Tech Won't Save Us - Europe is Gutting Its Tech Regulations w/ Aline Blankertz

Episode Date: December 4, 2025

Paris Marx is joined by Aline Blankertz to discuss how right-wing governments and international corporations in the European Union are pushing to gut tech regulations with the goal of boosting AI development in hope of improving economic growth and geopolitical standing. Aline Blankertz is a cofounder of Structural Integrity. Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon. The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Kyla Hewson. Today’s sponsor is ⁠Aura Frames. Exclusive $35 off Carver Mat at https://on.auraframes.com/PARIS. Promo Code PARIS Also mentioned in this episode: Aline wrote about how the sovereignty discussion was progressing at a recent summit in Europe. Aline mentioned an upcoming conference tying together different activist movements that listeners may find interesting: Cables of Resistance. Learn more about the EU’s Digital Omnibus regulation proposal. The Draghi Report examines EU competitiveness. France and Germany are partnering up to utilize AI in public administration Shoutout to the book Vulture Capitalism by Grace Blakeley. Here’s the latest in OpenAI’s ongoing litigation. Macron and Merz spoke out against authoritarianism, in particular calling out a lack of national control over social networks. Some governments are pushing back and disconnecting from US tech giants.

When it is a European company, one benefit would be that it is easier to enforce European law in that case, but at the same time we're rolling back European regulation. The tech we get comes with the very same issues we know already from the US. Hello and welcome to technical and save us made in partnership with The Nation magazine. I'm your host, Paris Marks, and this week my guest is Aline Blankertz. Aline is a co-founder of structural integrity, a group working on radical digital policy and data regulation. Throughout this year, we have been talking a lot about digital sovereignty, about countries trying to reduce their dependence on U.S. technology,

and how that is actually going, right? Whether there is progress to be made here, what this might actually look like in practice. And I figured as we're getting close to the end of the year, it might be good to look in at how that is going in the European Union in particular because, you know, it's such a massive block. It has, I would say, a significant ability to actually move forward on these things if it were serious about it, but also where we see a framing of digital sovereignty by groups that are closer to power, that are influenced by major corporations there that probably doesn't align with the way that we would be thinking about digital sovereignty as many of the listeners of this podcast, and certainly of me in particular.

So I figured it would be a good idea to have Aline back on the show. Of course, she was on the show earlier this year to discuss what we have actually been seeing in the European Union on tech policy over this year as there has been pressure from Donald Trump and the United States, as there has been this push to expand digital sovereignty to get more serious about this. And what that has actually looked like on the political level, right, on the policies that governments are taking. And unfortunately, there is still a lot of focus on deregulation in order to try to build a tech industry that looks a lot like the one that exists in the United States right now, right? That is going to create a lot of value that is going to try to lead on AI or at least be,

you know, a major competitor in the space of AI. And of course, to have a load of massive data centers. But of course, there are also still movements trying to get off of these technologies, trying to propose different ways of doing this. And so I knew that Aline would be able to fill me in on what is going on to give us a pretty realistic perspective of what is happening rather than one that is just trying to make things look really good, right? And unfortunately, the picture is not necessarily the greatest or at best pretty mixed if we're looking at what we've been seeing so far. That doesn't mean that, again, there aren't still opportunities to do something more. But unfortunately, tech policy in the European Union largely

seems to be going in a direction that we wouldn't necessarily want it to go in, in pulling back on the types of things that Europe has been leading on for quite some time now, and that if it wanted to build technology for the public good, to see technology in a different lens, it would probably want to double down on, rather than abandoning just so that companies can roll out products that maybe are going to harm the public of Europe and people using these technologies more broadly. So with that said, I thought that this was a fascinating conversation to dig in how things have been going over in the European Union. Of course, I'm still interested in what is happening in many different parts of the world as these conversations progress,

and those conversations will continue into next year on the show as well. So stay tuned for that. But for now, if you do enjoy this conversation, make sure to leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice. You can share the show on social media or with any friends or colleagues who you think would learn from it. And if you do want to support the work that goes into making tech won't save us every single week so we can keep having these critical in-depth conversations, looking at how digital sovereignty is evolving, and of course allowing you to get ad-free episodes of the show and even stickers if you support at a certain level. You can join supporters like James from Toronto, Haley and Sydney, and Peter from Cape Town in South Africa by going

to patreon.com slash tech won't save us where you can become a supporter as well. Thanks so much and enjoy this week's conversation. Aline, welcome back to Tech Won't Save Us. Hi, thanks for inviting me again. It's always great to speak with you, whether in person over in Germany or on calls like this having you on the show. Last time we talked, we were talking about this digital sovereignty agenda, how it was progressing in Europe at the time. And I feel like as we come up to the end of the year, I think it's probably good to get an update on where things are at at the moment, because obviously, you know, there are certain things that we hope would happen in these discussions and what it's going to look like. And

