Introduction

The battle for global leadership in AI is often framed as a competition about the raw capabilities of models. The US is a clear winner, because no other country has the ability or willingness to throw as much venture capital and public funding behind datacenters and expensive training runs.

I will argue that governance is even more important to ‘win’ in the AI economy. ‘AI governance’ means establishing the systems, laws, policies, human resources, organizational and institutional capacities to prevent and absorb the negative impacts of AI, while harnessing its potential. Without the proper governance frameworks and oversight mechanisms there is no way to safely deploy the technology at scale.

AI is categorically different from past tech revolutions whether cars, aviation, pharmaceuticals, renewable energy, personal computers, or the internet itself. As Henry Farrell et al. puts it “Large AI models are cultural and social technologies” which means that their impacts are not limited to economics or people’s lifestyle choices. Large AI models will also affect how we relate to society and each other on a fundamental level. Another example of a “’cultural and social technology’ is social media, which the US, EU member states and most other countries have utterly failed to govern, while China was more prescient about its dangers.

China is currently positioned to become a world-leader in AI governance, while the US is positioned to lose big time by repeating the same mistakes it committed with social media. Instead of governing the technology for the public good, private companies are essentially allowed to do what they want, which means that a few companies grow big and powerful, while the population, institutions, and other businesses are left poorer in both spirit and pockets. Europe remains mostly a testing ground for American technology without much self-determination or autonomy, until it develops a separate identity apart from the US and a digital infrastructure of its own – despite its regulation.

AI Governance in China vs. the US

Interim Measures for the Administration of Generative Artificial Intelligence Services entered into force in July, 2023. The law strictly regulates how GenAI services can operate in China. For example, GenAI services are required to adhere to the core socialist values, take effective measures to prevent discrimination, respect copyright laws, business ethics, and the legitimate rights and interests of others. GenAI services with “public opinion attributes or social mobilization capabilities” are required to register different types of information about the system in a public database (same procedure as with recommendation algorithms) and undergo a government security assessment, before they can be offered to the public. China has also adopted comprehensive laws on labelling of AI-generated content and deepfakes.

In western countries, AI girlfriends have become notably popular among young men. In China, it’s primarily the other way around as adult women seek to meet their romantic needs through AI boyfriends. The cultural perspective is interesting here, but that is not why I bring it up. The reason is that China is the first country to my knowledge which has presented a comprehensive and targeted regulation of the emerging and strange market for AI companions.

On December 27, 2025, the Cyberspace Administration of China Interim Measures for the Administration of Artificial Intelligence Anthropomorphic Interactive Services for public solicitation. The law is set to enter into force already in July, 2026, and applies to AI technology which “simulate human personality traits, thinking patterns and communication styles and interact emotionally with humans through text, pictures, audio, video, etc.” Among other requirements to these AI systems with anthropomorphic qualities, they are not allowed to:

• Generate or disseminate content that promotes obscenity, gambling, violence, or incitement to crime.

• Provide false promises that seriously affect user behavior and services that damage social and interpersonal relationships.

• Harm users’ physical health by encouraging, glorifying, or suggesting suicide or self-harm, or harming users’ personal dignity and mental health through verbal violence or emotional manipulation.

• Induce users to make unreasonable decisions through algorithmic manipulation, misleading information, and setting emotional traps.

• Induce or extract confidential and sensitive information.

Article 11 of the law states:

“Providers should have the ability to identify user status. On the premise of protecting users’ personal privacy, they should assess users’ emotions and their dependence on products and services. If they find that users have extreme emotions and addiction, they should take necessary measures to intervene.”

Using such vague language to describe people’s inner states is not usually a feature of laws in Western democracies which evolve around observable behaviors and actions. The problem is that the harms of AI companions are rarely observable until it’s too late and the user has developed an “AI psychosis”.

China’s laws set out strict and numerous requirements and obligations to AI companies. This approach makes complete sense, since only the companies that develop and provide AI systems to the public are in a strong position to mitigate the harms and risks before they are realized. Let’s contrast these governance measures with AI laws in the US.

