Cloudflare backs 2023 Summit for Democracy with three new commitments

On March 28, 2023, the US government will launch the Summit for Democracy 2023, co-hosted with Costa Rica, Zambia, the Netherlands, and South Korea. The gathering follows the inaugural Summit held in December 2021, which brought together over 100 countries to address authoritarian threats, corruption, and human rights. Cloudflare will participate in the Thematic Day and Co-Host Event Day in Washington, DC, alongside related events, and has pledged to support the initiative through three concrete commitments.

The 2023 Summit shifts focus toward partnering with the private sector on technology policy: countering misuse, shaping emerging technologies, and promoting a vision where technology strengthens democracy. Cloudflare's mission of building a better Internet aligns with these goals, given the role connectivity plays in enabling activists, human rights defenders, and civil society movements.

A call to action for the private sector

The US government has asked private companies to align commitments with the Presidential Initiative on Democratic Renewal, the Declaration on the Future of the Internet, and the Summit's four objectives:

  • Countering the misuse of technology
  • Fighting corruption
  • Protecting civic space
  • Advancing labor rights

In response, Cloudflare has committed to democratizing post-quantum cryptography, working with researchers on Internet censorship and shutdown data, and consulting civil society on privacy-enhancing technologies.

Post-quantum cryptography, free by default

Cloudflare will include post-quantum cryptography for free and by default across all customer plans. This extends to individual developers, small businesses, non-profits, and governments. The goal is to protect at-risk groups—humanitarian organizations, human rights defenders, and journalists using Project Galileo, as well as state and local election websites under the Athenian Project—from future quantum threats.

Cloudflare will also publish vendor-neutral roadmaps based on NIST standards so that organizations using non-Cloudflare services can secure connections. The company hopes others will follow by making post-quantum implementations free, avoiding a "quantum" premium on privacy.

Sharing data on Internet shutdowns and tampering

Cloudflare operates a network of 285 locations across more than 100 countries, interconnecting with over 11,500 networks while carrying a substantial share of global traffic. Through its Radar service, the company already publishes aggregated insights and alerts used by organizations such as Access Now's KeepItOn coalition, the Freedom Online Coalition, the Internet Society, and the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) to monitor censorship and shutdowns.

Now Cloudflare commits to deeper collaboration with researchers: identifying signatures associated with connection tampering and failures likely caused by active blocking, then sharing these findings publicly to support broader detection efforts with global context.

Civil society input on protocols and privacy tools

Cloudflare engages with Internet standards bodies and providers on next-generation privacy technologies, including encrypted DNS, Encrypted Client Hello (ECH), and OHTTP. The company is committing to direct dialogue with civil society and human rights experts on standards that may carry implications for human rights.

This work extends existing initiatives where Cloudflare helped develop and deploy TLS 1.3, contributed to QUIC, improved transparency around routing and public key infrastructure (PKI), and operates a public DNS resolver that supports encryption protocols. The aim is to ensure future privacy-enhancing standards reflect feedback from those focusing on human rights impacts.

Preparations and partnerships

Cloudflare has coordinated with the US Department of State, the National Security Council, USAID, and various private sector and civil society groups ahead of the Summit. The company has taken part in discussions with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, GNI, the Design 4 Democracy Coalition, and the Freedom Online Coalition, and will attend official meetings and side events at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Council on Foreign Relations.

Separately, civil society events are cataloged on a website created by the Accountability Lab, with the Global Democracy Coalition convening a Partners Day on March 27. Several Galileo partners are hosting events, including the National Democratic Institute, the International Republican Institute, Freedom House, and the Council of Europe. Cloudflare says its participation and commitments aim to support a free, open, and interconnected Internet amid growing global challenges to democracy and human rights.