The Race Beyond Innovation
Before examining regulatory approaches, Bradford emphasized that discussions about AI governance occur against the backdrop of an existential technology race. Governments and companies worldwide recognize that AI will reshape economies, determine military capabilities, and define geopolitical power for generations. "This is the technology that is transforming so much of our economy, that the rewards are tremendous if you win this race. Nobody wants to be left out when all these dividends are being distributed."This urgency creates tension between maximizing AI's benefits and managing genuine risks - from privacy erosion and democratic instability to catastrophic scenarios threatening civilization itself. How societies balance these competing imperatives reveals fundamental choices about the relationship between technology, markets, states, and individuals.
Three Models, Three Empires
Bradford identified three distinct regulatory philosophies competing for global influence, each representing a different vision of technological governance.The American market-driven model prioritizes free markets, free speech, and innovation incentives. Government plays a minimal role, with governance largely delegated to technology companies themselves. This techno-optimist approach emphasizes AI's benefits while often downplaying potential downsides. "The governance of technologies like AI is handed to the tech companies themselves."
China's state-driven model focuses laser-like on achieving technological superpower status through massive state investment while deploying technology as a tool for surveillance, censorship, and propaganda to entrench political power. "AI is a double-edged sword for the Chinese government," Bradford explained. While AI-powered facial recognition enables invasive surveillance - a field China dominates - generative AI simultaneously threatens the government's censorship regime by potentially producing politically unacceptable content.
The European rights-driven model charts a third path, emphasizing fundamental individual rights, democratic structures, and fair distribution of gains from digital transformation. "The Chinese model for the Europeans is too oppressive, but the American model is too permissive," Bradford noted. This human-centric approach seeks to preserve European values while enabling innovation.
Exporting Power in Different Forms
These three regulatory powers function as what Bradford calls "digital empires" because none confines its model to domestic borders. Each exports different forms of power globally.America primarily exports the private power of its technology companies. Platforms like Meta's Facebook operate in nearly 200 countries with 3 billion users, harvesting global data to train AI models. This worldwide presence gives the United States tremendous advantages in the AI race.
China exports infrastructure power - building 5G networks, data centers, undersea cables, and smart cities along the Digital Silk Road reaching across Asia, Latin America, Africa, and parts of Europe. "By building these digital backbones of societies, those societies are made compatible with future Chinese technologies, and that allows China to export its digital authoritarian model."
Europe exports regulation. While Europeans struggle to name major European tech companies, they quickly recognize the GDPR. Through the "Brussels effect," the EU leverages its position as one of the world's largest and wealthiest consumer markets to set global standards. Companies serving the EU market must comply with European regulations, and many extend those rules globally to avoid managing multiple regulatory regimes. "All the leading US tech companies use the GDPR as their global privacy policy."
Horizontal and Vertical Battles
These competing empires generate conflicts on two axes. Horizontal battles occur between empires - most prominently the US-China tech war for technological, economic, and geopolitical supremacy. While full technological decoupling remains unrealistic given today's integrated economy (Apple's iPhone contains 2,700 parts from 187 suppliers in 28 countries), protectionism through export controls, investment restrictions, and subsidy races continues intensifying.Another horizontal battle pits the United States against the European Union, where market-driven and rights-driven models clash. Europeans feel American tech companies take too much while giving too little back, prompting regulatory responses that Americans view as overreach.
Vertical battles involve governments confronting tech companies. Europeans lead these efforts, targeting major US technology companies with antitrust actions and regulatory requirements. China has conducted its own tech sector crackdown. During the Biden administration, the United States appeared to join these vertical battles with Congressional hearings and antitrust cases. However, the current administration has forged closer alliances with technology companies, making US participation in vertical battles against tech firms unlikely. "If the US is to rein in its tech companies, it's going to weaken the very weapon it has in the horizontal battle against China."
The Innovation Gap Myth
Bradford challenged the prevailing narrative that European regulation explains why Europe lags the United States in producing leading AI companies. "It's not because the Americans have chosen not to protect digital rights that they are doing great. It's because they have been adamant about building these other pillars of an effective, efficient tech system."The real factors driving American advantage include: a unified digital single market versus Europe's 27 fragmented markets with different languages, cultural expectations, and regulatory frameworks; vibrant capital markets versus European dependence on risk-averse bank financing; bankruptcy laws and cultural attitudes that embrace entrepreneurial failure as learning rather than stigmatizing it; and most critically, the ability to attract top global talent.
"Over 50% of over $1 billion startups in the US have immigrant founders," Bradford noted, listing household names: Steve Jobs (son of a Syrian immigrant), Jeff Bezos (second-generation Cuban), Elon Musk (South African), Eduardo Saverin (Brazilian), Sergey Brin (Russian), Jensen Huang (Taiwanese). Current restrictions on immigration therefore represent a self-defeating policy undermining America's core competitive advantage.
The implication: adopting federal privacy laws or robust AI regulation wouldn't undermine American technological supremacy. "That wouldn't rewrite the bankruptcy laws. That wouldn't keep the immigrants from coming here. That wouldn't undermine the robust capital market. Those two are not alternatives. They can be pursued at the same time."
Agency in an Uncertain Future
Bradford concluded by emphasizing that while these battles feel overwhelming, outcomes remain undecided. The scholarly publishing community, despite feeling like "a tiny little speck of dust within these big machines," possesses real influence."You are the market. There's nothing if there's no demand," Bradford emphasized. Collectively, industries can shape technology development through voiced preferences, employee advocacy (as when Google employees refused to work on censored search engines for China), and user coalitions articulating acceptable versus unacceptable technologies.
The choices being made now - whether market-driven, state-driven, or rights-driven models prevail - will define our digital future and the AI revolution's trajectory. "I invite you all to be not just passive spectators when we are writing the rules for our digital future and charting the course for the AI revolution. But we really think about how we can have agency in shaping that revolution in a way that AI technology is something that we can harness the tremendous potential, while at the same time, making sure that technology serves us, our organizations, our societies, and never, never undermines us and our societies."
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