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Tag: Lobbying

  • Washington moved fast to crack down on TikTok but has made little progress with Big Tech | CNN Business

    Washington moved fast to crack down on TikTok but has made little progress with Big Tech | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    In a matter of days, the United States is expected to ban federal employees from downloading or using TikTok on government-issued phones or tablets, marking the country’s broadest crackdown on the short-form video app to date.

    The looming ban is the result of a bill that’s moved through Congress in the final days of the year with lightning-fast speed and bipartisan support. It’s gone from being just another proposal from a Republican lawmaker to being unanimously adopted in the Senate, backed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and added to a massive year-end congressional spending package. The proposed ban has support from the White House, which already blocks TikTok on its devices.

    The TikTok measure, while limited in its impact on the app’s wider US user base, highlights how quickly lawmakers can act when a combination of national security fears, bipartisan anti-China suspicions, and more targeted proposals cause the legislative stars to align.

    But in fast-tracking the bill, Congress can’t help but draw attention to its notable lack of progress on regulating American tech giants more broadly — despite years of reports, hearings and proposed legislation.

    The stark difference between the two illustrates how simple narratives, well-funded lobbying and genuinely thorny policy questions can make or break a bill. It also hints at how a select few Big Tech companies continue to maintain their dominance in the market and their centrality in the lives of countless US households.

    The tech industry’s largest players have faced a kitchen sink of allegations in recent years. From knee-capping nascent rivals; to harming children and mental health; to undermining democracy; to spreading hate speech and harassment; to censoring conservative viewpoints; to bankrupting local news outlets; Big Tech has been made out as one of Washington’s largest villains.

    But over the course of this year, TikTok has once again emerged as an even bigger target, two years after the Trump administration threatened to ban the application in the United States amid rising tensions with China. And one reason why is the relatively straightforward case that US policymakers have put forward for banning the app.

    The central allegation against TikTok is that the company poses a potential national security risk. US officials have worried that the Chinese government could pressure TikTok or its parent company, ByteDance, into handing over the personal information of its US users, which could then be used for Chinese intelligence operations or the spreading of Chinese-backed disinformation.

    There’s no evidence yet that that has actually happened. Still, policymakers and security experts have said China’s national security laws make it a possibility — identifying a kernel of risk that fits into a broader anti-China narrative linked to issues including trade, human rights and authoritarianism. Those concerns were renewed after a report this year suggested US user data had been repeatedly accessed by China-based employees. TikTok has disputed the report.

    In recent weeks, numerous states have leapt on the bandwagon, further increasing the pressure on Congress to act. More than a dozen states have now banned TikTok on state government devices, from Maryland to South Dakota.

    TikTok has insisted it maintains robust security controls on its data and that it prioritizes user privacy. It has also taken steps in recent months to wall off US user data from other parts of its business, both technologically and organizationally. But earlier this year, it acknowledged that China-based employees can access TikTok user data and declined to commit to cutting off those data flows in general.

    Since 2020, TikTok has been negotiating with the US government on a possible deal to keep the app running in the United States. But those talks have so far proven fruitless, giving an opening to policymakers in Congress and at the state level to seek restrictions on TikTok.

    “We’re disappointed that Congress has moved to ban TikTok on government devices—a political gesture that will do nothing to advance national security interests—rather than encouraging the Administration to conclude its national security review,” said Brooke Oberwetter, a TikTok spokesperson.

    TikTok’s head of public policy, Michael Beckerman, has called the ban affecting government devices a “political approach that doesn’t have any real impact on national security.”

    “We think a lot of the concerns are maybe overblown,” Beckerman told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Tuesday, “but we do think these problems can be solved” through the ongoing government negotiations.

    TikTok has significantly expanded its Washington presence in recent years.

    In 2019, ByteDance had 17 lobbyists and spent $270,000 on lobbying, according to public records gathered by the transparency group OpenSecrets. By the end of last year, its lobbyist count had more than doubled and the company had spent nearly $5.2 million on lobbying.

    That pales in comparison, however, to the full force of Big Tech’s lobbying machine, which has become one of the largest in Washington.

    Meta was the biggest internet industry lobbying giant last year, spending upward of $20 million. Next was Amazon at $19 million, then Google at almost $10 million. Combined, that’s roughly $49 million in lobbying — almost 10 times what was spent by TikTok’s parent, which nevertheless clocked in at number four on the list.

    Tech giants have repeatedly deployed their CEOs to Capitol Hill, who in some cases have made arguments citing the threat of Chinese competition. They’ve also leaned on help from trade associations they’re members of and relied on advertising campaigns to make the case against some of the biggest legislative threats to their business.

    One of those bills, the American Innovation and Choice Online Act (AICOA), would erect new barriers between tech platforms’ various lines of business, preventing Amazon, for example, from being able to compete with third-party sellers on its own marketplace. That legislation was a product of a 16-month House antitrust investigation into the tech industry that concluded, in 2020, that many of the biggest tech companies were effectively monopolies.

    For much of this year, supporters of AICOA insisted the legislation had enough votes to pass, and they called on Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to bring it to a floor vote. But between intense tech lobbying and doubts about whether the bill did in fact have the votes, it never received the floor time its supporters wanted. The same fate awaited other tech-focused antitrust bills, such as one that would have forced Apple to allow users to download iPhone apps from any website, not just its own app store.

    For a brief moment this month, lawmakers seemed poised to pass a bill that could force Meta, Google and other platforms to pay news organizations a larger share of ad revenues. But the legislation stumbled after Meta warned it could have to drop news content from its platforms altogether if the bill passed.

    Time and again, Silicon Valley’s biggest players have maneuvered expertly in Washington, defending their turf from lawmakers keen to knock them down a peg.

    But it isn’t just lobbying that has made some of these bills difficult to pass. It’s much more challenging to impose sweeping regulations on an entire industry than it is to pass a bill governing how the US government handles its own technology.

    The TikTok bill banning the app from government devices is seen as having a limited potential impact on the company’s wider US user base, which skews younger. A ban on public employees’ use of the app likely wouldn’t reach the many teens or other young people with whom the app has grown increasingly popular.

    With at least 100 million US users as of 2020, and likely more by now, TikTok has become almost “too big” to ban outright, some analysts have said.

    Politically speaking, in light of TikTok’s deep foothold among US consumers, a ban affecting government devices also represents low-hanging fruit for policymakers who enjoy clear legal authority over official devices and don’t have to worry about triggering a consumer backlash that a broader ban might invite.

    By contrast, decisions about the rules government might impose on tech platforms have called into question how those regulations may affect different parts of the economy, from small businesses to individual users to the future of the internet itself.

    In some cases, as with proposals to revise the tech industry’s decades-old content moderation liability shield, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, legislation may raise First Amendment issues as well as partisan divisions. Democrats have said Section 230 should be changed because it gives social media companies a pass to leave some hate speech and offensive content unaddressed, while Republicans have called for changes to the law so that platforms can be pressured to remove less content.

    The cross-cutting politics and the technical challenges of regulating an entire sector of technology, not to mention the potential consequences for the economy of screwing it up, have combined to make it genuinely difficult for lawmakers to reach an accord.

    It’s no wonder, then, that when Congress sees an easier victory within its grasp, lawmakers take it.

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  • The Moroccan spy at the heart of the Qatar investigation

    The Moroccan spy at the heart of the Qatar investigation

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    PARIS — A Moroccan secret service agent, identified as Mohamed Belahrech, has emerged as one of the key operators in the Qatar corruption scandal that has shaken the foundations of the European Parliament. His codename is M118, and he’s been running circles around European spy agencies for years.

    Belahrech seems at the center of an intricate web that extends from Qatar and Morocco to Italy, Poland and Belgium. He is suspected of having been engaged in intense lobbying efforts and alleged corruption targeting European MEPs in recent years. And it turns out he’s been known to European intelligence services for some time.

    Rabat is increasingly in the spotlight, as focus widens beyond the role of Qatar in the corruption allegations of European MEPs, which saw Belgian police seizing equipment and more than €1.5 million in cash in raids across at least 20 homes and offices. 

    Belgian Justice Minister Vincent Van Quickenborne last week provided a scarcely veiled indication that Morocco was involved in the probe. Speaking to Belgian lawmakers, he referred to “a country that in recent years has already been mentioned … when it comes to interference.” This is understood to refer to Morocco, since Rabat’s security service has been accused of espionage in Belgium, where there is a large diaspora of Moroccans.

    According to Italian daily La Repubblica and the Belgian Le Soir, Belahrech is one of the links connecting former MEP Pier Antonio Panzeri to the Moroccan secret service, the DGED. The Italian politician Panzeri is now in jail, facing preliminary charges of corruption in the investigation as to whether Morocco and Qatar bought influence in the European Parliament. 