then there's the reality of how things are actually playing out as they work through, you know, European bureaucracy and as lobbyists get involved in all these sorts of things. So I wonder, just to start us off generally, what you have made of how this discussion around digital sovereignty has progressed over the past year in the European Union. So there are a few aspects worth mentioning, but maybe the overarching theme is that a lot of European policy currently revolves around growth and national security and digital sovereignty has become a part of that. So that trend has continued. Right now, a lot of EU regulation is being revisited with regard to, well, whether it serves those purposes of fostering growth and or national security. And that is actually

quite a shift from a couple of years ago when politicians at least still talked about things like public interest or human-centric design or fairness. Right now, it's all about industrial policy. So the idea that government should decide which sectors should grow. And as we also already touched on last time, there is a lot of support for expanding the military sector and technology is seen as an important area within that. And this is also quite a win for big tech, I would say, because deregulation and growth is something that also benefits them a lot. So yeah, I'm keen to dig into that in more detail. Absolutely. There are like several things there that I immediately want to jump on. And of course, we'll get back to how this

is benefiting, you know, big tech specifically. But the first thing you mentioned that, right, you know, about this kind of effort to innovate this deregulatory agenda, I feel like, and you can correct me if I'm wrong here, but I feel like a lot of this narrative was really propelled by this report from Mario Draghi, I believe it was at the end of last year, right? How has that kind of reshaped these discussions in the European Union? And was this really like a catalyst for this change or were there already people kind of pushing for this change in the agenda and this report served as kind of a useful way to push lawmakers in this direction? I would say the latter. A lot of this has been in the making for a very long time. So maybe just

to use the GDPR as a specific example, frankly, I would say that it was never such a great piece of regulation that many people wanted it to be. So a large part of it was not about ensuring fundamental rights, but also about facilitating a free flow of data within the European Union. So also to facilitate mass commercialization of data. But at the same time, it imposed some burden on companies and some of which might, you know, we can debate whether those specific provisions made sense, some of them are kind of, I would say it's widely acknowledged that they never quite worked, like individual consent, for example, and people from all sides agree on that. But the Draghi report really pushed that into momentum where

now everybody says we need to deregulate. So while that regulation was never perfect to begin with and that romantic perspective of like it never ensured that companies actually worked in the public interest. But now even those guardrails are being attacked very heavily and mostly really from industry actors, both outside of Europe, but also European companies. It's kind of everybody's trying to chip in with ideas of which provisions could be deleted. It's terrible to hear, right? like we can have our criticisms of the regulations how they were and and i want to come back to discussing specifics on that but still to see them eroded is like this is the wrong direction you know it's like

we want them to be strengthened to be improved not to be completely eradicated so the companies can do whatever they want i just wanted to pick up on the other piece of what you were talking about there in your initial answer and then we'll come back to talking about this deregulatory push and what we're seeing there but the other piece is the military piece which i think is actually really important and i feel like One thing that I have been seeing from the Canadian side is, and I feel like there are definitely echoes of this in Europe as well, where on the one hand, because of the increasing unreliance of the United States, there's this push to invest more in the military as a result of that. But I also feel like as a result of this kind of pledge to invest 5% of GDP into the military

through NATO, that it feels like governments are trying to find all these different things to like term as military or to like reorient toward military uses so that they can fall under this this kind of goal or this cap. I wonder like what you're seeing on the military side of this and how tech is them being, you know, kind of repositioned in that way as well. Many governments are also drumming up a lot of support for more military mass mobilization. So it doesn't feel like they're trying to term as much as possible military investment. but they're actually keen to bring in a lot of sectors and get them to somehow also indirectly benefit from this military push. So the kind of push against or even the debate about, well, is this 5% what we want?

How do we think about the future alliance with the US? How should the EU react to that? There isn't really much debate happening still. but for example, even in the health sector, like also hospitals are being promised money in order to get ready for war, really. And so even they don't really push back because, well, in the short term, it means money and it means money that then goes into infrastructure that is best serves in a case of actual conflict rather than ensuring a long-term prosperous life for everyone also in peace times.

So it's really quite all-encompassing. And I think politicians are kind of trying to not have too much debate about it, but get as many people on board as possible. I think you've put that so well. And I just specifically on the tech side of things, how are we seeing this being kind of brought into this broader remilitarization agenda that we're seeing all these governments pursue at the moment. So quite recently there was a French-German summit on digital sovereignty. And for example, there was one panel that dealt with militarization to quite some extent. And there was an army general

basically explaining, you know, how this tech works. And also the kind of new European champions for the battlefield, like Helsing and also Andriel and others are being seen as the future. And even looking at Palantir, I mean, there was one person from Palantir who was actually present at the summit with a different affiliation. But there, the criticism doesn't go against kind of Palantir as a business model, but it's about the problem is still being seen as Palantir coming from the US. And a lot of people are calling for a volunteer to be built in Europe. So, yeah, a lot of investment.