In the US, the regulation of AI is currently fragmented among individual states. There is no federal framework to address the risks and impacts of AI and the government is actively opposing “onerous” state laws. However, the White House recently published a series of legislative recommendations to the US Congress in a document titled A National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence. It proposes that Congress must establish a Federal AI Policy Framework that preempts state laws and shall include certain measures to protect children from harm online, local communities from increased energy costs due to datacenters, creators, publishers, and innovators from copyright infringements, while also defending “free speech” and “removing barriers to innovation”. What is missing from the proposed framework is any obligations or requirements directed at AI companies.

Big Tech influences policy-making in the US to such an extent that one starts to wonder who really is in control. The companies assert influence through a record-breaking $109 million in lobbying, Super PACs, lobby-drafted legislation, charm offensives with lawmakers, and warnings about its powerful technology. Above all, Big Tech and AI have become such a foundational pillar of the US economy, that democratic governing powers have little choice, but to obey the industry’s demands.

That is why AI governance is failing in the US and succeeding in China. Downplaying societal harms and risks lead to more profits and economic growth in the short term, but the lack of central oversight and governance undermines trust in institutions and lead to complex and unfavorable outcomes in the longer term.

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This is a joint post written by me and . In the first part, I will share my candid thoughts about the legal and geopolitical implications of Claude Mythos. In the second part, Aysu will lay out her personal thoughts about Mythos as a Sustainability Business Development Consultant and AI Enthusiast.

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When I was a young law student, I was once approached by a homeless immigrant outside of the law faculty in Copenhagen, who begged me for a cigarette. He told me that he used to be a promising young scientist with a Ph.D. degree in physics from a fancy European university. Now, he was forced to sleep on a cardboard box and had “no pride”. Even though I don’t remember much of the exact exchange – and of course, he could be lying - the impression I walked away with was that anyone could end up in his shoes.

I am indeed worried that many young people with talent today will. A new Gallup survey shows that the percentage of respondents between age 14 and 29 who said they felt hopeful about AI had declined from 27% last year to 18% as of February and March. Also, “48 % of working Gen Zers believe the risks of AI in the workforce outweigh its benefits”. No way that a new consumer/work technology has ever generated so little excitement and so much concern among those who are supposed to be its main adopters. Is AI having a “PR crisis” or is there something else going on?

Besides AI’s potential to absorb middle class jobs, the vulnerable, global supply chain it relies upon, and the extreme amount of resources that goes into creating cutting-edge models, the competition for entry-level jobs is fierce. I know from experience that companies tend to treat candidates like a bunch of data points, while they expect perfect credentials and love letters in return.

Increasingly, bosses are convinced that AI is a worker-replacement technology, thanks to billionaire influencers like Sam Altman, whose shameless self-promotion entice investors, board rooms and executives the world over. Some people have no pride and sleep on cardboard boxes; other people have no shame and become billionaires.

In 2019, OpenAI was a non-profit organization that refused to launch GPT-2 to the wider public due to fears about how it could be misused. Needless to say, GPT-2 is a laughably primitive model by today’s standards. How much have things changed!

In the paid section below, I will comment on OpenAI’s document, Industrial Policy for the Intelligence Age: Ideas to Keep People First.

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Justin co-wrote the paper, AI Won’t Automatically Make Legal Services Cheaper with Sayash Kapoor, and Arvind Narayanan and has surveyed lawyers about their experience using AI tools for .

We discuss how AI is already changing the work of lawyers and what the legal profession may look like in the short-term future.

A topic of major importance to society!

What do you think? Join the conversation in the comments.

From the archive:

I have to get something off my chest which will hopefully clear up a common misconception about how regulation affects tech innovation in the EU. Let me just say, I don’t think those voices who claim that regulation is an insurmountable barrier to start a successful tech company in Europe are authentic. The narrative is driven by lies and propaganda, most likely stemming from Russian troll farms.

