- il y a 6 heures
Regulation vs. Attractivity: Creating a Strong(er) Tech Market
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00:00Good morning and welcome to this panel regulation versus attractivity creating a stronger tech market
00:07and I'm joined here on stage today with Marie-Antoine de Bitker, Director of Public Affairs at France Digitale
00:13and member of the French Economic, Social and Environmental Council,
00:18our third chamber with the Senate and the National Assembly,
00:23Mr David Trudor, Group General Council at investment company Prozis
00:29and Michel Bourgeois, National Alliance and Imaging Technology Leader at PwC in Canada.
00:39First of all, when working on this panel regulation versus attractivity creating stronger market,
00:48one concept really struck me out because it's been in every lawmaker's and politician's mouth
00:56since the new Trump administration in January, which is sovereignty.
01:04Sovereignty being the exclusive authority of a state on its population, its territory, but also on companies.
01:13And so why does it matter to speak about sovereignty when we speak about regulation and attractiveness?
01:20Well, basically because when we do regulation, it basically is the arm of a state to actually keep being sovereign,
01:32but also as well because in tech, we don't only have now in Europe, but also in Canada or in
01:39other places of the world,
01:40US tech dominance being a problem because they have an oligopolistic form of a market,
01:47especially in the cloud market, for instance, but also because this oligopolistic market can be weaponized by a foreign government
01:55in order to be used in as a bargaining chip in any types of deals the US government would like
02:03to have.
02:06So, many people around the world, in Canada, in Europe, in India, in Brazil are now fearing that it's only
02:13a matter of time
02:14before this oligopolistic form of a market is actually used by the US government in order to strike a deal.
02:23So, ironically, these companies and the CEOs of these companies are now saying that they will never comply with an
02:36order
02:36or that they will challenge it in court. There's been a lot of US CEOs, chief lovers, executives who've been
02:45saying
02:45that they are committing to defend their customers in Europe. And so, ironically, it already attracts foreign direct investment
02:56and it makes Europe more attractive to foreign investments. So, that's quite interesting to see already.
03:05So, in order to open the floor, I would like to ask you an answer in one minute so we
03:10can start this conversation.
03:12Do you think this sovereignty debate now is positive? Does it attract investment?
03:18Do you think that this political push for sovereignty is also positive in terms of regulation?
03:25Marianne?
03:26Well, thank you, Théophan. I'll speak from the French-European point of view, but I think we can see a
03:34shift in France and in Europe
03:36with regards to sovereignty. It's a consequence of the war in Ukraine, of the COVID crisis, but we see a
03:45shift in Europe
03:46that is starting to create the grounds for more strategic autonomy in the value chain. So, it's interesting for the
03:56development of startups
03:57and that we've been pushing for at France Digital for a few years. So, it's a great shift in our
04:02opinion.
04:03David, thanks, Théphane. I think we need to move away from a debate about sovereignty towards a debate about leadership.
04:12And I think if we frame the debate in terms of Europe creating a framework within which it can take
04:18a leadership position in the world,
04:21rather than narrowing it down to a sort of sovereignty debate. That's the way I'd think about it.
04:27Okay. Thank you.
04:28And I think that's a great one. Michelle here, I'll answer for Canada. I think, you know, your question was,
04:36is this a good thing?
04:37I absolutely believe it's far past the time that Canada should be really looking at itself and what it can
04:45do around not only AI sovereignty,
04:48but just sovereignty in general, as you know. The world's largest or longest border exists between Canada and the US.
04:59And for that time, hundreds of years, it's always been very... We've always gotten along. There has been no conflict.
05:08So, yes, I would say that this is a great time. As you know, we have new leadership in Canada.
05:13You mentioned leadership. It's super, super important. And I think it will be good for us over the next decade.
05:20I see. So, positive for everyone. Maybe, David, could you explain a little bit more what you mean by leadership
05:26and not sovereignty?
05:28Sure. I think what I was meaning about leadership is tech leadership. So, I wouldn't frame the debate solely in
05:35terms of we need to be independent of China or the US.
05:40I think the debate needs to shift. We need to create an environment in which tech companies are encouraged to
05:47succeed.
