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- [00:01]
A
Your film is now ready to be shown. Good morning. I'm Justin Hendricks, editor of Tech Policy Press, a nonprofit media venture intended to provoke new ideas, debate and discussion at the intersection of technology and democracy. A couple of months ago, I read a compelling post on the Internet Exchange titled Big Tech Redefined the Open Internet to Serve Its Own interests. The piece explored how the idea of the open Internet has been hollowed out by decades of policy choices and corporate consolidation. Now, with the rise of AI, deepening global dependencies on few powerful firms, we risk repeating the same mistakes. To learn more, I spoke to the authors.
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B
I'm Mallory Knodle. I'm the executive director of the Social Web foundation based in Washington, D.C. in New York, and I also contribute to and founded a weekly newsletter called the Internet Exchange.
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C
Hi, this is Brucha Kalut and I am a senior fellow with cg.
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A
I'm excited to have the two of you here today to talk about this piece that you both authored this summer in Internet Exchange. But Mallory, I want to ask you just what's going on in Internet Exchange? I've seen some announcements out of the organization lately. Looks like things are moving forward and you've got some things to share.
- [01:21]
B
So we've been doing the Internet Exchange now for two years, and I say we because about a year ago added a couple folks to the team. But there is, there's been a shift in terms of sustainability models. So we want to now keep the newsletter going. We're going to, rather than try to fund it in and of itself as sort of philanthropic project. We're really a communications and technology collective now. So Audrey Hingle, the editor in chief, does a lot of our publications and editing work. We have Rama Shahid, who is an excellent public relations and promotions partnerships expert. And we also have Nadej Lucas, who does a lot of the tech and website work. So, yeah, we're a crack team and we're out there to help support all organizations as well as keep this newsletter going.
- [02:13]
A
Well, I am always interested, of course, in the sustainability of independent media ventures, so will be paying attention to that and looking forward to opportunities to working with Internet Exchange, which I think of as being in a, well, I'd say a small community of entities that I think of as very congruent with Tech Policy Press and its interests and have appreciated our chances to collaborate in the past. And I think Tech Policy Press listeners for the most part will know your background, Mallory. They'll of course seen your byline on our site, but in many other contexts as well. Certainly most recently at cdt, the center for Democracy and Technology. All the work you've done across, you know, so many different groups and standards bodies and popping up at all the major conferences across the world. Virtue, you. You also, you know, someone who is well known to the tech policy press listenership and quite a extensive resume and worked across various entities that folks are familiar with, including all the academic affiliations you just mentioned and think tanks, but also groups like Mind Public Citizen. Can you just give us a little bit about the focus area of your research? Generally?
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C
It's an interesting question, I have to say, because, like, you know, like, people keep asking me, what is, what is your focus area? And nowadays my focus area is quite broad because the issue became really, really interesting thanks to the Trump administration. You know, my expertise starts with digital trade, and until very recently, it was a very niche topic. You know, no one cares. I've been saying for the last 10 years, everyone in the community, that, guys, you need to pay attention to the trade rules, because trade rules shape the policies and they shape the regulations. So nowadays, like now, like, this is a very popular topic, you know, because, like, all the tech policy issues became part of the tariff discussions. They were part of the trade negotiations, but no one cared at that time because those trade negotiations were taking place behind closed doors. Now, like, everything is out there, you know, thanks to the President Trump and his tweets, like, you know, and we can see that, like, what's happening behind the closed doors. So, yeah, like now I focus on digital trade. But, you know, as I said, it's very broad, like broader, like tech policy issues like AI governance, because that's the highlight of today now. But, you know, my expertise is in digital trade.
- [04:49]
A
Well, I want to try to weave that back in perhaps as we talk about the open Internet and we talk about kind of what's going on at the moment. But you all got in touch with me. Audrey got in touch with me, related to this piece that you published, well, gosh, back in July now called Big Tech redefined the open Internet to serve its own interests. You know, in it, you kind of take apart that theme and exactly what has happened over the last few years. But you pose this question. What if the Internet, as you know it is already gone? First off, Mallory, what do you think is the Internet as we know it? What do you think most people are thinking of when they think of the Internet, and why is it already gone?
