By Lola Montero Santos, PhD researcher at the European University Institute.
‘Digital Empires. The Global Battle to Regulate Technology’ is Anu Bradford’s latest insightful, thought-provoking, and nuanced critical analysis of the leading digital world-wide powers. Going beyond the often-referred battle between China and the US, Bradford includes the EU as a digital empire. Similar to her previous book, ‘The Brussels Effect’, the author argues for the EU’s global influence in regulating markets through significant empirical evidence – a distinguishing trait of this book, making it not only informative but also an absorbing read. Bradford uses the term ‘digital empires’ as a metaphor to encompass the current “leading technology, economic, and regulatory powers, each with the ambition and capability to shape the global digital order toward their interests and values.”
Main claims
Bradford’s reflections are broad in scope and deserve careful attention. I consider that these, albeit simplified, are her three main claims:
- 1. The digital stage is at a turning point. The American market-driven regulatory model needs to shift to a regulatory model akin to the European rights-driven one, anchored in liberal democratic values.
- 2. The US and the EU, alongside other liberal democracies, need to unite and offer undecided countries an affordable alternative to the powerful Chinese state-driven digital infrastructure, the main force of digital surveillance authoritarianism.
- 3. To uphold liberal democratic values, it is crucial to establish and properly implement a regulatory framework that protects individuals from both corporations and the state itself.
These claims are not advanced linearly but are instead reiterated across the chapters of the book, with supporting examples spanning various domains and jurisdictions. This includes an overview of the most significant (but also lesser known) conflicts between different empires, which Bradford names ‘horizontal battles’, as well as the ‘vertical battles’ between these empires and multinational corporations – mostly Chinese and American – that are attempting to operate within them. I find numerous aspects of this book commendable, yet others are more open-ended. This is not in itself a criticism, but a consequence of the extensive scope of Bradford’s book, which conditions the length with which each topic can be addressed. Bradford reflects on many gray areas where conflicting rights must be balanced but does not shy away from arguing in favor of specific positions which she identifies as aligned with liberal democratic values. For example,
while Bradford does not reduce the origins of the American market-driven regulatory model to profit-hungry capitalism, acknowledging the then left-leaning fears of tyrannical governments and hopes of the internet becoming a tool to empower individuals, she is clear that the ideals behind it have not been met.
Regulation is necessary to combat the rampant market failures in our current digital space.
Overlaps across empires
Bradford identifies certain overlapping commonalities across the three different empires, revealing shared traits despite stark divergences. This is enriching: it shows the potential for common ground, while also displaying the irreconcilable differences among them.
Bradford notes the Chinese and European regulatory models’ pursuit of a fairer digital market with a greater redistribution of digital gains. China has been adopting laws which protect its citizens vis-à-vis profit-seeking Chinese companies – without protecting individual freedoms – including the Data Security Law, the China Personal Information Protection Law, and the revisions of the Cybersecurity Law and the Anti-Monopoly Law. This has not yet happened in the US.
What differentiates the European framework from the Chinese one is, as Bradford explains, the absolute absence of citizen protection against state action in the latter. Rather, the opposite is true. The Chinese digital laws create, in the name of a more efficient delivery of public services and safer cities, unrestricted surveillance. Similarly, behind the mask of avoiding social unrest, extreme censorship is maintained, and any criticism of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is severely punished. Additionally, there may be an innate motivation behind the Chinese push for a better distribution of digital gains: maintaining social stability, where citizens feel their needs are covered and they can improve their conditions – if they align themselves with the regime, that is. This exact reasoning is shown by Bradford in the context of several antitrust cases brought forth by the CCP against increasingly powerful Chinese digital corporations like Alibaba or Meituan. These companies immediately accept their responsibility, pledging to do better per the path shown by the CCP, and they go beyond the payment of fines to financial contributions towards the strategic goals set forth by the Chinese state.
There are no vertical battles between Chinese corporations and the Chinese state. Bradford defines their relationship as “amorphous […with many] entanglements” (p.317). The Chinese state extends its authoritarian control not only to its citizens but also to its tech companies, which are expected to contribute actively to the successful implementation of the CCP’s political vision. This applies not only to the Chinese corporations but, as Bradford recalls, also to the American businesses still operating in China. This is not a conjecture, as Bradford supports this claim with ample evidence, such as Intel’s apology, Apple’s data center, and Microsoft’s shutting down of blogs.
The size of the Chinese market is so large, and the profit potential is so significant, that some American tech companies seem willing to forego their anti-censorship and freedom guidelines.
Bradford suggests that the reason that other American multinationals no longer operate in China – such as Meta (including Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp), Google, and Amazon – is the potential for intense public backlash rather than their commitment to liberal democratic values. Some Chinese corporations also face difficulties in operating simultaneously in China and the US due to conflicting legal obligations in both jurisdictions. Bradford exemplifies this by recalling TikTok and Huawei’s struggles in the US, showing that despite not engaging in vertical battles with the Chinese regime, Chinese companies do engage in vertical battles with the US.
The US and the EU regulatory models each have some commonalities with the innate traits of the Chinese state-driven model. Bradford refers to surveillance (especially in the case of the US), and the pursuit of digital sovereignty (in the EU). Who can forget the leaked Snowden revelations? These evidenced American surveillance of its citizens and foreigners, against the US’s own democratic values. However, Bradford argues that despite both models displaying surveillance, there are stark contrasts among them. She refers to the ability of US tech companies to resist user data requests from the government, and the extreme censorship used against dissenting Chinese civil society voices, from penalties to imprisonment, especially after President Xi’s ascension to power.