05:47We need to create an environment in which tech companies feel welcome and are encouraged to grow and to scale.
05:56And I think that will lead to tech leadership. That will lead to sovereignty, in another word, instead of losing
06:04all of our successful tech companies elsewhere.
06:10I see. Do you want to come in?
06:11Yeah. I wanted to add, around AI sovereignty, we look at that value chain starting with critical minerals, semiconductors, data
06:22centers, obviously models, as well as just the services, the brain power, right, to offer that.
06:29So, when we're looking around AI sovereignty, we're considering all of those pieces, especially because Canada can and has the
06:38critical minerals that many other countries don't.
06:41Yeah.
06:42Something you would call a Canadian stack?
06:45Yeah.
06:46The Canadian stack.
06:47There's a lot of discussion about Canadian stack, hero stack.
06:51Yeah.
06:51Yeah.
06:52Which would be, for people who are not familiar, trying to have more independence in every level of a tech
06:57stack, meaning from chips to cloud, but also connectivity, data spaces, software, everything you can think about.
07:06Maybe, Marianne, could you answer to David when he was speaking about leadership, because our president, Emmanuel Macron, just had
07:17a panel two days ago in Vivotech, where Arthur Mensch, the CEO of Mr. AI, announced 18,000 NVIDIA chips
07:25in the new data centers for European sovereignty, and I quote.
07:31Well, the definition of sovereignty is not easy, and let's be honest, Europe will never be sovereign or autonomous on
07:39the whole value chain.
07:41No.
07:41It's not possible.
07:42However, when you talk about leadership, I think it's a great view and a great way to see it.
07:47And the idea is how we can leverage different things.
07:52There are some sectors that are very strategic, like, for instance, defense, perhaps health sector.
07:58So, in those sectors, the question is, how are our data protected?
08:05Is it able to be taken by another country?
08:10Is there a risk over there?
08:12Another question will be, if it's not strategic, then how can we help European champions to grow in this particular
08:22part of the value chain?
08:23So, in all that, we have to deal with the fact that there are big techs over there, and they
08:31own part of the chain.
08:33So, when I see that there is this partnership between a French company, who is actually a leader in this
08:41part of the value chain, so the LLM part,
08:44when they have actually, they are developing a cloud with, of course, it's going to be chips from NVIDIA,
08:50but actually, if they make it available for French companies to access computing power, then, in my opinion, it feels
08:58like it's okay.
08:59Because some part of the value chain will be held by the French or European people, and it would be
09:05developed by companies who actually have to comply with the GDPR,
09:12with the AI Act, with all the regulation, which is pro-citizens and pro-European citizens.
09:20And a company which doesn't have to comply with an executive order from somewhere else in the world.
09:27Maybe coming back to you, David, you said also something that I would like to spend some time on, which
09:35is creating an environment that is positive for start-ups.
09:39And in Europe, there is just the enforcement of the Digital Markets Act, a new antitrust law dedicated to services
09:49online.
09:50Do you believe that this enforcement is actually creating attractiveness for companies to actually have business in Europe, because markets
10:01will be more open?
10:04I think, when I talk about making an environment, I'm sort of slightly avoiding answering the question, I want to
10:12try and take it to another place.
10:14When I'm thinking about creating an environment that is friendly to start-ups, I'm looking at something like India, where
10:23you have a coherent government policy
10:27that sets out to empower people to start businesses, gives them access to capital, encourages foreign direct investment, simplifies the
10:36laws, and then helps them to scale.
10:39And I think that coherent strategy is something that I think makes for a very attractive start-up environment, rather
10:50than sort of just simplifying what we have.
10:54I don't know if that's got close to answering your question, but I'm happy.
10:58Yes, maybe I think, Marianne, you want to comment?
11:01Yes, exactly. Actually, we have to look at regulation as being a tool to enable the creation of start-ups,
11:08of companies that are going to scale,
11:10and that are going to be useful to the target that you're willing to serve, and that could be citizens,
11:18that could be companies, that can be anything.
