Tech regulation raises some of the thorniest questions of our time — about free speech versus hate speech, copyright versus fair use, truth versus manipulation. Yet these debates are increasingly irrelevant unless states can first establish digital sovereignty. Without the will to enforce laws on multinational corporations, “tech regulation” is a dead letter.
Both the EU and the Commonwealth countries have been trying to use regulation to chart a third path between the “laissez faire” of the US and the explicit state control of authoritarian regimes like China. But the shakedowns occasioned by Trump’s unilateral “reciprocal” tariffs demonstrates the pointlessness of these laws without the will to enforce them.