Digital Empires: The Global Battle to Regulate Technology by Anu Bradford.
Anu holds LLM and SJD from Harvard Law School, and both a Master of Laws and Licentiate from the University of Helsinki. Today Anu serves as Professor of Law at Columbia Law School. Today she is Director of the European Legal Studies Center at Columbia Law School and former assistant professor at the University of Chicago Law School.
This is one of the important books everyone should be reading today in order to understand how the world is operating, the political and economic shifts underway and even how AI will influence the global economy in the coming century.
Anu is providing a very deep analysis of competing regulatory frameworks among the United States, China, and the European Union as they strive to govern technology and digital markets. Each is certainly shaping their efforts to support their global ambitions.
This is beyond business regulations and rather is contributing to their plans for dominating global digital economic market. And of course the digital market means AI.
China may indeed rule the global digital AI economy.
Their regulatory frameworks will also impact privacy standards and data protection for all companies. So, the impact of which country can quickly establish their framework’s control over tech companies. Anu further illustrates a concept of technological sovereignty. This insights reveals how each country will seek to control digital ecosystems while protecting (and controlling) their nation’s population from external influences abroad. Anu is also raising a red flag regarding how governments, tech companies, and key individuals will shape and benefit.
This will certainly take hold with the current trillion dollar AI market. While America has lead technology efforts, with the introduction of DeepSeek and the long understood corporate espionage by China, the future of AI is now somewhat in question as China can certainly make a claim and leverage this across those global regions they now are exploiting for economic gain.
In conclusion, I could write more and more about how important this book is for understanding the future world. So, please consider adding this to your book list. Yes, Anu has provided a key yet balanced look at our short term future with AI at the intersection of one country’s economic dominance.