11:19And so regulation, so for instance the DMA, so regulation of antitrust, but it could be the DISA, regulation of
11:27content, or any kind of regulation, that is a tool.
11:30But it should not only be the only tool that the governments have in their hands to create and scale
11:37champions.
11:38Regulation, in particular antitrust, can help create and foster new in-commerce, new companies to grow.
11:46So, of course, if we have the possibility to have new search engines, new LLMs, it's great that it's not
11:55only the two or three big ones that have all the markets,
11:58so it's great for new entrants, but it's not the only thing that we have.
12:02We have to have financing, we have to have talents, we have to have public procurements, so it's part of
12:08the tool that you have to get.
12:11So, yeah, please, David.
12:13No, no, I completely agree with you. I think it's an aspect, but regulation can be such a chilling effect
12:19on people who want to grow and scale.
12:21And I think, yes, it is, it's one of those things, but we've got to look at the whole panoply
12:26of regulations that apply and work out,
12:29are these really giving both the protections that they need to give, and at the same time creating an environment
12:36in which businesses feel that they're able to grow and scale.
12:41But it's not the only thing, you're absolutely right.
12:46And in terms of public procurement, as you say, this is actually something that is in mind, in the mind
12:54of most political leaders at the moment,
12:58we direct public procurement to tech companies, but also review the prudential rules that we inherited from the financial crisis.
13:10Do you think this will help, this will make Europe a bit more like the US? Michelle, what do you
13:18think?
13:19So the question was around, I sort of make sure I understood it, government procurement?
13:24Yeah, public procurement.
13:25Public procurement, yeah.
13:28It must be an issue in Canada as well, because we've been discussing at the moment to turn public procurement
13:34towards sovereign cloud,
13:36in order to have homegrown companies.
13:41Yeah, so I really like what you guys are saying. I think this was about being intentional about why we
13:46have regulation.
13:47Does it intentionally help us feed the startup environment?
13:53On the procurement side, for Canada, we have not traditionally been like the US.
13:59I've heard other people say this before, you know, the US military government created the internet, right?
14:06They were really funding that innovation, and that innovation was going out into the other sectors.
14:16In Canada, we haven't traditionally been an engine, I'd say, of innovation in the government, and we are now seeing
14:23that.
14:24Our new Prime Minister, Mark Carney, just announced that we would meet the 2% GDP mandate for NATO, and
14:35that will not be retrofitting old submarines.
14:38That will be creating an AI digital core for the military, which will absolutely focus on innovation.
14:45So we're hoping to see that those types of things going forward, and obviously we'll have a Canadian lens, will
14:52help start to move it forward a bit.
14:56I think what you said is really interesting.
14:59It's about consciously directing procurement into industries that will bolster or create innovation.
15:08But that needs to be a conscious decision, and consciously we're going to sort of put procurement, use these funds
15:14and just sort of spray and pray.
15:16I think there needs to be a very conscious decision around where that's going to go, what industries we're going
15:22to pursue, and AI is a great example of that.
15:25Completely agree with you.
15:27And in France, we can see that there is always, as regards to public procurement, when there is an act
15:32of doing public procurement, it's already a choice between making by yourself technology by the state, or buying.
15:41And that's actually the choice of to make or buying is not something that is settled.
15:48It will depend on the sectors.
15:50For instance, in the defense, it would be acceptable that the Ministry of Army will actually do it by themselves.
15:56But in fact, when it's not strategic, it can be very important just to have experts, developers that are able
16:05to understand and keep on having the innovation working.
16:11And just buy.
16:13So in France, we already have that choice that needs to be made, and the government is not very well
16:18aligned on the choice to either make or buy.
16:21So let's choose buy, in my opinion.
16:24And then when you buy, what you have to ask is, what do you buy?
16:28And we have been asking a lot at France Digital to buy European, because we're actually the only continent in
16:35Europe that is not buying for themselves.
16:37Like the US are buying the US because they don't care about the rules of the World Trade Organization.
16:44The Chinese are buying Chinese, and we don't see who is buying European.
16:48So in our opinion, with regards to public procurement, it would be great to actually focus on European technology.