    In a cache of Moroccan diplomatic cables leaked by a hacker in 2014 and 2015 (and seen by POLITICO), Panzeri is described as “a close friend” of Morocco, “an influential ally” who is “capable of fighting the growing activism of our enemies at the European Parliament.”

    Investigators are now looking at just how close a friend Panzeri was to Morocco. The Belgian extradition request for Panzeri’s wife and daughter, who are also allegedly involved in the corruption scandal, mentions “gifts” from Abderrahim Atmoun, Morocco’s ambassador to Warsaw. 

    For several years, Panzeri shared the presidency of the joint EU-Morocco parliamentary committee with Atmoun, a seasoned diplomat keen on promoting Morocco’s interests in the Brussels bubble.

    But it’s now suspected that Atmoun was taking orders from Belahrech, who is “a dangerous man,” an official with knowledge of the investigation said to Le Soir. It’s under Belahrech’s watch that Panzeri reportedly sealed his association with Morocco’s DGED after failing to get reelected to the Parliament in 2019. 

    Belharech may also be the key to unraveling one of the lingering mysteries of the Qatar scandal: the money trail. A Belgian extradition request seen by POLITICO refers to an enigmatic character linked to a credit card given to Panzeri’s relatives — who is known as “the giant.” Speculation is swirling as to whether Belahrech could be this giant.

    The many lives of a Moroccan spy

    Belahrech is no newbie in European spy circles — media reports trace his presence back to several espionage cases over the past decade.

    The man from Rabat first caught the authorities’ attention in connection to alleged infiltration of Spanish mosques, which in 2013 resulted in the deportation of the Moroccan director of an Islamic organization in Catalonia, according to Spanish daily El Confidencial.

    Belahrech was allegedly in charge of running agents in the mosques at the behest of the DGED, while his wife was suspected of money laundering via a Spain-based travel agency. The network was dismantled in 2015, according to El Mundo. 

    Not long after, Belahrech reemerged in France, where he played a leading role in a corruption case at Orly airport in Paris. 

    A Moroccan agent, identified at the time as Mohamed B., allegedly obtained up to 200 confidential files on terrorism suspects in France from a French border officer, according to an investigation published in Libération. 

    The officer, who was detained and put under formal investigation in 2017, allegedly provided confidential material regarding individuals on terrorist watchlists — and possible people of interest transiting through the airport — to the Moroccan agent in exchange for four-star holidays in Morocco. 

    French authorities reportedly did not press charges against Belahrech, who disappeared when his network was busted. According to a French official with knowledge of the investigation, Belahrech was cooperating with France at the time by providing intelligence on counterterrorism matters, and was let off for this reason.

    Moroccan secret service agents may act as intelligence providers for European agencies while simultaneously coordinating influence operations in those same countries, two people familiar with intelligence services coordination told POLITICO. For that reason, European countries sometimes turn a blind eye to practices that could be qualified as interference, they added, so long as this remains unobtrusive.

    Contacted, the intelligence services of France, Spain and Morocco did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

    As to Belahrech: Five years after his foray in France, the mysterious M118 is back in the spotlight — raising questions over his ongoing relationship with European intelligence networks.

    Hannah Roberts contributed to reporting.

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    Clea Caulcutt and Elisa Braun

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  • Qatar scandal: What just happened at the European Parliament?

    Qatar scandal: What just happened at the European Parliament?

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    Watchdogs say it could be the “most serious,” “most shocking,” “most egregious” corruption scandal to hit Brussels in years.

    A series of at least 16 raids by the Belgian federal police Friday netted five people they said had committed “alleged offenses of criminal organization, corruption and money laundering.” The morning searches yielded €600,000 in cash, plus phones and computers.

    Initially, the culprits weren’t major names by Brussels standards: A former member of the European Parliament, a few parliamentary assistants, and a trade union boss, all allegedly on the take for World Cup host Qatar. But to what end, really? Some questioned whether ­— if the charges were true — Doha had really made a smart investment.

    By the evening, however, it was clear this wasn’t just a story of some has-beens and wannabes lining their pockets. Eva Kaili, a vice president of the European Parliament and vocal defender of Doha, landed in police custody, according to the Belgian federal police. The case also centers around an NGO that, until recently, counted some of the biggest luminaries in left-wing politics among its board members.

    “The State of Qatar categorically rejects any attempts to associate it with accusations of misconduct,” said a Qatari official in a statement e-mailed Sunday morning.

    As this potentially superlative scandal continues to unfold, POLITICO answers all your questions about the controversy roiling the EU capital.

    Q: Who is Eva Kaili?

    As one of Parliament’s 14 vice presidents, Kaili is one of the institution’s most powerful players — and as a former news presenter with celebrity status in her native Greece, one of Brussels’ most glamorous figures.

    But Kaili has also emerged as one of the most vocal defenders of Qatar. She recently called the country a “frontrunner in labor rights” after meeting with the country’s labor minister, despite deep international concerns about conditions for stadium construction workers. A member of the center-left Socialist & Democrat (S&D) party, her portfolio includes special responsibilities related to the Middle East.

    Kaili’s partner and co-parent, Francesco Giorgi, has also been detained, according to police and people with direct knowledge. He’s an adviser on the Middle East and North Africa region in the European Parliament — and a founder of an NGO called Fight Impunity, which aims to promote “accountability as a central pillar of the architecture of international justice.”

    Crucially, Fight Impunity’s president is Pier Antonio Panzeri, a central figure in the case.

    Q: Who else is involved?

    Panzeri, an Italian ex-MEP also from the S&D, was among those arrested Friday morning. By the evening, his wife and daughter were also nabbed by Italian police. A warrant for their arrest, seen by POLITICO, accused Panzeri of “intervening politically with members working at the European Parliament for the benefit of Qatar and Morocco.”

    41 Rue Ducale in Brussels where both No Peace Without Justice and Fight Impunity have offices | Eddy Wax | Eddy Wax

    Former parliamentary aides, especially those with ties to Fight Impunity, are also falling under scrutiny. In addition to arresting Giorgi, police also sealed the office of another parliamentary assistant who used to work for Fight Impunity, currently serving as an aide to Belgian S&D MEP Marie Arena.

    Arena, who inherited the chairmanship of the human rights subcommittee from Panzeri and works closely with Fight Impunity, confirmed that her aide’s office was under seal. Arena said she herself has not been questioned by police.

    According to Italian newswire Ansa, Niccolò Figà-Talamanca has also been detained. He’s the director general of another NGO, No Peace Without Justice. Focused on international criminal justice, human rights and promoting democracy in the Middle East and North Africa, the organization is officially based in New York and Rome. However, it has the same Brussels address as Fight Impunity, at 41 Rue Ducale.

    Emma Bonino, a former liberal MEP and foreign affairs minister for Italy, founded No Peace Without Justice. She is listed as an honorary board member of Fight Impunity. She and Figà-Talamanca did not immediately respond to requests for comment through Peace Without Justice.

    In a sign of Panzeri’s connections, former French Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, former European Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos, former EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini and former MEP Cecilia Wikström are also listed as honorary board members.

    Mogherini resigned from the board on Saturday morning, according to a spokesperson for the College of Europe, where Mogherini is now rector. Avramopoulos said in an email Sunday morning that he, Cazeneuve and Wikström had also resigned “immediately when we were informed back on Friday.”

    The list of staff at Fight Impunity has apparently been deleted; however, web archives show Giorgi and other current parliamentary assistants holding key roles in January.

    Q: Is this limited to the European Parliament?

    Nope. Also detained: Luca Visentini, who just last month became secretary general of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC). Before that, he was the longtime chief of the European Trade Union Confederation. (He didn’t have to move for the new role: Both the global and the European organizations are based at the same address in Brussels, on Rue Albert II.)

    Builders’ unions have been some of the top critics of Qatar’s record on worker’s rights in the lead-up to the World Cup. But even before Visentini took over, ITUC was a notable exception. Sharan Burrow, the previous ITUC chief, urged external critics of the country’s labor laws to “go and have a look at a look at the change” in a video posted by the Qatari labor ministry in June.

    Q: Why would Qatar want to lobby?

    The Gulf emirate is hosting the World Cup, but rather than a public relations coup, the tournament turned out to shine a negative spotlight on the country. Accusations of bribery in the bidding process and slave-like conditions for foreign workers cast doubt on the choice, and liberal critics seized on the moment to attack the conservative Muslim country’s position on women’s and LGBTQ+ rights.

    Fans arrive prior to kick off of the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 | Dan Mullan/Getty Images

    Maintaining a good reputation is crucial, as Qatar works to hash out deals with EU countries for its natural gas. A proposal to give Qataris visa-free travel to the EU’s Schengen area is also moving forward in Parliament — at least, it was.

    Q: How has Kaili advocated for Qatar?

