3#20 - Ingrid Aukrust Rones - EU Policies, Big Tech, and Global Geopolitics (Eng)

«We can get lost in politics, when what we should be discussing is policy.»

In this seasons final episode, we’re thrilled to have Ingrid Aukrust Rones, a policy expert with a rich background in the European Commission and Nordheim Digital, shed light on the role of the global geopolitical landscape in shaping digital policies.

Explore with us the dominant influence of big tech from the US to China, and how the EU's regulatory approach aims to harmonize its single market while safeguarding privacy and democracy. Ingrid breaks down the contrasting digital policies of these regions and discusses how the EU's legislative actions are often driven by member states' initiatives to ensure market cohesion. We also chart the historical shifts in digital policy and market regulations from the 1980s to the present, highlighting key moments like China's WTO entry and the introduction of GDPR.

Lastly, we delve into the future landscape of digital societies and the challenges nation-states face within the context of Web3. Ingrid emphasizes the concentration of power in big tech and its potential threat to democracy, while also lauding the EU’s robust regulatory measures like the Digital Markets Act and the Digital Services Act.

Here are my key takeaways:
Geopolitics

• our security, economy, the national and international system relies on data.
• How data is collected, stored, protected, used, transferred, retained.. happens as much across boarders as within.
• Data Strategy on this geopolitical level is about creating a digital autonomy, not being reliant on big international enterprises, but for our political system to stay sovereign
• US is based on a liberal, free market model that is very innovation friendly.
• China is based on a very controlled environment, with limited access to their domestic market. Incubation of local companies, shield from global competition.
• The EU is setting the regulatory standard. Freedom is balanced with other values, like fairness or democracy.
• We need to talk about the role that big tech has on the global scene.
• Geopolitical impact on digital policies.
• Ingrid has a role between policy and business, coordinating and finding opportunities between both.
• EU has set the global standard in how we could deal with data and AI from a regulatory perspective.
• Politics are the decisions we make to set the direction for society.
• «Policy is the plan and implementation of what is decided through politics.»
• Cultural differences influence how we perceive, utilize and establish global policies, but also how we work with data in a global market.
• We have an issue if we only think in 4-5 year election cycles for tackling long term issues.

The EU

• Regulation is the biggest tool the EU has.
• «We are always in competition with technology, because technology develops so fast, and legislation develops so slowly.»
• You can see a change in responsibility for enforcement of EU rules and regulations, where implementation is moved from national responsibility to EU responsibility.
• The EU system is not any easy system to understand from the outside.

The rise of Big Tech

• We can go back to the anti-trust laws from the 1980s that opened for much more monopolistic behavior.
• The rise of the internet had a large influence on big tech.
• The liability shield was a prerequisite for social media platforms to gain traction.
• Big tech has created dependency for other organizations due to eg. their infrastructure offerings.
• We need to be aware of that concentration of power in the market.
• Big Tech is not just leading but also regulating the development of the market.
• Bigger companies that are competing with Big Tech, feel their influence and size the most.

Transcript

Geopolitical Impact on Digital Policies

Speaker 1 0:00

This is Metadema, a holistic view on data management in the Nordics. Welcome, my name is Winfried and thanks for joining me for this episode of Metadema. Our vision is to promote data management as a profession in the Nordics, show the competencies that we have, and that is the reason I invite Nordic experts in data and information management for a talk. Welcome to this season's last episode of MetaDema. As always, we finish off our podcast seasons with a bit of a deeper view into maybe a more political topic. So today we're going to talk about the geopolitical impact on digital policies.

Speaker 1 0:55

That is a topic that really touches in on our security, our economy, our national international system, which very much relies on data economy, our national international system, which very much relies on data, and therefore data is vital, a building block for our society to actually function, and that requires both strategy, that requires governance, that requires policies and, ultimately, trust. So how we collect, store, protect, use, transfer, retain data. That happens very much within, but also across national borders, and there are national differences and cultural differences that we need to take into account also when we work with data on that level. So there is a meme that went around when the AI Act was ratified that said, basically USA innovates, china replicates and Europe regulates, and this shows very much that cultural difference that we actually handle and deal with. So data strategy on that geopolitical level is about creating a digital autonomy, so not being reliant on big international enterprises, but for our political systems to actually stay sovereign. And it's a huge topic to cover, but thankfully I have an expert on the call today. Welcome, ingrid.

Speaker 2 2:20

Thank you, winfred, it's really nice to be here. Thank you. Thanks for letting me be on the season finale for this important topic.

Speaker 1 2:27

Well, fantastic to have you on, so please feel free to introduce yourself.

Speaker 2 2:32

Yeah, so hi everyone. My name is Ingrid Orquist-Rohn and I'm a Norwegian, but I've spent the majority of my career abroad, so I've mainly been a bit in Norway, but I've been mainly in London and in Brussels. And I've been working in policy for about more than the last decade, generally focused on what we call the creative industry, so very IP based industries, and until the last year I was in the European Commission. But now I'm in the private sector and I'm working for a Norwegian consultancy called Nordheim Digital. So in Nordheim we work on the digital transformation, but we give strategic advice on things that are at the intersection of law, tech and policy, and these three areas are really becoming more and more interconnected.

