Lies and propaganda are central to the emergence of totalitarianism, and centralisation of communications is key to producing an information environment where both can thrive.
US Vice-President JD Vance shocked European leaders at the Munich Security Conference in February 2025 when he launched a blistering attack on the European Union (EU), warning that European values were diverging significantly from that of the US’s and that their “shared values” were being called into question.
Typically, a security conference such as this one would be focused on material threats to European security, the most current and profound of which would be Russia’s war on Ukraine, which has made both Scandinavian and eastern European nations nervous that their own sovereignty might come under threat from Russia in the future.
However, in what prompted a serious double-take from the audience, Vance instead launched a blistering broadside against the US’s European allies, stating that “the threat that I worry most about vis-à-vis Europe is not Russia, not China; it’s not any other external actor. What I worry about is the threat from within, the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values, values shared by the United States of America.”
He got straight to the point, railing against “digital censorship” and “social media” being shut down for “hateful content” in Europe, as well as prosecuting online users for sharing views that were deemed hateful or misogynistic.
He expressed the US’s deep concern that, “Romania straight up cancelled the results of a presidential election, based on the flimsy suspicions of an intelligence agency and enormous pressure from continental neighbours” that “Russian disinformation had affected the Romanian elections”.
What followed was a populist right-wing polemic arguing for free speech absolutism, an ideology that is professed as foundational to the libertarian alt-right MAGA movement that constitutes the base that Donald Trump relies on to exert near-absolute control over the Republican Party.
Referring to the concerted efforts by US progressives (ie, democrats) and the EU to hold social media platforms to account for the content hosted on their platforms – particularly mis/disinformation, hate speech and misogyny – Vance scolded the European delegates while holding out a supposed olive branch, stating that:
“So, I come here today not just with an observation, but an offer. Just as the Biden administration seemed desperate to silence people for speaking their minds, so the Trump administration will do precisely the opposite, and I hope that we can work together on that. In Washington, there is a new sheriff in town, and under Donald Trump’s leadership we may disagree with your views but we will fight to defend your right to offer it in the public square, agree or disagree!”
The argument for free speech absolutism would later culminate in Vance exerting a binary conditionality on the EU’s leaders: “… There’s no room for firewalls. You either uphold the principle or you don’t! … I really do believe that allowing our citizens to speak their mind will make them stronger still.”
At first glance, Vance’s rhetoric appears to be an attempt to signal to the European right-wing and far-right formations that their issues of concern – particularly migration and the perceived threat multiculturalism poses to the European “way of life” – would enjoy the support of the new US administration as it attempts to galvanise the US and European right around their core values and reassert traditionalist values and societal norms.
However, there is a significant undercurrent that has not been reported on or adequately debated by news commentators that is quite striking.
Despite the deployment of the rhetoric of free speech absolutism, the US likely harbours a deeper agenda. It is US progressives and the EU in particular – alongside international non-government organisations such as the United Nations – that have been making significant moves to regulate (and even break up) the large tech platforms that the Silicon Valley billionaires who have fallen in line with the Trump agenda own.
It is far more likely that Vance’s deeper message was a blunt – albeit disguised – signal to European politicians to adopt a hands-off approach towards the large US technology monopolies that are at the heart of the global revolution in digital communications and artificial intelligence.
It is hardly a coincidence that Vance himself made his wealth as a tech venture capitalist and remains deeply entrenched in the sector.
While Vance’s lecture on free speech absolutism has precious little to do with the EU’s security priorities, the Big Tech platforms constitute a key security concern for the EU. To understand this, it is important to understand the nature of the threat with which the EU is currently dealing.
The EU is deeply concerned about asymmetric hybrid warfare that is being waged on their citizenries and member states. Hybrid warfare extends beyond the use of conventional warfare, to the inclusion of irregular warfare and non-military methods (eg sabotaging undersea internet cables).
In this new multimodal type of warfare, mis- and disinformation, coordinated influence campaigns and narrative manipulation, scapegoating and divisive rhetoric have been particularly effective in disrupting and fragmenting social and political cohesion in countries, rendering them more vulnerable to domestic and foreign threats.
Big Tech platforms are the main vehicles through which these threats are deployed and mobilised.
Hybrid warfare can enable the achievement of political goals at a cheaper price than conventional warfare, making it a particularly attractive form of warfare for a state such as Russia. While Russia has a significant nuclear arsenal and conventional army, it has a relatively small economy when compared with global superpowers, roughly equivalent to that of Spain’s.
EU member countries are currently being attacked by massive Russian misinformation campaigns and interference in their national politics. In some cases, the prospect of Russian incursions on their borders (eg, Sweden, Poland, and many others) constitute a very real and pressing threat.
The EU has a living memory of the destruction that World War 2 brought to their nation states. And while the US (and Russia) effectively rescued Europe from the Nazis, it has not in recent history experienced a war waged by foreign powers on its sovereign territory. The US therefore has no recent memory of the cost of war on their own soil.
In contrast, the EU is a post-war project that is in large part designed to prevent it from ever lapsing into such destruction again. This is why the EU is more pragmatic about the limits of free speech, leaving it largely to member nation states to draft their own polices and the EU government to champion issues that they find agreement on that need to be addressed in the European context (eg, regulating Big Tech).
So, when Vance waltzes into a European security conference and lambastes them for not embracing free speech absolutism as though it was a European norm, which it is not by any measure – and never has been, to be clear – it was bound to raise their hackles.
