Transatlantic Reset: Private Sector Diplomacy & Digital Trust with Sébastien Garnault

Overview Transatlantic cyber cooperation is being tested by political strain, regulatory divergence, and competing ideas about sovereignty, trust, and market access. In this episode of Cyber Focus, Sébastien Garnault argues that if the United States and Europe want to keep working together on security, they need to move quickly to make that cooperation practical, especially in critical infrastructure and digital markets. Speaking from a French private-sector perspective, Garnault makes the case that governments alone may not be able to repair or sustain that cooperation at the speed the moment requires. He points instead to private-sector partnerships, shared market incentives, and clearer language around security standards as possible ways to keep the transatlantic relationship workable even when public-sector trust is under pressure. The conversation also explores how Europe and the United States differ on clean versus trusted technology stacks, how threat perceptions shape national requirements, and how privacy, AI, and data localization debates can either strengthen or complicate cooperation. The conversation was recorded on February 11, 2026. Main Topics Covered Private-Sector Cooperation as a Strategic Bridge: Why Garnault believes business-to-business cooperation may move faster than government-to-government diplomacy when trust is strained. Clean Stack vs. Trusted Stack: How U.S. national-security thinking and EU market-standard thinking create different paths for defining who can participate in secure digital markets. Threat Perception and Market Access: How geography, history, and national priorities shape security requirements across Europe and affect access to critical infrastructure markets. Trust, Sovereignty, and the Transatlantic Reset: Why Garnault sees damaged trust as a real obstacle, and why he argues for a reset rather than a rupture in U.S.-European cyber cooperation. Privacy, AI, and Data Localization: How French and European views on privacy, regulation, and AI governance differ from those in the United States, and why those differences matter for security and interoperability. Key Quotes "Maybe what we've done in the last decade and what we will do in the next decade don't belong from government but belongs to us." — Sébastien Garnault "We can do a reset; we cannot afford a reboot." — Sébastien Garnault "The damages that have been done in our trust, mutual trust, are very deep. So we need to fix it quickly." — Sébastien Garnault "The best way for us to cooperate with our allies is to use the market because the market is less political than national security." — Sébastien Garnault "From my standpoint, the glue that binds us together is much greater than anything that can tear us apart." — Frank Cilluffo Links/Resources CyberTaskForce: https://www.cybertaskforce.fr/ Paris Cyber Summit: https://www.paris-cyber-summit.com/ Guest Bio Sébastien Garnault is the founder of the CyberTaskForce and president of the Paris Cyber Summit. He joined Cyber Focus while in Washington leading a French delegation meeting with U.S. policymakers, industry leaders, and other decision-makers, and spoke in a private-sector capacity rather than on behalf of the French government.