That is the question George R. B. Salter (Danish Centre for Studies in Research and Research Policy, Aarhus University) asks in his new open-access chapter, “The New Cadre of Technology Envoys as Diplomats: Organizational Sense or Tradition?”. The chapter is part of The Palgrave Handbook of Science Diplomacy, edited by J. Lüdert and M. Wählisch (Palgrave Macmillan, 2026, pp. 133–143), and was published online on 25 August 2026.
We are especially pleased to share this chapter because it builds on TDGI’s own research. It draws on The Global Tech Diplomacy Report 2026 to describe the different ways states organize their tech diplomacy.
The core argument
Salter starts from a well-established finding in innovation economics: innovation no longer happens mainly inside individuals or firms, but across the networks they belong to. Scientific and technological breakthroughs come from many actors working together across borders, sectors, and disciplines.
From there, he reaches a provocative conclusion. One senior official, or even a few, will struggle to make sense of these dense, fast-moving networks, let alone act within them or change them. Appointing a tech ambassador is valuable, but it should be the start of organizational design, not the end of it.
Five takeaways for our community
1. Tech is not a self-contained policy area
The chapter explains why technology is unusually hard to handle as a foreign policy issue:
- Security and prosperity goals overlap, because technologies such as AI, quantum, and biotechnology can serve both civilian and military purposes.
- Governments face the Collingridge dilemma: a technology is easiest to govern early on, when its impact is still unclear, and hardest to govern once its effects are obvious.
- Hopes for “sovereign capability” run into reality, because value chains, innovation networks, and science networks span the globe.
Tech also challenges diplomacy’s traditional focus on regions, because so much of it is not tied to any one place.
2. Structures vary, but sensemaking is what matters
The chapter cites data from the Tony Blair Institute: by 2022, 19 countries had appointed senior diplomats with a dedicated technology brief, many of them in San Francisco. It also highlights larger networks, such as the UK’s Science and Technology Network, with around 130 staff at embassies and consulates around the world. Drawing on TDGI’s work, Salter identifies three ways to formalize tech diplomacy:
- a tech ambassador based in the foreign ministry (Denmark);
- a stand-alone body outside the ministry (Switzerland’s Swissnex);
- a hybrid model (Open Austria).
He argues that structure matters, but the key resource is “sense”, both individual and collective.
3. Sensemaking is a useful lens for diplomacy
Salter applies the organizational theorist Karl Weick’s concept of sensemaking, which means “structuring the unknown” so that an organization can act. According to Weick, an organization does not need certainty to act effectively. It needs a convincing “story”, or a shared map of a changing world. Former US Secretary of State Antony Blinken summed up the challenge in 2024, saying he needed scientists and technologists at the table “just to tell me whether I needed scientists and technologists at the table.”
4. A single envoy can become a bottleneck
This is the chapter’s most striking point. Drawing on Joosse and Teisman’s distinction between organizational simplification and complexification, Salter argues that appointing one high-profile envoy can be a form of simplification. It places the entire burden of making sense of technology on one person. Tech envoys usually bring impressive backgrounds and strong networks, but if they are not well connected across the ministry, embassies, and innovation ecosystems, they “risk becoming a bottleneck to action.” Making sense of a complex world requires an equally complex organization, what Weick calls “requisite variety.”
5. Recommendations for foreign ministries
The chapter ends with five high-level recommendations:
- Design roles around the connections between science, innovation, and technology, instead of creating new silos.
- Build horizontal expertise that spans academia, industry, and government, alongside the knowledge of culture, place, and history that ministries already have.
- Experiment with networked, decentralized structures and distributed leadership.
- Use the ministry’s convening power and global presence to create meeting points and communities of practice.
- Be clear internally about national interests and values on science and technology, so that foreign policy has clear limits for action.
Why this matters for tech diplomacy
At TDGI, we have long argued that tech diplomacy is a team effort. Salter’s chapter gives that view a solid theoretical basis and a constructive challenge. Ministries should keep traditional diplomatic strengths such as convening, communicating, and negotiating. But they also need to work closely with universities, startups, investors, R&D-intensive companies, scientists, and national diasporas, who drive technological change in the first place.
Salter also points to a gap. Organizational sociology and innovation studies have a lot to say about how institutions deal with new technologies, but this research has looked almost only at domestic policy. Diplomacy has been left out. We think that needs to change, and we want our community to be part of that conversation.
Read the chapter
The chapter is open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. We encourage diplomats, policymakers, researchers, and tech-ecosystem leaders in our network to read it, discuss it with their teams, and share their views with us.
Citation: Salter, G. R. B. (2026). The new cadre of technology envoys as diplomats: Organizational sense or tradition? In J. Lüdert & M. Wählisch (Eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Science Diplomacy (pp. 133–143). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-032-29473-9_8