16:55Indeed, but this raises a lot of questions, and especially one that I would direct to David, which is that
17:03American companies say, you can buy European if you wish so, but the services will just be worse than ours.
17:15Yeah, I think, again, I'd go back to the point.
17:19I'm not an expert on procurement, but it seems to me we've got to think about what is strategic in
17:25the future.
17:26And if it's important for us from a sovereignty perspective to have this technology, then we are going to have
17:33to invest in it, and may in the short term cost a little bit more than buying something out of
17:38America, which would be easier.
17:40But that's maybe something we have to do.
17:45Indeed.
17:46And I do have a question as well for you, David, making sure that we are positive.
18:00It's a positive question.
18:02What does make Europe attractive now beyond what we just said around regulation?
18:10I mean, I think regulation is a bit of a mixed bag.
18:14I have sort of views on where we've perhaps gone too far, which we can explore perhaps a bit later
18:18on.
18:18But what makes Europe attractive?
18:22Fantastic entrepreneurial culture, extraordinary number of people who want to grow businesses, fantastic universities, fantastic research centers.
18:33That's all stuff that we should be proud of and we should be encouraging.
18:39Fantastic workforce, deep AI expertise.
18:43Those are all really immensely attractive skills and qualities to have.
18:50That's why we certainly are investing in Europe.
18:53We see massive potential for growth.
18:56So then I would ask again my question about the Digital Markets Act and opening up market.
19:00If everything here, if everything you just said is great in Europe, don't we just need actually regulation on top
19:08to open up markets and then we will have a flow of company?
19:13I think there are a couple of questions around why you don't have a tech, we don't have a tech
19:23champion at the scale of the big Chinese or American tech champions.
19:28Can I add that?
19:29Yeah.
19:30Because Europe didn't have regulation for 20 years, maybe this is why we had dominance by foreign actors.
19:36This is something that has been said by a lot of people in Brussels.
19:41Well, I'm not sure I agree with them.
19:43The instinct can't be when something develops that your first instinct is to regulate it.
19:49It's got to be, I think you've got to let it run.
19:52And that's a philosophical debate that people have about, you know, do you see the entire risks of something end
19:59to end and then build the most perfect regulation?
20:02Or are you prepared to let something go for a while, see where it goes and then decide what is
20:07appropriate to regulate or not?
20:09And I know I fall into the latter camp there.
20:13But I'm keen to hear other people's views.
20:16I don't think that the reason why we're here, the reason why there are just a few big techs and
20:23that those who are, and those big techs are non-European, I don't think it's because we lacked regulation.
20:29I think that we lacked money, we lacked financing, we lacked the will of Europe to create champions.
20:39And so let's not focus on what we did wrong.
20:42And I think we should focus on what we should do right now, especially at this moment where there has
20:49been some epiphany in Europe for different reasons.
20:53But now we're here. The European Commission just announced a start-up and scale-up strategy just two weeks ago.
21:02And I think it's ticking all the boxes that we need to tick to have champions.
21:06And those boxes are more money and being deployed the right way to finance and match the way Europe can
21:15actually get that money and invest on.
21:17And that's a lot of things.
21:18That's also, it means having more talents, more procurement, but it's actually super important just to create those financing.
21:24But please.
21:26Yeah, just to add, because I agree, when I look at Canada and I think there's probably a lot of
21:31synergies, I think about the structural differences with the US for us when it comes to funding, cultural differences,
21:43and then historically, just that historical, you know, what's happened.
21:48So structurally, the US is just bigger, and the funding is bigger, and the types of programs that are available
21:55are numerous, and there's just more.
21:59And often our start-ups in Canada have to get that, they get early funding from Canada, but there's no
22:05real seed funding out on mass that you might get from the US.
22:09So it just makes sense to go there. That's sort of the structural. And then culturally, Canada is just more
22:16risk-averse.
22:17And so even the money that we have to make the investments, our banks are a bit more risk-averse,
22:22and our people are more risk-averse.
22:25And so we're often, you see the US spend their selves out of a problem.
22:28Canada will sit back and try to understand where it's going, which leaves us a bit behind.