Speaker 2 3:24

It's kind of the monster that moves the digital transformation. You know you can't do anything on AI unless you're following the GDPR, unless you're dealing with bias via equality laws, and you also have to deal with the technology. So we're sort of at the intersection of that, trying to move companies forward, and my role sits somewhere in between kind of business and policy, and that's also, coincidentally, where I am the happiest when I can deal with both sides. So it's looking at what's happening in the world and how businesses, especially in working in digital, how they can navigate the policy landscape of what will happen in the next 5, 10, 20 years.

Speaker 1 4:06

So really the right person to talk to about this topic. So what are you doing when you're not at work? Not working with policies? What are your hobbies?

Speaker 2 4:15

So I love that question because one of the things that I love doing, which I feel defines my personality, is that I really like eating delicious food, which means that you know to do that that you generally have to be good at cooking. So I spend a lot of time in the kitchen making making good food. I've you know, I said I've lived a lot internationally, so I have a lot of friends from all around the world and I love talking to people about what their culture is and and what, and cooking together, and then I'm I do work out and all the kind of typical Norwegian things. But the one thing that I spend a lot of time with my partner, who is a screenwriter for film, so we watch a lot of series and we eat good food and watch series and I try and tell him not to spoil the ending of things because he'll always understand what's happening. That's what I do when I talk to policy. Eating good food, drinking wine and discussing policy is also. Yeah, I'll be that way.

Speaker 1 5:12

Yeah, I think I have had some of the best food experiences in my life in Brussels, so there's so many great places to go. So you're lucky living there. So the entire interest for the policy work and the European Union as a system, where does it come from for you?

Speaker 2 5:29

Well, it comes from this creative perspective really. So I've had a bit of an interesting journey in that I started out in the creative industries in London, really working with the people there and understanding that to safeguard that industry you have to safeguard IP, you have to work in policy, and that's how I entered into policy. Then, in the last four or five years, working in digital policy in the heart of the EU at this time where the European Commission has really rewritten the digital rulebook. I don't know what led me here in that sense, but it's been an interesting journey to come here and now work in this field.

Speaker 1 6:10

Interesting. I think for many people there is a certain distance to what's happening in Brussels or in the EU. It just feels like it's not really touching my everyday life, but it actually does on so many different levels. Me as well as you are really interested in what's happening on the EU level because it has so much potential also to change things, not just for one state but for an entire region, right.

Speaker 2 6:34

So, when it comes to digital policy and the EU, I think EU has really set this global standard in how we can deal with and we're talking about data here, but data privacy, gdpr it did set the global standard. It did change the world, and Brussels can sometimes have a reputation as being dry and boring, but it is somewhere where we do something that is the first in the world, first with the GDPR and now Digital Services Act, digital Markets Act so it does feel like you are at the center of what is happening.

Speaker 1 7:07

So, before we dive into the main topic itself, I think we should get some background. There's some mechanisms in geopolitics that are quite interesting to understand, and first I think we need to start with the difference between politics on the one side and policy on the other side. How would you describe that difference?

Speaker 2 7:24

Thanks for that question. I think it's a really important differentiation to make, because when we talk about politics, we talk about the activities that we do to set the direction that society goes in, and that's a really important part of the democratic process. Winfried, you might say, okay, I want to go to the left, straight left, and I say, hey, I want to go right, and somehow we are politics. We end up probably going forward. Policy, on the other hand, that's the plan and the implementation of what is decided through politics. So when we start walking straight forward, it's how do we do that? Where do we go?

Speaker 2 8:04

So policy is not always as entertaining as politics can be, but to me, it's really where they impact it and we have different areas in policy. It's health policy, foreign policy, security and what we're talking about, which is digital policy, and it's both of these things, politics and policy. It's it's connected, but I do sometimes miss in the media that there can be a lot of talk about politics, and sometimes that's really important because we need to hold our politicians to account but there's less of a focus on the actual policy, and I think that is particularly important now in the global election year, where sometimes we get a bit lost in the politics of things, when what we should be discussing is policy.

Speaker 1 8:47

Very much so, and especially when we see the election in the US ramping up Exactly. And then we are in the middle of the who is who in geopolitics. Really, what are the key and the important players that we have to know?

Global Geopolitics of Big Tech

Speaker 2 9:01

I think, depending on what area you come from, you'll probably respond to that question a little bit differently. But when we're talking about tech policy, well, it's called tech policy and digital policy. Those terms are used. So when you talk about geopolitics in digital policy, normally you'd look at the US and China, but we also have the EU has a really important role to play here, and I think that we should. When we talk about geopolitics, it's easy to talk about nation states. That's where our mind goes, but I do think we should, in the context of geopolitics, also talk about big tech and the role that big tech has on the global scene. So, if you look at the different, so we have the US, we have China, we have the EU and we have big tech as the big, important players on the geopolitical scene. So the US has this free, liberal market model. Right, it's little regulation, especially compared to the EU and to China. It's very focused on freedom of expression, what we call freedom of speech. In Europe it's seen as being very innovation friendly. You know. It's produced what we used to be the big four, now the magnificent seven, and if there is regulation, it tends to be on national security grounds. So that is in one little summary. That's the American liberal free market model and that's their approach to digital policy as well.