- [05:31]
B
Well, I think a lot of people have a pretty simplified model of how the Internet works, and we think of these core Internet protocols like tcp, ip, HTTP, DNS. And if you think of the Internet in those terms, it does feel like a very open and interoperable system. Any software or service that speaking those protocols ostensibly is on the Internet, you can do a lot with it. But that isn't really. It's the oversimplified model where we're well beyond that and to the point where we're not even using exactly those same protocols anymore. The major services that are on the Internet and make up the Internet are highly consolidated. So a lot is left to what we say in the standards world implementation, you know, taking these protocols that are standardized, but then implementing them in very specific ways, working with certain partners and not others. And so I feel like for a while there, and this is, we've kind of gotten over this bump a little bit for the last couple of years, people were talking about fragmentation all the time. Internet fragmentation and Internet governance circles was a huge topic. We don't hear it as much anymore. And I think it's because we've kind of untangled what that actually means. It like unpacked what the euphemism of fragmentation. I think it is really a symptom of highly centralized services on highly centralized networks and then the ways in which that gets tangled up with state power and other things. So this piece, I think really helps, we're hoping. Right. Helps just take this analysis a step further and understand how we got here. And it wasn't by accident. And we have to be careful about our advocacy when, when we are advocating for open and interoperable systems so that it doesn't sort of reinforce some of these dynamics. So that's what I think the open Internet isn't basically. It's what we have now. So I kind of answered your question in the negative, but hopefully that's helpful.
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A
Well, you write that today the quote, wide Internet is effectively gone. True openness and actual interoperability have all but disappeared. Internet providers limit connection, hide systems behind proprietary walls, and treat people in society as data resources to extract. And you put a lot of the blame for these phenomena at the feet of big tech virtually. Why is big tech killing off the wide Internet, the open Internet?
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C
I mean, I can talk about it for like five hours, but, you know, I think the issue goes back to the, you know, like mid-1990s, you know, and that's, that's a, this is a story that I heard from Shoshana Zubov, like the author of the Surveillance Capitalism, and she coined the term surveillance capitalism and last year at Harvard I worked with her and this is a story she tells. I will try my best. I don't think I would be good as her. But when we look back like 1990s, the Clinton administration and at that time Clinton administration came up with this global framework for e commerce. And that global framework really determined US Approach to Internet. And of course at that time like you know, this is like these are the early, early days of the Internet and Silicon Valley. But that framework was so interesting because the author of that framework was a advisor and a good friend of Clinton's and he spent like Ira Magaziner, he spent maybe like six to eight months in Silicon Valley. And when he came back to D.C. in Washington D.C. clinton asked him because Clinton should send him to, to, to California to get to know what's going on with this Internet thing. And when he came back, you know, Clinton asked him so what are we going to do about the Internet? And his response was nothing, we are not going to do anything because we will let the industry to regulate itself. The industry will take the lead and will support them. And if other countries try to regulate the Internet, we'll stop them. So that, you know, so that was, that was the beginning of the U S Tech policy and U. S Trade policy. So like digital trade policy. So it goes back to 1990s and from 1990s to until very recently we talk about open Internet but I was always skeptical about this term because you know, like I knew what was going on in trade agreements, I knew the US Trade policy, I knew the priorities of tech companies. And then like, you know, starting with the mid-2010s like people started to question this. Surveillance capital is like the business model. And then there were more and more like more and more like concerns raised about the business model and the open Internet because we all believe in open Internet, but the Internet was not open. There's a very good example of this. Not an example, but let me put in another way. When there was the competition, the antitrust case was going on between Google and the FTC and some of the states, the Microsoft CEO testified and I think this was like 2023 and he said that there's no open Internet. There's nothing like open web. This is Google's web. That was the point Many people realized we lost the open Internet because of all the data it's collected and processed and the structure of the surveillance capitalism. But it's not only the tech companies, there are many other actors and institutions supporting this system. And now it became clear that open Internet is no longer about decentralization or user agencies. It's more about, you know, the tech companies used openness as a way to resist regulation, evolute accountability and control global infrastructure and monetize data. So it's very hard to talk about the open Internet.