    Kaili has arguably been the dean of the (sizeable group of) Doha defenders within the S&D.

    On November 24, for example, as the plenary passed a resolution “deplor[ing] the deaths of thousands of migrant workers,” Kaili took to the floor to praise the “historical transformation” of Qatar brought on by the World Cup. Similarly, 10 days ago, she showed up to vote in favor of visa liberalization for Qatar and Kuwait in the Parliament’s justice and home affairs committee — even though she’s not a member of the committee.

    Kaili also alienated MEPs on a panel dedicated to the Middle East when she freelanced her own trip after Doha canceled the group’s visit. The Parliament’s Delegation for Relations With the Arab Peninsula (DARP) had been planning to head to Qatar just ahead of the World Cup in November, to visit tournament facilities and observe labor law changes.

    With barely a month’s notice, however, Qatar’s consultative assembly, known as the Shura Council, asked to postpone. Instead, Kaili went to Qatar the week the full delegation was supposed to be there — and gave full-throated praise to the emirate’s labor reforms. According to local press, she said she was there representing 500 million European citizens who see the country’s progress as representing common values.

    “She was somehow going behind my back,” said MEP Hannah Neumann, the German Green at the helm of DARP. Doha was “uninviting the group that would have had a balanced position” and “instead invited her, knowing that her statements would be less critical.”

    Repeated calls to Kaili’s mobile phone Friday and Saturday went unanswered.

     Q: How big a deal is this?

    Watchdog groups agree on the superlatives. The Qatar scandal could be “the most egregious case” of alleged corruption Parliament has seen in years, said Transparency International chief Michiel van Hulten. Alberto Alemanno, a law professor at HEC Paris, called it the “most shocking integrity scandal in the history of the EU.”

    German Green MEP Daniel Freund, co-chair of the Parliament’s anti-corruption intergroup, called it one of the “most serious corruption scandals in Brussels in recent decades.”

    Van Hulten said the Parliament has created a “culture of impunity … with a combination of lax financial rules and controls and a complete lack of independent (or indeed any) ethics oversight.” Alemmano likewise predicted this would just be the “tip of the iceberg,” hoping a pile-up of scandals would create political momentum for an independent ethics system.

    Q. What are people saying can be done about it?

    The Commission is due to propose an independent ethics body that would apply to all EU institutions, but it almost certainly will not come with investigative or enforcement power.

    Freund argued that countries that are not part of the EU should have to follow the “relatively good lobbying rules already in force” in Brussels. At the moment, countries don’t have to register in the EU’s transparency register of interest groups, for example, and MEPs don’t need to report those contacts. “The EU must improve this immediately,” Freund said.

    Incidentally, Panzeri’s NGO, Fight Impunity, is not listed in the transparency register. That’s an apparent violation of the existing rules for EU-based groups that want to make their case in Parliament. Under the latest transparency register guidelines, NGOs are required to include extensive details about their funding.

    Arena, the current chair of the human rights subcommittee, has worked closely with Panzeri and Fight Impunity, including the NGO in press conferences and traveling with Panzeri for discussions on civil liberties.

    Even as she defended her own independence, Arena predicted that more revelations would come out. “If Qatar is doing so, I know that others are doing exactly the same,” Arena said. “And so we have to really prevent this kind of capacity to influence.”

    Current chair of the human rights subcommittee Maria Arena | EP

    Q: How’s it going now for Qatar?

    The blowback from these accusations is already coming fast.

    The S&D has called for the visa liberalization proposal to be put on hold, and the Green rapporteur said he would vote against the measure if it comes up for a vote next week.

    Separately, Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee planned to head to Saudi Arabia and Qatar in the coming weeks. Now the latter part has been canceled — meaning a top rival of Doha gets all the attention.  

    “Any association of the Qatari government with the reported claims is baseless and gravely misinformed,” said the Qatari official statement issued Sunday. “The State of Qatar works through institution-to-institution engagement and operates in full compliance with international laws and regulations.”

    Q: What’s next in the Parliament?

    Late Saturday, Parliament President Roberta Metsola suspended all of Kaili’s “powers, duties and tasks” related to being a vice president. To revoke the title completely would require a decision by the Parliament’s conference of presidents, and then a vote in the plenary.

    When the plenary gathers in Strasbourg this week, MEPs are likely to revoke Kaili’s parliamentary immunity. The Left has already formally called for a debate about the incident to be added to the agenda, with a vote slated for Monday evening.

    Kaili has also been suspended from the S&D group and her domestic party in Greece, Pasok.

    Eddy Wax, Nektaria Stamouli, Hannah Roberts and Vincent Manancourt contributed reporting.

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  • A few bad apples or a whole rotten barrel? Brussels wrestles with corruption scandal

    A few bad apples or a whole rotten barrel? Brussels wrestles with corruption scandal

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    As Belgian police launched a second wave of raids on the European Parliament, a stunned Brussels elite has started to grapple with an uncomfortable question at the heart of the Qatar bribery investigation: Just how deep does the rot go?

    So far, police inquiries launched by Belgian prosecutor Michel Claise have landed four people in jail, including Parliament Vice President Eva Kaili, on charges of corruption, money laundering and participation in a criminal organization.

    After the initial shock of those arrests wore off, several Parliament officials told POLITICO they believed the allegations would be limited to a “few individuals” who had gone astray by allegedly accepting hundreds of thousands of euros in cash from Qatari interests.

    But that theory was starting to unravel by Monday evening, as Belgian police carried out another series of raids on Parliament offices just as lawmakers were gathering in Strasbourg, one of European Parliament’s two sites, for their first meeting after news of the arrests broke on Friday.

    With 19 residences and offices searched — in addition to Parliament — six people arrested and sums of at least around €1 million recovered, some EU officials and activists said they believed more names would be drawn into the widening dragnet — and that the Qatar bribery scandal was symptomatic of a much deeper and more widespread problem with corruption not just in the European Parliament, but across all the EU institutions.

    In Parliament, lax oversight of members’ financial activities and the fact that states were able to contact them without ever logging the encounters in a public register amounts to a recipe for corruption, these critics argued.

    Beyond the Parliament, they pointed to the revolving door of senior officials who head off to serve private interests after a stint at the European Commission or Council as proof that tougher oversight of institutions is in order. Others invoked the legacy of the Jacques Santer Commission — which resigned en masse in 1998 — as proof that no EU institution is immune from illegal influence.

    “The courts will determine who is guilty, but what’s certain is that it’s not just Qatar, and it’s not just the individuals who have been named who are involved” in foreign influence operations, Raphaël Glucksmann, a French lawmaker from the Socialists and Democrats, who heads a committee against foreign interference in Parliament, told POLITICO in Strasbourg.

    Michiel van Hulten, a former lawmaker who now heads Transparency International’s EU office, said that while egregious cases of corruption involving bags of cash were rare, “it’s quite likely that there are names in this scandal that we haven’t heard from yet. There is undue influence on a scale we haven’t seen so far. It doesn’t need to involve bags of cash. It can involve trips to far-flung destinations paid for by foreign organizations — and in that sense there is a more widespread problem.”

    Adding to the problem was the fact that Parliament has no built-in protections for internal whistleblowers, despite having voted in favor of such protections for EU citizens, he added. Back in 1998, it was a whistleblower denouncing mismanagement in the Santer Commission who precipitated a mass resignation of the EU executive.

    Glucksmann also called for “extremely profound reforms” to a system that allows lawmakers to hold more than one job, leaves oversight of personal finances up to a self-regulating committee staffed by lawmakers, and gives state actors access to lawmakers without having to register their encounters publicly. 

    European Parliament Vice President Eva Kaili | Jalal Morchidi/EFE via EPA

    “If Parliament wants to get out of this, we’ll have to hit hard and undertake extremely profound reforms,” added Glucksmann, who previously named Russia, Georgia and Azerbaijan as countries that have sought to influence political decisions in the Parliament.

    To start addressing the problem, Glucksmann called for an ad hoc investigative committee to be set up in Parliament, while other left-wing and Greens lawmakers have urged reforms including naming an anti-corruption vice president to replace Kaili, who was expelled from the S&D group late Monday, and setting up an ethics committee overseeing all EU institutions.

    Glass half-full

    Others, however, were less convinced that the corruption probe would turn up new names, or that the facts unveiled last Friday spoke to any wider problem in the EU. Asked about the extent of the bribery scandal, one senior Parliament official who asked not to be named in order to discuss confidential deliberations said: “As serious as this is, it’s a matter of individuals, of a few people who made very bad decisions. The investigation and arrests show that our systems and procedures have worked.”

    Valérie Hayer, a French lawmaker with the centrist Renew group, struck a similar note, saying that while she was deeply concerned about a “risk for our democracy” linked to foreign interference, she did not believe that the scandal pointed to “generalized corruption” in the EU. “Unfortunately, there are bad apples,” she said.

