Digital Empires: The Global Battle to Regulate Technology
In-person, Members-only Briefing
Wednesday, October 25, 2023 | 6:30 PM – 8:30 PM ET
World leaders agree on little in the current geopolitical climate. However, regulation of big tech is one topic that most of the major powers can get behind. The United States, China, and European Union are all working on their own to crack down big tech companies. However, each is following a different governing model. In her recent book, Professor Anu Bradford argues that China pursues state-driven digital authoritarianism, the U.S. is following market-driven surveillance capitalism, and the European Union’s espouses liberal democratic individualism. What are some central issues global technology regulators face? How will the global battle to regulate technology play out? How might this battle reshape the digital economy and world? Will we see a single regulatory model prevail in the end? Join us on Wednesday, October 25, 2023 from 6:30 PM to 8:30 PM ET for an in-person, members-only briefly with Professor Anu Bradford, Henry L. Moses Professor of Law and International Organizations at Columbia Law School, a Director for Columbia’s European Legal Studies Center, and a Senior Scholar at Jerome A. Chazen Institute for Global Business at Columbia Business School where she will talk about these questions and her new book, “Digital Empires: The Global Battle to Regulate Technology.”*
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SPEAKER:
Professor Anu Bradford
Anu Bradford is Henry L. Moses Professor of Law and International Organizations at Columbia Law School, a Director for Columbia’s European Legal Studies Center, and a Senior Scholar at Jerome A. Chazen Institute for Global Business at Columbia Business School. Bradford is also a nonresident scholar in the Europe Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Her research focuses on international trade law, European Union law, digital regulation, and comparative and international antitrust law.
Bradford earned her S.J.D. (2007) and LL.M. (2002) degrees from Harvard Law School and also holds a law degree from the University of Helsinki. After completing her LL.M. studies as a Fulbright Scholar at Harvard Law School, Bradford practiced antitrust law and European Union law at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton in Brussels before returning to Harvard for her doctoral studies. She has also served as an adviser on economic policy in the Parliament of Finland and as an expert assistant to a member of the European Parliament. Bradford is the author of “The Brussels Effect: How the European Union Rules the World” (OUP 2020), which was named one of the Best Books of 2020 by Foreign Affairs. Her next book “Digital Empires: The Global Battle to Regulate Technology” will be published by the OUP in September 2023.
About Digital Empires: The Global Battle to Regulate Technology
The global battle among the three dominant digital powers—the United States, China, and the European Union—is intensifying. All three regimes are racing to regulate tech companies, with each advancing a competing vision for the digital economy while attempting to expand its sphere of influence in the digital world. In DIGITAL EMPIRES: The Global Battle to Regulate Technology (Oxford University Press, September 26, 2023), her provocative follow-up to The Brussels Effect, Anu Bradford explores a rivalry that will shape the world in the decades to come. Across the globe, people dependent on digital technologies have become increasingly alarmed that their rapid adoption and transformation have ushered in an exceedingly concentrated economy where a few powerful companies control vast economic wealth and political power, undermine data privacy, and widen the gap between economic winners and losers. In response, world leaders are variously embracing the idea of reining in the most powerful tech companies. Bradford examines three competing regulatory approaches—the American market-driven model, the Chinese state-driven model, and the European rights-driven regulatory model—and discusses how governments and tech companies navigate the inevitable conflicts that arise when these regulatory approaches collide in the international domain. Which digital empire will prevail in the contest for global influence remains an open question, yet their
contrasting strategies are now increasingly clear. Digital societies are at an inflection point. In the midst of these unfolding regulatory battles, governments, tech companies, and digital citizens are making important choices that will shape the future ethos of the digital society. DIGITAL EMPIRES lays bare the choices we face as societies and individuals, explains the forces that shape those choices, and illuminates the immense stakes involved for everyone who uses digital technologies.
Advance praise for Digital Empires
“Anu Bradford provides a holistic and balanced view of the three competing regulatory systems at the intersection of technology and society. Digital Empires is a must read for anyone seeking to understand what’s at stake in developing a practical regulatory framework that serves the needs of people everywhere.”
—Brad Smith, Vice Chair and President of Microsoft
“Digital Empires describes the coming race between the US, China, and the EU to impose their regulatory models and set the norms that govern the global digital order. The outcome of this struggle will shape the geopolitical map in unimaginable ways. A thoroughly researched, extremely readable, and perfectly timed work.”
Ian Bremmer, President of the Eurasia Group and author of The Power of Crisis
“Digital Empires is essential reading for all policymakers wanting to understand the drivers and implications of conflicts that threaten the global nature of the digital economy. Bradford offers a nuanced and highly compelling account of a digital world between decoupling and continuing globalization.”
Pascal Lamy, Director general of the WTO, 2005-2013
“This is the definitive account of the fierce and hugely important fight within and among “digital empires” – the United States, China, and the European Union – over the shape of our digital lives. Among its important conclusions are that the European rights driven regulatory model, rather than the American market-driven model, is best poised to unite the democratic west and challenge China’s growing control in the digital realm.”
Jack Goldsmith, Learned Hand Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
“It is easy to forget that the future of the big tech is not just the question of what Europe, China or the U.S. will do, but how it all comes together. Anu Bradford offers the single best approach to understanding these interactions to make sense of an otherwise bewildering present and future.”
Tim Wu, Special Assistant to President Biden for Technology and Competition Policy, 2021-2023
“Anu Bradford’s Digital Empires is an essential read for anyone who wants to understand the regulatory choices confronting governments that seek to reign in big tech. The US, China and Europe have chosen different paths, and Bradford carefully breaks down the legal and political contexts of each. Bradford’s voice is clear and reasonable and this book is a tour de force.”
Joseph E. Stiglitz, Nobel laureate 2001 in economics
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