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A
So, you know, you pointed 2023 is perhaps another end date. So we have somewhere along that trajectory from the 90s, Clinton administration, Internet freedom as the kind of dominant policy of the US as sort of, you know, laissez faire approach to things. You know, Mallory, another question you ask here is when did open stop meeting open? So might ask you to kind of try to put a date on that perhaps, or at least indicate when that might have happened. But maybe also just respond to Virtue's kind of sweeping mini history of the Internet freedom movement, the extent to which it was supported by US Tech policy, such as it were, and kind of where are we now?
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B
Maybe I can come at it from a slightly different angle. I'm saying really the same things. I'm not going to be as good at putting dates on this as Berji was. But I think one way to look at this is that there is the Internet, you know, regulating the Internet or trying to predetermine how the Internet works. And then there's is regulating companies and dealing with antitrust issues. And I feel like we've done a poor job of keeping those things separate. So there's. I think one of the big ideas of this piece is that keeping the Internet protected, keeping the Internet the way it works in sort of an unfettered way and preserving interoperability and so on, has become the slogan or the rallying cry of these huge companies that are using their position as centralized, centralized services or networks to say we're protecting that. If, you know, if you come at us, you're destroying the Internet. And that's just not. That's so assuming that and accepting that is assuming this false narrative. So if we look at what's happening on the Internet, then, so setting aside regulating companies that are being anti competitive and you know, they're shutting out competitors and stealing all of our data and all of that going back to the way the Internet has evolved, though, you can imagine there has been some shifts because of this. There have been some major changes to the way the Internet works because dominant players participate in standards, dominant players work together, and the kinds of technologies they're developing, the kinds of things they're proposing evolve. The Internet very much suits their conditions. So that's why 2014, 20, 15, people like me and others, Article 19, ACLU, several other organizations started getting involved in standards bodies because we were worried about privacy. This is post Snowden worried about consolidation of these services and re expression and all of that. I wanted to talk about the ongoing tussle that happens in the industry. One reason the openness argument has lasted so long is that when we think of being able to do things across borders, having a common experience of the Internet, we think of the services. We think of search of email, document editing, Wikipedia, you know, things like that. And those services are what we really have a mental model of. And they were really pushing back against the networks which were already very consolidated because telecommunications has always been very consolidated. Telephone companies essentially evolved into providing networks. And so the services coming in to disrupt that the first time in the 90s and the early 2000s was very welcome. They were really disrupting all across in other countries, more so even in the U.S. right. They were, you were able to Skype instead of paying huge costs of long distance phone calls. It's just like a very obvious example. And so this sort of the network versus the services has been an ongoing issue for years. And so sometimes you see, you know, I would consider misguided regulation that is actually trying to preference networks over services. This would be like a fair share or some of these ideas that have come up that don't, they don't really work or, you know, Net neutrality was really trying to push back against, you know, network control so that the services could flourish. I think that this tussle is really an important part of the story because it's kind of like we forget that there's a whole other sector of tech and big tech that are really about building networks out and they're the ones closest to the technology, the protocols and so on that we think of as open Internet and also still consolidated. It's just different kinds of consolidation.
- [16:53]
A
Well, let's talk about the word open. I mean, you spent a good amount of time in this piece focused on just that phrase and how it's been co opted. Just give me the canned history of that. Where have we got to? I mean, of course there's the example and you do mention OpenAI, but there's I think the, the example of a company that's so often in the headlines these days called OpenAI, which in fact isn't terribly open at all. I think that's probably a hyper example. But it's not all of what you mean by this.
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B
Open can mean a lot of things, right? We Were talking about like this idea of decentralization. So, you know, anyone can do it. There's no central point. You don't have to ask for permission, innovate. Permissionless innovation is another sort of proximal term or phrase. You know, as long as, yeah, you're, you're speaking these protocols and you're offering something on the Internet like you're connected. Interoperability is another one that's somewhat wound up in this which is that you can swap things out, you could, you can change your Internet service provider and nothing else is affected by that. It's less so with services. It's much, much harder to say, well I'm going to move from like a Microsoft product to a Google product because it's, those are basically our only choices, right? Or, you know, and this is maybe where I get into Amazon, right? There's like nowhere else to go if you want to be part of a big global marketplace. There's this lock in factor that's so much more severe with services. So that's again, I'm kind of answering your question about what open is in the negative. But I think what has happened though is this idea of like openness and the value of openness being also proximal to like free flow of information, free expression, like those are great ideas. But like put in terms of verticalization, you know, capturing your audience, locking them in, that sort of thing, that's not really what's happening. So it's been really easy for I think the gatekeepers or these large companies to sort of flip that meaning.
