Center for Data Innovation Blog

The UK’s refusal to formally designate China as a national security threat has undermined its ability to prosecute espionage, leaving its technology and innovation sectors vulnerable to Chinese infiltration and economic coercion.

The UK Online Safety Act aims to protect children online but its vague rules and strict enforcement have led to over-censorship, threatening legitimate communities, and Parliament should clarify content definitions, allow remediation periods, and require judicial review to fix these issues.

California’s new AI safety law includes some constructive measures like incident reporting and whistleblower protections, but by acting at the state level, it creates a fragmented regulatory patchwork that undermines innovation, complicates a national framework, and risks weakening U.S. leadership in AI governance.

The European Commission’s 2025 Strategic Foresight Report misframes the U.S. as a rival on par with China, risking transatlantic unity and protectionist policies that weaken Europe while leaving China free to dominate critical technologies.

European consumers report a decline in online experiences since the Digital Markets Act took effect, as regulatory restrictions on platform integration and data use have reduced functionality, slowed searches, and fragmented services across maps, travel, jobs, and more.

Lawmakers in Montana, New Hampshire, and Idaho are advancing “right to compute” laws to protect individuals and businesses from limits on their ability to use computational tools and AI systems.

The idea that nations can invoke “AI sovereignty” to draw on U.S. technology when convenient, while walling off their markets, is not a bargain U.S. policymakers should entertain.

Without federal preemption on AI regulations, states are rushing to impose audits, transparency mandates, and sector-specific obligations—often with overlapping or conflicting rules that extend beyond state borders.

Europe’s pursuit of digital sovereignty rests on a flawed premise: that competing with the United States, rather than China, should be the central priority. To advance this goal, Brussels has embraced the so-called “Airbus model”—the belief that the government-led coordination that created an aerospace champion can be replicated to achieve dominance in semiconductors, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence (AI). The idea is seductive and gaining traction, but the analogy is unproven and misguided.

The United States plans to win the AI race by “exporting its full AI technology stack—hardware, models, software, applications, and standards—to all countries willing to join America’s AI alliance.” To succeed, it will need to pursue the right partners, make offers that meet their ambitions, and resist the urge to lead with virtue over value.