Yeah, like completely the wrong way to see it, right? Like, it's not like, wow, this is a really terrible company and the way that they're approaching these things is not something that we should pursue in Europe, but rather like, how can we just have our own? And it feels like that echoes so much of the rest of this debate that we're seeing. You know, you talk about this summit, right, as we're seeing it play out in the higher levels of like the political debates

in Europe, it feels increasingly like it's, you know, the orientation is much more, how do we build our own version of this thing that exists in Silicon Valley in the United States, rather than questioning the fundamentals that have created a lot of these problems in the first place with these companies, which goes back to what you're saying about this kind of deregulatory agenda and all this in the first place, right? Yes, I couldn't agree more. Well, maybe you can tell us a bit about how that is playing out, right? you know, how you're seeing this effort from these political leaders, you know, again, you mentioned the summit, you know, how they are positioning the kind of future of the European tech industry and how they're looking to build it through deregulation, but also the kind of broader framing that they're setting up here.

One of the announcements that maybe makes this clearest is that Germany and France both agreed that they want to invest in frontier AI development. so they're still very much following this narrative of an AI race and also the GDPR changes are mainly intended to enable AI training so they really want to embark on this what I would say is a race to the bottom to lead in climate destruction and to lead an attack on workers' rights and it's also very much framed by those few US companies And I think it's important to emphasize that this frontier AI approach is, for example, quite different from the Chinese version of it, because Chinese companies are currently releasing more and more open source, or at least open weight models. So they're less interested in monetization, but actually might undermine U.S. profitability even more than is already the problem.

So if we just kind of look at the role of Europe in the current AI bubble, I think it's important to emphasize that, well, a lot of people observers like Golden Sachs, J.P. Morgan, the economist, have for over a year been flagging the concerns about an AI bubble. But this is not mentioned at all, for example, at the summit. But everybody sees generative AI still as the only way forward. what's important then to consider is that, well, the U.S. government has pushed this a lot with it, for example, it's a Stargate initiative where it actually encouraged a lot of private money to go into this, but at some point that will dry up. And what those companies are doing right now is they are looking for new sources of income, and that's where European governments come in very handy. So they know, like Big Tech knows, European governments care about sovereignty and national security. So if you can make them believe that AI will get them there, they're going to put everything on the AI card as well. And that makes sure that this bubble, well, doesn't deflate

as soon. And especially even if it's, or once it deflates, you get more people willing to chip in and rescue them because if that AI is part of the public administration, part of the military, like they can't afford that to fail. And a lot of European actors, companies are involved in that as well. So France and Germany announced a partnership by French Mistral and German SAP to use AI in the public administration. And that's bad for a variety of reasons. Like, I would say it's the completely wrong approach to digitizing public services because it undermines accountability. But irrespective of that, like, we know that this AI paradigm has been shaped by big tech.

I mean, our common friends, Cecilia Ricab, she has great papers showing that Google, Amazon and Microsoft have all been very carefully planning the AI development trajectory to be compatible with their research agenda by capturing. both academic research and start-ups. So there's really no meaningful debate about the future of technology is just AI, AI, AI, AI, and then maybe some quantum, which is always kind of five years in the future. And on top of that, I think there are some hopes around, like, once the AI bubble starts to deflate, it will get easier.

And if you read, for example, Grace Blake's, Volta Capitalism, it's very clear that, usually it's the biggest companies that benefit the most from crisis. So I think, yeah, European governments are in for a right. And it's still kind of, to some extent, avoidable. But, yeah, there are no signs of them wanting to push back against those narratives. Yeah, it's like the completely wrong direction, right? And even in Canada, we hear the prime minister always talking about the need to invest in AI and quantum. So, like, you know, that narrative is here as well.

But even when you talk about like how the European Union and how France and Germany are really behind this kind of model of AI development that comes out of the United States, it brings me back to when J.D. Vance was in Europe. I believe it was back in February. He spoke at the Munich Security Conference and pissed a lot of people off there. But then he was also at the AI Forum or whatever it was called him in Paris. And like explicitly said that Europe would always be secondary to the United States on AI because of course, you know, France was trying to present itself as this, like, third node in kind of the AI fight between the United States and China. But it's like if, you know, if Europe is serious about doing this whole AI thing, and it's just aligning within the European paradigm and is not even, you know, trying to do something different, trying to do something distinct, you know, challenging the model that comes out of there by trying to do something that's like supposedly more aligned with European values, whatever that means today, you know, then it's not really going to get anywhere, is it? Well, I mean, it's going to go in a direction where it maintains and further summons

its dependence, even if there might be some more European companies that might also benefit from that. But kind of collectively, on a societal level, it well, contributes to making all these harms even worse, for the environment, for workers, for a global inequality, all these things you're very regularly discussing on the show, so I don't need to explain them from scratch, I think. Fair enough, fair enough. But I was also struck in reading one of the articles that you wrote that even as there's this talk of digital sovereignty, of gaining greater sovereignty over technology within Europe, obviously the major tech companies have been pushing these notions of sovereign clouds to try to not get kind of kicked out of the