However, to those people who genuinely claim that EU laws are so annoying that’s it’s impossible or nearly impossible to start a successful AI or tech business here, my advice is straightforward: quit your whining and leave. I bet you won’t make it anywhere. The defining trait of successful entrepreneurs is their ability to overcome obstacles. If the legal barriers are such a burden in Europe, you probably don’t have what it takes to be successful no matter where you are located. We need serious and dedicated talent in Europe to ensure our survival, including of the ideas the EU stands for, and our future competitiveness. If you spend a lot of time complaining that bureaucrats in Bruxelles are holding you back and ruining your one shot at success, you probably don’t have what it takes. I say that as someone who helps companies comply with EU laws for a living.

Now, let’s move on to discuss AI. AI will likely be more successful as a military technology, than as a consumer product. The way that AI is reshaping the military is simply more consequential than its ability to generate ‘workslop’, propaganda for social media and to support or replace white-collar professionals. Yes, the military application of AI is to surveil and kill people. Not something I condone, but that is the reality we live in. It’s an utmost priority for Europe to prepare for modern AI-driven warfare as we are facing threats from within, the East, and the West (and many other angles we won’t go further into here).

The threat from within is primarily those with a defeatist attitude who refuse to stand up for European values, and are parroting the anti-democratic rhetoric from their feeds on X and TikTok. Russia is threatening Europe’s territory from the East. The US is increasingly threatening Europe’s territory from the West. A few years ago, a war between the US and the EU was unthinkable. Now, it’s a real, albeit remote, possibility that the EU needs to seriously prepare for. A war with the US may not necessarily be fought out with bombs and boots on the ground, although there is a non-zero chance it could be. More likely, it will be a continuation of the information warfare and economic warfare which is already ongoing. This means that EU countries must become independent of US tech for national security purposes, while rapidly building up sovereign capacities in military AI.

In the paid section of today’s post, we shall see how the EU is preparing for AI-driven war.

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To be honest, it’s a depressing time to advocate for digital ethics and law enforcement on the internet. These things barely register with most people, and understandably so. Considering the persistent hype about AI’s capabilities and the level of economic strain and chaos the Trump administration is introducing to the wor…

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I propose a new term to describe recommender systems on digital platforms, “American algorithms”.

Besides the fact that nearly all digital platforms we use in the West are owned and managed by American companies, they are primarily designed to serve the interest of MAGA America which is to destroy civil society and replace it with a technocracy governed …

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This is the second part of a longer post about AI risks and the EU’s AI strategy. Read the first part here.

In this part, I argue why the EU must address the risks of AI foundation models before speeding recklessly ahead. Instead of replicating Big Tech’s “move fast and break things”-approach, the EU should promote open(-source) foundation models, only trained on public and licensed data, encourage people and institutions to treat AI technology with common sense, not as a magic panacea, while also minding the broader financial and environmental risks. That is how the EU becomes an “AI continent”.

The final version of this draft will be available in Handbook on Regulating Big Technology in the Era of Sustainability by Edward Elgar Publishing.

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(“How the EU Should Approach AI - Part 2” will be published on Thursday. See part 1 here.)

The Western millennial generation was raised with an American pop culture that elevated individualism, consumerism, and encouraged young people to live in a self-absorbed way. We were subliminally and overtly told it was “me, myself, and I” against the world and that ego-gratification was the highest ideal in existence.

This self-centered culture was brought about in a time of relative peace and stability. The US won the cold war, distributed Western culture via channels such as Hollywood movies, MTV, and the first internet companies, and took charge of world politics with its “peace through strength” dogma. Under these circumstances, Western millennials could live in a fantasy world where we thought our personal satisfaction mattered more than anything else.

This time of relative peace and stability wouldn’t last. Peace and prosperity is not a new norm; it was a brief footnote, an anomaly in the otherwise violent track record of human beings. Western civilization is no longer in a peacetime. We are back to normal; a new time of upheaval and great suffering, too great to distract from, marked by idiotic wars, significant loneliness, mental health disorders, and palpable risks of economic collapse, climate disasters, and a new deadly pandemic.

Beyond imminent, catastrophic risks, young people are struggling to find jobs, relationships, and housing. Nothing indicates it will change soon as the boomer generation (Trump’s age and older) refuses to share its wealth and wants to live forever. Old people are not just overly represented in wealth statistics, but in politics too. Their stubbornness and antiquated worldviews may explain why we still resolve conflicts with war, sustained by the lives of young men as raw material if necessary, and insist on generating energy with coal and crude oil even though science shows the excessive consumption undermines the conditions for life on earth.