Speaker 2 10:27

When it comes to China, which is a different model, they have a much more controlled environment. Also, what they've done, which has been to the frustration of many, is that they have limit access to their domestic market. So they limit foreign access to their domestic market or they restrict it to a certain extent. But that is a huge domestic market and because of the limitations, the sort of borders that they put around their market, it can also incubate local companies by shielding them from global competition. And I'm saying this trying to say it on neutral ground, but in geopolitics this is something that causes friction. Then the Chinese model also relies quite heavily on state subsidies, so it's not really a free market model in the same way that the US is, and it's very heavy. While it's protecting its big domestic market, it's very heavy on manufacturing and export. So China is about 15% of global exports. Internationally. It's huge. It's twice as large as the next door exporter below it. But the thing with China is that when we talk about big tech, you couldn't really have something like TikTok come out of any other place than China. I don't think that would be possible to have someone competing with big tech. So they do have a purpose in geopolitics in that they can incubate these massive companies that can compete with the others. There is this feeling globally that China is sort of competing on different terms than the rest of us, and that's part of the trade frictions that we're seeing now.

Speaker 2 11:58

Then the EU, which is the next big player on the list here, isn't as big as the US and China, but when it comes to digital policy, it's really it's been quite. It's not perfect nothing is perfect but it's been quite impressive to see how the EU has really set a global standard. We know the GDPR, but it's we'll see now in the coming years. If you're not following this area, you'll really start seeing things from the Digital Services Act, the Digital Markets Act I'm sure that listeners to this podcast are aware of the AI Act For the EU. It's similar to the US, but it's heavier on regulation and here.

Speaker 2 12:34

So freedom of speech is really important in the EU, but it's balanced by other needs and other pillars, let's say, such as you know, fairness, which is fairness in the market, and fairness for workers and fairness for people.

Speaker 2 12:48

Privacy is really heavily enshrined in European law and it's, you know, close to fundamental right, and democracy is also important.

Speaker 2 12:56

So we have freedom of speech and that's important, but we also have to balance it with these other rights. Then the biggest asset that the EU has is its single market right. It's 450 million people, it's relatively wealthy and there's a lot of money to be made there. But the EU needs to make sure that its single market is harmonized, because if you have 27, or, if we take the DEA, 30 different markets that have different rules, and in digital, where they start bleeding into borders, then that's not going to be as attractive as one single market. And the biggest gun that the EU has to deal with the single market, which is its biggest interest, biggest asset is regulation. That's what the EU does, that's the biggest tool they have, more so than funding. So that's kind of how the EU has ended up a little bit setting the global standard, plus the fact that the US has been quite paralyzed politically, which has opened up the space for the EU to take this role.

Speaker 1 13:54

There's a really important difference I see between the three of them, and that is that while at a certain level, you or national states in Europe have transferred formally their national authority on a certain topic to the EU right, there's really policymaking going on on a lot of different levels in the EU compared to US or China. Does that make a difference in how quickly you can move and react?

Speaker 2 14:21

I think it does, in that the EU really has to safeguard a single market In this. You know, we're always in competition with technology because technology develops so fast and legislation develops so slowly, especially democratic legislation. But the problem for the EU or maybe it's not a problem, it's actually a good thing is that when the member states will start legislating, the EU really has to be quite fast to be, oh, we need to do this now. So if you take the Digital Services Act, that kind of came after Germany had done its own very similar law and the EU said, oh, germany has done it. We really need to get on the ball here and make sure that this is valid for all the EU.

Speaker 2 15:01

And this is also sometimes the frustration, for for smaller countries, um, especially in the nordics, because the eu sometimes we don't want, we don't want legislation because things work well things. So we have things that might work really well, like media, for example, media freedom, that works relatively well and in the nordics. But then the eu will say, oh, it doesn't work in poland and and we have problems with it in pol and Hungary and Slovakia, so we need EU-wide regulation, but then that isn't good for us where it already works. So that's kind of the friction that happens in the EU.

Speaker 1 15:33

And then the big question that is unanswered is what about that responsibility for digital policies? What about that responsibility for data in the European market? What about that responsibility for data in the European market? Is that transferred to the EU as a task for the EU to work on, or is that actually a national responsibility?

Speaker 2 15:52

So it's both. But this has been one of the criticisms of the GDPR, because the GDPR so it's an EU regulation, but the problem with the GDPR has been enforcement, because it's enforced on a member state level and that hasn't worked as well. And that could be the GDPR, it could be the member states, but what you're seeing now with these new rules is that the commission is taking responsibility for enforcement, and that's where things are really changing, but we won't know. You've seen the signals this year. The commission is very on in trying to enforce their new rules, but we don't know where that's going to end up and if it's going to be different from the GDPR. But you can tell that the EU has really taken notice on what didn't work with the GDPR and learned from that and trying to fix that problem.

Speaker 1 16:42

So, if we look at these three key players that you described and lined out the US, china and the European market how did we end up here?

Cultural and Regulatory Differences in Tech

Speaker 2 16:51

Well, I think there's one more thing that we really need to look at as well, and that's big tech. Right, and just how big big tech is, and because how we ended up with that is also part of the journey. So, when you look at how large these companies are 40% of the global population is on Facebook, Half of us use Google every day and we have companies. What was it? Amazon had half a trillion, so $500 billion in revenue in 2023. It's immense. It's larger than the Norwegian state, right? So you have to kind of look at these guys and how they grew so big to also understand what's going on in politics, because big tech is both a frustration. Sometimes it's also a tool, in a way, between the US and China. So we have to do that. But maybe to answer your question then on how we ended up here, I would love to go back to the history of the 15th century and the printed press, but I think that would be its own episode. So we really have to go back to the 1980s and President Reagan, where what happened in the US then was that the antitrust laws in the US really kind of went off course, and what that did was that it opened for much more monopolistic behavior by companies under US law, and this is really one of the things that had made it possible for big tech and other companies to grow as big as we see them today.