European cloud market. But you also noted that even in Germany, you know, there was this big celebration of a major Google investment in new data centers over there, which just seems completely counter to what supposedly is important in this moment. Can you talk a bit about that and what we're seeing kind of on the cloud front and the investments that are happening there and the discussion of whether to have more sovereign cloud versus the increasing dependence on these U.S. tech firms? I mean, maybe before going into cloud specifically, I'd kind of like briefly take one step back and look at kind of where does Europe stand, be the US because I think it's important to bear in mind that also Europe is quite divided

and there is still I mean since we last spoke this far right turn has become much worse so in the last two weeks we we've seen the center of right party the EPP partnering up twice already with fascist parties to water down rules for sustainability and this is at the at European Union level, right? Yes, exactly. There is a lot of, well, a lack of coherence about actually where Europe, if, you know, whatever that means, wants to go.

And especially within those far-right parties, it's a, well, I would say fairly dynamic situation because some of them used to be closer to Russia, for example. Now they are kind of making their peace with NATO increasingly. And overall, there's still a lot of hesitation to push back against the U.S. too much because Europe is just so exposed economically to the U.S. So those tariffs hurt some countries quite badly and Germany is very much at the front there because they just export so much. So that's why, for example, at this summit, there was also a lot of emphasis on like we want to keep the door open. for U.S. companies, and they also threw out in this deregulatory push, for example,

there was a lot of discussion previously about, for example, having more asymmetric regulation, which would mean stricter rules and or stricter enforcement against large players, but none of that actually materialized. And instead, as you mentioned, there's this weird way which tries to marry, up different approaches, which will be incompatible at some point, where the German vice chancellor goes with Google to happily welcome their data center. But then you have those European companies building data centers still within that very same paradigm. So one big player which was present at the summit as well is Schwartz Digits.

the founder is the richest or second richest person in Germany, you know? So it's like, it's not Jeff Bezos, but it's not quite, you know, coming from a paradigm of let's do things differently. So also in Europe, what we're seeing is a certain degree of pushback against some of that. So also in Heilbronn in Germany, like where Schwarz is particularly active. There are some protests in Portugal. It's actually very acute because there is a lot of data center construction, which, I mean, like in North America, is creating a huge drain on the energy and water grids. And people are very concerned that they will actually have to pay the bill for that tech expansion, even if some European companies might be

involved in that. But it's actually a huge, like, we're still very far away from kind of collectively deciding how much, for example, compute infrastructure is necessary and how much of that we want as a society. Yeah, exactly. And especially if you're pursuing this model of tech development and, you know, of AI and generative AI development specifically that is oriented along the lines of the United States. And that means, you know, this continued mass expansion of computation, regardless of whether the public is really benefiting from that at the end of the day and it you know as you say in a lot of places are actually feeling significant costs as a result of that of that build out you know the draw from energy the the draw from water and and things like

that i wanted to pick up on what you were saying initially because i'm really happy that that you brought up the the political dimension here as well right and i was wondering if you could you could talk a little bit more of that because i feel like if you're just initially thinking about it and you think okay the you know the far right is getting more involved in these discussions you know you would think of the far right as being like, you know, quite nationalist, right? And focused on the national borders. And, you know, you mentioned, of course, some of them are getting more okay with the notion of NATO and stuff. You know, we see that from, say, the Italian Prime Minister, Georgia Maloney, and how she has really kind of shifted on these questions, but many of the other ones have as well.

But I guess, you know, if they are getting involved in these debates, you would initially imagine that they would kind of want more European companies to be involved in this stuff and to be less reliant on foreign actors in American companies, you know, just thinking about the kind of general notion that you would expect from the way that these people talk. So I guess what are we seeing in the different kind of political dimensions of this debate around digital sovereignty and technology within Europe, you know, from the far right, but also from other other aspects of the political spectrum, I guess. For a lot of these parties, digital sovereignty is not quite top of mind and like a lot of them are actually even trying to you know so even in

Germany for example the AFD has some leading politicians that are very friendly with Putin and others who are very friendly with Trump and you know this will this works right now but at some point it will they need to actually make certain decisions which will then mean they you know they can't be friends with authoritarians all over the globe I'm sure they'll still try to be friends with Elon Musk either way, though, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, no doubt about that. There is a lot of incoherence and, yeah, but they're actually pretty good at finding kind of quite pragmatic alliances, I would say. So sometimes they are more concerned, you know, about their national economies.