The whole secure and seemingly unbreakable infrastructure which allowed millennials like me to live comfortably and carefree is now shaking beneath our feet. This means that ignorance and complete self-absorption are not luxuries young people in today’s world can afford. To survive in this time of upheaval, younger generations need to cultivate the same qualities American pop culture tried to destroy when I was growing up.

To succeed, Generation Z and Generation Alpha will need to be knowledgeable about how the world works, possess the ability to concentrate, think independently, critically, and long-term. They will also need moral clarity, ideological conviction, discipline, courage, self-sacrifice, community-mindedness, and love for humankind regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, political and religious beliefs. The exact opposite of those personality traits displayed by modern American folk heroes such as Donald Trump and Elon Musk.

An in-field report by Sam Kriss reveals that young tech entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley are taught to cultivate “high-agency”. Allegedly, this is the most important personality trait in the age of AI. Those who don’t possess it are at risk of becoming part of the permanent underclass when the great “bifurcation event” happens which will separate those skilled with AI from those who are rendered useless.

I agree that agency is important, but without knowledge, moral principles and clear direction, it’s a dangerous quality to have. Evidently, assertiveness without a moral standpoint creates shitty people, harmful products and ultimately, at a large enough scale, threatens the survival of our species.

To cultivate agency in a meaningful sense of the word here are some simple, practical tips that will prepare new generations for a dignified life in the tumultuous, confusing, and dangerous time ahead: limit exposure to social media as much as possible, practice digital minimalism and switch from using commercial LLMs to local LLMs.

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So starts a recorded lecture by Jiang Xueqin given to high school students in Beijing. I think of Xueqin as China’s Jordan Peterson.

Xueqin teaches “secret history”, geopolitical strategy, and how to use game theory to make probable predictions about future events (Predictive History on Substack). He has recently achieved a meteoric rise of fame on social media, among other things for predicting in a lecture from May 2024 that 1) Trump would be re-elected, 2) go to war with Iran, and 3) lose the war against Iran with catastrophic consequences (link).

Xueqin’s lectures on YouTube and Substack posts are sweet candyfloss to the ears of conspiracy theorists and doomers. His claims should be consumed with a pinch of salt and a healthy dose of skepticism. There is a razor-thin edge between genius and insanity. Too much light is blinding; too much truth is maddening. Maddening and depressive as it is, Xueqin has an extraordinary and enviable ability to connect dots and poke at a deeper level of truth beneath the noise, even if his viewpoints are dystopian and sometimes deeply controversial.

When reading the daily stream of news, the only logical conclusion to draw must be that we are living through the end times of the Pax American world order. Those who were supposed to prevent this from happening are too busy humblebragging and virtue-signaling on LinkedIn or getting high on American endorphin on X. How will the war in Iran affect the US economy and the tech billionaires’ human-replacement-and-surveillance project, also known as AI? It will meet hard physical constraints and the stakes are extremely high.

My bold prediction for 2026 is that this year will not be “the year of the AI agent” – something boosters have predicted each year since 2023. Instead, the AI bubble pops. If not this year, then in 2027. Sooner or later, it is bound to happen, not gradually, but suddenly and violently. This shock will give tech billionaires and average Trump voters alike a much-needed reality check, and vindicate tech ethicists like myself. The hype and expectations surrounding AI are simply not sustainable, and neither are the energy demands and environmental strains. If my prediction holds true, I don’t expect the same level of online fame as Xueqin, but some credit must be due.

Anyways, onto the positive news of today’s post. The EU Parliament has very sensibly voted to protect copyrighted work and its creative sector in the age of AI. A new opinion piece in the award-winning publication AdExchanger admits that the targeted advertisement industry has made some serious mistakes. A new survey of privacy practitioners in the EU shows what kind of measures that could be adopted to revise the GDPR in a meaningful way (contrary to the Digital Omnibus proposal). Meta currently faces a lawsuit in California and an investigation in the UK after a Swedish newspaper exposed creepy privacy violations related to its AI smart glasses. Last, but not least, it looks like the controversial chat control proposal is finally approaching its grave.

