Since the start of the second Trump presidency, the geopolitical tensions surrounding the regulation of the digital sphere have reached new heights. European regulation, such as the Digital Services Act (DSA), is described as an instrument of censorship by the Vice President of the United States. This piece of legislation was recently also portrayed as a “threat to American free speech and innovation”. In the same vein, antitrust law is labelled as an anti-American measure that requires a “strong” answer in the form of punitive tariffs. Reportedly, the enforcement of the DSA and the Digital Markets Act (DMA) is the most controversial – and still unresolved – issue in the trade negotiations between the EU and the US. EU Commission President von der Leyen even used the opportunity of her State of the Union speech to refer explicitly to digital regulation when she emphasized that Europe sets its “own standards [… and] regulations”, and that it “will always decide for itself”.
In addition to the massive criticism of European regulation, the use of digital technologies tomonitor, suppress and persecute the people in the US is another hallmark of the current Trump administration. It is in particular the collection and merging of data about all American citizens and, especially, immigrants in one central database which has been classified as an “AI coup” paving the way to a “new fascism”. Thus, it is a very distinct business-friendly and increasingly anti-democratic model of the digital transformation which unfolds in the US.
While the EU and the US are engaging in this battle for the regulatory dominance in the digital sphere with increasingly different models of digital governance, China is becoming more and more powerful. Be it in the production of chips and semiconductors, the “Digital Silk Road” as part of the Belt and Road Initiative, or the development of AI systems such as DeepSeek, China has demonstrated how the export of infrastructure can leverage influence over foreign actors. This further reflects Chinese government’s desire to emerge as the “world’s leading technology superpower”.
It is precisely the conflict between these three stakeholders, China, the US, and the EU, which Anu Bradford describes extensively in her highly-acclaimed 2023 book Digital Empires. She sketches the global landscape of digital governance through the lens of three “empires”, describing their distinct approaches to digital regulation: the United States (US) with a market-driven, China with a state-driven, and the European Union (EU) with a rights-driven approach. Each of these “empires” engages in “horizontal battles” (with each other) and “vertical battles” (with the tech companies). Now, roughly two years after its publication, we decided to enter into a cooperation with the open access Zeitschrift für ausländisches öffentliches Recht und Völkerrecht (ZaöRV)/Heidelberg Journal of International Law (HJIL) to jointly review Bradford’s assumptions, analyses, and conclusions. The aim of this cooperation is to re-read “Digital Empires” in the light of the developments of the last two years, to apply its analytical lens to current situations, and also identify potential weaknesses and gaps.
To this end, we combine a “traditional” book review symposium in the ZaöRV with our own reflectiÖns format. The latter allows for quick publication and direct interaction with your peers’ thoughts and comments, encouraging formats beyond the usual (and also very much welcome) form of written texts. For example, we explicitly invite audio and video contributions, e.g. recorded comments or conversations. Furthermore, its open-ended character allows for the publication of reviews not only from a particular moment in time, but on an ongoing basis. Hereby, Bradford’s analytical framework can be tested against new use cases and developments.
The kick-off of this conversation is taking place in the most recent issue of the ZaöRV, where Stefania di Stefano, Amnon Reichman and Kai Purnhagen, and Erik Tuchtfeld, reviewed Anu Bradford’s piece from three different perspectives, followed by a response from her. Each of the three reviews has a different focus:
Stefania di Stefano analyzes the strategic use of horizontal and vertical battles by technology companies for their own benefit, in particular in light of the recent alignment with the deregulatory approach of the second Trump administration. Using Meta as a case study, she shows how the company has for a long time actively endorsed public regulation, with Mark Zuckerberg stating explicitly that he does not think “private companies should be making so many important decisions that touch on fundamental democratic values”. This, however, has changed radically in the past months. By now, he labels such regulation as “laws institutionalising censorship”. This strategy, she argues, weakens both the EU’s rights-driven and the US’ market-driven approach and supports, ultimately, China’s state-driven strategy.
Erik Tuchtfeld contrasts Bradford’s rather optimistic outlook in 2023, as she envisaged further alignment of the European and the US approach, with the authoritarian shift of the past months. Not least against the backdrop of this worrisome development, he argues for more attention to regulatory developments beyond the “three empires”, in particular for developments in the Global South, and points, as examples, to Brazil’s efforts to subjugate X (formerly Twitter) to its own regulatory framework and India’s pioneering project of developing digital public infrastructure to reduce dependencies on Big Tech.
Lastly, Amnon Reichman and Kai Purnhagen emphasize the challenges the EU’s right-based approach is facing at the moment. Due to the costs and uncertainty of regulation and the increasing competition between different regional markets, it is mandatory to convince citizens and companies of the added value of the “European way”. This could be, for example, the legal protection against the extraction of (personal) data by US companies, a practice they label as “data colonialism”. The very same regulations are, however, increasingly under pressure because they unfold effects beyond European borders and, thus, could be labelled as a “new form of colonialism – not centred on data extraction, but rather on the imposition of legal frameworks”.
We’d like to invite further contributions that pick up on the themes which are already raised in these reviews, or address novel questions, bringing additional perspectives to the table. Possible questions for further reviews include but not limited to:
- What is the role of stakeholders from the Global South in the global landscape of digital governance?
- How does the rise of authoritarian regimes influence the “battles” for digital governance?
- How do movements towards “digital sovereignty” and the public funding of “digital public infrastructure” influence global digital governance?
- What role does disinformation play in this context, where it is used both as a tool to distort democratic discourse and as narrative to illegitimately justify restrictions on freedom of expression?
- What are the effects of “vertical battles”, where companies are challenging the exercise of public power, on human rights and democracy?
- To what extent does the narrative of “empires” fighting for the supremacy in digital regulation stand in tension with the traditional multi-stakeholder approach to Internet governance?
In particular, we are encouraging scholars from the Global South to share their views on Bradford’s book and/or comments set out in other reviews. As part of our cooperation with Oxford University Press, the first three chapters of the book are made freely accessible for the period of three months. In case you’d like to contribute something to the reflectiÖns format but don’t have access to the full book, please contact us and we will find a solution. Next to legal comments, we are also interested in thoughts from the perspective of political sciences, economics, international relations, sociology, science and technology studies, and others. Written contributions should be around 1500 words. We welcome single-authored, co-authored and co-produced pieces, as well as less traditional and more creative contributions. They can be sent on an ongoing basis to reflections-digital-empires@voelkerrechtsblog.org.
Erik Tuchtfeld is a research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law (Heidelberg) and head of the humanet3 research group. He is an editor at Völkerrechtsblog.
Jasmin Wachau is a doctoral researcher and research fellow at the Assistant Professorship of Public International Law and International Administrative Law at the University of Erfurt. She is an Editor of Völkerrechtsblog.