- [18:49]
A
And I want to ask a little bit, just maybe put this in context of some of the news just, just recently. I mean, you know, you talk about Google, you talk about the idea that Google has so much power over the web these days, the power to shape the behavior of users, businesses, even regulators, you say, all while cloaking its dominance in the language of open access and innovation. I think there were a lot of folks looking at the Google search antitrust remedies trial and thinking, you know, as possible that there may be some remedy here that would shake things loose a bit. And I think those hopes have largely been dashed. There's, I think, a kind of growing feeling that a lot of regulation even in the eu, and you point to GDPR here as essentially kind of reinforcing some of the dynamics you're concerned about rather than actually addressing them. There's this kind of sense, I think, in the tech accountability or whatever you want to call it, the digital rights, the, the various kind of civil society circles that we all swim in. There's a kind of sense that a lot of these things have failed effectively. Virtue. Do you agree with that? Is that where we're at at the moment? We're kind of staring into the abyss. What can be done?
- [20:05]
C
I think the, the issue is more about power. Like, you know, right. This company is like, I mean we started with openness, like discussing open Internet. Yeah, open Internet was open at some point, you know, but it's very hard to talk about open Internet now. That's something that we need to acknowledge and then from there we can talk about what's happening now. Like what's happening now is very interesting both in the US and the eu and I think many people, for many people this came as a show. But the thing is like, I think it took a while for us to get here, but it was obvious that we were getting here. So starting with the gdpr, I have to say, like, you know, I was a consumer advocate, so for many, many years, like I work as a consumer advocate and I like, you know, I remember like, you know, back in like early 2010s, like going to the Brussels and talking to the European Parliament parliamentarians and telling them that like guys, we really, really need some, something coming from the EU because that there won't be any regulation coming from the US so you need to pass this like, you know, like the privacy, like, you know, data protection regulation. And yeah, I mean this is like 2015, 2016. And then you know, at that time like everyone was saying that like I remember in GDPR entering the inter force in 2018, it will break the Internet. Nothing happened. You know, it didn't break the Internet. But the problem with the GDPR is like GDPR is a really great regulation. On paper. The enforcement of the, of the GDPR was very weak and very limited. And you know, if we had, if the Europeans had enforced the GDPR back in 2018, 2019, things could have been different. But they didn't. I mean there are many reasons. There is Ireland problems, DPA and also like, you know, they didn't have private right of action. There are many, many reasons for that. So the, even the GDPR became like a, you know, tool for these companies, like you know, to differentiate themselves from the small businesses. I mean one of the concerns when GDPR entered into FIRS was like, oh, this is not good for the small businesses. But the, but the tech companies took full advantage of this argument, you know, and assuming that like, yeah, yeah, this is, this is really, really bad for the SMEs. But the SME is like Uber on our platforms because you know, if you're an SME, you can't have it. You know, you can't have an existence separate from these platforms. I mean if you have like, if you want to sell your goods, like you need to be on Amazon, you need to put like ads on Google or on, on, on, on Instagram or on Meta, like on Facebook, you know, these things. Like, we can't really separate like the, the small businesses from the, the big tech ecosystem. So they, they built that ecosystem. And the thing is, many people miss the point that this ecosystem starting from the 1990s is protected by the broader trade like rules and the trade agreements. So the tech companies like were very, very invested in trade agreements and making sure that this business system that they created is reinforced, is protected in, in, in trade agreements. Not only the US trade agreements, but also the eu. So the thing is like there were like, I think there were two worlds. Like there was that word that know, people were like focusing on like regulation of tech. But in the meantime, like, that was like a, that was another word where like, you know, where people speak the language of trade and trade. The tech companies like build that system and you know, limited, like the ability of like many, many countries to regulate, not only regulate, but also enforce the regulations they already had. And that brought us to this point. You know, we just realized that, I mean Europeans just realized that, oh, you know what all the regulations, like we thought that, you know, we thought they were great. They were not because we couldn't enforce that. And now like, we want to enforce them, but you know, the U.S. u.S. Government is, is threatening us and, and then other countries which like, you know, which were inspired, inspired by the European Union, like they realize, oh, we have great laws in the books, but we can't enforce them. And in the meantime, these big five tech companies, maybe now like the OpenAI, the new edition, they own the infrastructure, which is a key. Like, I mean everyone is like finally realizing that they own the infrastructure and they control all the data. So you know, like we came to realization that, oh gosh, like we missed that. Like, and I don't want to say it's too late, but you know, let's hope that, you know, better late than never.