To get full access to my Briefs and read the second part of my post “How the EU Should Approach AI” when it’s published next Tuesday, consider supporting my work with a paid subscription.

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OpenAI is back on top of leaderboards with its latest model, GPT-5.4. Did you notice?

The model signifies another round of impressive, yet relatively incre…

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This is the first part of a long and detailed post about AI risks and the EU’s AI strategy.

I argue why the EU should not follow in the footsteps of the US. European culture cannot embrace the “move fast and break things”-attitude which made OpenAI the world’s second-most valuable startup (second to SpaceX).

The EU should not race towards building “superintelligent” AI systems, but stand by its founding values, and formulate an independent vision of the technology with measurable goals and targets.

The final version of this draft will be available in Handbook on Regulating Big Technology in the Era of Sustainability by Edward Elgar Publishing.

(Part 2 is here)

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The short story is: things are not looking good.

The inability to effectively curb monopolies is a symptom of failed democracy.

In European countries there is a tendency to blame Trump and Big Tech for many problems (I am guilty of this).

In reality, the EU may only be a few years behind on the authoritarian trajectory. In spite of all the high-minded intentions and talks about digital sovereignty, there is too much bureaucracy, too much inaction, excuses, and a pronounced unwillingness to deal with problems head-on.

What kind of risks and harms are Big Tech posing to societies? Why are the EU and the US not able to enforce their laws against these companies? And what can be done?

If these questions interest you, please listen along.

The great Danish storyteller H.C. Andersen wrote fairytales for children in the 19^th century.

If I had more time, I would write a contemporary fairytale in the style of H.C. Andersen, called “The Toxic Toupee on Adventures”. Here is the storyline.

A toupee is possessed by an ancient curse. It travels restlessly around in search of a human body to infest. Its ultimate goal is to turn society into a Kingdom ruled by a rich elite. Whenever the toxic toupee jumps up onto the head of a human, it overtakes their mind and spirit like a zombie parasite. Whoever wears it feels a strong urge to put on a suit and tie, adopt Trump’s mannerism, rhetoric, and imagination abilities, and gradually turn more orange in the face each time they lie like Pinocchio’s growing nose. Because the curse is not bound to a human form, it cannot easily die or be killed. The only way to defeat it is if enough people recognize the curse for what it is, and society is structurally changed to prevent it from obtaining power.

The Toxic Toupee would be written as a bedtime story for children, but the adult who reads it aloud will easily catch the subliminal message. The story is really about the authoritarian takeover project. The moral is, when Trump dies, the driving force behind this project will live on. The mission is to further the gap between rich and poor, control people’s thoughts by taking hold of the information ecosystem, and destroy national and foreign communities by sowing hatred, distrust, and division which distract people from the power grab from above.

Another key aspect of the authoritarian project is to co-opt innovation in the private sector, and ultimately decide what gets made by whom to extend centralized control, stay on top of the political narrative, and squash dissent before it arises. Arguing with or making any demands against the government is a strict breach of protocol, explaining why Anthropic was very publicly designated a “supply chain risk” by the Department of War for failing to accept the government’s terms of service which included a demand for unrestricted access to their technology.

Trump is not the initiator or the leader of the authoritarian project in the US; he is merely an agent of it. Certain conditions in the American society have allowed the authoritarian project to move forward. Of course, I am in no position to exhaustively identify and analyze what exactly has gone wrong– a lot of it is based on national culture, history, past political priorities and decisions that I don’t have insights into. However, as a European, I have noticed three specific and distinct flavors of American society which have greatly contributed to the authoritarian progression:

• Information asymmetry, namely between tech billionaires and the rest of the population

• The politicization of everything

• The blurring line between reality and science fiction

In the paid segment below, we will take a deeper look at each of these conditions based on recent news and viral stories in tech.

