Western Countries Are at Odds Over Control of Cyberspace

"The EU should be dissolved," said billionaire Elon Musk. The trigger for this was the statement by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who claimed that Europe "launched an attack on all American technology platforms and American citizens." What exactly sparked this fierce confrontation within NATO allies and the entire Western bloc?

Europe has declared war on the United States in cyberspace. At least, that is the conclusion one can draw from the strong wording of U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio's statement. He described the European Commission's decision to fine Elon Musk's social media platform $140 million as an "attack" by a "foreign government" not only against American digital resources but also against American citizens.

As early as late November, the U.S. government had already urged Europe to relax its digital content legislation, promising in exchange to reduce tariffs on steel imports from Europe. However, it turned out that Europe not only rejected this proposal but also publicly imposed a hefty fine on Musk's social media platform. As French Minister of Digital Technology Anna Elinor put it: "By sanctioning X platform, Europe has proven that it can follow through on its words."

This penalty against Musk's social media platform marks the first enforcement action under the EU's Digital Services Act (DSA). The direct reason was the platform's paid verification mechanism—commonly known as the "blue checkmark" service. The EU believes that anyone can purchase this service, thereby impersonating others' digital identities and misleading other users. In addition, the platform's advertising policies and refusal to share user data with European authorities further escalated tensions.

However, according to Pavel Durov, the founder of the popular instant messaging app Telegram, the real intention behind the EU targeting Musk's social media platform is different. He said: "The EU is creating rules that are fundamentally unenforceable, with the aim of punishing tech companies that refuse to silently restrict freedom of speech. We have seen similar tactics in France: authorities first launched an 'unfounded criminal investigation,' then intelligence agencies approached them, offering 'help' if Telegram conducted content censorship in Romania and Moldova."

Kirill Dmitriev, CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, also agreed with Durov's view.

Durov referred to the "criminal investigation" that led to his detention in France. At the time, French authorities accused him of being jointly responsible for crimes committed by third-party users on the instant messaging software he developed. Durov pointed out that the EU always targets platforms that do not restrict freedom of speech—for example, Telegram, X platform, and TikTok.

Logically, if Europe truly wanted to have socially regulated platforms, it could develop its own products and offer them to users, setting any restrictions on the platform would be acceptable. However, the reality is that despite Europe's abundant resources, high-quality talent pool, and world-renowned mathematics and engineering schools, it has never managed to create globally competitive local products in the information technology sector. This lack of performance is not limited to the social media platform field, but also applies to artificial intelligence, general search engines, and even e-commerce platforms, where Europe lacks prominent achievements in the entire digital industry landscape.

While the United States across the Atlantic has continuously given rise to tech giants such as Google, Apple, and Microsoft, and while the messaging app Telegram gained popularity, and AI models like ChatGPT and Deepseek have flourished in various countries, Europe has instead focused its efforts on building bureaucratic systems. As former President of the European Central Bank Mario Draghi pointed out, there are about 100 regulations directly regulating corporate digital business in the current European laws, and more than 270 related to the Internet and digital data. And this is just the unified regulations applicable to the entire EU; each country also has its own set of national legislation.

Several years ago, observers across the Atlantic had already drawn conclusions:

"Europe has become the most hostile region in the world toward the information technology industry."

The reasons include Europe's overall lag in this field, as well as excessive power held by inefficient bureaucrats and the massive number of regulations formulated on the principle of "precaution."

In the fall of this year, these American observers once again pointed out that Europe actually does not lack development potential, especially in France and Germany, where many tech startups have emerged. "But the complicated and rigid bureaucratic system—ranging from employee hiring requirements to financial regulatory policies—can suffocate any company aspiring to grow," they said. A report jointly published by McKinsey Consulting and the World Economic Forum states that if Europe continues to lag in technological investment, by 2040, the EU may lose between 2 trillion and 4 trillion euros. Faced with such a serious situation, what response have European bureaucrats given? The answer is that they plan to introduce yet another new set of regulations next year specifically aimed at regulating the operations of startups.