- [25:27]
A
So what I hear you saying is that in, in many ways, while a lot of folks were focused on tech regulation and focused on addressing, you know, some of the phenomena that we see from the tech firms, et cetera, there was something else Going on at the commanding heights of the political economy, around trade and around, you know, the more, I guess, in the halls where power and infrastructure is really set and the halls where power and infrastructure are really, you know, debated. And that was the actual debate. And most folks in our field essentially weren't paying attention to it. I mean, Mallory, would you have anything to add to that?
- [26:10]
B
Yeah, I think we think of this as a layer cake. Love, love to think in layers. As an Internet person, you know, what Bridget is talking about is the very top. We were sort of paying attention to the middle and then I think there was something even lower, which is where we were in standards and building the technology from the ground up. And this was this whole move to privacy and to more private and user centric security models for protocols and protocol development. Privacy became the business model. GDPR seemed to be reinforcing that from a policy perspective. But what it allowed it to do is simply business as usual, but with a lot more disclosure and maybe some transparency as well. But it didn't stop the data collection and it didn't stop the centralization of the data. And that's where we are today with you know, these huge piles of data that are very proprietary and very valuable for companies like OpenAI or Meta with its Llama and Google with its Gemini. Right, but you know, the, the privacy enhancing protocols didn't do it either. Right. It just made it so that individual services could use them and keep your data private from everyone else. Right. That you, in partnership with the services that you decided to use, worked together to keep your data private because nobody else, they didn't want any other companies to have access to it either. They didn't want the network to have access to the data. But it's still all of the data and huge volumes of it have been siloed and kept in these silos for use now in large language models. And so that has. So, you know, taking that at maybe the lowest layer, the tech layer, you know, looking then at the public governance debates and then at the top you have these more closed door power conversations. And then gives you a picture of how have we wound up in this situation. Just folks really not paying attention and not thinking through how it isn't just about the business model. Although folks like ranking, digital rights and so on were so good to point that out when they did. You know, Shoshana Zuboff and her surveillance capitalism also really helped. It's also the political economy. It's that you mentioned, Justin. It's the, it's the End game being quite, quite a lot of power on the global stage in a way that is now, as you were alluding to, Virgil, very, very difficult to disrupt at this point.
- [28:30]
A
So I do want to just ask where this leaves us with AI at the dawn of the sort of AI moment. Can you kind of speak a little more to that? You know, we're in for another phase change here. And this is a technology that I think of as being perhaps the greatest at concentrating power of any technology, perhaps we've seen before, and runs very counter to all the original ideas of the Internet, even though there are many who would probably argue with me on that and say, no, no, we'll democratize AI and it'll be commoditized, et cetera.
- [29:03]
B
Let me start with the tech, and then virtually you can end with the power. So, yeah, I think that there's unlike. There's a massive gulf, I believe, between how the Internet was organically grown and now where we're at with AI. There is no incentive to interoperate when it comes to AI. None. In fact, it is the product of this centralization and this proprietary approach that you keep. You amass this massive amount of data and that becomes your proprietary secret and you're better than your competitors. So there's no reason why we should expect interoperability. Unlike the Internet, where, you know, if you want to be part of the Internet, you have to interoperate. This is not how this goes. So I'm very skeptical that, you know, open standards, I would say just drop the open for a second. Standards might be built. They will be built at the requirement of regulation, and then maybe we can have some compliance frameworks that, you know, force that for some specific use cases like government or health or something like that. I think that data governance needs to go far beyond consent because the protocols are not enough, the tech is not enough. It's all left up to implementation. And companies will try to get as far as they possibly can with that. I think another thing to consider at the tech level, and there are also. There's a. There are pieces, I know, on tech policy press. We've done some Internet exchange as well about bots and crawling. Being able to have some agency over that is really important. And I think we need to be. Be very clear about what we mean when we're talking about it. And the reason why there's been so much written about bots and crawlers is because it's very hard to understand. And it's very hard to understand because until very recently, it was completely flat. Right? Every agent that was scraping the web was from meta. That's all you knew. You had no idea what the bot was for. It was just tagged with like one thing. And every single bot that one company was deploying for every single purpose had the same user agent identifier. It was impossible to tell the difference if you're an admin on the web. Now that we're coming up with more fine grained agent controls, that's going to change hugely. What people post, the agency they have over at the platforms that they're posting on can give them hooks and all that's going to change, but it's going to make a tiny dent I believe unless there's some awareness about that and some ways to hook into norms and regulatory action.