    European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who’s under fire over her handling of COVID-19 vaccination deals with Pfizer, declined to answer questions about her Vice President Margaritis Schinas’ relations with Qatar at a press briefing, triggering fury from the Brussels press corps.

    The Greek commissioner represented the EU at the opening ceremony of the World Cup last month, and has been criticized by MEPs over his tweets in recent months, lavishing praise on Qatar’s labor reforms.

    European Commission Vice President Margaritis Schinas | Aris Oikonomou/AFP via Getty Images

    Asked about the Commission’s response to the Qatar corruption scandal engulfing the European Parliament, and in particular the stance of Schinas, von der Leyen was silent on the Greek commissioner.

    Von der Leyen did, however, appear to lend support to the creation of an independent ethics body that could investigate wrongdoing across all EU bodies.

    “These rules [on lobbying by state actors] are the same in all three EU institutions,” said the senior Parliament official, referring to the European Commission, Parliament and the European Council, the roundtable of EU governments.

    The split over how to address corruption shows how even in the face of what appears to be an egregious example of corruption, members of the Brussels system — comprised of thousands of well-paid bureaucrats and elected officials, many of whom enjoy legal immunity as part of their jobs — seeks to shield itself against scrutiny that could threaten revenue or derail careers.

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  • Brexit Britain trapped in the middle as US and EU go to war on trade

    Brexit Britain trapped in the middle as US and EU go to war on trade

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    LONDON — Three years after leaving the EU to chart its own course, Britain finds itself caught between two economic behemoths in a brewing transatlantic trade war.

    In one corner sits the United States, whose Congress in August passed the Biden administration’s much-vaunted $369 billion program of green subsidies, part of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).

    In the opposing corner is the European Union, which fears Washington’s subsidy splurge will pull investment — particularly in electric vehicles — away from Europe, hitting carmakers hard.

    The EU is preparing its own retaliatory package of subsidies; Washington shows little sign of changing course. Fears of a trade war are growing fast.

    Now sitting squarely outside the ring, the U.K. can only look on with horror, and quietly ask Washington to soften the blow. But there are few signs the softly-softly approach is bearing fruit. Britain now risks being clobbered by both sides.

    “It’s not in the U.K.’s interest for the U.S. and EU to go down this route,” said Sam Lowe, a partner at Flint Global and expert in U.K. and EU trade policy. “Given the U.K.’s current economic position, it can’t really afford to engage in a subsidy war with both.” The British government has just unleashed a round of fiscal belt-tightening after a market rout, following months of political turmoil.

    For iconic British motor brands, the row over the Biden administration’s IRA comes with real costs.

    The U.S. is the second-largest destination for British-made vehicles after the EU, and the automotive sector is one of Britain’s top goods exporters.

    Manufacturers like Jaguar Land Rover have warned publicly about the “very serious challenges” posed by the new U.S. law and its plan for electric vehicle tax credits aimed at boosting American industry.

    Kemi on the case

    U.K. Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch has for months been privately urging top U.S. officials to soften the impact of the electric vehicle subsidies on Britain by carving out exemptions, U.K. officials said.

    When Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo visited London in early October, Badenoch pushed her to rethink the strategy. The U.K. trade chief brought that same message to Washington in a series of private meetings earlier this month, including at a sit-down with Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo.

    Badenoch has “raised this issue on many levels,” an official from the U.K.’s Department for International Trade said, citing conversations with U.S. Ambassador to Britain Jane Hartley, with Secretary Raimondo, “and with members of the Biden administration and senior representatives of both parties.”

    The Cabinet minister has also spoken out in public, telling the pro-free market Cato Institute in Washington earlier this month that “the substantial new tax credits for electric cars not only bar vehicles made in the U.K. from the U.S. market, but also affect vehicles made in the U.S. by U.K. manufacturers.”

    U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo | Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

    Badenoch’s comments echo concerns raised by both British automotive lobby group the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT), and by Jaguar Land Rover, in comments filed with the U.S. Treasury Department.

    The SMMT warned that Biden’s green vehicle package has several “elements of concern that risk creating an uneven competitive environment, with U.K.-based manufacturers and suppliers potentially penalised.” The lobby group is taking aim at the credit scheme’s requirement for green vehicles to be built in North America, with significant subsidies available only if critical minerals are sourced from the U.S. or a U.S. ally.

    In response to Washington’s plans, the EU is preparing what could amount to billions in subsidies for its own industries hit by the U.S. law, which also offers tax breaks to boost American green businesses such as solar panel manufacturers. Britain faces being squeezed in both markets, while lacking any say in whatever response Brussels decides.

    Protectionism that impacts like-minded allies “isn’t the answer to the geopolitical challenges we face,” the British trade department official warned, adding “there is a serious risk” the law disrupts “vital” global supply chains of batteries and electric vehicles.

    The conversations Badenoch had this month in Washington were “reassuring,” the official added. “But it’s for them to address and find solutions.”

    ‘Ton of work to do’

    Yet others believe Badenoch will have a hard time getting her colleagues in the U.S. — now cooling on a much-touted bilateral trade deal — to take action. “The U.S. is minimally focused on how any of their policies are going to impact the U.K.,” admitted a U.S.-based representative of a major business group.

    While Britain and the U.S. are “very close allies”, they added, those in Washington “just don’t really view the U.K. as an interesting trade partner and market right now.” The U.S. is more focused, they noted, on pushing back against China, meaning Badenoch has “a ton of work to do” getting the administration to soften the IRA.

    Nevertheless the U.S. is still working out how its law will actually be implemented, the business figure said, and is assembling a working group on how the IRA impacts trade allies. This has the potential, they added, to “alleviate a lot of the concerns coming out of the U.K.”

    Late Tuesday evening, the SMMT called on the British government to provide greater domestic support for the sector as it prepares to ramp up its own electric vehicle production. The group wants an extension past April on domestic support for firms’ energy costs; a boost to government investment in green energy sources; and a speedier national rollout of charging infrastructure and staff training.

    In the meantime, Britain’s options appear limited.

    Newly manufactured Land Rover and Range Rover vehicles parked and waiting to be loaded for export | Paul Ellis/AFP via Getty Images

    The U.K. “could consider legal action” and haul the U.S. before the World Trade Organization or challenge the EU through provisions in the post-Brexit Trade and Cooperation Agreement, said Lowe of consultancy Flint. “But — to be blunt — neither of them care what we have to say.”

    Anna Jerzewska, a trade advisor and associate fellow at the UK Trade Policy Observatory, suggested pressing ahead “with your own domestic policy and efforts to support strategic industries is perhaps more important” than complaining about foreign subsidy schemes. But she noted that after a “chaotic” political period, Britain is “likely to take longer to respond to external changes and challenges.”

    And in truth, Britain “can’t afford to out-subsidize the U.S. and EU,” said David Henig, a trade expert with the European Centre For International Political Economy think tank.

    Outside the EU, Britain could work to rally allies such as Japan and South Korea who are also unhappy with the Biden administration’s protectionist measures, he noted. “But I don’t think we’re in that position,” Henig said, as it would take a concerted diplomatic effort, and the U.K.’s automotive sector would “have to be well positioned” in the first place, not struggling as it is. He predicted London’s lobbying in Washington and Brussels is “not going to get anywhere.”

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    Graham Lanktree

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  • Australia argues against ‘endangered’ Barrier Reef status

    Australia argues against ‘endangered’ Barrier Reef status

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    CANBERRA, Australia — Australia’s environment minister said Tuesday her government will lobby against UNESCO adding the Great Barrier Reef to a list of endangered World Heritage sites.

    Officials from the U.N. cultural agency and the International Union for Conservation of Nature released a report on Monday warning that without “ambitious, rapid and sustained” climate action, the world’s largest coral reef is in peril.

    The report, which recommended shifting the Great Barrier Reef to endangered status, followed a 10-day mission in March to the famed reef system off Australia’s northeast coast that was added to the World Heritage list in 1981.

    Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek said the report was a reflection on Australia’s previous conservative government, which was voted out of office in May elections after nine years in power.

    She said the new center-left Labor Party government has already addressed several of the report’s concerns, including action on climate change.

    “We’ll very clearly make the point to UNESCO that there is no need to single the Great Barrier Reef out in this way” with an endangered listing, Plibersek told reporters.

    “The reason that UNESCO in the past has singled out a place as at risk is because they wanted to see greater government investment or greater government action and, since the change of government, both of those things have happened,” she added.

    The new government has legislated to commit Australia to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 43% below the 2005 level by 2030.

    The previous government only committed to a reduction of 26% to 28% by the end of the decade.

