So long, and thanks for all the fish

After many incredible years and editions, it’s time for me to bid farewell to Digital Bridge. This newsletter has been a labor of love for your author, a place where we’ve explored the intersection of technology, politics, and policy. Your engagement and feedback have been invaluable and we’re grateful for the conversations we’ve had along the way. We are putting this newsletter on hold for now but please watch this space for exciting news about what POLITICO is planning next. In the meantime, we want to make sure you continue to get the insights and analysis that matter most to you.
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THIS IS MY LAST DIGITAL BRIDGE. I’m Mark Scott, POLITICO’s chief technology correspondent, until Friday. Next week, I join the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab’s Democracy + Tech Initiative, as a senior resident fellow. I will also be a research fellow at the Hertie School’s Center for Digital Governance.
More on that below. But if you want to stay in touch, you can reach me on my new email here and find my ongoing thoughts on digital policy here.
Right. One more for the road?
— The transatlantic relationship on tech is stronger than ever. Here’s what should happen next, and what policymakers should avoid.
— Most digital lawmaking is based on faulty assumptions, not clear evidence. It’s time we change that.
— Two major obstacles lie ahead for tech rulemaking: what to do about China, and balancing national interest with international cooperation.
WHEN I STARTED THIS NEWSLETTER in early 2021, my thesis was clear. After transatlantic ties (across all policy areas) had soured during Donald Trump’s administration, the incoming Joe Biden presidency offered a chance to restart links between Brussels and Washington. On digital, an area that has been a repeated bone of contention between the European Union and United States, that included: 1) Moving past Washington’s misguided view that all European regulation is veiled protectionism; 2) Convincing the EU that innovation and economic growth, tied to tech, were not four-letter words; and 3) Recognizing there was more common ground between arguably the world’s two more important democratic regions — on everything from social media oversight and digital competition to online privacy rights and, belatedly, artificial intelligence rules — than divisions between them.
Fast forward more than three years and it’s safe to say that Washington and Brussels speak more as one on digital now than ever before. When I visited the Beltway in the spring, multiple U.S. policymakers and politicians sounded overtly European when they explained the need to rein in the worst abuses of tech. Sure, that’s unlikely to lead to actual legislation from Congress anytime soon. But the language of digital policymaking has seeped across the Atlantic from Brussels, often in bizarre ways (case in point: the Texas and Florida social media laws). Conversely, Brussels has embraced its inner American to champion a more robust approach to China, mostly on technology. In some quarters of the Berlaymont building, there is also a belated realization it’s not enough to create digital rules, but that Europe also has to build companies if the 27-country bloc wants to compete on the global stage. To both of these points, I say: It’s about damn time.
The EU-U.S. Trade and Technology Council (TTC) biannual meetings — let alone myriad regular gatherings between officials in between those mostly boring set-piece events — prove how far we have come. Yes, technically, the concept for the TTC began in the latter days of the Trump administration. But the Biden and Ursula von der Leyen administrations deserve credit for pushing it forward. Some argue these meetings were nothing more than expensive boondoggles that did little, if anything, to move the digital and trade agendas forward. I would disagree. People forget how toxic the U.S.-EU relationship had become, during the Trump era (though that’s not all down to the former U.S. president). The fact officials regularly met, even to swap notes on what they were thinking, was a worthwhile endeavor. Case in point: trade officials then used those personal ties to fast-track transatlantic sanctions against Russia after it invaded Ukraine in 2022.
The question then becomes: What’s next? The von der Leyen 2.0 European Commission presidency has already laid down a marker for its tech ambitions over the next five years. The polls are still too close to call in the U.S. over who will win the White House in November. But, frankly, I would argue that Trump and Kamala Harris are a lot closer on digital policymaking, at least in the international arena, than many aides on either side would like to admit. No one expects Washington and Brussels to be aligned on everything, even if a likely Harris administration will be more open to Europe’s views of digital than Trump 2.0. But the foundations of transatlantic ties — even if, under a Republican presidency, almost all current officials will be replaced — should not be cast off. There are tricky issues ahead when it comes to technology and digital governance. Europe and the U.S. pulling in the same direction, especially against China’s eagerness to promote its authoritarian take on the online world, is needed now more than ever.
So, what to do? Given the different political approaches to digital rulemaking on both sides of the Atlantic, my preference would be to go super wonky. Bear with me. If the next decade, globally, will be determined by computing power, semiconductor design and digital infrastructure, then Europe and the U.S. should prioritize joint funding for such efforts akin to the collective U.S. and EU Chips Acts. They should also open up pathways so that transatlantic research and development projects (caveat: outside national security areas) between like-minded institutions can tap into joint U.S.-EU funding for next-generation tech like quantum and 6G telecommunications. They should similarly divert export financing via the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the U.S. Commerce Department to support tech-focused projects across the so-called Global Majority countries to provide an alternative to cheap state-backed loans from China.