22:33And then culturally, it hasn't really proven to be too hard for us, or the world in general, to rely
22:40on that tech.
22:41And so we've made decisions that are 20 years old that have put us behind.
22:44These are not recent decisions that were made by any country not to get involved, or to jump in, or
22:49to have certain kind of regulations,
22:51or be able to create the right capital. That's been going on for 20 years.
22:55So everybody is trying to catch up very quickly, and I do think that everyone has the right ambition, the
23:02right intention, but there's a lot of variables.
23:05And I think what you said is really interesting about capital, and about the capital being so cautious.
23:11There are pools of European capital that won't invest in startups, because either they can't, or they're just too cautious.
23:19And that's something, I think, in terms of what we need to explore to create growth and scale.
23:28That's something that's critically important for us.
23:30And the other thing we should probably talk about a little bit is the single market.
23:33I mean, we were talking about that earlier.
23:35There isn't a single market.
23:36You can scale in the US very quickly, because that is a huge single market.
23:42But Europe is a fragmented market.
23:46So even, I mean, not talking about the capital side of it, but just purely the market where you want
23:52to deploy your product is not a single market that you can scale very quickly.
23:58So I have a great news that the fact that the European Commission is actually working on the 20th regime,
24:06which is the name of a rule that is going to help startups scale in Europe, is not going to
24:13harmonize everything in Europe in terms of labor law, tax law.
24:17So it's not even thinkable.
24:19But what we can work on is to make the business more accessible, how you can actually create a company
24:25and also another branch in another European country.
24:29So it's all the frictions that you can have when you grow a startup within Europe that could be actually
24:34helped through this 20th regime.
24:37But that being said, so unification of the market is absolutely necessary.
24:41And on top of that, we were talking about money.
24:44Another great news is that there is actually money in Europe, which is in pension funds, in some pension funds,
24:52I mean insurance funds, exactly.
24:54But it's just not invested into the private equity sector and even more so, not in the capital risk sector.
25:02It depends on different reasons.
25:05One reason is that pensions funds, insurance funds are actually quite risk adverse.
25:11But when you look at the data, when we see the European Innovation Fund giving us data on the risk,
25:19when you invest into your European company or French or whatever European company, you can see that the European is
25:26not doing worse than the US.
25:28It's actually doing best in terms of profitability.
25:30So let's invest into private equity and venture capital.
25:35And it actually works.
25:37The only thing is that you have to think long term.
25:40And that's what is complicated when you have an insurer, that you have to make sure that the people who
25:49invest and give you money through the insurance life, they have to be able to get the money when they
25:54want.
25:55So it can be contradictory with private equity or investing in capital risk.
26:02So let's make the risk being settled and let's change that into doing big funds of funds, creating liquidity in
26:14the sector.
26:15But it's actually possible.
26:17And that's exactly also what the EU Commission is working on.
26:21That is called the Union of Capital Markets, Capital Markets Union.
26:26And it's actually the target.
26:27So I'm actually quite positive because I can see it has been taking a long time and we've been working
26:33very hard at France Digital to do that with many other people.
26:37But the idea is that now I think the Europe has actually quite well understood what they need to do.
26:43The only thing is not only in the hands of the public sector, of the regulator, it's not only in
26:50the hands of the Commission.
26:51Now we have to work also with the private sector, with institutional investors to actually put the money into the
26:58market.
26:59So if there are some frictions, let's work on that.
27:02But it's actually possible in my opinion.
27:05We touch on a lot of things here.
27:07The single market that is not quite harmonized.
27:10But it is by design not harmonized because with 27 countries, we can't really have a single market unless we
27:16create a federation or a union like the US.
27:20And I'm not sure Germans and French and Estonians would like to live in the same country just now.
27:27But it's interesting to see that with this whole discussion on sovereignty, boosting competitiveness, actually the push for a more
27:38federated union comes from the industry.
27:40It comes from below.
27:42It doesn't come from the politician level.
27:45And the 28th regime also might be the pan-European legal status for tech companies.
27:54Probably will be harmonizing some incentives, salary law but not tax and labor law.