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C. Thi Nguyen & Bekka Williams offer an expansive definition of the term “porn” in their paper, “Moral Outrage Porn”:

“a representation is used as generic porn when it is engaged with for the sake of a gratifying reaction, freed from the usual …

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Back in the good old days, technology served human culture. Mediums such as VHS tapes, CDs, discmans, radios, televisions and computers enabled us to enjoy, experience, and more deeply engage with culture. Ever since American tech giants made the public web synonymous with social media and algorithmic recommendations, this dynamic fl…

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Introduction

The main story of this installment of Tech Legal Brief concerns a very serious topic: fascism.

In the paid segment of this post, we ask how to effectively fight fascism, look at a video which explains how the Russian military manages to infiltrate and attack the US from the inside out, a new study that shows the political effects of X’s recommendation algorithm, and a new proposal for a law in Wyoming which seeks to sanction foreign censorship (h/t ).

All these stories are closely tied to the themes of my recently published ebook “Death To Algorithms: On the entertainment and matchmaking engines that rule our lives” which can be purchased via this Gumroad page.

Beware of Fascist Tendencies

“European censorship” is one of those issues you often hear Trump admins and MAGA Americans complain about. It’s typically accompanied by a bundle of other beliefs which we could call the “MAGA starter pack”.

The US is undergoing an invasion of illegal immigrants, because the Democrats want them as voters. X is a safe haven for free speech warriors. If parents are not careful, democrats may force sex change operations on their children on any given school day. A cult of rich elites is secretly running an international pedophile ring (oops that one checks out). I compiled a video of beliefs from the MAGA starter pack with clips from a recent episode of the Joe Rogan podcast with Elon Musk.

But this is only scratching the surface.

What makes MAGA-American beliefs so dangerous is that they can’t be disputed with rational arguments, facts, or evidence to the contrary. The MAGA starter pack is rooted in a desire to take back control from an overly bureaucratic and unfair system. The beliefs are really only strawman arguments to justify this desire. When MAGA Americans such as Elon are making political arguments, they are doing so in bad faith, thus playing a different game than ordinary politicians in modern times. They use language with the purpose of reaching a specific aim. Therefore, logical holes in their argumentation or lack of factual evidence are not problems to them. The term we use to describe this kind of language use is: propaganda.

Propaganda is the language of fascism. It consists of slogans and simple solutions to complex problems that a majority of people or a powerful minority agree on. The first page of fascism playbook is: create unity among people by finding a common enemy to blame for the country’s hardships.

In Nazi Germany the enemy was jews. In MAGA America the enemy is – luckily – more diffuse. The various factions of the MAGA coalition have not managed to settle on a single, common target. To some it’s illegal democrats, to others it’s all non-white people, to others it’s trans or LGBTQ+ people, to others again it’s the working class, feminists, climate activists, the homeless, or foreign censors.

Trump is obviously a showman, a clown who invites laughter, while the coalition behind him is a fascinating mix of cruel and callous personalities with different agendas. We should all be very aware of the fascist tendencies that are taking root in the US, and partly in Europe. Even though some of us can denigrate Trump and MAGA’s chaos with laughter and schadenfreude for now, it may not last very long. History teaches us that we are perhaps only seeing the beginning, a temporary movement that could evolve with time into a darker, more potent, and less fragmented force of evil. This force could be boosted by socioeconomic inequality, social media as a propaganda tool, and AI as a privacy-eroding tool that discourages dissent. 1984 went from a dystopian novel to a gameplan.

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I would describe my time in law school as a competition between students to achieve certain symbols on a certificate which could translate to an attractive student position which could translate to a prosperous career. Not everyone played this game, but many students did. Treating legal education as a means to an end is a dehumanizing way to think about…

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Not long after the end of World War 2, the UN General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) - a cornerstone for human rights law interpretation to this day. Article 19 states:

These words sounded noble in 1948 and intuitively made a lot of sense for people in the US, Europe, and in other democratic jurisdictions. In 2026, reasonable and decent people can still nod along in agreement to these words. But our world is radically different now. Chiefly, because of the rapid development and adoption of information technology with social and cultural impacts.

In 1948, the US and the EU were both considered liberal democracies. The US democracy leaned heavily into its free market approach; companies should be able to do business without too much government oversight and bureaucracy. Fast forward to today, and the US can hardly be characterized as a liberal democracy. A transgressive democracy? The EU for its part, was always more of a social-democratic power (reference: Thomas Piketty), emphasizing social welfare, individual rights, and peace over technological innovation and economic growth.