In terms of the commonalities between the EU and China, Bradford refers to the EU’s leveraging of its digital technologies to enhance its economic growth, advising caution. The current EU policy push towards ‘European champions’ could devolve into protectionist policies – akin to those in China – which would harm the EU’s rights-based empire, and is also apt to be expanded across nations with a further fragmentation of the global scene.
Bradford also considers the shared “commitment to free speech as a fundamental right” (p.58), the main commonality between the US and the EU regulatory models. However, in the US there is a narrow focus on free speech, which disregards other fundamental rights. This does not occur in the EU, where some types of speech are banned, and content moderation rules apply in instruments such as the Digital Services Act.
The divergence between the American and European frameworks also lies in additional regulated areas in the EU. This is the case in data privacy, artificial intelligence, platform workers’ rights, digital taxation, and digital competition.
Bradford reminds us that the European position as an empire is intrinsically linked to the economic importance of the EU market for multinational corporations, warning that an excessive push for regulation risks modifying excessively the commercial interests of companies to operate in the EU market, which could harm the EU’s position as a digital empire.
Polarization and protectionism
Bradford defends the importance of balancing access to essential technologies while keeping protectionism at bay. As Bradford shows, the conundrum cannot be understated.
By trying to maintain their technological independence, the US and especially the less technologically advanced EU risk embracing techno-protectionism, a defining trait of the Chinese state-driven model.
This reflection is one of the most interesting contributions of this book and a timely discussion, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic showed the fragility of global value chains during global crises. Bradford considers that current and future policies must be meticulously drafted and implemented so that they do not have undesirable consequences. The failure to do this could be fatal, extending to the worsening of geopolitical tensions, the decoupling of the internet and the rise of separate digital spaces, or the primacy of techno-autocracies over techno-democracies. These scenarios are still conjectures. Despite the ongoing horizontal battles, Bradford reasons that China and the US cannot currently be fully decoupled; they must still engage with one another for certain strategic technologies. Thus, while the status quo is a perilous and unstable equilibrium, it is more beneficial than a complete lack of interdependence.
Innovation-regulation
Bradford claims that regulatory intervention does not stifle innovation and economic growth. She puts forth a couple of alternative reasons in the book’s conclusion for why there are no digital EU market leaders: the lack of a truly integrated European digital single market and capital markets union, which complicates the growth of companies and their funding; a more risk-averse culture, where entrepreneurial failure carries both a deep stigma and the impact of a punitive bankruptcy law; and an insufficient attraction of global talent. While plausible, these reasons do not sufficiently counter the fact that regulation can also be, at times, detrimental to innovation. Given its seminal importance to Bradford’s overall claims, starker evidence is needed for the disconnection between regulation and the lack of incentives to innovate. Independently, Bradford could have adhered to the more plausible argument that, regardless of regulation possibly limiting innovation to some extent, it is nonetheless necessary to prevent ongoing harms, such as online disinformation and hate speech (motivating the Digital Services Act), anti-competitive behavior by gatekeepers (the Digital Markets Act) and their unrestricted control of personal and non-personal data (the Data Act), and biased algorithms (the Artificial Intelligence Act). This is part of the balancing act that empires need to engage in, which is also an argument put forth by the author.
Moreover, Bradford is not sufficiently critical of the failures of the EU digital empire in implementing its rules. It is not enough merely to adopt regulations upholding liberal democratic values.
These must modify the conduct of corporations and governments and deliver a digital world with these values at its core. For example, the GDPR has so far brought forth changes, but it has been insufficient to modify the inner workings of the digital corporations operating in the EU. This is part of the reason why the EU has (just) adopted the numerous ex ante and ex post acts referred to above, the success of which will only be evaluable in the coming decades.
The future
At the end of the book, we are left wanting more. We are made aware of the issues at hand, but how do we advance towards a solution? Bradford acknowledges that a free internet can pose greater security dangers than an internet within the grasp of an authoritarian regime. China is better able to deter hate speech, enforce willing compliance from antitrust-infringing corporations, and obtain investments in strategic areas. All of these are facilitated by the authoritarian approach of the Chinese state, with corporations being expected to collaborate and advance the CCP’s strategies. As an alternative, Bradford presents a coalition of liberal democracies. However, I consider that the indispensability of an alliance going beyond the EU and the US is not sufficiently highlighted. Greater coordination with countries in South America (such as Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile), Africa (South Africa, Ghana, and Botswana), Asia (Japan, India, and South Korea), and Oceania (Australia and New Zealand) is needed.
The EU and the US alone cannot sufficiently offer the resources, innovative potential, or technological tools to provide a real alternative to China’s technological powers.
This becomes obvious when we acknowledge the existence of other relevant problems faced by humankind, such as the pressing and resource-consuming transition to environmental sustainability.
Overall, Bradford reflects that many of the issues identified in ‘Digital Empires’ are currently unfolding. Only time will tell whether the US will pass legislation to regulate the digital sphere and whether these laws will be centered on the liberal democratic values at the core to the EU’s current approach. This will in turn condition the possibility of creating a coalition of liberal democracies to counter the advancement of the Chinese authoritarian vision of the world and the type of society in which we will all live.
In collaboration with Oliver Garner.