And at the same time, like they don't want to risk tariffs and they're actually quite, fine as long as European companies do okay and kind of can grow at a similar pace at the US. Something that is quite clear is that they do buy into this narrative of this is about domination and coercion and we need to be stronger in that. So they certainly are fueling those narratives about wars and militarization, even though some of them actually currently position themselves as against the war between, you know, Ukraine and Russia. So it's a complicated setting that they are maneuvering. And the far right likes to present itself one way, but how it acts in practice is always a little bit different than that, right? You know,

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I was wondering as well, do we see much focus on this from the more left-wing side of the spectrum in, say, the European Parliament, but European politics more generally? Are they more engaged on these issues? Or is it still something that is hard to get traction in discussions with those parties as well? They are not particularly vocal, I would say, and they are actually trying to foster very broad alliances. And I think they are still trying to figure out a way of, well, for example, deal with the EPP drifting further to the right. So they're not trying to create a completely different agenda

or kind of an alternative. It's really more about them trying to be selective about what to deregulate. Yeah, so maintain some regulation, maintain some public interest perhaps, but we don't see any kind of big counterproposals to what Merz and Macron, for example, are presenting. Yeah, that's fair enough. It's unfortunate, but, you know, maybe it's not wholly surprising. I wanted to pivot a little bit because you were talking about the relationship to the United States right? And I feel like this is something that, you know, was obviously driving a lot of these discussions about digital sovereignty.

But I feel like we've also seen conflicting discussions of how to approach that within Europe, right? You know, so for example, there was a lot of criticism a few months ago when Ursula von der Leyen sat with Donald Trump agreed to this supposed trade agreement or trade deal or whatever we want to call it. And it looked like a real capitulation on the side of, you know, Europe and the European Union. And, you know, as you've been talking about, there's still a lot of kind of major U.S. tech companies very involved in Europe and things like that. But then on the other side, I feel like we have seen some regulators on the European level come out and say that, you know, we should have more hostile stance. We should not always be giving in to demands. And then, of course, I believe we saw this letter come from a number of European parliamentarians recently saying that the European Union should be moving forward on getting off of, U.S. technology and focusing on getting off of Microsoft specifically. So I wonder what you see on kind of both sides of that and how this debate is actually playing out kind of tangibly with how the government approaches this issue. What we've seen very recently is this digital omnibus, which, as I said, rolls back regulation for everyone and is very likely to benefit

big tech to a large extent. But there are other regulations which are more controversial right now. So, for example, the Digital Markets Act and the Digital Services Act, they are already pieces of asymmetric regulation where kind of bigger companies do have more responsibilities. And, well, those bigger companies tend to be U.S. companies. And that's why the U.S. government frames everything as an illegitimate tariff. And the EU is still kind of trying to find an adequate answer to that. I mean, if you ask, like, who's actually currently imposing erratic tariffs, the answer is clearly Trump, right? But we are in a post-consistency world. So just pointing out that Trump is not consistent, like, is completely meaningless. Because as I said, this is all

about dominance and coercion. Another discussion which might be worth mentioning as kind of not taking place or is about something that is an anti-coercion instrument, which has actually been designed at the EU level again, kind of for exactly this kind of situation where the European Parliament could impose tariffs or reduce IP protection, things like that, to protect themselves against a hostile foreign agent, but this is not happening. They're only discussing this vis-à-vis China. So with regard to moving away from big tech, it's all like this theme which is coming through, I guess, is kind of, it's a little bit of tiptoeing, kind of trying to do a little bit, but not too much.

That's also happening there and governments are really struggling with finding a consistent approach at the different levels. Because, for example, in Germany, a lot of those decisions are being made at, you know, even a city level. Then you have the national levels and then you have the EU level. A lot of those discussions now revolve around procurement and about favoring EU companies. So that's basically money that the governments are spending anyway. But also their kind of national interests come into play. And there is a question of like, should this be European companies first? or should national governments also be allowed to favor, you know, national companies?

A lot of this is still very much work in progress. Yeah, and I'm sure then there's a discussion of like whether preferencing certain companies, whether it's national or European kind of gets in or kind of like goes against certain trade agreements or things like that that have been signed and whether it's okay to continue. Like we see this whole thing in Canada as well, right? you know, a greater focus on having Canadian companies in public procurement and all this sort of thing. Like, you know, I'm sure a much broader discussion, there's a few things that I wanted to pick up on from your answer. But I guess, you know, when we're looking at these European companies,

as you were saying before, you know, if there's this focus on buying European or buying national as part of these procurement processes, are those European companies really wholly different from the types of companies that, you know, we're dealing with anyway? Or, you know, are they just tending to favor companies that are doing virtually the same thing, rather than really taking a wholly different type of approach in how to do this sort of thing, right? And I imagine it's unfortunately the former, right? Yeah, I mean, just coming back to the cloud example, Schwartz digits build the same type of data center. It's also about, they also, you know, use extractivism to make profits. Everybody's calling for more capital market integration.

to get more investment across Europe. There's also a lot of hope being put into startups, which, you know, again, ignores how hugely dependent the entire startup ecosystem is on big tech infrastructure. So often you get big tech products with EU packaging, like German SAP works with Google. But even when it's, when it is a European company, One benefit would be that it is easier to enforce European law in that case, but at the same time we're rolling back European regulation.