    Plibersek said her government has also committed 1.2 billion Australian dollars ($798 million) to caring for the reef and has canceled the previous government’s plans to build two major dams in Queensland state that would have affected the reef’s water quality.

    “If the Great Barrier Reef is in danger, then every coral reef in the world is in danger,” Plibersek said. “If this World Heritage site is in danger, then most World Heritage sites around the world are in danger from climate change.”

    The report said Australia’s federal government and Queensland authorities should adopt more ambitious emission reduction targets in line with international efforts to limit future warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times.

    The minor Greens party, which wants Australia to slash its emissions by 75% by the end of the decade, called for the government to do more to fight climate change in light of the report.

    Jodie Rummer, a marine biologist at James Cook University in Townville who has worked on the reef for more than a decade, supported calls for Australia to aim for a 75% emissions reduction.

    “We are taking action, but that action needs to be much more rapid and much more urgent,” Rummer told Australian Broadcasting Corp.

    “We cannot claim to be doing all we can for the reef at this point. We aren’t. We need to be sending that message to the rest of the world that we are doing everything that we possibly can for the reef and that means we need to take urgent action on emissions immediately,” she added.

    Feedback from Australian officials, both at the federal and state level, will be reviewed before Paris-based UNESCO makes any official proposal to the World Heritage committee.

    In July last year, the previous Australian government garnered enough international support to defer an attempt by UNESCO to downgrade the reef’s status to “in danger” because of damage caused by climate change.

    The Great Barrier Reef accounts for around 10% of the world’s coral reef ecosystems. The network of more than 2,500 reefs covers 348,000 square kilometers (134,000 square miles).

    Australian government scientists reported in May that more than 90% of Great Barrier Reef coral surveyed in the latest year was bleached, in the fourth such mass event in seven years.

    Bleaching is caused by global warming, but this is the reef’s first bleaching event during a La Niña weather pattern, which is associated with cooler Pacific Ocean temperatures, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Authority said in its annual report.

    Bleaching in 2016, 2017 and 2020 damaged two-thirds of the coral.

    Coral bleaches as a response to heat stress and scientists hope most of the coral will recover from the latest event.

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  • Stop the killer robots! Musk-backed lobbyists fight to save Europe from bad AI

    Stop the killer robots! Musk-backed lobbyists fight to save Europe from bad AI

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    A lobby group backed by Elon Musk and associated with a controversial ideology popular among tech billionaires is fighting to prevent killer robots from terminating humanity, and it’s taken hold of Europe’s Artificial Intelligence Act to do so.

    The Future of Life Institute (FLI) has over the past year made itself a force of influence on some of the AI Act’s most contentious elements. Despite the group’s links to Silicon Valley, Big Tech giants like Google and Microsoft have found themselves on the losing side of FLI’s arguments.

    In the EU bubble, the arrival of a group whose actions are colored by fear of AI-triggered catastrophe rather than run-of-the-mill consumer protection concerns was received like a spaceship alighting in the Schuman roundabout. Some worry that the institute embodies a techbro-ish anxiety about low-probability threats that could divert attention from more immediate problems. But most agree that during its time in Brussels, the FLI has been effective. 

    “They’re rather pragmatic and they have legal and technical expertise,” said Kai Zenner, a digital policy adviser to center-right MEP Axel Voss, who works on the AI Act. “They’re sometimes a bit too worried about technology, but they raise a lot of good points.” 

    Launched in 2014 by MIT academic Max Tegmark and backed by tech grandees including Musk, Skype’s Jaan Tallinn, and crypto wunderkind Vitalik Buterin, FLI is a nonprofit devoted to grappling with “existential risks” — events able to wipe out or doom humankind. It counts other hot shots like actors Morgan Freeman and Alan Alda and renowned scientists Martin (Lord) Rees and Nick Bostrom among its external advisers.

    Chief among those menaces — and FLI’s priorities — is artificial intelligence running amok.

    “We’ve seen plane crashes because an autopilot couldn’t be overruled. We’ve seen a storming of the U.S. Capitol because an algorithm was trained to maximize engagement. These are AI safety failures today — as these systems become more powerful, harms might become worse,” Mark Brakel, FLI director of European policy, said in an interview.

    But the lobby group faces two PR problems. First, Musk, its most famous backer, is at the center of a storm since he started mass firings at Twitter as its new owner, catching the eye of regulators, too. Musk’s controversies could cause lawmakers to get skittish about talking to FLI. Second, the group’s connections to a set of beliefs known as effective altruism are raising eyebrows: The ideology faces a reckoning and is most recently being blamed as a driving force behind the scandal around cryptocurrency exchange FTX, which has unleashed financial carnage. 

    How FLI pierced the bubble

    The arrival of a lobby group fighting off extinction, misaligned artificial intelligence and killer robots was bound to be refreshing to otherwise snoozy Brussels policymaking.

    FLI’s Brussels office opened in mid-2021, as discussions about the European Commission’s AI Act proposal were kicking off.

    “We would prefer AI to be developed in Europe, where there will be regulations in place,” Brakel said. “The hope is that people take inspiration from the EU.”

    A former diplomat, the Dutch-born Brakel joined the institute in May 2021. He chose to work in AI policy as a field that was both impactful and underserved. Policy researcher Risto Uuk joined him two months later. A skilled digital operator — he publishes his analyses and newsletter from the domain artificialintelligenceact.eu — Uuk had previously done AI research for the Commission and the World Economic Forum. He joined FLI out of philosophical affinity: like Tegmark, Uuk subscribes to the tenets of effective altruism, a value system prescribing the use of hard evidence to decide how to benefit the largest number of people.

    Since starting in Brussels, the institute’s three-person team (with help from Tegmark and others, including law firm Dentons) has deftly spearheaded lobbying efforts on little-known AI issues.

    Elon Musk is one of the Future of Life Institute’s most prominent backers | Carina Johansen/NTB/AFP via Getty Images

    Exhibit A: general-purpose AI — software like speech-recognition or image-generating tools used in a vast array of contexts and sometimes affected by biases and dangerous inaccuracies (for instance, in medical settings). General-purpose AI was not mentioned in the Commission’s proposal, but wended its way into the EU Council’s final text and is guaranteed to feature in Parliament’s position.

    “We came out and said, ‘There’s this new class of AI — general-purpose AI systems — and the AI Act doesn’t consider them whatsoever. You should worry about this,'” Brakel said. “This was not on anyone’s radar. Now it is.”

    The group is also playing on European fears of technological domination by the U.S. and China. “General-purpose AI systems are built mainly in the U.S. and China, and that could harm innovation in Europe, if you don’t ensure they abide by some requirements,” Brakel said, adding this argument resonated with center-right lawmakers with whom he recently met. 

    Another of FLI’s hobbyhorses is outlawing AI able to manipulate people’s behavior. The original proposal bans manipulative AI, but that is limited to “subliminal” techniques — which Brakel thinks would create loopholes. 

    But the AI Act’s co-rapporteur, Romanian Renew lawmaker Dragoș Tudorache, is now pushing to make the ban more comprehensive. “If that amendment goes through, we would be a lot happier than we are with the current text,” Brakel said.

    So smart it made crypto crash

    While the group’s input on key provisions in the AI bill was welcomed, many in Brussels’ establishment look askance at its worldview.

    Tegmark and other FLI backers adhere to what’s referred to as effective altruism (or EA). A strand of utilitarianism codified by philosopher William MacAskill — whose work Musk called “a close match for my philosophy” — EA dictates that one should better the lives of as many people as possible, using a rationalist fact-based approach. At a basic level, that means donating big chunks of one’s income to competent charities. A more radical, long-termist strand of effective altruism demands that one strive to minimize risks able to kill off a lot of people — and especially future people, who will greatly outnumber existing ones. That means that preventing the potential rise of an AI whose values clash with humankind’s well-being should be at the top of one’s list of concerns.

    A critical take on FLI is that it is furthering this interpretation of the so-called effective altruism agenda, one supposedly uninterested in the world’s current ills — such as racism, sexism and hunger — and focused on sci-fi threats to yet-to-be-born folks. Timnit Gebru, an AI researcher whose acrimonious exit from Google made headlines in 2020, has lambasted FLI on Twitter, voicing “huge concerns” about it.

    “They are backed by billionaires including Elon Musk — that already should make people suspicious,” Gebru said in an interview. “The entire field around AI safety is made up of so many ‘institutes’ and companies billionaires pump money into. But their concept of AI safety has nothing to do with current harms towards marginalized groups — they want to reorient the entire conversation into preventing this AI apocalypse.”

    Effective altruism’s reputation has taken a hit in recent weeks after the fall of FTX, a bankrupt exchange that lost at least $1 billion in customers’ cryptocurrency assets. Its disgraced CEO Sam Bankman-Fried used to be one of EA’s darlings, talking in interviews about his plan to make bazillions and give them to charity. As FTX crumbled, commentators argued that Effective Altruism ideology led Bankman-Fried to cut corners and rationalize his recklessness. 