Speaker 2 18:24

Then in the 90s you know it's the start of the globalization as we're used to it and there was this optimism and this idea that free trade, that global free trade, would kind of save the world in a way. Democracy had won, the Berlin Wall had fallen and we would all live happily ever after the end of history. But the idea was that free markets would lead to economic development, which again would lead to more and better democracies. That was kind of the logic that things were built on. We saw an increase in global trade and many companies got access to this bigger global market. They had the possibility to grow really big under US antitrust law if they were based there and they also got access to really cheap labor. But the thing is that this idea that a free market would lead to more and better democracies, it hasn't really delivered what we were hoping for. So this is also part of this journey to get through these three models.

Speaker 2 19:26

Then in the 90s we also have the advent of the Internet as we know it today. You know they used to call it cyberspace, this free, beautiful place where the left was like this is amazing, we can use it for democracy and for civil liberties. And the right was like this is great for the free market, we can have big companies. So there was this agreement that technology is great. And then again in the US we got the Communication Decency Act, which has if you don't know about it, but you're into this kind of thing, you should look up Section 230 of the Communication Decency Act, which is really what Web 2 is built on, right Act, which is really what Web 2 is built on, right. Section 230 means that Facebook and its friends doesn't have to worry about being sued for the content that's on its platforms, and it wouldn't probably wouldn't be possible to have these platforms grow in the way that they have without that. But it's this so-called liability shield, and the other thing that Section 230 does is that it encourages the internet to develop as an unregulated environment for free speech online. So here we really get this focus on free speech and we shouldn't meddle with that on the internet, which worked in the 90s and the early 2000s.

Speaker 2 20:40

And then you have to look at, when you look at digital policy, also to look at trade. So in 2001,. That's when China joined the World Trade Organization, and you have to remember that at this time, the internet had much fewer users and you didn't have the content moderation technology that you have now. So they still started building the great firewall, but it wasn't as easy to manage as what they can have now. So it was they still started building the great firewall, but it wasn't as easy to manage as what they can do now. So it was more freedom to criticize leaders and to reveal corruption online. But then, when the global financial crisis hit, China in terms of trade thinks oh shit, this is also also hitting us. We're very dependent on what's going on in the world, and that made them see that you know we're vulnerable. And another point that happened in the the 2010s was that the Arab Spring came, and the Arab Spring was really kind of it's an important milestone because it showed the power of what we can do on social media, how we can topple regimes using social media, and I think people forget about that a little bit now, but Xi Jinping he didn't forget about it. It's something that really stuck with him and China when Xi Jinping comes to power in 2012,. It's something that he carries with him to this day, you know, and he's worried about it. So then you start seeing more control, which is both in terms of regulation under Xi Jinping, but also better technology. When they started being able to use artificial intelligence to content moderate, that completely changed the game in China. So here you know, technology is neither good nor bad, but here it's something that's been used to get more control, and I think I'm not.

Speaker 2 22:32

I don't like to polarize the debate. I think we should hold people to account and countries to account, but I like trying to see things through the lens of empathy and seeing other cultures. So you have to understand as well that China has this really traumatic history in living memory. Right, it's had immense growth, but it has a difficult recent past. So, yes, it's an authoritative regime. There's human rights abuses that we should hold them account for, but you have to understand that social cohesion is so important in Chinese culture and that's not really compatible with this American model of completely free speech and a lawless internet, right? So I think we should kind of sometimes stop and think about that as well, that there is the cultural part in that the EU also kind of sees OK, completely lawless internet.

Speaker 2 23:33

I'm not sure. I'm not sure we can do that. We need some kind of guardrails. So in 2018, that's when the GDPR came into force and it really sets the standard for data privacy laws globally and Brussels is really proud of itself rightfully so. But this also fits in Brussels is oh, we can do something or we can have an impact. We have something to say and something to do in the world. And while this happens you know the gdpr 2018 the us has tried to pass state to privacy laws on a federal level since 2012 but haven't managed to. There's states, states that california has essentially gdpr but um, but since 2012 and they still don't have it. They try again and again. It doesn't happen.

Speaker 2 24:17

And if we go back to the first point about what happened with the antitrust laws in the 80s, the EU has a completely different approach to antitrust. Right here it's called competition law, but it's not. In the US after the 80s and Borkism and Reagan, it was much more easy to be a monopolistic business lawfully, so the EU has a what's called an abuse of dominance standard, where a business can be prosecuted for abusing its position. So that means that if you have loss making prices, for example, you set prices at a loss making level or you make it really hard for new businesses to enter the market, but it takes 10 years the prosecution. So if you think about where the technology was 10 years ago, where big tech was 10 years ago, it's just so exponential. They're growing so fast.

Speaker 2 25:22

So the EU is thinking OK, we have the GDPR, great.

Speaker 2 25:26

What else can we do in this space to ensure fair competition, to make sure that new entrants that compete with big tech and depend on big tech can also be in the market fairly? And it also has an interest in, as I said, safeguarding the single market and it has regulatory guns. It really has guns when it comes to this and it gives the EU political clout to do good regulation that works in this space, because other countries will do the same. So that's why we now have, you know, the AI Act is one example, but it's really good to see new acts such as the Digital Markets Act, which will ensure much fairer competition, and Digital Services Act, which deals more with search engines and social media platforms and its impact on our democracy. But we're seeing the EU really taking on this position in the world as the global standard setter, and that's kind of how we've ended up with the US, the Chinese and the EU model. If I had to summarize it in a couple of minutes, yeah, oh, fantastic.