Some of these efforts bore fruit during discussions within the EU-U.S. Trade and Technology Council. Though bureaucratic hurdles, including technical barriers that stopped both sides from jointly funding digital infrastructure projects in countries like Costa Rica and Kenya, needlessly got in the way. But what such funding would enable is long-standing commercial relationships that would solidify a Western democratic approach to digital infrastructure. Yes, there would be difficulties, most notably in companies seeking to play one side off another in search of state-backed subsidies. But, given the appropriate transparency about how public funds are earmarked, such hurdles (I say, naively) are not insurmountable. Add a layer of policy coordination, within international organizations like the United Nations and World Trade Organization, on apolitical topics like telecom global standards, definitions for artificial intelligence and digital-focused trade, and you start to have the makings of policymaking with teeth.
That’s the positive. Now, the negative. There are many, on both sides of the aisle, in Washington who still view Brussels’ digital ambitions with serious skepticism. Big Tech firms are our companies, goes the line, so stay in your lane. Similarly, many in Brussels imagine all U.S. officials are beholden to the industry, unable to see the forest from the trees. That transatlantic misalignment is both untrue and unhelpful. It leads to unnecessary competition where policymakers vie for supremacy, instead of acknowledging existing differences on the path to compromise. If anything must not happen over the next five years, it’s a return to type, where the U.S. sees Europe as a protectionist digital rulemaking racket, and Europe eyes the U.S. as a “move fast and break things” obstacle in the pocket of Big Tech.
LONGTIME DIGITAL BRIDGE READERS will be aware of my frustration about the black box that is social media. While much of the digital policymaking world has shifted, legitimately, to artificial intelligence, it’s the likes of TikTok, Instagram and YouTube that remain the engine for how much of us live increasingly online. There is no judgment on that. I, too, enjoy a good scroll and internet meme. And for all the ills (and there are a lot) that social media can represent, it is a powerful tool that can build communities, foster connections and break down barriers. As with other digital policy areas, social media oversight shouldn’t be about banning this or that. It should focus on reducing harm, acknowledging that mistakes will happen, and holding companies/people to account, where necessary. Example: what has happened to Telegram founder, Pavel Durov, in France over the last few days.
But let’s be clear: No one has a clue about how these networks work, and what impact, writ large, they have on people’s political views. More broadly, it’s vastly unclear how the interconnection of online platforms, internet messaging services, offline conversations and traditional media affect wider society. I started covering the digital side of global elections in 2016, and over the past decade, my frustration about trying to decipher what was really happening online has steadily built. That’s why, as of next week, I’m rolling up my sleeves to do something about it. My pitch is this: Many countries’ politicians are eagerly chomping at the bit to create new laws aimed at quelling the worst abuses on social media. Yet these efforts are almost entirely based on a lack of quantifiable evidence of harm beyond anecdotal studies and media reports on everything from child sexual abuse material, state-backed interference and hate speech. Yes, this nastiness is rife online. But to what degree, and how it shows up in people’s social media feeds, is still very much unknown.
That’s where I’m looking to make a (small) difference. Under the EU’s Digital Services Act, the most wide-ranging effort to stop such systemic digital harm affecting society anywhere in the Western world, policymakers ordered the largest social media platforms to open up their treasure troves of publicly-facing data to outsiders. That includes, for example, people’s public Instagram posts and TikTok videos, but not private Facebook and YouTube accounts. The goal: to boost people’s understanding of how these complex online networks work by offering outside experts the opportunity to track, in real-time, public social media posts. That insight can then be fed back into the policymaking world, so that when politicians get around to making digital-focused rules, they are based on actual systemic-wide evidence, and not on what a specific research project found on a very small part of the web.
These so-called data access rules already exist. And plans are already underway, across the regulatory, academic and civil society world, to put them to good use. But what my recent fellowship at Brown University’s Information Futures Lab showed me was that this digital rulemaking was missing a major component: how to turn the data access requirements into a well-functioning reality. It’s one thing to create obligations, like the Europeans have, so that social media must be more transparent to outsiders. It’s a whole other thing to make such obligations something practical. And it’s that second part that will be one of my key jobs when I join the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab next week.
Let’s go through the pain points. Currently, social media data access has primarily focused on giving academics opportunities to decipher how these platforms operate. It is a worthy cause and has led to unprecedented understanding on how some, if not all, of these networks function. But to maximize the new transparency rules, we need to create as broad a church as possible so that those from across academia, civil society and journalism can similarly bring their collective expertise to bear on digital areas related to climate change, LGBTQ+ rights and antisemitism hate speech. To be clear, this isn’t about curbing people’s online speech or creating an all-seeing social media regulator. It’s about making Europe’s new social media data access rules as inclusive and wide-ranging as possible, while ensuring people’s online privacy and security are protected at all costs.