- [31:36]
C
So just to follow up on what Mallory said at policy level, I think we are having a deja vu moment, you know, and I, I, when, when we first started our chat, I, I, I mentioned the, the Clinton times, like you know, mid-1990s when Internet was new and no one knew what it was about, you know, and I were like, you know, all these questions about like the, the future of the Internet and how it will shape the world. And at that time the, the U.S. government, the Clinton administration made it made a decision that they are not going to regulate, they, they were not going to regulate the Internet, you know, and the private sector should lead. And I'm, I'm just reading the five like the core principles of the framework for global e commerce. Like governments should avoid undue restrictions on the, on electronic commerce. And you know, when there is a, when there's a government involvement, the aim should be to support and enforce a predictable, minimalist, consistent and simple legal environment for commerce. This is electronic commerce, it's the Internet. And this is the interesting part. Governments should recognize the unique qualities of the Internet. So it's the same discussion, we are having the same discussion. In 1990s the Internet was named, no one knew what it was about. And these companies like the, at the time the Silicon Valley, the, you know, the good boys of the Silicon Valley made us believe that this is so special, this is so different than anything we need. So we should, and no one could understand so we should let them regulate, you know, and that you know, the self regulation became the U.S. policy and the global policy. And then countries tried to, to regulate like the US was like very critical of those countries. So the thing is, I mean it's almost like 30 years later we are at the same point, you know, they Keep telling us that AI is so special, it's so technical and you don't understand and let us self regulate and you know, the current trend is like, you know, not only in the US even Europeans are like, yeah, we need to be pro innovation, not like pro regulation. Because they made it, they made all of us believe that like innovation and regulation, it can go, it can go together. Like so, you know, and like every country is pro innovation. Every country is so big on like AI driven economy and whatever it means. And now like what are, what we are doing is like we are like, you know, I mean AI is a really good technology, I have to say. Like, I'm not critical of the technology, but I'm very critical how we're approaching to this technology. And we are making the same mistakes, you know, again and we should learn from our history and you know, we should be more skeptical. But now like you see that like, you know, we are transforming everything. Like we are transforming all the public services. Like we are digital transformation going on. AI transformation. AI is part of the, you know, circulum in and in the universities, but not only the universities, like even like middle schoolers, they are like, you know, encouraged to use AI. And it is very, very concerning because you know, the current trend is we create dependencies and then when we realize, oh gosh, we need to do something, it will be too late. You know, just like it was late to regulate the Internet, regulate the social media, it will be late to regulate AI. I mean, when I say regulate, like it's a very broad term I have to say, you know, I mean, but we shouldn't let companies to take the lead because they failed us many, many, many times. Like, I mean, we should learn from our own, you know, our own experience. And this time we should be like, okay, it's, it's a very complex technology, it's very unique. But let's do, let's, let's work together, you know, I mean, because there is a huge community out there which can really, really help not only the policymakers but also tech companies to find better build this system. But I think nowadays the narrative out there is yeah, this is innovation and we should be supportive of innovation. And unfortunately when you raise questions about this ongoing innovation discussions and everyone is like, you don't, you don't understand, you don't know what's going on. Like, you know, but I think, you know, I'm very concerned that we are like, not us, but also the countries, like the governments all around the world are creating dependencies like technological dependencies. And Mallory can, can chime me more on that, but it is very concerning because there are only maybe three, four companies out there and maybe some Chinese too. But, you know, there we can't even talk about, you know, 10 companies out there. So it's, it is very concerning and I'm very concerned about what's going on now.