Speaker 1 26:32

Thank you for that very well put run through. What I'm taking with me here is that there are definitely huge cultural differences, not just in the approach to how we regulate a market, but also in the approach to how we regulate the data market itself, which is kind of interesting that you have those cultural differences in a globalized. Kind of interesting that you have those cultural differences in a globalized, open data market or internet. What does that mean to actually manage data across board?

Speaker 2 27:01

I think, when it comes to cultural differences, it's something that's often forgotten about, in a way, like we think about tech and we think about regulation, and I do think we need to approach this a little bit with empathy as well. As you know, the carrot and the stick, we need to make sure that we hold people to account, but that we also try and understand where they come from, and, on the other hand, we need really good hard tools, which is like conventions or it's things that we all agree on when it comes to human rights abuses. We have conventions and charters and we can go to China and say, hey, you have signed this, can you please behave? And I think that's what we also need in the digital space and when it comes to data flows, but the problem is that that's really really hard. You know it's not something that you can do overnight. If you go and say, hey, can we agree on all of this? And that's one of the reasons why you ended up.

Speaker 2 27:54

You know you followed the UN expert group. Obviously, the expert group, the AI safety summit, all of these international these for us, and places that we have to agree internationally. We come out with these declarations that we all agree on, but the language is incredibly vague and incredibly abstract and we should criticize that because it shouldn't be as vague and abstract. But that is sort of the first step towards the language that will be more concrete and we have to go through it and we have to accept that, in the same way that we accept that democracy will take time. Agreeing internationally is also not going to be. It's even slower, you know, probably 10 times as slower. In 100 years. We'll probably have solved this issue relatively well, but it won't be perfect.

Speaker 1 28:38

Before we dive a little deeper into how these public policies actually can be generated or implemented or monitored or even improved over time. There's one more thing that I maybe a bit of a side note, but you talked about big tech and the role big tech plays in this geopolitical setting, and I think that one part that is really interesting from the last two years is the rise of OpenAI as a company, and if you think of that information data, the power that OpenAI has and then now Microsoft has, it's really interesting because it's a small company of like 700 employees in the beginning which has risen to a status where it can't be ignored on that political level.

Speaker 2 29:25

Yes, it's interesting that it's possible to do that. But when it comes to things like open AI, it's impressive what they've done, but the what is it? 30 billion investment that Microsoft has made in open AI most of that from? We don't have it confirmed, but there's been reports that most of that is access to cloud infrastructure. So really they can maybe rise to a certain level without big tech and do that on their own and disrupt the market. And if you look at kind of open ai versus google and where google was at at the beginning with this, it's you know it's it's how the market works with these disruptors coming in. But when you see how dependent they're on the infrastructure that they need from the big tech companies, I'm not sure it's possible to do it without them. Yet.

The Evolution of Digital Policy

Speaker 1 30:15

Yeah, then that also means that there is a certain influence that they have on companies like iGoPenet. That can't be denied. But let's dive into that policy question that I've started to talk about. How is public policy and what you have explained to us now, how is public policy generated, implemented, monitored and improved?

Speaker 2 30:36

It can be sometimes a bit of a slow and dull process. I think it's fascinating, and loads of people luckily do, but it can be In a democratic system. It's very slow, I should say, and I like to think of it as kind of a river that moves through a landscape, because it can start as a creek and you can kind of use the laws of physics to understand where it's going. Maybe there's a creek coming here, but then you'll maybe have rain or you'll have a big storm, or you'll have a draft and it will disappear drought and it will disappear, will disappear. But it is very much, when you look into it, it's very much a decade of an organic process that is governed by something similar to the laws of physics, so you can predict where it will go. And I don't think it's worth me giving a step-by-step guide to the EU process, the legislative process. In that case, your listeners might drop off and go and listen to a podcast about politics instead. But, to use an example, well, first of all, the EU hasn't made it easy for itself. There's this famous quote by a former US Secretary of State who said who do I call if I want to call Europe? And the answer to that isn't clear. So it's not an easy system to understand from the outside. But essentially, if we do the basics, the three main bodies are the commission, it's the council and it's the parliament. The commission is that's where I used to work. It's similar to ministries that we'll have on a national level, but it's not quite the same, but it's similar to ministries and it kind of takes care of the day-to-day running of the European Union. The council is represented by. It's where the, the member states are represented, so it's where they have their say. And the parliament is the body that's elected by the people so they take care of citizens rights. And how it normally happens is that the commission will propose something and say, hey, here's a proposal for an AI act, and then the council and the parliament, they will discuss and they will adopt and decide. So the commission can never say this is now a regulation, but they can say council and parliament, please decide what you think about this. And then it goes through a long process and most people won't really feel the impact of that process until you go online and you try and enter a website and there's a cookie banner. Then you know, and unless it's a very, very. You know, unless it's a very controversial suggestion or proposal, it won't really impact you until either the cookie banner or you go on holiday to Greece and you come back and your phone bill is next to Washington because telecoms are charging you for roaming. Right, that's when it hits you.