28:07And the discussion about skills I found also quite interesting.
28:11But I do have a question that is maybe a bit more philosophical.
28:17So in the EU we have 27 legislative systems, 24 official languages and I don't count all the other non
28:26-officials or only official at national levels.
28:29We still have eight currencies.
28:31We usually say we have one currency which is the euro but we actually have eight currencies in Europe.
28:37But my question is actually quite easy.
28:39Now that we have AI, isn't it very easy to navigate this complexity?
28:46Isn't AI actually the tool that gives us the possibility to be just like the US because scaling up will
28:52be so much easier?
28:53The AI will just tell us you do this to enter the market in Estonia and you do that for
28:57Malta, etc.
28:59What's your view, David?
29:02I love that view of the future.
29:05We're not seeing it quite yet.
29:06I also think just while we're touching on the AI world, we are barely scratching at the surface of what
29:13AI is going to do.
29:14AI is fundamentally going to transform I think the human existence and we are barely at the start of that.
29:23I think it's going to be absolutely profound.
29:25That also means we're going to have more of this debate around AI regulation and countries moving forward far faster
29:36where they're not as tightly regulated and become much more attractive investment destinations.
29:41So there is talk about simplification, certainly not implementing everything that people had intended to do.
29:52But I think we need to look fundamentally at what we've done already and maybe begin breaking up some of
29:56that.
29:57Not just not implementing what was to come, but fundamentally renovating what has been put in place.
30:04And I think that debate needs to happen.
30:06Can I add, because I like what you had said, I also think there's the risk of the have and
30:13the have not countries.
30:14Not just the ones that move ahead, but those that can't compete at all.
30:18And I do think that is something we need to be aware of as we look at these ecosystems globally.
30:26Yeah.
30:29In terms of what you just said about AI, actually there is also a topic that is really important is
30:35the AI adoption by civil society.
30:38Because when we see that what AI is capable of, sometimes it's very scary.
30:43I've just seen the news about what Grok does to pictures of young women, which is terrible, three days ago.
30:52So actually, maybe we need more regulation.
30:55We are still waiting for the AI code of practice at the EU level in order to regulate AI.
31:03But when talking about AI, the fact that there will be a revolution that will completely change humankind,
31:09this makes me usually think about skills, diversity, diversity of people, about origins, etc.
31:19And then looking at the Trump politics that are highly unpredictable, that I directly hatred towards LGBTQI,
31:31directly hatred against women, a very erratic spending policy.
31:40Don't you think that somehow the world's brightest, youngest element of society will stop going to the US
31:48and prefer staying in Canada or travelling to Canada instead?
31:53Is it something you've been seeing?
31:56Well, there's a couple of things there.
32:01Canada has always had an AI talent pool, right?
32:05We have the U of T, where our godfathers of AI, Jeffrey Hinton, Todd,
32:12and we actually at PwC Canada have many of those students that work with us.
32:16So on the brain drain, I do think, yes, there are many of those that wrote that first paper,
32:23all you need is attention, and some of them for U of T, all went to the US and all
32:27started up different.
32:29But what we are seeing now, with Trump, and just some of what people would suggest are fascist tendencies,
32:37I'm not here to be political, but we are seeing academia look to Canada.
32:41A number of Yale professors have already put in the news that they were going to move to the U
32:46of T.
32:46So, yeah, we'll take whatever talent we can get, right?
32:51And it's good to see, but it's not only the brain drain, and it's not just the aspect of them
32:55going to work for these big companies
32:57and getting to do great leading edge, because the investment is their opportunities, it's also the paycheck, right?
33:04So there's a number of variables, and I don't see those going away anytime soon.
33:09Maybe, Marianne, your view, because in France we had a great political media action by President Macron,
33:22who went to Marseille, said that, or was it Ex-en-Provence?
33:25No, I think it was Marseille, the university, and they opened some places for researchers that were kicked out of
33:30the US,
33:31and they received more than a thousand applications, so it seemed like a great flow of researchers,
33:39but maybe the reality on the ground is different.
33:41Well, if you want my honest opinion on that, yes, there was this kind of launch of Choose Europe for
33:49Science,
33:49and I think that every country will do its own, Choose Canada for Science, or...
