22 BriefingGlobal technopolitics The EconomistNovember 21st 2020
2 verage to strangle enemies and put pres-
sure on friends. But Europe’s resistance to
banning Huawei’s gear and the ecj’s deci-
sion show that even friends can balk.
America needs to give if it is to receive.
It might not have to give all that much.
European views on regulating platforms
more strictly because of their tendency to
become quasi-natural monopolies are not
exactly mainstream in Washington, dc,
but nor are they completely alien to the po-
litical debate there. A recent congressional
report about how to limit big tech’s power
included many ideas already touted in
Brussels, such as banning tech giants from
favouring their own services and refusing
to connect to competing ones. Positions on
regulating speech online are not that far
apart either. As in Europe, there is growing
agreement in America that legislation is
needed to push social-media firms to do
more to rid their services of hate speech
and the like.
A deal on taxing tech firms seems with-
in reach, too. The Trump administration
resisted efforts to compel them to pay taxes
where they do business rather than in tax
havens, regarding this as a grab for the pro-
fits of American companies. A Biden ad-
ministration is likely to be more open to
the argument that more of the taxes on dig-
ital firms should go to places where their
customers live. Expect negotiations on the
matter at the oecdto be revived—as they
must be to keep countries from charging
digital taxes unilaterally. Barring a com-
promise, France, Spain and Britain will
start collecting such a levy early next year.
In parts of the world’s international bu-
reaucracy the grand bargaining has already
begun. When Japan presided over the g20,
a club of developing and rich countries,
last year, it succeeded in getting the group
to launch the “Osaka Track”, an attempt to
come up with rules to regulate global data
flows. This summer also saw the launch of
the Global Partnership in ai, which is
meant to come up with rules for the re-
sponsible use of ai, and of the Inter-Parlia-
mentary Alliance on China, which bringstogether lawmakers from 18 countries.
These new groups join a few established
ones, such as the oecdand the Internet Go-
vernance Forum, which have long pushed
for common rules in the digital realm.
natohas started to do the same for aiand
data-sharing among its members.
One of the key parameters in the bar-
gaining will be how formal a framework
the parties want. In some ways, formal is
better: everyone knows where they stand.
In others, formal is worse: agreement is
harder. Take the example of trade, thor-
oughly formalised within the wto. Trade
agreements take years to negotiate, often
only to be blocked by legislatures at the last
minute. This is why a Biden administration
will probably aim for a much looser form of
co-operation, at least initially. An idea dis-
cussed in foreign-policy circles close to Mr
Biden is that, instead of agreeing on certain
policies that then have to be implemented
nationally, governments should opt for a
division of labour within certain red lines.
If Europe wants to go ahead with rules to
regulate big tech which do not amount to
expropriation, America would not put up a
fight—thus allowing the euregulation to
become the global standard of sorts, rather
as it has done with the gdpr.The show must go on
Compromises that provide something for
everyone are not hard to spot. But reaching
them will not be easy. After four years of
President Trump, “the mistrust on the
European side runs deep,” says Samm
Sacks of cnas. On the other side of the At-
lantic, Congress will not want to make life
more difficult for its intelligence agencies,
for whom social media and online services
have become a crucial source of informa-
tion. In order for a grand bargain to be
reached, all of that must be made more dif-
ficult. If the ecjstruck down the Privacy
Shield, it was mostly because the court be-lieved that America does not provide
enough safeguards to protect European
data from the eyes of its intelligence and
law-enforcement agencies.
Another big barrier on the way to a bar-
gain will be the question of how much
America’s tech titans need to be reined in.
“To bring globe-spanning technology firms
to heel, we need something new: a global
alliance that puts democracy first,” argues
Marietje Schaake, a former member of the
European Parliament who now works for
the Cyber Policy Centre at Stanford Univer-
sity, in a recent article. Many in California
and elsewhere in America like the sound of
this, but Congress will only go so far in re-
stricting its tech giants and their business
model, which is increasingly based on ex-
tracting value from data.
Even if a grand bargain can be reached,
many small ones will need to be done as
well. That is why, in the long run, the world
needs more than bilateral deals and a loose
form of co-operation, but something more
robust and specialised. It may even have to
be something like a World Data Organisa-
tion, as Ian Bremmer of the Eurasia Group
has suggested (or at least a gadd, a General
Agreement on Data and Digital Infrastruc-
ture, a bit like the General Agreement on
Tariffs and Trade, as the wto’s predecessor
was called). Given the sorry state of the
wto, this may seem fanciful, but without
such an organisation today’s global data
flows may shrink to a trickle—much as
protectionism limited trade in the days be-
fore the gattand the wto.
Will it ever happen? Yes, if history is any
guide. In July 1944 representatives of 44
countries met in Bretton Woods, New
Hampshire, to hash out a new financial or-
der, including the imfand the World Bank.
Granted, the pandemic is no world war.
But, with luck, living through it may pro-
vide enough motivation to try again in the
digital realm. 7Up in the clouds
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