Speaker 2 33:24

But if you really want to get a sense of the direction that the EU is heading, you need to go beyond the basics, beyond the three institutions. And I can give an example here that's quite relevant this year, and it's the AI Act. The AI Act, like the GDPR, has been a decade in the making. It takes 10 years to get these things through until they hit the market. And the problem with that when it comes to technology is, if you ask someone working in data or AI where was your industry 10 years ago and that's when you started making the rules, then it doesn't fit right and that's why we have this river, where it changed and it moves.

Speaker 2 34:03

But if you look at the AI Act, it started really in 2017, when the council so that's the member states they said to the commission hey, there's this new emerging technology we need to look into and we probably need a common European approach, so 2017. A year later, the commission says they published a paper. Let's call it a paper Many different types of papers, but let's keep it to that. So they launched a paper saying artificial intelligence is already part of our lives. It's not science fiction. So we need a common European approach to this.

Speaker 2 34:38

Another year passes, by 2019, we get ethics guidelines on trustworthy AI. Another year goes by and we get another paper different type of paper that is more kind of proposal for action. So in 2020, the commission says we support a regulatory and an investment oriented approach to AI. And 2021, so we started in 2017, now we're in 2021. That's when we get the proposal for the AI Act. And we're in 2024 now. So that has taken three years from.

Speaker 2 35:11

The commission said these are the rules that we should have, and then it's going through the negotiations and it really won't take effect until 2025, 2026. So we're talking here about a process that started in 2017 and that will be final by 2026. And if you think about how far AI got in that timeframe, you can't really set the rules in 2017. And that's why it has to be a little bit of a dynamic process and if you're in Norway, it will take even longer right. So it's a long and complicated process, but if you want to have an impact, you need to see what's happening on kind of the soft side, before a regulation is proposed, and with that you actually have the perfect transition to my next question what's happening on kind of the soft side, before a regulation is proposed?

Speaker 1 35:59

And with that you actually have the perfect transition to my next question.

Speaker 1 36:01

I've been reading about this in newspapers for a while now that Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, for example, have proclaimed the end of the national state, said that democratic processes don't work anymore, and the reason for that is that we haven't accelerated technological development.

Challenges in Future of Nation States

Speaker 1 36:16

That is basically accelerating more and more exponentially as we go, whilst the democratic processes we have and you explained it very nicely now take time, can take up to 10 years, and once you get to a result there, the technological development is entirely different. So there is a discrepancy between what we can call the digital world on the one. There the technological development is entirely different. So there is a discrepancy between what we can call the digital world on the one side, or the technology world, and the physical world, or the politics world. That's one part, and the other part is that and we already talked about that global data market or global digital market national borders and boundaries of law enforcement and regulations are made for that physical world. They are made for the national state or maybe the European Union as a market, but they don't really match up with that digital reality that we actually have. How can we adopt? How can the national state actually survive going forward?

Speaker 2 37:14

I love this question because I've been concerned about, you know, the dwindling power of nation states for a while and it's really rooted in the work that I've done on the future of digital societies and where we're heading with Web3. And for me, the concern is very much related to, you know, the survival of the Norwegian welfare state, or Nordic welfare state, and because I think that's I've lived many different places but I think it's a brilliant model and I think everyone who can should use it. But it feels like we're at a space where there's a crisis at every turn. But, to answer your question, there are ways that we're dealing with it already. So number one is that if you look at the GDPR, it's quite I can't say abstract, because that's not right, but the language is quite soft and trying to be future-proof and anticipating things that isn't happening yet. So that's the same with Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act is that it's trying to anticipate the problems that have yet not yet risen. So it's using a tool that's called well, we don't have to go into the terminology but it's essentially trying to attack the problems before they happen. The backside of that is that it can be unclear what wants to be achieved. So where the law has to be very, very hard and very rigid, it sometimes becomes a little bit soft and unclear, and that can be a problem. If you look at the, so the digital services like this, the one that is supposed to govern our social media platforms and our search engine and make a healthier kind of information ecosystem, that one is very much based on the German law I mentioned earlier, but Russia also took that law, almost copy pasted it and applied it in their system. So the weaker the language kind of becomes, the more you can fill in with it.

Speaker 2 39:00

So that is a concern that I haven't seen Elon Musk talk about, but it is something that I think we need to be aware of in the democratic process. When the language becomes too weak, do we then open up for other things, especially if democracy is sort of under threat, which is part of the discourse at the moment? So I'm concerned about that. And then you'd asked about the nation states themselves, because that's a big question and it's a lovely question, and I think we need to be aware of this concentration of power, which is both in the markets, with big tech, and the concentration of power with people, because we've seen in the US under Biden, there is a push to go after big tech, and we've seen in China that China is going after its own companies because they have become too powerful, right? So my concerns here boils down to the concentration of power versus the blind spots of democracy. And when it comes to the concentration of power versus the blind spots of democracy.

Speaker 2 40:02

And when it comes to the concentration of power, if you follow the debate, people are using languages like autocrats of trade. I don't know if you've heard that term, but that's how they're describing the people at the top here, and I think it's a politicized term and I haven't decided if I like it or not, but it's at least an interesting intellectual exercise if you compare these guys and usually it's guys if you compare them to autocrats, because when, during the AI safety summit in the UK, rishi Sunak, the prime minister of the UK, he had the opportunity, you know he had Kamala Harris, the vice president of the US, visiting tons of heads of state. The guy he decides to sit down with and do an interview with is Elon Musk and, of course, for those following British politics, you know that he'll be out of a job and needing a new job this year, so it's probably a job interview. So that, taking into account it's these, we're giving the type of power that we used to give to heads of state, to people who are in charge of companies, and I don't like that. And on top of that, you have people like like you.