That leads us down a rabbit hole of tasks. One is basic: Who’s going to pay for data access? Currently, much of this funding for independent research is picked up by U.S. philanthropic institutions, though these entities are shifting gears toward AI policymaking. If Europe truly believes itself to be the West’s digital enforcer, it must be willing to put its money where its mouth is and financially support wider data access projects aimed at supporting the bloc’s transparency and accountability rules. Brussels also must be willing to extend who can take advantage of its regulatory efforts to those outside of the EU, most notably American researchers who have, collectively, decades of expertise in monitoring social media. Finally, there is a dire need to create user-friendly tools, similar to Meta’s recently-shuttered CrowdTangle social media listening service, so that non-techie experts can participate alongside Ph.D. computer scientists.
The final job is to convince other democratic governments to champion social media data access obligations in the litany of digital regulatory regimes coming down the pike. Efforts like the Global Online Safety Regulators Network, a group of nine domestic agencies from Australia to France, offer ways for officials to share best practices and avoid potential pitfalls — including, most seriously, giving either governments or shady researchers unfettered access to people’s online thoughts. None of this will be easy, and platforms legitimately push back that some of these efforts put their users at risk. But if democracies are going to create digital laws, then they should be at least based on quantifiable evidence, not perceived wisdom. My goal is to try and make that happen. If you’re interested, let’s talk.
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I GET ASKED A LOT ABOUT WHAT DIGITAL POLICYMAKING topics keep me awake at night. Yes, I hang out with some geeky people. But the two areas that I always come back to are: China and countries’s national interests. To be clear, I’m not a China expert. But Beijing has made clear its ambitions to export its authoritarian practices to a global audience. That includes online surveillance, digital infrastructure and tech rules that give the state’s security apparatus access to endless reams of data.
This puts the U.S. and Europe at loggerheads. Washington, primarily for national economic interest, wants Brussels and EU capitals to take a tougher stance on Beijing. The Europeans, though, are not a financial superpower with a global reserve currency, so they can’t be too strong with what is, essentially, a long-term strategic economic partner. Figuring out a unified Western response in the digital space to the China question will be critical in the years ahead.
The second conundrum has dogged politicians since the Westphalian system (h/t: history nerds) was devised in the 17th century. It’s completely legitimate for governments to pursue their own national interests. But when you’re confronted with digital companies that span continents, let alone borders, that state-based structure quickly falls apart. Finding a way to work, collectively and at speed, among democracies on digital policy, while allowing countries to compete to attract companies and set their own rules, is now an urgent priority.
FORGIVE THE SCHMALTZ, BUT as I sign off for the last time, I want to give a shout-out to the tens of thousands of you who read this newsletter each week. I may not have responded to all your emails and DMs, but I read them all, and appreciated the pushback whenever I get things wrong.
I also want to highlight Kelsey L. Hayes, assistant tech editor at POLITICO, and the outlet’s data team, who have edited my weekly ramblings and turned my bizarre chart requests into a reality, respectively. They have made my work better.
Finally, to the person who’s provided almost all of the memes that I’ve included at the top of each week’s newsletter, thank you. Their internet culture powers are a lot stronger than mine.
“In 2021, senior officials from the Biden Administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain Covid-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree,” Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, wrote in an open letter to U.S. Congressman Jim Jordan. “I feel strongly that we should not compromise our content standards due to pressure from any Administration in either direction — and we’re ready to push back if something like this happens again.”
— The United Kingdom’s AI Safety Institute wants to pull together so-called safety cases of when next-generation AI models have been created in ways that mitigate harm and potential misuse. More here.
— The spread of misinformation and wilful disinformation harms public health, evidence-based policymaking and the democratic process, according to analysis from a group of academics led by those at the University of Potsdam/Bristol. More here.
— The Open Source Initiative published a definition for so-called open-source artificial intelligence. The debate between closed AI systems and those that allow everyone to participate has been central to global policy fights over the last two years. More here.
— Texas is trying to stake a claim to being the lead privacy enforcer across the U.S., argues Joe Duball for the International Association of Privacy Professionals.
— The NATO Strategic Communications Center of Excellence ran experiments that showed online actors, with a small amount of data on social media users, could tailor AI-generated influence campaigns directed at those individuals. More here.
— The recently-approved U.N. Convention on Cybercrime is a massive win for the likes of China and Russia, and should be opposed by democratic countries worldwide, claims Tobias Bacherle for the Center for European Policy Analysis.
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