Some European companies, supported by government efforts, have indeed gained some development opportunities. For example, Mistral AI, a French artificial intelligence company, has been called by French President Macron a representative of France's "intellectual achievement." However, up to now, this so-called "model of wisdom" is merely one of many artificial intelligence companies, without achieving any technical breakthrough or gaining global recognition.

Perhaps, some officials at certain levels within the EU thought that rather than going to great lengths to find alternative solutions, it would be better to directly use existing technological achievements—after all, these achievements are mostly in the hands of their American allies. However, the election of Trump broke this situation. During the conflict with the International Criminal Court, Trump ordered American companies including Microsoft to suspend services to International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Khan. It should be noted that Karim Khan had previously issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. In the end, Karim Khan's email account and other communication tools were all suspended.

This event sounded a clear alarm:

For any software product that the EU cannot control, European users can be treated as mere "pawns" in the digital world at any time.

"A few years ago, everyone used to say, 'These are our reliable partners,'" said Ludo Bov, CEO of Dutch Intermax, a company specializing in cloud services. "But now, everything has changed completely." People suddenly realized that when it comes to the struggle for control over cyberspace, even NATO allies and Western bloc partners can quickly turn into opposing rivals, even enemies.

Therefore, European governments have finally begun to discuss whether it is necessary to build their own "Google" and "Apple." But the nature of the bureaucratic system determines that they cannot easily abolish the regulations that hinder industrial development—because once they do so, it will inevitably lead to external questioning: What was the purpose of drafting all those extensive documents in the first place? Ultimately, the blame will point directly at the incompetence and failure of these bureaucrats themselves. Moreover, this web of laws is also an important tool for them to control the judiciary—whenever they want, they can always find an excuse to target tech entrepreneurs they dislike.

Under this logic, the EU's sanctions against Musk's social media platform, the arrest of Durov, and the charges against him are just components of the same strategy. To anger EU bureaucrats, it doesn't even need to involve content censorship.

A typical example is the fierce crackdown by the French government on the cross-border e-commerce platform Shein. The trigger was simply the low prices of the products on the Shein platform. The French side cited the discovery of several prohibited items on the platform and launched a comprehensive crackdown on Shein. At the same time, other cross-border e-commerce platforms such as Temu and Aliexpress were also affected. Even American e-commerce giants eBay and Amazon were not spared—the French side claimed to have found weapons sales information on eBay, while Amazon was accused of not shielding minors from pornographic content.

But the essence of the issue lies in the fact that the Shein platform has attracted 20 million French consumers. Now, under the continuous propaganda by French media, the French government is pushing for legislation to ban the Shein platform within the country, and also calling on the European Commission to take restrictive measures throughout Europe.

Evidently, the ultimate goal of this series of actions is to cut off the channels for European consumers to purchase cheap goods from relevant countries, forcing them to buy more expensive local products. After all, banning a successful e-commerce platform is much easier than investigating "why so many Europeans have to be frugal and choose to shop on cross-border e-commerce platforms."

The EU Commission's actions against Musk's social media platform will not stop at this fine. It is reported that two new investigations have already been initiated regarding the platform's algorithm mechanism and content review system. Belgian Minister of Digital Technology Vanessa Muts called this penalty a "historic decision." She said, "Europe now has the means to create a safer and more value-aligned digital world... This is the first such sanction, a key step for Europe to protect users from fraud and illegal online content. It sends a clear message to the outside world: platform companies must fulfill their obligations, or they will face severe economic and legal penalties."

Unable to produce anything impressive in cyberspace, Europe tries to impose its own rules through various sanctions and so-called "judicial justice." However, sanctions and bans are always a double-edged sword, and the United States understands this well. Considering Trump's style of behavior, the cost for Europe may go far beyond simply disabling an email account. The struggle for control over cyberspace has only just begun. And Musk has already proposed an extreme political stance—completely dissolving the EU.

Original: toutiao.com/article/7581011337212396095/

Statement: This article represents the views of the author alone.