    Both MacAskill and FLI donor Buterin defended EA on Twitter, saying that Bankman-Fried’s actions contrasted with the philosophy’s tenets. “Automatically downgrading every single thing SBF believed in is an error,” wrote Buterin, who invented the Ethereum blockchain, and bankrolls FLI’s scholarship for AI existential risk research.

    Brakel said that the FLI and EA were two distinct things, and FLI’s advocacy was focused on present problems, from biased software to autonomous weapons, e.g. at the United Nations level. “Do we spend a lot of time thinking about what the world would look like in 400 years? No,” he said. (Neither Brakel nor the FLI’s EU representative, Claudia Prettner, call themselves effective altruists.)

    Californian ideology

    Another critique of FLI’s efforts to stave off evil AI argues that they obscure a techno-utopian drive to develop benevolent human-level AI. At a 2017 conference, FLI advisers — including Musk, Tegmark and Skype’s Tallinn — debated the likelihood and the desirability of smarter-than-human AI. Most panelists deemed “superintelligence” bound to happen; half of them deemed it desirable. The conference’s output was a series of (fairly moderate) guidelines on developing beneficial AI, which Brakel cited as one of FLI’s foundational documents.

    That techno-optimism led Emile P. Torres, a Ph.D. candidate in philosophy who used to collaborate with FLI, to ultimately turn against the organization. “None of them seem to consider that maybe we should explore some kind of moratorium,” Torres said. Raising such points with an FLI staffer, Torres said, led to a sort of excommunication. (Torres’s articles have been taken down from FLI’s website.)

    Within Brussels, the worry is that going ahead, FLI might change course from its current down-to-earth incarnation and steer the AI debate toward far-flung scenarios. “When discussing AI at the EU level, we wanted to draw a clear distinction between boring and concrete AI systems and sci-fi questions,” said Daniel Leufer, a lobbyist with digital rights NGO Access Now. “When earlier EU discussions on AI regulation happened, there were no organizations in Brussels placing focus on topics like superintelligence — it’s good that the debate didn’t go in that direction.”

    Those who regard the FLI as the spawn of Californian futurism point to its board and its wallet. Besides Musk, Tallinn and Tegmark, donors and advisers include researchers from Google and OpenAI, Meta co-founder Dustin Moskovitz’s Open Philanthropy, the Berkeley Existential Risk Initiative (which in turn has received funding from FTX) and actor Morgan Freeman. 

    In 2020 most of FLI’s global funding ($276,000 out of $482,479) came from the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, a charity favored by tech bigwigs like Mark Zuckerberg; 2021 accounts haven’t been released yet. 

    Brakel denied that the FLI is cozy with Silicon Valley, saying that the organization’s work on general-purpose AI made life harder for tech companies. Brakel said he had never spoken to Musk. Tegmark, meanwhile, is in regular touch with the members of the scientific advisory board, which includes Musk. 

    In Brakel’s opinion, what the FLI is doing is akin to early-day climate activism. “We currently see the warmest October ever. We worry about it today, but we also worry about the impact in 80 years’ time,” he said last month. “[There] are AI safety failures today — and as these systems become more powerful, the harms might become worse.”

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    Gian Volpicelli

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  • Police: Man with ax, sword asked to enter NY Times newsroom

    Police: Man with ax, sword asked to enter NY Times newsroom

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    NEW YORK — A man with an ax and a sword went into the lobby of the New York Times building on Thursday and asked to speak the political section, authorities said, then handed over his weapons and waited for emergency personnel when he was denied entry.

    The New York Police Department said officers responded to the Times’ building in midtown Manhattan shortly after noon after getting a 911 call about a man with a knife.

    When officers arrived, building security told them the man had the two weapons, and made the request to speak with the specific part of the newspaper staff.

    He was taken to the hospital for evaluation.

    A representative said in a statement that the Times was grateful to police “for responding to an incident in our lobby that was resolved quickly and peacefully.”

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  • Elon Musk gives Europe’s digital watchdogs their biggest test yet

    Elon Musk gives Europe’s digital watchdogs their biggest test yet

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    After Elon Musk bought Twitter — and fired almost anyone whose job it was to deal with regulators — the social networking giant is now facing a flood of legal challenges across the European Union.

    The question now is whether the EU’s watchdogs can live up to their ambitions to be the world’s digital policemen.

    Ireland’s privacy regulator wants to know whether the company’s data protection standards are good enough. The European Commission doesn’t know who to ask about its upcoming online content rules. The bloc’s cybersecurity agencies raise concerns about an increase in online trolls and potential security risks.

    Twitter’s unfolding turmoil is precisely the regulatory challenge that Brussels has said it wants to take on. The 27-country bloc has positioned itself — via a flurry of privacy, content and digital competition rules — as the de facto enforcer for the Western world, expanding its digital rulebook beyond the EU’s borders and urging other countries to follow its lead.

    Now, the world’s richest man is putting those enforcement powers to the test. 

    Europe’s regulators have the largest collective rulebook to throw at companies suspected of potential breaches. But a lack of willingness to act quickly — combined with the internal confusion engulfing Twitter — has so far hamstrung the bloc’s enforcement role when it comes to holding Musk to Europe’s standards, according to eight EU and national government officials, speaking privately to POLITICO. 

    “This will be a major test for European regulators,” said Rebekah Tromble, director of the Institute for Data, Democracy & Politics at George Washington University. She is part of the advisory board of the European Digital Media Observatory, a group helping to shape the EU’s online content rulebook, known as the Digital Services Act (DSA).

    “If Musk continues to act with intransigence, I think there’s an opportunity for European regulators to move much more quickly than normal,” she added. “These regulators will certainly be motivated to act.”

    A representative for Twitter did not return requests for comment.

    Regulatory firepower

    The bloc certainly has the firepower to bring Twitter to heel.

    Under the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, companies can be fined up to 4 percent of their annual global revenue for failing to keep people’s personal information safe. The Irish regulator, which has responsibility for enforcing these rules against Twitter because the company’s EU headquarters are in Dublin, has already doled out a €450,000 penalty for the firm’s inability to keep data safe.

    As part of the bloc’s upcoming content rules, which will start to be enforced next year, the Commission will have powers to levy separate fines of up to 6 percent of a company’s yearly revenue if it does not take down illegal content. Brussels also has the right to ban a platform from operating in the EU after repeated serious violations.

    “In Europe, the bird will fly by our rules,” Thierry Breton, the French commissioner, told Musk — via Twitter | Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP via Getty images

    Thierry Breton, the European internal market commissioner, reminded Musk of Twitter’s obligations under the bloc’s upcoming content rules in a call with the billionaire soon after his acquisition of the social network. Musk pledged to uphold those rules, even as he has pushed back at other content moderation practices that could hamper people’s freedom of expression on the platform.

    “In Europe, the bird will fly by our rules,” Breton, the French commissioner, told Musk — via Twitter.

    Yet over the last three weeks, European regulators and policymakers have struggled to navigate Twitter’s internal turmoil, according to four EU and national officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

    The likes of Damien Kieran, Twitter’s chief privacy officer in charge of complying with Europe’s tough data protection standards, and Stephen Turner, the company’s chief lobbyist in Brussels, were among scores of senior officials who left since Musk took over.

    Two of the EU officials, speaking about internal discussions on condition of anonymity, told POLITICO that multiple emails to Twitter executives bounced back after those individuals were laid off. One of those policymakers said he had taken to Twitter — scrolling through the scores of posts from the company’s employees announcing their departures — in search of information about who was still working there. A third official said the current confusion could prove problematic when the company had to reveal long-guarded information about the number of its EU users early next year. 

    Others have been fostering wider connections within the company, just in case. Arcom, France’s online platform regulator, for instance, has built ties with high-level executives outside of France and still had a contact in Dublin at the company to answer its pressing questions.

    The policymaking blackholes — fueled by mass layoffs — have been felt beyond the EU. 

    Julie Inman Grant, Australia’s eSafety commissioner who previously ran Twitter’s public policy team in Asia, told POLITICO she had written to the company last week to remind them about its obligations to clamp down on child sexual exploitation on the platform. She had yet to hear back from Musk or other senior officials.

    “We did have a meeting on the books with Twitter,” Melanie Dawes, chief executive of Ofcom, the U.K.’s communications regulator, told POLITICO ahead of her trip to Silicon Valley this week to meet many of the social media companies. “It was canceled.”

    What about privacy?

    Another open question is how Twitter with comply with Europe’s tough privacy rules.

    Although the company’s chief privacy executive had been fired — and rumors swirled Twitter could pull out of Ireland in its cost-saving push — the Irish Data Protection Commission told POLITICO it had yet to open an investigation into the firm.

