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America’s relationship with its European allies is under mounting stress over increasingly divergent views of online censorship, technological innovation and regulation of artificial intelligence.
In the wake of riots over illegal immigration, British police are locking up people over social media posts. A police commissioner threatened internet users beyond British borders who post what officials consider disinformation. France has arrested one of the world’s best-known technology entrepreneurs whose messaging platform has allegedly been used for child pornography and other criminal activity. The European Union is pushing for mandatory restrictions on AI development, and the U.S. government has pursued voluntary commitments from major technology companies.
Ambassador Nathaniel C. Fick, the first head of the State Department’s cyberspace bureau, is involved in preventing philosophical and legal fissures in technological freedom from fracturing the U.S. government’s relationship with its closest allies.
Asked whether Europeans share the broad American support for free speech online, Mr. Fick told The Washington Times that not every European nation supports the U.S. view but that the continent is not a monolith.
“I think that there are EU countries that, generally, broadly, have the same free speech views that the United States has, and there are some that don’t,” he said in a wide-ranging interview in his Foggy Bottom office. “There’s always this tension between individual liberty and the collective good.”
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Mr. Fick directed The Times to French authorities regarding Pavel Durov’s stunning arrest. Mr. Durov, the CEO of the popular messaging app Telegram, was detained after touching down at a Paris airport in August, sending shock waves through America’s technology sector.
Questions persist over any politics behind the prosecution and the French authorities’ motivation. Telegram has been criticized for having lower content monitoring standards than U.S. rivals such as X, and some fear that Telegram’s encrypted messaging services are being used for criminal activity. Telegram, now based in the United Arab Emirates, said after Mr. Durov’s arrest that it followed all applicable European laws and regulations.
After Mr. Durov’s detention, Alexander Vindman, a security aide in the Trump administration, ominously told X owner and CEO Elon Musk that he should be nervous.
Chris Pavlovski, founder of the video-based platform Rumble, waited until departing Europe before commenting on the Telegram controversy because of uncertainty over whether he would face a similar fate.
European nations’ digital crackdowns extend beyond speech and censorship to include AI regulation and emerging technological innovation.
The European Union’s 27-nation Parliament approved the EU Artificial Intelligence Act earlier this year. The legislation, the first of its kind, prohibits various AI applications involving behavior manipulation and facial recognition systems, among other things.
An earlier European initiative employed a similar strategy on data privacy regulations. It advanced rules before the U.S. and other nations could act and set the de facto industry oversight standards worldwide for more than five years.
Tension has emerged between Europe, seeking to impose its AI rulebook, and the U.S. government, urging relative restraint. At a meeting of nations in Japan last year, Mr. Fick argued against bans and strict requirements, in contrast with his European counterparts, according to Politico.
Mr. Fick said he is not pursuing U.S. economic interests at the expense of others. He said the future would worsen if the U.S. has a thriving technology sector and its closest allies and largest trading partners do not. U.S.-based companies such as Google, Facebook and Apple feel many of the EU online regulations most keenly.
“The argument that I make in Brussels all the time, it’s not, ‘Hey, you need to unshackle American tech.’ It’s ‘Hey, you need to grow some of your own, for God’s sake,’” he said.
If the top 10 AI companies in the next decade are all American, then the U.S. and Europe have each missed a significant opportunity, Mr. Fick said.
Whichever Western policy prescription for internet freedom and technology innovation prevails, deterring malicious technology use by adversaries and competitors may prove an even more critical task. China, Russia, Iran and other adversaries are far from guaranteed to follow America’s lead or heed its agenda.
Mr. Fick said the digital world is in a transitional period, a “sort of Wild West,” where China has gotten away with intellectual property theft and Russia remains largely unscathed after being accused of covert election influence campaigns targeting the U.S. and allies’ political systems.
The U.S. is in a “20-plus year deterrence hole with [China],” he said, arguing that America must dramatically ramp up digital deterrence.
“It’s not cyber tit for cyber that; it’s using every instrument of national power — diplomatic, yes, also economic, informational, [and] if necessary and justified, military — in order to enforce those norms that we’ve all agreed to,” he said. “I think that’s going to be a big issue for the next administration, regardless of who it is.”
• Ryan Lovelace can be reached at rlovelace@washingtontimes.com.
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