Speaker 2 41:02

Take Jon Stewart. He's a good example. So Jon Stewart does a lot of work to make policy kind of easily accessible to people and politics as well. But he worked with Apple and he wanted to interview the chair of the Federal Trade Commission and her name is Lina Khan. She's quite vocal in going after these autocrats of trade I think she uses the term as well and because Jon Stewart was working with Apple to create content, apple said we don't want you to talk to her, and that's a problem in a democracy when a company gets to say that.

Speaker 2 41:34

And it's also a problem when with the liability shield that they have via Section 230, because we normally hold power to account through media, but our information ecosystem is decided not by our democratic guidelines but by the terms and conditions on a platform and we on the other side we have you know, we don't have editorial media in the same way that we used to. Politicians can go and speak directly to their people. They're not dependent on journalism. So what I'm really concerned about here is kind of the I'm scared to call it death, but the decline of editorial media. I think that's a part of the discussion in the nation state where that's missing. Then the other thing that I'm concerned about is the blind spots of democracy, and the problem here is that we are in democracies.

Speaker 2 42:28

We're not great at dealing with long-term crisis that we see coming. We base our problems a little bit on election cycles, so it's often what can I fix in the next four to five years? And you know, winfried, you deal with data, so you know this. We have a pretty clear perspective of the challenges that we need to fix in the next 50 years, and it can be hard to fix those within the confines of our system. One thing is the national borders, but just within the five-year election cycles or four years and the climate. I think climate crisis is an obvious one and I think it's impressive the work that we're doing there. Maybe we're not acting quickly enough, but I think we've been able to do a lot in the last years and really go beyond what the system allows we've been able to do a lot in the last years and really go beyond what the system allows.

Speaker 2 43:17

But what I'm concerned about is the demographic shift, and when we talk about data, we know that this is coming. It's undisputed, it's clear, like there is nothing we can do other than get loads of people moving to our countries. There is nothing we can do about the demographic shift other than accept it. But the political discourse there is that you know immigration is killing the welfare state and people are taking your jobs. But the data clearly, it clearly says technology is taking your jobs and pensioner are the biggest burden on the welfare state. So this is one of the blind spots of democracy that we have.

Speaker 2 43:53

This crisis is one of the blind spots of democracy that we have. This crisis. We see it coming and I get the same ominous feeling that I had at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, you know, in December 2019, where it was like, oh, this is happening, but we kind of stood still and we couldn't deal with it until we could feel it, until we saw people getting sick close to us. And it's a little bit same with this demographic shift and the reason why that is a problem when it comes to the power of big tech is that if the state can't deal with our issues, if the state can't solve our issues, then the market will. Someone will solve these issues and that's not necessarily a bad thing. There's loads of really good solutions in the market. But when we look at healthcare, for example, tech can do a really, really good job at keeping people fit throughout their lives. The Apple Watch is a brilliant device for fitness right and it gets you moving and you don't sit all day.

Speaker 2 44:51

But If my fear is that we have these challenges in the next 20, 50 years, where we will have an aging population and you see that some of these companies are investing in health care and these are the companies that if our system, if our public health care system, cannot deal with the shift that's coming and the burden that's coming, then we might move towards a model of privatization like what you've seen in the UK, and it will be more privatized.

Speaker 2 45:23

Worst case, we can end up with an insurance-based system and if the people who decide on what health insurance you get are also the people who have access to all of the data on you, since you were a fetus, mind you, like people post pictures of their pregnancies on on facebook and other places. If the companies that have that data and knows your screen time from when you were 12 and everything you googled every time you google the health problem, if they are the ones that get a say, or if that data becomes something that comes into a privatized healthcare system and insurance decisions, then we have a huge problem. I think it's far off, but that is the part of the discussion that I'm missing.

EU's Strong Role Against Big Tech

Speaker 1 46:06

Yes, that is the part of the discussion I'm missing as well, and what I think is really interesting is that there are people like you and me who are conscious about this, who are talking about this, who are talking about this, who are trying to write about this, but this is not a topic that you can easily get access to in public media, because there's maybe a lack of interest, I don't know, but it's probably hard to sell. That's one part, and the other thing that really interests me when it comes to the big tech is that you talked about terms and conditions on a platform have actually an impact on how we act and interact with that platform, but also beyond that, and it seems like we are at a stage where big tech is not just leading but also regulating the development of the market.

Speaker 2 46:51

Okay. So here I have to really, you know, be proud of what the EU has done, because I think they're very powerful and we need to be aware of that and think about how we want to deal with that. But the important thing here is that the US is politically paralyzed at the moment and have been for a long time on a federal level, and that's where the tech lobby is the strongest. The EU is still. There's still lobbyists here, and it's not always like lobbyists are doing, it's just doing bad and legislators are doing good things. It's a system that works together and then sometimes one part will get too strong and will get bad decision. But the EU is less vulnerable to lobbying. There's less money going into it and when you look at what's been done, the EU has been able to push through a lot that the big tech didn't want. So I think that the fact that the EU is taking a leading role in this is very important in standing against big tech, and that is also because the US is politically paralyzed, so that kind of plays a little bit to the global benefit in certain aspects. Right, and the fact that it is more resilient when it comes to this lobbying machine. I think that's something we have to safeguard I really do and what I would be concerned about it's not so much if I'm a legislator, because there I think we're in good hands, good hands but what I'm very concerned about is if I was a competitor to big tech and I'm not talking about a small shop trying to sell on Amazon, but if you're, for example, shopify, who has a big market share that is in a way, competing. It's a payment solution that represents smaller companies and an alternative to Amazon, but they are big and, for example, shopify, also Spotify and Epic Games really big companies but that aren't the biggest and that are competing with big tech. I think they are the ones who are feeling the size the most.