The tech we get comes with the very same issues we know already from the U.S. The deregulation is the other piece that I wanted to pick up on, right, to talk about some of these laws specifically. You mentioned earlier the GDPR and changes that are happening to that, but there's also this AI Act that, you know, has been moving through the European Parliament and whatnot. So what are we seeing on that front? You know, what are we seeing with the tangible changes to the GDPR? What is that going to mean in practice? And what about this AI Act? Is it actually coming into force? You know, what is going on there? On the GDPR, I mean, it's often very much, you know, the devil's in the detail and how it plays out in practice is tricky to summarize. Because, I mean, yes, of course, there is a lot of not super straightforward

with European regulation, and one can criticize that regulation could be less complex, and oftentimes policymakers try to think about or anticipate a lot of exemptions and how they need to be addressed as well. So as I said, in the GDPR, there are a lot of exemptions now for AI training. But on top of that, for example, the very definition of what is considered personal data does not depend on the data itself anymore, but does depend on who holds that data. So who can infer how much. So that means actually it will get a lot harder to determine, or there will be a lot of arguments for companies to make that the data they're holding is not actually personal

data. And also, for example, for health data, the scope is becoming a lot narrower. So there are extra provisions because it's considered particularly sensitive data. So the scope of that is being reduced extensively. On the AI Act, I must admit I'm not an expert on the Act in its entirety. So it's currently being delayed again. And also kind of companies were asked quite openly kind of which provisions they released happy with. So it's like, okay, send us a list of provisions you don't like. And then we, I don't know,

is this a poll? So there are various changes in there to make it harder, for example, to designate something as high risk. The devil's in the detail. But overall, it is really a gift to the AI industry on both sides of the Atlantic to say we should first innovate and then we can see what of that we really need to regulate. Whereas previously people said, well, we should regulate so we get the kind of innovation we want. Which makes sense, right? Instead of letting these companies run roughshod and then trying to clean up the mess later, like we're seeing with, you know, how Open AI is in court right now because chat GPT has been helping people commit suicide and even pushing them to do so, right? And it's like there are so many consequences of these technologies

that have not been properly dealt with. And these companies are just being allowed to roll them out into our societies. Then a bunch of people have to feel the costs of that, you know, because as you say, we're letting them innovate, quote unquote, so to speak. But that innovation or, you know, what they consider innovation has some really harmful consequences when they are not thinking about those sorts of things, right? Which is why that regulation is so important, right? Because we need to think about what affects these technologies should be having in our society rather than just letting the companies decide all on their own. And it's very frustrating to me, as I'm sure it is for you. I share that 100%. And I mean, I would say regulation should be the minimum in certain areas.

we should also consider, you know, to take more seriously this notion of democratization there was once promised to come through the internet. And actually, you know, which has never really materialized, but what we see instead is kind of concentration all along the way and kind of anti-democratic movements, finding it's best to use the technology we have right now, which is, well, a problem. Oh, but Aline, I don't think you realize that generative AI actually democratizes creativity and writing. So we already have all this. Yes, yes, exactly. And it allows everybody kind of to bring up post-truth narratives where it just gets impossible to understand what actually happens. How are we going to have a democratic debate in that environment? It's

just getting harder and harder. Yeah, it's such a wonderful world that they've created. But it's actually really interesting. As you bring that up, it brings to mind the speech that Emmanuel Macron gave in Germany, I believe it was what, a month, month and a half ago at this kind of celebration or anniversary of German reunification. And he was talking about how kind of letting these companies roll out with the model that they have has undermined the European project because, you know, there's so much kind of false information being spread around and, you know, that's affecting the European political debate and pushing things to extremes. And it's like, on the one hand, you hear something like that. And you're like, okay, you know,

this makes some sense, right? We should be reigning in these companies. We should be reigning in the model of tech development that they have set up. But then on the other hand, as you've been saying, we see Emmanuel Macron trying to make France, this AI leader. And, you know, it's basically like let the companies do what they want to do or let European companies do the exact same thing and incentivize them to do so. And it just seems like the rhetoric and the actual policy is not aligned at all. Yeah. And also, So, you know, also different policy actions are not aligned at all. But as I said, kind of a lack of consistency is not a relevant criticism right now.

