United Kingdom

The collapse of a UK espionage case against alleged Chinese spies highlights Britain’s refusal to call China a security threat, exposing a dangerous weakness driven by economic dependence.

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.

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.

Rather than following the UK’s lead on children’s online safety, U.S. policymakers should learn from their mistakes and chart a better path that skillfully preserves user privacy, limits collateral damage, and removes the incentives for online services to over-remove lawful content.

ITIF does not agree with the Competition and Markets Authority's provisional findings that Apple's mobile platform has Strategic Market Status and that there are high barriers to entry and expansion.

President Trump has rightly emphasized that AI should be allowed to learn like humans do, and unless the UK adopts a commonsense approach to AI training and copyright, it risks falling behind China in the global AI race.

The CMA should not regulate a nascent and rapidly evolving field like AI chatbots as an access point to search, where competition limits the potential for market power.

If the Starmer government thinks for one minute that the PRC will allow the UK to expand exports of anything with any real strategic importance, it is gravely mistaken. It’s time for competitive realism.

In 2023, the United States invested about $175 billion in research conducted at government institutions and universities. That same year, the EU invested about $180 billion, and China about $200 billion.

The UK should reject misleading claims that AI training is theft and instead adopt a modern, permissive copyright framework that protects creativity while enabling the innovation needed to become a global AI leader.