- [36:57]
A
Same precarious moment to me as well. But I guess one of the things that, I don't know, kind of brings it into focus for me is that, you know, the, the US Government under the Trump administration has more or less completely turned away from the old Internet freedom kind of policies and some of the positioning of the US on these issues, which many people argued for a long time weren't all completely about values and principles and democracy to begin with. They were more about protecting U.S. trade interests. But, you know, the Trump administration has really taken it very much in that direction, very baldly. So I suppose on some level we could at least be thankful for the honesty. You know, they're very much out there selling American AI and working on behalf of American big tech firms to remove regulation and to implant the AI infrastructure and products that we create in Silicon Valley across the globe. Mallory, I don't know, can we find any silver lining in that, that there's a kind of, you know, just baldness about it now?
- [38:11]
B
I think you're making some solid points and definitely worth thinking about. The silver lining is that maybe other countries will step up to fill those gaps. Although I think we have yet to see really bold action on that front. I'm really keeping hump alive. I just note that in my work in technology and the technical standards work especially, we are actually still seeing the US engaged. So, you know, they're pulling out of a lot of soft power and diplomatic spaces, but they are sticking around in the International Telecommunication Union, they're sticking around in the Internet Engineering Task Force. They're engaged in, you know, they're still there building the tech, no question. And US Industry, of course, is dominating still in those places. I think it's worth thinking about, though, whether the center of gravity goes to those places, because I think there's, from my perspective, I've always had this sort of analysis front of mind that although these places are certainly important fronts of struggle and places of power, we have to be careful to characterize political and social issues in the terms of tech, because technocracy is not a great alternative to whatever we're dealing with now in this sort of, you know, pseudo democratic, neoliberal space. Also, you know, Russia and China are super active in these places because as authoritarians, like a technocracy is a dream, right? You get to just translate the messiness of humanity through the, you know, through the terms of debate over, you know, technical requirements and, you know, amortized constraints and all that. Right? So it's not great. But I think it is worth noting that those places are actually still intact and they're still producing standards and they're getting, you know, the Security Council can't get anything done and hasn't for 10 years. Those same countries, when they come to the ITU or when they come to these other tech standards bodies, they manage to churn out together. So I just, you know, I just want to point that out. I mean, I'm going to continue to follow those spaces. I think they're important. But as I pointed out previously in this podcast, tech alone is really not enough. It's actually a far cry from that. And we need to be careful about relying on that as the only functioning sort of form of diplomacy we have going forward.
- [40:40]
C
And I have to say, like, you know, many people believe that what's going on, especially with the tariff discussions, is something new and something like Trump's administration's like, position. But as I said, like, since 1990s, this has been the U.S. policy and the U.S. trade policy. I mean, there was a, there was a, there was, there, there was a time like during the Biden administration when USTR started to question some of these positions. But then apart from that, you know, even then, USTR was all alone, that was broader. U.S. government was like very into this, like, you know, into this approach to Internet and their narrative around the tech innovation. But the thing is, what we are seeing now is now has been happening for many, many, many years behind the closed doors. Now it's just out there and people are finally realizing. But the thing is, the US Trade negotiators have been threatening the countries for many years behind the closed doors when they want to introduce regulation or when they want to enforce regulation because they, they thought that these are American companies, we need to protect the interests of these companies. You know, that's what the trade, like, you know, trade negotiators do. So it was, it was all about American industries. And they had to, you know, they had to push back on any regulation coming from any country around the world. And that's, as I said, this has been the US policy since 1990s. So I think the good thing is, I mean, there are, the silver lining is finally People are realizing, like, they can see the very. That they can see that the top layers. You know, even with Europeans, there is, like now, like, realization that, oh, we are not that safe because Americans can threaten and they can bully us about or digital regulations. And then what we see from European officials is like, you know, they had to make a choice between protecting their, like, their, you know, industries like cars, like, which really, like, contributes to European economy, or the tech regulations. And then the choice is very clear. So I think, I think good thing is, like, this is what I've been telling people. Like, finally this is happening out there, not behind closed doors. And we can see what's happening and we can really adjust according to what's happening out there and then really pay attention to the issues which we need to pay attention.