They feel they need to cater to different constituencies and the companies are coming through very much. And then the best we can hope for is that, well, we should also somehow protect our children with, you know, concepts that really don't work at all. there is no coherent approach. Yeah, it is wild. Totally. And I know that the kind of age limit on social media is moving its way through the European legislative process at the moment. I believe they agreed to like a 16-year age recently and we'll see how that progresses, you know, just to pick up on what you're saying there, right? The other piece, the other kind of set of regulations that you brought up are the Digital Services and Digital Markets Act, are these being watered down as well? Or are these

one's kind of still sticking around in the form that they had before? It is an ongoing struggle, so there have been various attacks on them, and then it took a lot of back and forth within different governments and then within the European Union to get everybody together like, no, actually we shouldn't water them down. I think this has happened two or three times already, and now also just last week, the German minister for the economy was asked whether those would be up for negotiation again, and then all of a sudden she said yes again. And everyone was like, what? How did that happen? So at least as long as Trump is in power, I feel all of this will require a lot of defensive action to not be completely watered down.

Even if, you know, some European companies come out in favor of them, it actually needs to be a very broad front. And even then, like, we don't know. Yeah, kind of like constant vigilance against these things, right? Because the pressure from the United States is constant. I wanted to pivot because, you know, obviously we've been talking more broadly about the regulations and about this effort for deregulation, but we are also seeing some efforts to look at trying to move off of these U.S. tech services, right? I know when we were talking, you mentioned Munich. I remember seeing some stories about some cities in Denmark that were doing something similar. I've read about state governments, certain state governments in Germany that we're trying to move off

of some of these services over in France. We see this initiative called La Suite Numeric, which I believe has cooperation with Germany and the Netherlands. We've recently saw a story about the international criminal court, getting off of Microsoft products after the sanctions against the court and, you know, members of the court by the United States. So I wonder what you're seeing there in the actual effort to try to get off of these services and how that has been going. for some of these organizations and governments that have been trying to make these moves. I think Munich is a very interesting example because this fight hasn't been on since yesterday, but actually they started to want to move away from Microsoft back in 2003.

And actually they started to do so. Well, they wanted to switch away from Windows, so the Microsoft operating system to Linux, to avoid escalating license costs. So this is not a new issue. And they finished that transition in 2012. Then following that, Microsoft actually moved their offices to Munich and started to pay taxes there. And there was a lot of political back and forth about like,

oh, now it's cheaper, maybe we should go back to Microsoft. And then, yes, in 2017, the Munich city government decided to switch. back to Microsoft Office. And since then, it's been in a limbo. And I think what's important here to illustrate that any wins currently are really temporary as long as big tech is as powerful as it is. So all of these moves away,

they require a long-term political commitment to do something different. As we also briefly discussed earlier, is that this challenge that digitization is so much captured by big tech means that a lot of governments and institutions currently understand it as, you know, put it on the cloud and run some AI on it without any deeper understanding of the purposes that digitization should fulfill. So, I mean, in theory, you could enhance government transparency, increase accountability,

facilitate participation, but a lot of these local and national governments actually lack the resources to even understand what they are buying. And that is a huge concern. I mean, this is, you know, dating back to Thatcher and new public management, which is about, well, you know, the state doesn't need to do much. They just need to buy from the right company. So that is a serious resource constraint in managing the move of big tech. Munich is still an interesting example because we see a bigger push for open source.

there again also schleswig holstein which is this german land which is kind of a good example there they actually pursue a reasonable approach because they don't go straight to well we use AI and then it's done but they actually think about changing processes so they get structured data which allows them to still have this level of government accountability and transparency at least in the background to make sure that, well, you don't just throw an AI at unstructured data. In one case, you get a, for the very same application, you get a, yes, you're eligible for this benefit, and then next time you get a no, right? It requires governments to think more deeply about how to use digital services and not

to listen so much to, you know, the accentious and McKinsey's of this world, who will just tell them to, yes, do buy from big tech or use the local contestant. But yes, as you said, there are encouraging local examples, which are small steps in a good direction, but having a more long-term vision of how those institutions should look differently and how they should technology for the benefit of their citizens, that vision is, well, not as well developed as some people would like it to be. The example of Munich that you give is fascinating, though, right, to actually make the move and then start to roll it back because Microsoft locates the office there.