33:54It's always, always legitimate, but the question is, let's also look at what we have at national grounds.
34:03We've seen in France that France has been a territory that has been great to have...
34:12Well, actually, the brain drain has stopped from France.
34:16We can see that people are actually coming back to France, and it's engineers coming back to France after they
34:25did an internship in the US,
34:27because they want to create innovation in France, but it's very...
34:33It's still tight, and we have to make sure that in the different finance bills that are going to pass,
34:40that have already passed, that are going to pass in the next few months,
34:43we have to make sure that actually we don't destroy this ecosystem,
34:48because it takes a very long time to create attractivity for a country,
34:52attractiveness for a country, but it can be stopped at any time.
34:57Trump is the best way to look at it.
34:59But looking at Trump, we also have to look in our own countries what is going to happen.
35:05And so, if France is not financing anymore the way we do research and development in-house in France,
35:13then we are not as attractive as we were just a few months before.
35:18So, I'm cautious with that.
35:20So, choose Europe for science, absolutely.
35:23Let's also choose France for France, and it's actually a great opportunity as well.
35:28I think it's an absolutely brilliant question.
35:31I've been thinking about it while we've been talking,
35:34and it's exactly the balance between the attractiveness of the capital and the salary
35:43and the ability to scale and all of the advantages you get in being with the US.
35:48is that at some point outweighed by the civil liberties that you lose by going to live in that particular
35:57country?
35:58And I think at the moment, we don't know, is this a structural shift in the United States?
36:02Is this the way in which the United States is committed to its future?
36:06Or is this something that is a manifestation of an issue that will go away?
36:12I don't know what the answer to that is.
36:14But if you commit to go down a path where you are substantially circumscribing people's liberties,
36:21then they won't want to live there. You're absolutely right. They'll want to live somewhere else.
36:27Indeed. Well, thank you for these answers.
36:31Of course, it's a bit early to say it's only been five months.
36:35Maybe talking about something that is here to stay,
36:41I want to come back to regulation, is do we actually need to regulate design features of tools?
36:51Because so far, of course, the EU has been regulating,
36:55has been on a regulated frenzy spray in the past mandate,
36:59but they never have regulated the design features like the dark patterns on Amazon
37:05that makes you click and buy a product you wouldn't need,
37:08or the way influencers are pushing for products online,
37:14or manipulative UX, or biased recommender systems.
37:19If you would regulate that to make it more human-centric,
37:23more abiding by our values,
37:27wouldn't it create better value for customers?
37:29Wouldn't it be something positive?
37:32Marianne?
37:33Your question makes me think of two things.
37:35First, do we need additional regulation,
37:38and then what it would take?
37:40Maybe the regulation we've done is not the right way,
37:43we should put it in the bin and replace it with something else.
37:46It's actually not possible.
37:50What I can see is that with regards to digital,
37:56we have a bunch of regulations,
37:58which are the regulations that are already applying to specific aspects of the digital markets,
38:05which are competition, antitrust, content, AI, data, data governance,
38:11there is a lot of regulation.
38:13Now, in my opinion, we have to stop regulation,
38:16look at that and see what is lacking,
38:20if there is anything lacking,
38:22because we have also to take into account that there is also civil law, corporate law,
38:28and so it's a lot of common laws that add to that.
38:33And so, when you ask citizens, when you ask lawyers,
38:37when you ask pretty much everyone,
38:39they will just tell you that we have a bunch of regulations,
38:42and now let's just make the market grow and see if there is a lack.
38:48My second point here was also to think that when you're doing a regulation,
38:54you have to make sure that it's going to last during the time.
38:58And so, with the AI Act, for instance, we were having a regulation
39:04where they wanted to create a level of regulation if you were above a certain threshold.
39:13And so, the question was, what should be this threshold?
39:17And I'm always thinking about the fact that just 20 years ago,
39:21we were accessing the internet, and we only have one hour to share in the family
39:27to have access to the internet.
39:29At that time, the threshold would have been, if you have unlimited internet,
39:34then you have to be regulated.
