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The geopolitics of tech regulation

The geopolitics of tech are heating up. While the EU recently passed the world’s most comprehensive AI law, imposing major restrictions on an industry led by US firms, the US is threatening a ban on the Chinese tech platform TikTok. 

• 🇪🇺 → 🇺🇸 European lawmakers are concerned about how America’s big tech giants collect data from Europeans and create unsafe online spaces.
• 🇺🇸 → 🇨🇳 American lawmakers are concerned about TikTok’s ability (and by extension, China’s ability) to mine the data of Americans, influence elections, and spread misinformation.

This week we’re exploring how regulating or banning technology is an increasingly powerful tool in geopolitical diplomacy for countries looking to protect their citizens and limit foreign influence.

// Digital surveillance balloons

Last year, one of China’s high-altitude spy balloons drifted into US territory, causing a major diplomatic incident. The balloon was part of a much more extensive surveillance program by the Chinese, violating “the sovereignty of countries across five continents,” according to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

But a high-altitude spy balloon pales in comparison to the distributed surveillance and data collection mechanisms of social media platforms like TikTok and Facebook. At the time of the balloon incident, Congressman Darrell Issa (R-Calif) said “Having TikTok on our phones is like having 80 million Chinese spy balloons flying over America,” and an article in the Center for European Policy Analysis last year suggested that TikTok is “a Chinese spy balloon in our pockets.”

Big tech platforms wield immense power—from the data they harvest to their ability to distribute misinformation and disinformation. According to Ethiopian researcher Abeba Birhane, the power of tech is a form of “digital colonialism.” The geopolitical use of the term colonialism is not by accident; Birhane argues that today’s tech companies rival old colonial empires where one country’s values get exported globally, leading to control and oppression.

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“We might turn out to have created a precedent that comes back to haunt us,” Anupam Chander said of the possible TikTok ban.

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// From east to west: limiting tech's power

In many cases, global tech platforms are exporting Western values to the Global South.

However, the tables have turned recently with renewed momentum in the US to ban TikTok out of fear of China’s influence with American users. (After a bill requiring TikTok’s parent company to either sell the app or face a nationwide ban quickly moved through the US House, its progress has slowed in the US Senate.)

• US lawmakers are concerned that TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, might be controlled or influenced by the Chinese Communist Party, making TikTok’s widespread use in the US a matter of national security. One in three American adults use TikTok, and the platform has over 100 million monthly active users in the US.
• There is opposition to a ban, but the concerns about TikTok range from concerns about data privacy for American users, to the possibility of election interference, to promoting pro-Chinese propaganda and misinformation.

While the close relationship between TikTok’s parent company and the Chinese government has prompted heightened national security concerns, the EU’s wave of regulation of predominantly American tech platforms is not dissimilar: a bloc of nations imposing restrictions on foreign tech platforms to protect their citizens’ wellbeing, data privacy, and their elections from misinformation.

• The EU just passed the world’s first comprehensive law regulating AI, which is a type of European consumer protection against risky AI algorithms. It categorizes AI technology along a spectrum of risk, from “unacceptable” to high, medium, and low hazard.
• The EU’s Digital Markets Act went into effect earlier this month. Five of the six firms under the most scrutiny are American; one interpretation of Europe’s suite of tech laws is that they’re designed to limit American influence in Europe. Another is that the EU tech laws are a form of anti-American protectionism.

// The Brussels effect

When national laws regulate global tech platforms, those laws can quickly become worldwide norms. 

• For example, the Brussels Effect is the dynamic where a corporation’s activities outside of the EU end up adhering to EU laws because it’s easier for a company to comply with the most stringent laws uniformly than it is to tweak its operations for each regulatory regime. In this way, the EU’s regulations are not just governing behavior within the Union, but setting global precedents. It could become difficult for Meta and Google to defend their practices in the US when they behave differently in the EU.
• There might be a similar effect if the US restricts or bans TikTok; other countries might follow suit and the platform itself might be forced to make changes that impact users globally (TikTok is under fire to bring transparency to its algorithm and content moderation practices).

Anupam Chander, a Georgetown University law professor and Project Liberty Fellow, told Axios, “We might turn out to have created a precedent that comes back to haunt us.” It could lead other countries to follow a similar strategy for US companies: stoking fears of data privacy and forcing them to sell local operations or transfer their technology to a foreign firm.

// Geopolitical bandaids on tech problems

Whether it’s a US ban on Chinese TikTok or EU fines on American tech giants, such laws might be little more than geopolitical bandaids on problems that need more structural fixes. 

• In the US, a ban on TikTok could distract from passing a federal data privacy law.
• In Europe, regulations on AI could lead to a brain drain on the continent of tech talent and stifle efforts for European companies to responsibly develop their own AI.

Greater regulation needs to be paired with responsible tech development and new models—from protocols to platforms. This is the work of Project Liberty: to cultivate the ecosystem that spans regulators and policy-makers to technologists and builders.

Project Liberty in the news

// Project Liberty Foundation announced it has partnered with FIDE to build a decentralized digital future. Read more here.

// Following the launch of OUR BIGGEST FIGHT, Frank McCourt was a guest on Entrepreneur’s podcast “How Success Happens” and Forbes’s Breaking News show. Listen to the podcast here and watch the Forbes interview here.

Other notable headlines

// 🏛 An article in the Washington Post reported that the Supreme Court is set to decide whether government demands to remove social media posts are censorship.

// 🦺 Reddit’s IPO is a content moderation success story. According to an article in The New York Times, the site’s transition from toxic content to trusted news source proves the business case for trust & safety.

// 📝 An article in Tech Policy Press explored why KOSA is popular and what it means for child safety regulation in the US.

// 🇨🇳 An article in The Economist reported that the US isn’t the only country concerned with social media. China is too, and the Community Party is paying attention.

// 🚸 Project Liberty Fellow Jonathan Haidt argued in an article in The Atlantic that it’s time to end phone-based childhood now. 

// 👬 An article in Noema Magazine explored how a digital twin might save your life.

// 📱 An article in The Free Press hosted a debate on if the US ban TikTok?

// 🤔 Can generative AI make online conversations more civil? Chris Bail, a Project Liberty Fellow, explored that question in an article in Harvard Business Review.

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