Part of you has to imagine that maybe that was part of the goal. Like, you know, they choose Munich in order to try to reverse this key example of a government, like, getting off of its services to show, like, no, everyone should stay on Microsoft and not try something different, you know. I think they were really concerned about Munich setting a precedent. So there is no question. Like, actually, the CEO back then flew to Munich specifically to negotiate with them a cheaper contract for Microsoft services. So, yes. And in that case, we have that information. When can only guess what's happening behind closed doors. Yeah, but it's not surprising either, right? Like, of course, it would want to keep this control over all these governments. And I think that the point you made

about Thatcher, you know, going all the way back to that is so important, right? Because I feel like that shapes a lot of, at least how I see what has happened here, where you have effectively had governments hand this stuff over to the private sector based on these political narratives that the government should not be involved in developing these technologies or what have you. And then that leads us to this degree of dependence on these major, in this case, US tech companies that control all of these infrastructures instead of, say, having a national agency in Germany that is dedicated to developing the technologies that, sure, the national government, but also say state or local governments could use that as well, right?

you know for the running of government the running of local schools like hospitals like whatever you know what is it that you need okay we'll develop it and then it works for all of these institutions across the country and that could even be kind of shared or you know kind of done collaboratively with other countries as well it's like this seems like a you know a whole different model based on a whole different set of values that also doesn't set you up to need to pay all these licensing fees all the time but it's like the companies like you saw in munich would fight tooth and nail against this, and our governments just unfortunately don't seem to have the will to actually try to push it forward.

Yes, I agree. And it is tricky. I mean, in the U.S., what we had there was actually like some, well, quite centralized, effective digitization. And that's why Doge was so effective at destroying a lot of, you know, democratically controlled digital infrastructure. So I do see arguments about like how do you set it up? So it's once you get far right or fascist politicians in control that it always takes a lot longer to build things up than to tear them down. But we have other ways of managing that and having checks and balances, which wouldn't require us to, you know, just rely on a private sector.

We know that they're accountable to their shareholders and not to the wider public. And I feel like a key piece of this as we round off our conversation, you know, if we're thinking about what that other alternative looks like is to think more about open source and to think more about the digital commons. Can you talk to us a little bit about that and what it would look like to think about, you know, these technologies and these systems in a different way, whether it is on the government level or just thinking about the technologies that say are used in Europe more generally if we were basing them more off of this form of development rather than relying on, you know, these massive private tech. companies that, as you were just saying, have a very different set of incentives than the ones that I think we would want, right? If you allow me, I have a fairly cautionary note on open source, because also their big tech has a big role to play. So if you just compare proprietary software to an open source equivalent, I would say open

source is better, it's less centralized, it's more transparent. But what we see right now is that a lot of the open source ecosystem has been absorbed into the big tech business model. And it can also be a competitive weapon. The latest with Microsoft's acquisition of GitHub, it's been, you know, become quite apparent that there is a very strong financial interest. But maybe I think Google Android makes this even more clear. So Google decided to make its mobile operating system. system, open source. And what it did thereby was to prevent any other player from entering the market.

What Google could do, because it is so big and it monetizes somewhere else, it could use Android as a vehicle for, for example, its Play Store to then charge commissions and to pre-install its ad-driven services. So kind of made sure it's a monopoly at that level, open source. and on top of that it also allows it to set standards as Microsoft does in office software and also to use free labor because a lot of people just like open source and developers dedicate their free time to it. So I think we need to just be mindful of that when we think about how open source fits into the answer of an alternative future. I think if we want to use

sovereignty in a positive sense, we should really ask for more than moving off big tech and we need to ask for technology that serves people that allows for good life for all and that requires recognizing that those promises about democratization just never materialized and we I think that's where we need to start and what we need to change I don't have the full answer to how exactly to do it differently but I mean if I can mention some of the efforts that are going on, there is a group of people bringing together different movements, for example, to a conference next year in Berlin, where we are trying to bring in climate activists, labor movements, also local initiatives, to think about how we can most productively combine

those different perspectives. And I think that's really important to develop a more comprehensive counterproposal because I think a lot of times what we end up with is, like we fix one issue and ignore the others, and then we find that those suggestions don't really work. And I think that's the way kind of through collaboration, through cooperation and democratization, bottom up how we can develop this alternative vision. I don't think it will ever be perfect and flawless, and it's very difficult to move away from where we are right now. But I think we really need ways of really still conceiving technology in a different way where certainly, you know, those mainstream political debates do not offer the room to do that. I completely agree, obviously, right?

I think we definitely need that. And I can put information on the conference that you mentioned in the show notes if you have a link so people can go check that out. Yeah, I think that will be, you know, a great kind of effort to bring these conversations together. to try to chart things in a different direction as these debates continue, right? They're not going anywhere. Donald Trump is not going anywhere. The pressure from these American tech companies is not going anywhere. And we need to be aware of what is going on there.

Aline, it's been really great to get your insights to get a catch-up on what has been going on in Europe, you know, as we're seeing these developments unfold. Unfortunately, often not in the direction that we would want them to go. But I really appreciate you taking the time to come back on the show. Thank you so much, Paris. Aline Blankertz is a co-founder of structural integrity. Tech Won't Save Us is made in partnership with the Nation magazine and is hosted by me, Paris Marks. Production is by Kyla Houston.

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