The US and the EU are thus global superpowers with different value sets. Historically, the US was right-leaning, while the EU was left-leaning, but our worldview was more or less the same. Over the last few years, the US has taken a big step to the right, while the EU has arguably slid a few inches to the left. Today, some of the values we once shared are in conflict with each other.

An obvious example is free speech. The average conservative in the US and the average socialist in the EU are both accusing each other of not living up to the principle. Conservatives in the US are furious at hate speech laws in European countries that penalize incitements to violence, threats, holocaust denial, and harassment on social media. The American government is accusing the EU of creating a “global censorship regime” with the Digital Services Act (DSA), a law requiring online platforms to take certain measures to prevent illegal hate speech. Meanwhile, citizens in the EU are following American news in disbelief as innocent people are prosecuted for speaking out against the government or expressing resistance to it.

What does it in fact mean to say that “everyone” has the right to freedom of opinion and expression? The current US administration is evidently not interested in that specific word of the declaration. If the “wrong” opinions spread, it could undermine the government’s agenda, including its violent mass-deportation program and unapologetic self-enrichment schemes.

UDHR was ratified at the time to prevent this exact scenario. Unfortunately, as Trump knows too well, enforcing civil rights is next to impossible if the government refuses to play ball and doesn’t feel obliged to adhere to the ground rules of the Constitution. He is the tyrant George Washington feared.

Given the Trump administration’s contempt for liberal speech rights in its own country, we can safely assume that its accusations against European hate speech laws and the DSA have nothing to do with high-minded free speech concerns, and everything to do with narrative control.

Whether we like it or not, social media platforms, search engines, streaming platforms, certain data-collecting apps, and most certainly AI models, are powerful tools for influencing the public discourse and controlling human beings. In the pre-digital world, no one could foresee just how much power those in charge of our IT systems would have. In hindsight, we were naïve. The EU is now waking up to this reality and trying to correct its past mistakes.

Here is a quote from Spain’s Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, recently speaking at the World Governments Summit in Dubai (h/t )

Sánchez went on to present five concrete actions the Spanish government will implement this week to reassert democratic control over social media:

1) Change the laws in Spain to hold platform executives legally accountable for failing to remove illegal or hateful content.

2) Turn algorithmic manipulation and amplification of illegal content into a new criminal offense.

3) Implement a footprint system to track, quantify, and expose how digital platforms fuel division and amplify hate and polarization.

4) Ban access to social media for minors under the age of 16 to protect them from “the digital wild west”.

5) Work with the public prosecutor to investigate and pursue the infringements committed by Grok, TikTok and Instagram.

In addition, Sánchez announced that Spain had joined forces with five other European countries in a coalition of the “digitally willing” committed to enforcing stricter, faster, and more effective regulation of social media platforms. The other countries in the coalition are Cyprus, Denmark, France, Greece, and Slovenia which issued a joint policy position in June 2025.

Unsurprisingly, Sánchez’s speech was met with “mixed reviews”. Elon Musk wrote to his 234 million followers on X: “Dirty Sánchez is a tyrant and traitor to the people of Spain 💩”. Telegram CEO Pavel Durov took it a step further by sending the following message directly to all Telegram users in Spain.

This is a battle of narrative control between governments and tech platforms.

Who is suppressing freedom of speech and privacy? Who is demanding transparency and fighting for human rights? Who do we trust - tech platforms or government?

Ironically, social media platforms like X and Telegram are contributing to creating this environment where geographical borders and local customs disappear as well as barriers between truths and lies, information and misinformation, authentic and synthetic content and data. Undeniably, tech platforms have disrupted the fabric of the state-governed world. Finally, states are pushing back by leveraging the last card they hold: the use of force.

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Today, I am unpausing paid subscriptions to Futuristic Lawyer.

My goal for the rest of 2026 is to publish at least one long, high-quality post to paying subscribers each month, while keeping shorter, more spontaneous posts free. You can expect weekly or bi-weekly commentary and analysis of new developments in tech and tech policy, along with deep reflect…

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