits of their persuasive impact.

Key players

Resources

News, lessons, and country profiles to prep for 3rd Annual Vancouver International Security Summit.

Recent reporting to ground your prep

Modi's Tamil Nadu Roadshow

Modi's NIA Strategy in Bengal

Hakeem Jeffries' Strategic Move

Gujarat CM Bhupendra Patel Sworn In

Lessons

Bite-sized lessons to build the basics

Engagement Strategies

Dynamic Analysis

Gender Dynamics Across Cultures

The Power-Interest Grid

Courses

Guided courses that go deeper on the topic

Cross-Cultural Communication

Stakeholder Mapping

Advanced Negotiation

Multilateral Negotiation

The states in play, with the data that shapes their stance

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

By committee

Frequently asked questions

3rd Annual Vancouver International Security Summit

Oct 28–29, 2026Vancouver, CanadaIn-person

Registration open

Committees & topics

Topics
Arctic Defence and Security · Cross-Border Trade and Economic Security · Data Sovereignty · Defence Industrial Strategy · Defence Procurement · Energy Security · Critical Infrastructure Security · Mis- and Disinformation

Why it matters

How to prepare

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 5 countries stand on the core issues in play. Click through for the full country profile.

Canada

As the host nation, Canada emphasizes multilateralism and cooperative security approaches.

Role in topic

United States

The United States often focuses on counter-terrorism, strategic alliances, and maintaining global stability.

Role in topic

China

China's perspective often centers on national sovereignty, economic development as a security pillar, and regional stability.

Role in topic

Germany

Germany advocates for diplomatic solutions, arms control, and strengthening international institutions.

Role in topic

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom prioritizes intelligence sharing, defense cooperation, and upholding international norms.

Role in topic

Topics & background

The background behind each topic and the actors that shape it.

Arctic Defence and Security

Key players

Cross-Border Trade and Economic Security

Key players

Data Sovereignty

Key players

Defence Industrial Strategy

Key players

Defence Procurement

Key players

Energy Security

Key players

Critical Infrastructure Security

Key players

Mis- and Disinformation

Key players

Resources

News, lessons, and country profiles to prep for 3rd Annual Vancouver International Security Summit.

Recent reporting to ground your prep

Modi's Tamil Nadu Roadshow

Modi's NIA Strategy in Bengal

Hakeem Jeffries' Strategic Move

Gujarat CM Bhupendra Patel Sworn In

Lessons

Bite-sized lessons to build the basics

Engagement Strategies

Dynamic Analysis

Gender Dynamics Across Cultures

The Power-Interest Grid

Courses

Guided courses that go deeper on the topic

Cross-Cultural Communication

Stakeholder Mapping

Advanced Negotiation

Multilateral Negotiation

The states in play, with the data that shapes their stance

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

By committee

Committees & topics

Why it matters

How to prepare

Country perspectives

Topics & background

Resources

Related conferences

J.W. Dafoe Political Science Students’ Conference 2026

Leadersphere 2026 Conference

CIC Toronto: Canada in a Fragmenting World – Navigating Geopolitics, Alliances, and Emerging Security Challenges

Parliamentary Symposium: The Future of Middle Powers After the Rupture: Perspectives from Canada and Beyond

Implementing Canada's Defence Industrial Strategy

2026 CANADIAN INTELLIGENCE CONFERENCE (CANIC 2026)

Frequently asked questions

Committees & topics

Why it matters

How to prepare

Country perspectives

Topics & background

Resources

Related conferences

J.W. Dafoe Political Science Students’ Conference 2026

Leadersphere 2026 Conference

CIC Toronto: Canada in a Fragmenting World – Navigating Geopolitics, Alliances, and Emerging Security Challenges

Parliamentary Symposium: The Future of Middle Powers After the Rupture: Perspectives from Canada and Beyond

Implementing Canada's Defence Industrial Strategy

2026 CANADIAN INTELLIGENCE CONFERENCE (CANIC 2026)

Frequently asked questions