39:35But that happened just two years after.
39:38And it's not the fact that the internet or the usage of digital became above the threshold
39:44that changed everything.
39:46The fact that the internet was done by many different kinds of people.
39:52So, having access to one specific threshold
39:56and putting all your attention to one specific aspect of regulation won't make that work.
40:01So, you have to think the fact that regulation should be resilient
40:05and adapt to a market that is constantly changing.
40:10So, keeping on being tech neutral.
40:12I see, I see.
40:14Exactly.
40:14Do you have an opinion, Michael?
40:18I think, first of all, philosophically, I'm opposed to the amount of regulation
40:24that we have at the moment.
40:25I think it's not fit for purpose.
40:27I think we need to think about it again.
40:28And it's creating an alienating environment for businesses as they try to scale.
40:32That's my view.
40:33Obviously, there needs to be regulation.
40:35To take the AI Act, for example.
40:38If you're supplying into defense or you're supplying into healthcare,
40:42I think the standards that should apply there to those businesses that are critical
40:45are perhaps different from the standards that should apply to people
40:49who are not doing or participating in such sensitive industries.
40:53And that's something I think we need to debate a bit more.
40:57It also can't be right that the simplification of the AI Act is more complicated than the actual Act itself.
41:04That just seems to me to be entirely counterintuitive.
41:07Yeah.
41:07The same thing is happening with the GDPR and data privacy.
41:10There's been, like, one omnibus, one simplification, another procedural rules.
41:15But I won't go into details.
41:16Did you want to add something, Michael?
41:19Listen, I agree with everything that was said.
41:21I think your question was about trying to regulate or put policy around design features.
41:27Yes.
41:28Those that I considered as harming the consumer, but you can say miners or the way you behave or you
41:37buy on the internet.
41:39And I think some of that, I think that's tough to over-regulate innovation
41:44where sometimes we don't know the impact of design features until once they've been out there.
41:50But I do think we have to find a way to respond in a more agile and quick manner, which
41:55I don't think exists today.
41:57Well, when you say that we don't know what the design feature does,
42:01if we look at Elon Musk's tweet, he changed the recommended system to help the election of Trump.
42:08That's just the tweet he wrote, so obviously we don't have confirmation that it's true.
42:13No, but sometimes we know, but I'm talking about social media, right?
42:17So that would be an example.
42:19And often, when they built some of these applications, they understood how to, you know, using psychology, right?
42:28Science and psychology, to understand how to hook people through getting likes.
42:33They realized that was a dopamine trigger and doing that got more usage.
42:39So then do we decide we don't want to do that, we don't want to allow that kind of design
42:44feature
42:45because it gets people hooked and then that it would be something we would react and respond to.
42:51That was the example.
42:52Indeed.
42:56Maybe a question for you, David.
42:59I'm also hearing a lot of debate about when we speak about sovereignty and the European stack,
43:06that some parts of the tech stack should be a public infrastructure.
43:13It doesn't mean that it must be owned by the state, but a bit like a road or an energy
43:19canalization,
43:22anything you can think of, fiber optic cables, they are owned by private companies,
43:26but they should be considered and regulated as a public infrastructure.
43:29Should we do that for things we all use, like the cloud market, for instance?
43:35I'm always hesitant to sort of put stuff into state ownership.
43:39I'm not sure that that's the right place for assets to sit, assets like that.
43:46But I do think there's a role for the state, for example, in providing what India has done,
43:51a digital identity system, which is rolled out, which has made it incredibly easy for companies to latch onto that,
43:59to use that, to build their own platforms on top of something that the state has provided.
44:03That's been a fantastic springboard for the Indian digital development.
44:08Great. Thank you very much. Can I ask you for one word about one piece of advice you would say
44:15Europe should take from another part of the world in order to be more attractive?
44:21I would say let's take money from the US debt and invest it in Europe.
44:27Great. I think embrace innovation.
44:32Sure.
44:33And I would say find a way to move at speed.
44:37Great. Thank you very much.
44:38Thank you. Thank you very much.
44:39Thank you.
44:40Thank you very much.
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