- [43:27]
A
You point out various alternatives for reclaiming openness. Some of them I think we've discussed in, you know, various ways here. Of course, you say policy has to go beyond symbolic gestures to drive structural change. You want to see more antif trust enforcement that reduces market dominance. You want to see, of course, more investment and effort in public infrastructure. You talk about expanding the number of Internet exchange points, investing in alternative AI. You talk about interoperability, and you talk about, of course, decentralized digital civic spaces, the theta verse. I'm sure folks out there working on open protocols will be buoyed by that. Is there anything else that you think we can do that the listener could do? What would you dispatch the listener to go and work on if they take on your diagnosis of the problem? The real threat to the open Internet is not trade barriers or state censorship. It is big tech. That is what you write. What should folks go and do?
- [44:31]
B
I would just love to see the folks we're working with, and that includes the folks that work in these big companies as well. Just have a lot more analysis and language for this moment in the political economy where we are just very much stuck with these big tech companies to try to dismantle that, because it isn't even good for the companies, right? Like, they are in some sense starting to ossify, starting to internally cannibalize their teams for bits and parts that can be used just for AI. Like, the innovation is slowing down. We're going in reverse. So I think it really. I think we really need to get on the same page again about what we mean by open, what we mean by interoperable, and what's good for users. And I. Do you think that means we have to start dismantling these two centralized Two big companies.
- [45:26]
A
Yeah, it does seem to me that, that idea that, you know, in the long run they'll be less innovative. The technology itself will experience, you know, less change, less innovation because of the lock in, in the long run, you know, that's certainly not in the US's best interest or perhaps in, you know, any democracy's best interest for that to happen. If you think of this in terms of kind of a global competition with another form of governance, I don't know, Personally, I don't know why more people don't see that. It strikes me as somewhat obvious, but it, you know, it appears that so much of our policy in the US is built on doing what's best for Google and Meta.
- [46:11]
C
Yeah, and I keep, I always say that the surveillance capitalism is just not a market problem, but it's a governance problem, it's a democracy problem, it's a global problem. And I think many actors across sectors, governments, academia, continue to benefit from the system as it is. But there are cracks, the cracks are showing and there is growing resistance. But what we need now is not just the criticism, but a coordination. Not just opposition, but alternatives, as Mallory said. You know, so, you know, if you are going to replace the surveillance capitalism, we need to build something better than, better than, you know, what we have now and how we do it, I don't know, but I think there are so many brilliant minds out there, you know, we just, we just need to have like, you know, that conversation. Rather than criticizing the system, we should be like, okay, how we can build the alternatives? We can start small. Like, you know, we don't necessarily need to be like the, you know, the biggest LLM or something like that if we are talking about the AI. But I think, you know, there is, there is, there is still a possibility to, you know, build some with alternatives and come up with a governance model that serves the people and the environment.
- [47:35]
B
I think, oh my gosh, I couldn't agree more. The alternatives work is so huge and there are some, there are actually some providers out there that have been around since the early 2000s. They've been trucking along fighting against Google this whole time. They still exist. And you can go move your email to them or move your document editing to them. There's a great group called Infrared, so, you know, Red being the top level domain, you can also search for it. But yeah, it's a lot of different collectives around the world actually, some in Europe, some in Asia, some in Latin America and the US that are providers, you know, of the same things that we get from big tech and we could start with civil society organizations migrating, but you know, we also have to be good at business, you know, and growing these things to be resilient and always available. And sometimes those are challenges. But I just, yeah, I just want to love on your idea of building alternatives. I love that.
- [48:33]
A
That's the lesson to the listener. Go out and build. I like that. Perhaps a positive place to end our conversation. Mallory and Bertrade, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me. The article that we've been discussing will be linked in the show notes if you search Internet Exchange Big tech redefine the open Internet to serve its own interests. I'm sure you'll find it would commend you all to it and I thank you both for joining me.
- [48:58]
B
Thanks, Dustin.
- [49:11]
A
That's it for this episode. I hope you'll send your feedback. You can write to me at JustInEckPolicy Press. Thanks to my guests, thanks to my co founder Brian Jones and thank you for listening.
- [49:29]
C
Tech Policy Press.