    A spokesman for the agency said Twitter executives had assured Irish regulators on Monday that Renato Monteiro had been appointed as the company’s acting data protection officer — because it’s a legal requirement to have one — and no changes to how Twitter handled data had been made.  

    A data protection official said it was likely that Musk would move such decision-making powers to his inner circle in the United States | Justin Sullivan/Getty images

    A key unanswered question is whether, in the wake of the mass layoffs, Twitter’s operations in Dublin are either shuttered or cut back to an extent that regulatory decisions are made in California and not Ireland.

    Such a change would lead the company to fall foul of strict provisions within Europe’s privacy regime that require legal oversight of EU citizens’ data to be made in a firm’s headquarters within the 27-country bloc.

    A data protection official, who asked to remain anonymous to speak candidly, said it was likely that Musk would move such decision-making powers to his inner circle in the United States. That potential pullback could allow any European regulator — and not just the Irish agency — to go after Twitter for potential privacy violations under the bloc’s data protection regime, the official added.

    This story has been corrected to specify how multiple European privacy regulators may target Twitter for breaching the bloc’s rules if the company pulls out of Ireland.

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    Mark Scott, Vincent Manancourt, Laura Kayali, Clothilde Goujard and Louis Westendarp

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  • Computer chip ban signals new era as Biden and Xi meet

    Computer chip ban signals new era as Biden and Xi meet

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    WASHINGTON — The Biden administration’s move to block exports of advanced computer chips to China is signaling a new phase in relations between the globe’s two largest economies — one in which trade matters less than an increasingly heated competition to be the world’s leading technological and military power.

    The aggressive move, announced last month, will help set the tone for President Joe Biden’s upcoming meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in Asia. It’s evidence of Biden’s determination to “manage” the U.S. competition with China, whose officials were quick to condemn the export ban.

    After more than two decades in which the focus was on expansion of trade and global growth, both countries are openly prioritizing their national interests as the world economy struggles with high inflation and the risk of recessions. The U.S. and China have each identified the development and production of computer chips as vital for economic growth and their own security interests.

    “We’re going to do whatever it takes to protect Americans from the threat of China,” Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said in an interview. “China is crystal clear. They will use this technology for surveillance. They will use this technology for cyber attacks. They will use this technology to, in any number of ways, harm us and our allies, or our ability to protect ourselves.”

    Xi responded to the export ban in his statement at last month’s congress of the Chinese Communist Party, where he secured a third term as the country’s leader. He pledged that China would move more aggressively to become self-reliant in producing semiconductors and other technologies.

    “In order to enhance China’s innovation capacity, we will move faster to launch a number of major national projects that are of strategic, big-picture and long-term importance,” Xi said.

    The Chinese government has named the development of advanced computer chips that could handle everything from artificial intelligence to hypersonic missiles as one of its top priorities. To bridge the gap until it can get there, China has been relying on imports of advanced chips and manufacturing equipment from the U.S., which imposed a series of export controls last month that block sending to China the world’s most advanced chips, factory equipment and industry experts tied to America.

    The U.S. and its allies famously deployed export controls against Russia after the February invasion of Ukraine, making it harder for Russian forces to be resupplied with weapons, ammunition, tanks and aircraft. As a result of those constraints, Russia has relied on drones from Iran and the U.S. has accused North Korea of supplying them with artillery.

    The U.S. had until recently operated from the premise that strong trade relationships would bring countries closer together in ways that made the world safer and wealthier, a post-Cold War order. Global supply chains were supposed to lower costs, boost profits and enable democratic values to seep into the terrain of oligarchies, dictatorships and autocracies.

    But after a global pandemic, the war in Ukraine and China’s own ambitions, the Biden administration and many European and Asian allies have chosen to prioritize national security and industrial strategies. Both the U.S. and European Union have provided tens of billions of dollars in incentives to spur more domestic production of computer chips.

    In a speech last month at IBM, Biden said China specifically lobbied against a law that provides $52 billion to produce and develop advanced semiconductors in the U.S., an incentive package that has been followed by a string of announcements by Intel, Micron, Wolfspeed and others about the construction of computer chip plants in the U.S..

    He said that some of the GOP lawmakers who opposed the measure had bought into the arguments made by China.

    “The Communist Party of China was lobbying in the United States Congress against passing this legislation,” Biden said. “And unfortunately, some of our friends on the other team bought it.”

    Donald Trump had fiery rhetoric on China during his presidency, imposing tariffs that the Biden administration has yet to lift. But by any qualitative measure, the export bans on computer chips are much tougher than anything imposed by Trump, said Gregory Allen, a senior fellow in the strategic technologies program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

    Allen said the Trump-era tariffs were large in terms of dollars, but they had almost no affect on the balance of trade. Nor were the import taxes strategic. The export controls imposed by the Biden administration would be a setback for Chinese technology that is already decades behind the U.S.

    “We have essentially committed ourselves to saying: China you will not achieve your number one goal,” Allen said.

    The era of China, Russia and other competitors having relatively unfettered access to U.S. and European markets appears to be ending, said Christopher Miller, a Tufts University professor and author of the book, “Chip Wars.”

    “The risks posed by these countries has grown, so Western leaders have reconsidered the wisdom of giving adversaries open access to their markets,” Miller said.

    Instead of trying to work together as a single global economy, new alliances are being formed such as the Quad (Australia, India, Japan and the U.S.) and existing partnerships such as NATO are being expanded. Economic integration among these partners has become essential, as the U.S. export controls on advanced chips need support from other producers in Japan and the Netherlands.

    “All the great powers are restructuring international economic relations in ways they hope will improve their geopolitical position,” Miller said. “Semiconductors are just one of many arenas in which trade, tech, and capital flows are being re-politicized due to great power rivalry.”

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  • G20 host Indonesia lobbies West to soften Russia criticism in communiqué

    G20 host Indonesia lobbies West to soften Russia criticism in communiqué

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    BALI, Indonesia — Senior Indonesian politicians are calling on Western leaders to make concessions on how far to go in criticizing Russia over the war in Ukraine in a last-ditch effort to avoid leaving the G20 summit later this week without a joint declaration, three diplomats with knowledge of the ongoing negotiations told POLITICO.

    According to these diplomats, U.S., European, Australian, Canadian and Japanese officials are among those under pressure from Indonesian counterparts, all the way up to President Joko Widodo, to show “flexibility” and consider using less tough rhetoric in order for Moscow — represented at the Bali summit by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov — to say yes to a communiqué at the end of the gathering.

    Widodo “considers it a personal success” if a G20 declaration could be reached, one of the officials said, adding that the Indonesian leader has lamented repeatedly that he is chairing the “most difficult” G20 summit ever.

    He is also seeking to avoid kicking Russia out and making it the G19, which the G8 did in the wake of Moscow’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea in 2014.

    One possibility would be to focus squarely on the aspect of “upholding international law.” If adopted, that would be much more coded wording than what’s been used by the G7, which has repeatedly condemned Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine.

    The latest G7 statement, following this month’s meeting of foreign ministers from the group, criticized Moscow for “its war of aggression against Ukraine” and called for Russia to withdraw. “We condemn Russia’s recent escalation, including its attacks against civilians and civilian infrastructure,” it said. The G7 countries also blasted “Russia’s irresponsible nuclear rhetoric,” according to the Nov. 4 statement.

    “Obviously we can’t be as tough as we do it in G7 when you need the Russians, Chinese and Saudis to agree,” a Western diplomat said, referring to the larger G20 grouping. “The question is how much we need to delete.”

    China, Saudi Arabia, India and Brazil, four of the fellow G20 countries, are described as “sitting on the fence” over the issue.

    Beijing, in particular, would find it impossible to accept any direct criticism of Russia. Chinese President Xi Jinping, who will be attending the G20 summit personally, has so far only made an effort to show disapproval of any threats of using nuclear weapons, without attributing such threats to Moscow.

    Another issue for Widodo is the likely lack of a family photo for the two-day summit that starts on Tuesday. According to convention, all the G20 leaders would line up and take a group picture to show solidarity. This time, however, Western leaders have hesitation about being in the same frame as Lavrov, a key aide to Putin, whom U.S. President Joe Biden has called a “killer.”

    Widodo is described as “interested” in assessing fellow leaders’ opinions on having such a family photo.

    Much of his lobbying has taken place in Cambodia, where he’s attending the East Asia Summit. Also in Cambodia were Biden, European Council President Charles Michel, Canada’s Justin Trudeau and Australia’s Anthony Albanese. Russia’s Lavrov and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang were also in Phnom Penh.

    Indonesian President Joko Widodo has urged Western countries for more “flexibility” | Sonny Tumbelaka/AFP via Getty Images

    Speaking in Cambodia, Albanese confirmed to reporters that officials are still negotiating over the wording a G20 final communiqué.

