At 48 years old, Kersti Kaljulaid is Estonia’s youngest president ever, and its first female president. A marathon runner with degrees in genetics and an MBA, she spent a career behind the scenes—mostly as a European government auditor—before being elected by Estonia’s legislature in 2016. Two years later, she’s continuing Estonia’s push for global digital security while deflecting military and cyber threats from Russia, which occupied Estonia for 50 years until its liberation in 1991.

Known for its digital government, tax, and medical systems, Estonia is planning for the future. The country’s “e-resident” program—which allows global citizens to obtain a government-issued ID card and set up remotely-operated businesses in Estonia—has attracted 35,000 people since 2014. Now the government is discussing a proposal to grant some rights to artificially intelligent systems. The law could make it easier to regulate decision-making by autonomous systems, robots, or driverless cars.

This week, Kaljulaid visited the White House along with the leaders of Latvia and Lithuania, to meet with President Donald Trump about issues including security along the Russian border. The visit coincided with the 100th anniversary of Baltic independence after World War I, and Trump took the opportunity to reaffirm the US's commitment to protecting the Baltic States in accordance with the NATO Treaty. After attending the US-Baltic Trade Summit and laying a wreath at Arlington National Cemetery on Wednesday, Kaljulaid sat down with WIRED’s Eric Niiler for an interview at the Estonian Embassy in Washington.

EN: With various efforts over the past decade, Estonia is moving from a traditional state to a digital society in many ways. Where does that effort stand now and what do you hope to see happen during your next few years in office?

KK: Digital society is born when your people refuse to use paper. And in our country we know that our people refuse to use paper. If you arrive at such a point in your development, you have to make your digital state always secure. You need several alternatives if something goes wrong. All the time you need to worry about security; it doesn’t differ much from your paper archives.

We have already a society which is digitally disrupted. We also see that it changes how people think about technology and work and what possibilities the internet can offer for new types of careers. For example, people don’t need enterprises to work; they can sell their skills online independently.

In our case, also the government is within in the digital sphere. We recognize that there is the need to think about tax systems if people work in five different companies in five different countries at the same time. This needs to be sorted out. We cannot sort it alone, we need to sort it globally.

Estonian citizens seem to trust their government when it comes to sharing digital information. Here in the US, we trust Facebook and Amazon to a point, but with the government, it’s quite the opposite. How have you done this?

The way we have created our trust is because our people are not anonymous on the internet. It has always been secure. If you try to transact with someone online, you would not do it with an email and pay with a credit card. What we do instead is create an encrypted channel and sign a contract that is time stamped. Estonians are much more used to internet banking rather than an online credit card. You can create trust, but you have to create tools and the legal space that supports the security for these tools. The state has to promise people to keep them safe on the internet. I find it astonishing that globally businesses are on the internet. Very few states have followed them.