Americans seem determined to bring our old ways back 🤔
I think many attribute a great deal of intent to a series of decisions taken over decades by different individuals, which eventually snowballed together.
It is true that United States agencies funded technology companies from the beginning when they believed those companies could serve key national security interests. A simple example is DARPA’s interest in whether tracking individuals online was possible. Research grants in this area helped create what later became Google.
The situation we face today is the result of many factors that emerged at different times for different reasons. The Patriot Act was signed in response to 9/11 and expanded surveillance tools. This effectively marked the beginning of the commoditization of data, which later spread into the advertising industry. Once these tools proved profitable, companies that chose not to use them were placing themselves at a competitive disadvantage. Better ad targeting meant higher profits, and this quickly became the norm.
At the same time, European companies failed to produce a viable response to Apple and Google’s mobile operating systems. American companies rapidly took over the market through network effects, while limited public investment further undermined European competition. The euro crisis and the immigration crisis were also significant factors during this period.
As surveillance became more effective and more invasive, profits increased. However, it was not until Brexit that a disastrous side effect of these capabilities became widely visible. Targeted advertising proved particularly effective at persuading people to vote against their own interests.
The dynamic is simple. When advertising targets society as a whole, advertisers are forced to be more consistent and truthful about the substance of what they are promoting. A large audience can collectively judge whether a product or message is misleading. With targeted advertising, this accountability weakens. Advertisers can exploit personal insecurities, recent conversations, and life events. They can show different messages to different people, often without anyone else seeing them. This makes it difficult for large groups to organize effectively when the information they receive is fragmented, misleading, or partially false. The result is confusion, hesitation, and impaired judgment.
All of this developed through the accumulation of many forces over time. There was always substantial money involved, but many older politicians did not recognize the threat posed by these systems. As a result, lobbying efforts successfully prevented the breakup of major corporations. It is also important to note that we still lack reliable ways to measure their true power. While these companies are now among the richest in the world, they were not at that level in 2016 or earlier, yet they already posed significant risks. At that time, the mechanisms of influence were far less visible than they are today.
The evolution of data collection into automated AI driven surveillance was something few could have predicted after Brexit. Consequently, safeguards were not implemented in time. GDPR was a positive step and, to some extent, a response to widespread abuses by companies engaged in data collection. For a brief period, the European Union successfully identified the problem and enacted legislation that constrained similar operations.
However, a core issue remains and continues to drive many current problems. European countries, whether because they viewed the United States as an ally or because they failed to classify modern communication platforms and data protection as matters of national security, did not create meaningful competition to United States based technology companies. This failure has only worsened the situation. The larger a human organization becomes, the more tyrannical it can grow without consequences, and in practice, this is often exactly what happens.
I think things feel worse now because the climb out of this hole is even steeper. The second Trump presidency marks a permanent shift in American geopolitical strategy, and the US government will now more or less give carte blanche to any American corporation that successfully undermines European autonomy.
As a result, the US government will protect and encourage hostile actions against European autonomy and sovereignty committed by large corporations, which incidentally also own almost the entire media ecosystem on which Europe runs its modern processes.
This allows these companies to further grow capabilities to directly influence Europeans not just according to their profit margins, but according to US foreign policy. There is now a concentrated effort to turn Europeans against each other, and they are starting with the EU.
This is not to say there is a conspiracy or a shadow cabinet directing these actions. It is fairly simple.
These big companies want more profits.
The engineers in these companies are a collection of ambitious, well connected individuals, or they become well connected, who have drunk the Kool Aid that they are somehow building meritocratic institutions around these corporations. If you read interviews with DOGE staff members, you can see how deeply these ideas run inside these companies, how the belief that the state is the source of all incompetence and that only data driven, profit oriented organizations can provide essential services with higher quality is widespread, even if at the cost of due diligence. I am paraphrasing with some liberty. I do think that to some extent many of these engineers know exactly the harm they are doing to society, but the paycheck keeps them quiet.
Then comes the US government and its new foreign policy.
Suddenly, for everyone involved, European autonomy no longer serves their interests. We are now being bombarded in many places with anti EU rhetoric. Far right parties are being openly supported by American companies. A blacklisted group of foreign organizations and individuals continues to push for chat control, and there is a continuous effort to weaken our environmental protections.
The important task now is to inform our neighbors about what is happening. We need to talk to people, examine these issues, and convince them that supporting European companies and a European economy will create more jobs than any American promise. Important as well to, not only highlight the danger to democracy, but also keep the conversation grounded on bread and butter issues. AI can serve society, but only if society owns it! And economies of scale can helps us if we build this as part of the European project, and not strictly nationally. We need to spread this key idea as far as possible. AI cannot be in American hands no matter how convenient is now. Again, I think focusing on job growth from actually building these technologies in our land, and then controlling the transition to a more balanced society, is a strong card to play. We can then tax AI and robots to serve our same society.
Quite frankly, I do not know whether we can overcome the danger of American social media without soft banning it in some circles. I find it hard not to compare this to Nazi Germany of shoving newspapers in the middle of London with impunity, filled with Nazi propaganda before the war, in an attempt to weaken British resolve and perhaps even convince them that France was either a lost cause or good riddance. America is now quite insistent on breaking us apart, and there are plans to divide us with Russia. At some point, we have to admit to ourselves that we are already at war, and engage in widespread investment of the key technologies and consumer goods we are missing. The cost of delaying this will only grow over time.