    “You know the way that these conferences work. We’ve just got through an East Asia Summit, an ASEAN meeting and a range of other summits. So we’re waiting to see what happens, but I go into the G20 with a great deal of confidence,” Albanese said.

    Lavrov criticized Washington for stirring up confrontation in Asia. “There is a clear trend on militarization of the region through coordination of efforts of local U.S. allies such Australia, New Zealand, Japan with NATO enlargement,” he said.

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    Stuart Lau

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  • Musk fires chief Brussels lobbyist in Twitter’s layoff round

    Musk fires chief Brussels lobbyist in Twitter’s layoff round

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    Twitter’s director for EU public policy Stephen Turner is among the thousands of employees laid off by its new owner Elon Musk, Turner announced on the platform Monday.

    “After six years I am officially retired from Twitter. From starting the office in Brussels to building an awesome team it has been an amazing ride. Privileged and honoured to have the best colleagues in the world, great partners, and never a dull moment. Onto the next adventure,” he tweeted.

    Since taking over Twitter, Musk reportedly sacked half of the company’s workforce — including lobbyists and content moderators. The deep cuts in the policy teams have raised concerned among regulators and politicians.

    On Monday morning, two of Twitter’s six-persons-strong policy team in Brussels still had a job, one person with first-hand knowledge of the issue told POLITICO.

    Turner spearheaded Twitter’s engagement and lobbying in Brussels at a time when the EU crafted a series of strict laws regulating privacy, content moderation, media freedom, online advertising and more.

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    Laura Kayali

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  • House approves scaled-down bill targeting Big Tech dominance

    House approves scaled-down bill targeting Big Tech dominance

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    WASHINGTON — The House on Thursday approved sharply scaled-down legislation targeting the dominance of Big Tech companies by giving states greater power in antitrust cases and increasing money for federal regulators.

    The bipartisan measure, passed by a 242-184 vote, pales in comparison with a more ambitious package aimed at reining in Meta, Google, Amazon and Apple and cleared by key House and Senate committees. That proposal has languished for months, giving the companies time for vigorous lobbying campaigns against it.

    The more limited bill would give states an upper hand over companies in choosing the location of courts that decide federal antitrust cases. Proponents say this change would avert the “home-court advantage” that Big Tech companies enjoy in federal court in Northern California, where many of the cases are tried and many of the companies are based.

    Many state attorneys general have pursued antitrust cases against the industry, and many states joined with the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission in their landmark lawsuits against Google and Meta (then called Facebook), respectively, in late 2020.

    The bill also would increase filing fees paid by companies to federal agencies for all proposed mergers worth $500 million or more, while reducing the fees for small and medium-sized transactions. The aim is to increase revenue for federal enforcement efforts.

    Under the bill, companies seeking approval for mergers would have to disclose subsidies they received from countries deemed to pose strategic or economic risks to the United States — especially China.

    “We find ourselves in a monopoly moment as a country,” Rep. Lori Trahan, D-Mass., said before the vote. “Multibillion-dollar corporations have grown into behemoths, eliminating any real competition in their industries and using their dominance to hurt small businesses and consumers. Meta’s monopoly power has enabled it to harm women, children and people of all ages without recourse. Amazon has used its dominance to copy competitors’ products and run small businesses into the ground.”

    The Biden administration, which has pushed for antitrust legislation targeting Big Tech, endorsed the bill this week.

    Even in reduced form, the legislation drew fierce opposition from conservative Republicans who split from their GOP colleagues supporting the bill. The conservatives objected to the proposed revenue increase for the antitrust regulators, arguing there has been brazen overreach by the FTC under President Joe Biden.

    Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Calif., described the FTC’s leader, Lina Khan, as a “a radical leftist seeking to replace consumers’ decisions with her own.”

    Another California Republican, Rep. Darrell Issa, told his colleagues: “If you want to stifle innovation, vote for this.”

    If Republicans win control of the House or Senate in the November elections, they are certain to try to crimp the activism of the FTC and to challenge its broader interpretation of its legal authority.

    The broader antitrust package would restrict powerful tech companies from favoring their own products and services over rivals on their platforms and could even lead to mandated breakups separating companies’ dominant platforms from their other businesses. It could, for example, prevent Amazon from steering consumers to its own brands and away from competitors’ products on its giant e-commerce platform.

    The drafting of that legislation marked a new turn in Congress’ effort to curb the dominance of the tech giants and anti-competitive practices that critics say have hurt consumers, small businesses and innovation. But the proposal is complex and drew objections to some provisions from lawmakers of both parties, even though all condemn the tech giants’ conduct.

    Lawmakers have faced a delicate task as they try to tighten reins around a powerful industry whose services, mostly free or nearly so, are popular with consumers and embedded into daily life.

    So with time to act running out as the November elections approach in about six weeks, lawmakers extracted the less controversial provisions on antitrust court venues and merger filing fees, putting them into the new bill that passed.

    Lawmakers added the provision targeting foreign subsidies to U.S. companies. Republicans especially have vocally criticized the Chinese ownership of popular video platform TikTok.

    In the Senate, Minnesota Democrat Amy Klobuchar is sponsoring similar legislation with Republicans Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Mike Lee of Utah.

    “Effective antitrust enforcement is critical to ensuring consumers and small businesses have the opportunity to compete,” Klobuchar said in a statement Thursday. “Enforcers cannot take on the biggest companies the world has ever known with duct tape and Band-Aids.”

    I

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  • Government Affairs Attorney Nicole Osborne Joins Waller

    Government Affairs Attorney Nicole Osborne Joins Waller

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    Press Release
    –


    updated: Jul 2, 2018


    NASHVILLE, Tenn., July 2, 2018 (Newswire.com)
    –
    Waller, a leading provider of legal services to the healthcare, financial services, retail and hospitality industries, announced today that veteran government affairs attorney and lobbyist Nicole Osborne has joined the firm’s Government Relations practice. Based in Waller’s recently opened Chattanooga office, Osborne has more than a decade of experience representing client interests before elected officials in the Tennessee General Assembly, the United States Congress and government officials in local, state and federal agencies.

    “We are thrilled to welcome Nicole to the Waller team,” said Waller partner James Weaver, who leads the firm’s Government Relations practice. “Nicole has earned a tremendous reputation as an effective legislative strategist and lobbyist in Chattanooga, Hamilton County, the State Capitol and across Tennessee and the Southeast. Our clients will benefit greatly from her experience and insights into working with legislators and policymakers.”

    Representing corporate clients, industry groups, professional associations and not-for-profit organizations, Osborne’s experience includes drafting and negotiating legislation, assisting with regulatory and rulemaking compliance strategy and traditional lobbying to the state legislature, the state executive branch, congressional representatives, state and federal agencies, city councils, county officials and community leaders. Additionally, she monitors legislative developments and educates clients on legislative processes, procedures and progress. She also manages political action committees (PACs) and fundraising programs for clients and provides guidance on grassroots advocacy efforts and the development of coalitions.

    Prior to joining Waller, Osborne led government relations, public policy and economic development initiatives for a Chattanooga-based law firm. Earlier in her career, she gained valuable government and regulatory affairs experience with the Tennessee American Water Company and the Pet Industry Joint Advisory Council. While earning her J.D. from Regent University Law School, Osborne served as a Federal Government Affairs Summer Associate for the National Rifle Association and a Government Relations Intern for a leading bipartisan government relations firm in Washington, D.C. Before attending law school, Osborne served as a congressional intern on Capitol Hill for United States Senators George Allen (R-Va.) and John Warner (R-Va.). Osborne earned undergraduate degrees in Mass Communications and Political Science, cum laude, from Emory & Henry College.

    Active in civic and community organizations in Chattanooga and Hamilton County, Osborne currently serves as president of the Junior League of Chattanooga. She is a graduate of the Women Mentoring Women program at the Chattanooga Women’s Leadership Institute. Additionally, she is a member of the Board of Directors of the Cherokee Area Council of Boy Scouts of America. Osborne is a member of the Chattanooga Rotary Club and an appointed member of Hamilton County Read 20, a public-private partnership that promotes the importance of reading with children.

    About Waller

    With more than 230 attorneys in Austin, Birmingham, Chattanooga, Memphis and Nashville, Waller assists clients in complex transactional, regulatory and litigation matters. The firm has built a national reputation for its work in healthcare, financial services, retail and hospitality, and has extensive experience in manufacturing, real estate, technology and other industries. For more information, please visit www.wallerlaw.com.

    Media Contact: 
    Sarah Brawner 
    Phone: 615.610.0323
    Email: sarah.brawner@dvlseigenthaler.com

    Source: Waller Lansden Dortch & Davis

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