First of all, I strongly recommend watching this discussion — one of the most engaging I’ve followed in recent weeks. Precisely because it brought real tensions to the surface, and there was no neat consensus, it proved especially useful. The participants themselves were almost mythic in stature, truly impressive figures. Among them, an economist of my own generation whom I’ve admired for decades (Mariana Mazzucato); a younger economist, equally stimulating, insightful and 'unorthodox' in her approach (Cecilia Rikap); and a third, also an economist (Francesca Bria), who has done remarkable work also from a legal perspective, I'm thinking especially of her time with the Municipality of Barcelona. The only technologist, and male, on the panel (Mike Bracken) chose his words carefully, and sensibly.
Now, I’d like to offer a few thoughts to set out where, in my view, the key points lie, and how we might frame them in a way that keeps this essential conversation moving in the right direction for the EU and beyond. I won’t begin with the problems, those are already well worn ground for any Wavesblog Reader who isn’t merely passing through. But if you do fall into that latter category, I’d suggest starting with the EuroStack Report itself, if you don't know it already, which came up several times during the panel discussion.
To stack or not to stack - and how?
Instead, I’ll begin with the blog post that accompanied the release of the panel video, as it already eloquently homes in on one of the underlying frictions. The post frames 'the core disagreement' as one of Ownership vs. Operational Sovereignty, one position being that pushing for digital regulation, something the EU is all too well known for, becomes little more than wishful thinking when the entities being regulated don’t just use infrastructure, but are the infrastructure. And those infrastructures "are controlled somewhere else, built according to laws we didn’t write, and underpinned by values we do not agree with." The opposing view says there’s no need for ownership, no need for democratic sovereignty over the layers of the stack, let alone the stack as a whole, As long as the right regulation is in place. That means building in the right regulatory safeguards: mandated interoperability, switching, portability, all the things we know sit also at the heart of the EU Digital Markets Act. The more radical version of the first position, as I see it, came from Bria. She was clear: yes, she’s spent at least part of her life pushing for the need of more, better digital regulation, but that’s no longer enough. We’re in a different phase now. It’s time to move beyond and, among other things, build. The second position was put forward by Bracken, drawing on his previous experience working for the UK government and his current work advising many more. His was a vision that includes leveraging on the (very) few digital public infrastructures we already have, with a nod to Brazil’s Pix system, which has recently attracted attention also from the Trump administration.
Then things got a little tense, and a touch tangled, when, at one point, the technologist referred to one of the women economists on the panel (it wasn’t quite clear which) as a Marxist. Judging by the subdued tone, I wouldn’t say it was meant as a compliment — more of an observation, perhaps. And, to further clarify his position, he added that he absolutely doesn’t buy into the idea of ownership over the stack. In his experience, the only place he’s ever seen it done is, you guessed it, China. Turning to the one tool that, in Biden’s words (remember?), keeps capitalism from becoming theft, namely, competition, Bracken argued that platforms should indeed be broken up. But his main point was this: industries work because there are standards (protocols!) — and when standards (technological and beyond) are in place, everything more or less falls into line. I didn’t quite share Bria's reaction, but yes, it did strike me as rather simplistic. From a legal and economic perspective, we know perfectly well that standards help things run, but they’re far from enough. Good functioning markets, where consumers, business users, and firms can confidently act and thrive, need a great deal more. So much more, in fact, that at times you can’t help but wonder whether the effort is really worth the candle. But the truth is, there aren’t many alternatives. So far, we haven’t managed to come up with anything better. So, do we stick with them, bolstered, for now, by a healthy dose of market engineering?
Rikap offered a perspective I wouldn’t place between the two, that would only flatten it. What she brought in terms of analysis was unmistakably ecosystemic. Her question cut through: which layers of the digital stack are chokepoints, offer a panopticon view of the economy and our live (i.e., everything happens on the cloud)s, and set the rules of distribution and production? Bingo: cloud services. Is it then a good idea to build an entire nation’s ID system on top of the cloud infrastructure controlled by Big Tech? Hardly. What struck me most, though, was when she spoke of complicity, naming names, such as Mistral and SAP. If we’re really in a phase where digital sovereignty is on everyone’s mind, where we’re all on edge about who holds the power, then the real question is: do we just carry on with capitalism-as-usual-only-worse? Or is it finally time to right the ship — and not just with a gentle nudge, but with a meaningful course correction?
Right after that, Rikap brings us back to a fascinating thread running through her research work. It’s not just about who produces knowledge, innovation — but about who ends up appropriating it. In a cascade from bad to worse, knowledge appropriated by those few isn’t being used to solve fundamental problems, take climate change, for instance. Quite the opposite: it often ends up making climate emergencies worse (think data centres). Nor we as a society might end up in great shape when it comes to producing new knowledge, regardless of who ends up capturing it. From Rikap’s perspective, we’re in epistemic trouble if we start tackling every problem, science included, with AI-based solutions alone, without even asking ourselves whether that kind of AI is the one we want. So where does that leave us? Until now, we heard of two paths: the EuroStack vision (Bria), or the technologically enlightened toolkit of interoperability, open standards, switching tools, regulatory safeguards, etc (Bracken). And Rikap? Bold. A "public-led, democratic, international, people centered, and ecological stack or value chain" is the way to go. One positive aspect is that the question of demand is addressed from the outset. Yes, the whole system is not only public-led: demand is also shaped by the state. And unsurprisingly, much of it should come from areas like healthcare and education, at least at the beginning. And here she turns to encouraging examples that stretch beyond Europe’s borders. Curiously, she brings up the Meta case in Nigeria, which I’ve briefly written about myself. She presents it as a situation in which Nigeria appeared willing to bear Meta’s market exit in order to enforce its digital regulation, if I understood correctly. I’ll need to think more about it myself.
Are these three visions irreconcilable? Certainly not. What's the most promising vantage point from which to start turning any of this into reality and saving the frog? What do we already have that can be used/repurposed/reused? And where, instead, will we need to overcome inertia/opposition and do something fundamentally different? On the latter, today we had one of those precious exchanges on BlueSky that still make you believe in net humanity and serendipity. Or way I just chatting with bots?
(/END? Not really, see here).
