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US President Joe Biden delivers a speech in Warsaw, Poland on February 21, 2023.

Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Reuters Connect

What We’re Watching: Fiery rhetoric and a Ukraine “peace plan,” Israel’s economy v. judicial reforms, SCOTUS social media cases

Dueling speeches on Ukraine

A lot of players (and potential players) in the war on Ukraine have used the looming one-year anniversary of the invasion to position themselves for the months ahead. On Monday, President Vladimir Putin used his annual state of the nation address to insist that Russia would continue to fight a war he blames on Western aggression, and he announced that Russia would suspend participation in the New START nuclear arms control treaty, which binds Russia and the United States to limit their strategic nuclear stockpiles and to share information and access to weapons facilities. (Note: Inspections have already been suspended for more than a year, and Russia is in no position to finance a new arms race.) President Joe Biden, meanwhile, followed up his surprise visit with Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv by meeting in Warsaw with Polish President Andrzej Duda and asserting during a speech that “Appetites of the autocrat cannot be appeased. They must be opposed. Autocrats only understand one word: no, no, no.” In listing what he called Russia’s “atrocities,” he said its forces have “targeted civilians with death and destruction; used rape as a weapon of war… stolen Ukrainian children in an attempt to steal Ukraine's future, bombed train stations, maternity hospitals, schools and orphanages.” Chinese President Xi Jinping is expected to make news on Friday with a speech of his own in which he’ll lay out the specifics of a peace plan which, given the distance between the Russian and Ukrainian positions, has virtually no chance of success. The war grinds on.

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The Path to Holding Social Media Companies Accountable | GZERO World

The path to holding social media companies accountable

Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen thinks governments need to rethink how they regulate social media companies to hold them accountable for the consequences of their actions.

Instead of laws banning specific stuff, which lawyers are very good at skirting, governments should develop legislation that opens conversations about potential problems.

"That's an ongoing, flexible approach to trying to direct them back towards the common good," she tells Ian Bremmer on GZERO World.

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Why EU Social Media Regulation Matters To You | GZERO World

What happens in Europe, doesn’t stay in Europe — why EU social media regulation matters to you

The EU just approved the Digital Services Act, which for the first time will mandate social media companies come clean about what they do with our data.

Okay, but perhaps you don't live there. Why should you care?

First, transparency matters, says Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen.

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Outsized Power of Big Tech Revealed in Russia-Ukraine War | Cyber In :60 | GZERO Media

Limiting Putin's propaganda: Big tech & the Russia-Ukraine war

Marietje Schaake, International Policy Director at Stanford's Cyber Policy Center, Eurasia Group senior advisor and former MEP, discusses the Ukraine conflict from the cybersecurity perspective:

If you're like me, you've been glued to the news all week after Russia invaded Ukraine to understand what is happening on the ground and how the democratic community is responding. We've seen tectonic changes already in this past week, and we could say the same for Big Tech.

How is the Russia-Ukraine war testing the role of Big Tech?

Well, I do think we see their outsized power revealed once more. We saw Putin restricting access to platforms like Facebook, as he is losing grip over his propaganda narrative. But then also social media companies finally being forced to stop amplifying state propaganda channels of Russian media in the EU, due to new sanctions. But the fact that the platforms are not doing the same in the US and other jurisdictions says a lot about their reluctance. And there's also a problem with executing their own corporate policies. New research shows that Facebook fails in 91% of cases to correctly label content when it is Russian state sponsored. It's very messy.

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US Taking Notice of EU's Tech Laws that Could Impact US Tech Companies | Cyber In :60 | GZERO Media

US pushes back on EU's proposed laws impacting US tech companies

Marietje Schaake, International Policy Director at Stanford's Cyber Policy Center, Eurasia Group senior advisor and former MEP, discusses trends in big tech, privacy protection and cyberspace:

What are the EU's digital gatekeeper rules, and why does the US want them changed?

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Will Political Polarization Stop Big Tech Regulation | Cyber In :60 | GZERO Media

Europe and the US can’t agree on how to regulate Big Tech

Marietje Schaake, International Policy Director at Stanford's Cyber Policy Center, Eurasia Group senior advisor and former MEP, discusses trends in big tech, privacy protection and cyberspace:

Are we running out of time to regulate big tech?

And to that I would say yes and no. So let me explain. Yes, because especially in the US, the legislative responses to the outsized and growing power of big tech have been incredibly slow. Over the past several years, we have seen initiatives being drafted, but when it came to that point, the polarization between Democrats and Republicans have been running so deep that hardly any of the legislative ideas have actually come to adoption. And there's no real expectation that that will change soon. But we are not running out of time, but actually catching up, in the sense that elsewhere in the world, for example, in the EU, a series of proposals are being made and adopted. To foster more competition, to ensure greater responsibility from tech companies on content moderation, on AI, data, political ads, rights and principles, cybersecurity, and so on. And these proposals do add up to a shift in the status quo and certainly regulate the effects of big tech.

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Annie Gugliotta & Jess Frampton

Who’ll rule the digital world in 2022?

Apple this week became the first company ever to surpass $3 trillion in market value — the latest milestone in the growing influence of Big Tech.

This was already happening before the pandemic, but COVID accelerated the trend. More people now buy stuff online, keep in touch on social media, and use apps to serve their daily needs than before the virus upended both the "real" and the digital world.

As Big Tech gains more clout, governments are increasingly struggling to exercise sovereignty over the digital space. Our very own Ian Bremmer argues that a handful of tech firms are now as powerful as nation-states: geopolitical actors with unprecedented influence over the information we get access to — and not — via their algorithms.

But governments don't like playing second fiddle to Big Tech in the "technopolar world," a new global order in which tech companies dominate the online world, but don’t rule it (yet). Eurasia Group, our parent company, considers a rapidly expanding digital space that neither governments nor tech firms can effectively control the #2 top geopolitical risk for 2022.

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State of the World with Ian Bremmer | GZERO Summit | GZERO Media

The next great game: Politicians vs tech companies

Ian Bremmer, president of Eurasia Group, our parent company, has opened this year’s GZERO Summit with a provocative speech on the near future of international politics. Here are the highlights.

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