Speaker 2 48:48

And there, when you look at you know we talked about enforcement and whether or not it works. The Digital Markets Act, which is supposed to free up this space a little bit. It can give fines of 10% first time. So the GDPR is 4% of global revenue. The digital market sector is 10% of worldwide turnover, 20% for repeat infringements and at the worst case, if they don't behave, they can be broken up. So I think big tech maybe they would have been leading, but with this these are big muscles. These are big regulatory muscles that the EU can deploy. So I think that's a way to keep the checks and balances going. So I'm not too concerned as long as the EU is a strong player in this game.

Speaker 1 49:34

I think it's interesting because, well, on a much smaller level in organizations, when we talk about data governance, we talk about a lot lately that we need to get away from a classic model of data governance, use, enforcement and authority to get people to work with data in a way that's ideal for the organization, rather towards a model where you use enablement empowerment, trying to build trust in data and get data available so people can actually use it, can actually see the problems that you have with your data, to then eventually figure out how to solve those problems. Right, but it sounds like on a geopolitical, on a global level, we're going a bit in a different direction, a bit more in the enforcement direction.

Speaker 2 50:15

I think that's the case when you look at. So I'm particularly following the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act. But because the criticism has been with the GDPR that enforcement hasn't been strong enough and you see that in these new acts that it is on the commission to do it, and I don't think I said but the thing that's very important with the EU is that it's part of safeguarding the single market, but it's also that the EU kind of legislates where it's difficult to do it on a national level, because the US also has an interest in not legislating big tech too much and they don't. Part of the criticism of the EU has been why are you just going after American tech giants? So the EU is quite important as a big player that can go against both the US and China in this very complicated landscape. So I think we have to acknowledge that as well.

Speaker 1 51:09

So let's spend a couple of minutes on breaking this down to. What does it actually mean for me? What impact does this have on my individual rights? Living in Europe in the digital space?

Speaker 2 51:20

Well, in the end, you know, if all you care about is the cookie banner, then what you'll see is maybe that you go and you search for a Google. You search on Google for a flight and you won't see the flight directly. So the trade-off is maybe that the user experience is bad or not bad, but that it's worse if that's what you care about. But you know, under GDPR, you also have a lot of other rights and you're safeguarded in another way, and if you care about that, then you can be kind of rest assured that the EU is taking care of it. But if you're concerned about so, if you're concerned about this kind of a safe marketplace as well, if you're a business owner and you want to both be dependent on big tech and compete with big tech, then you should follow what the EU is doing and, especially if you're a developer, you know, really look into the digital markets act and and how that can benefit you.

Speaker 2 52:11

But I do think that a takeaway here is that policy. It is very far away and far removed from our very everyday life sometimes. So my, my call to action here would be that you can have a real impact and there's tons of these structures that you can go through. You probably have a trade organization, you have businesses with similar, similar interests, you have your nation and representation here in Brussels and really try and come in early in the process and see what's going on and see if your voice should be heard and if you should be part of the decision, because the answer to that is you probably should.

Speaker 1 52:51

Definitely. And we talked about the lack of the political discourse on data and technology and how can we get people to be more aware of what's happening?

Speaker 2 53:01

Well, you're doing a good job, so I think we need more people like you.

Speaker 2 53:05

I think we need to get kind of digital literacy into schools and we have media literacy and we have, you know, working on trying to get people to consume healthy information.

Empowering Collaboration for EU Influence

Speaker 2 53:16

I think we need to understand that when it comes to digital rights as well. I am really hoping that we can get more really good tech journalists so not just people writing about the EU, but people writing about tech and who understands these issues into mainstream media because it touches every single part of our lives. Into mainstream media because it touches every single part of our lives, and part of that is also we really need to think about what we want to do with editorial media and how we want to support that, how we want that to look going forward and the value I think we're seeing that with the large language models the value of verified, high quality information. We really need that and that has traditionally been the media dealing with that and and we need, we really need to rethink and think about what to do with our editorial media and how, who, who gets the stamp on what's true and not fantastic.

Speaker 1 54:08

Before we finish, do you have any key takeaway or call to action you want to share with us?

Speaker 2 54:13

I think it goes back to this, this thing of we, we think of the law, like the tech develops and law feels like something stagnant that you just have to deal with. So my call to action would be that you can influence, you can be part of this process, you should think about it, you should look at what's going on in the world and for the Nordics, it's really that one of our assets. I've worked in the Nordics and I worked internationally and I think that we're so good at collaborating, we're so good at collaborating across borders and we should continue that, because that is also giving a voice within the EU, where we have more of a say, because we stand together and we have very similar interests. So I think we need to do that in the Nordics. The Nordics need to collaborate towards the EU, including Norway. Thank you so much. Thank you.