Vance clearly has little understanding of – or concern for – the European historical and current security context. Instead of reassuring the EU, he took the opportunity to push the US’s Big Tech agenda under the guise of “standing up” for the EU’s right-wing parties and their agendas.
Vance’s speech did not speak to the EU’s security priorities at all. To the EU, his overtures to the pro-Russian European far-right is the real “enemy within”. And if it is the US administration’s hidden agenda to weaken European security in this way, this constitutes a great betrayal, perhaps the most significant of the 21st century.
What’s really going on then?
The US tech monopolies are ostensibly at the epicentre of the new global economy. At least, that is what they want us and their shareholders to believe. The new global economy is characterised by centralised control over the main communication platforms on which billions of people communicate and access myriad other services in their day-to-day lives.
We now transact, recreate, consume news and information, share opinions, access communities and organisations, and financial services, and work online.
The unfolding revolution in artificial intelligence (AI) is central – in many ways – to securing US dominance in this new economy, which Shoshana Zuboff labelled “surveillance capitalism” a few years ago, and which Yanis Varoufakis has labelled “cloud capital” more recently (they essentially explain the same phenomenon from different angles).
Central to this new economy is the acquisition of vast swathes of online and real-world data – to be clear, which includes your data and my data, running roughshod over privacy ethics – to engage in behaviour modification that profits them.
We now know that these very same platforms hold outsized influence in the political and social realms. Elections can be won or lost, and societies can be fragmented and polarised through wielding influence on them that utilises the very same databases and insights to modify behaviours.
US tech oligarchs are hellbent on ensuring that their platforms remain intact and unfettered by regulation wherever they enjoy market share. For this, they need to secure access to as much of our data as possible. They loathe the efforts to regulate them by the EU, progressive US formations and the United Nations.
That is why they are so commonly referred to as latter-day “robber barons”. Their industries and technologies have progressed so quickly that regulators have scarcely been able to keep up. They’d like to keep it that way.
There is little doubt that the recent unveiling of DeepSeek from Chinese innovators, which wiped off $1-trillion from their stock market, proved deeply troubling to US aspirations to dominate the new economy.
It may well be that Vance’s broadside on the EU is simply a move to guarantee unfettered control over their platforms, and unquestioned dominance within the large EU market.
The EU may not be entirely opposed to that. However, what they are likely legitimately concerned about – or should be – is the simultaneous dog-whistling to the EU right wing while pushing the US “Free Big Tech” agenda. Additionally, the quick and unquestioning acquiescence of US Big Tech leaders to Donald Trump’s MAGA agenda calls their personal and company values into question.
Will US Big Tech simply blow with the wind and take instructions from the Trump administration, or do they have the resolve to declare their boundaries and defend their values when the time comes?
Currently, Big Tech appears to have unconditionally prostrated itself to the Trump administration. This constitutes a deep and legitimate concern for the EU (indeed, as it would to any region or country).
For such vast power to be wholly possessed in the hands of a few men in the US is a threat to the stability of countries, regions and the world.
This is because lies and propaganda are central to the emergence of totalitarianism, and centralisation of communications is key to producing an information environment where lies and propaganda can thrive.
In the US tech sector, this centralisation is twofold. US Big Tech companies are monopolies who are now in tight formation and in lockstep with the Trump administration.
Moreover, their platforms are highly centralised because they are controlled by centralised algorithms. Contending with this kind of centralised power is a daunting prospect for the EU but it is now the new reality.
Indeed, it would be for any region in the world, but perhaps more so in the case of the EU because it has until now been in such a close alliance with the US.
The populist agenda being advanced by the US and global right bears every indication that these platforms may well be misappropriated to influence European society’s opinions and political and electoral outcomes.
This is because the libertarian US right wing is diametrically opposed to progressive EU visions such as multicultural societies and globalism while – contradictorily – being both protectionist and expansionist at the same time.
It is also likely that Donald Trump’s electoral win – which might have at least in part been fuelled by Elon Musk’s acquisition and drastic transformation of Twitter/X – might prompt European political leaders to view moves to advance US Big Tech motives with suspicion.
Indeed, Elon Musk contributed $250-million to Trump’s election campaign, and is now openly courting and supporting right-wing movements across Europe and the UK with vigour.
Whereas Vance essentially accused the EU of engaging in a form of digital totalitarianism by regulating hate speech, misogyny and the like, what is patently obvious is that the centralised ownership and control of Big Tech platforms is far more likely to produce a digital totalitarianism that operates without limits in the interests of the oligarchic elites that own and control the platform monopolies.
This is particularly the case where there is an unquestioning loyalty and devoted alliance between oligarchic capital and political movements, as is currently the case in the US.
As the saying goes, “absolute power corrupts absolutely”. There is little reason or cause to believe that such combined economic, social and political power will not be abused, both for profit and gain, as well as to skew public discourse and political outcomes in the EU.
Varoufakis – loosely speaking – refers to the new economic arrangement brokered by Big Tech as “techno-feudalism”. In this new arrangement, the rhetorical veneer of free speech absolutism serves as a legitimising device for enabling unfettered control over data access, and the flow of information and speech.
In direct terms, this has more to do with the control of data, information and manipulation of public discourse than it has to do with free speech absolutism.
So, the push to guarantee unfettered access and monopolisation of US Big Tech companies is likely – and should be – deeply concerning and troubling to the EU.
The US is engaged in a game that is mainly advancing its Big Tech business interests, but which simultaneously leverages social and political sentiment – in regional and sovereign politics – to secure its share of the global market. In this mutation of digital totalitarianism, democratic participation is illusory and ineffective, open to manipulation and abuse by state and non-state actors, both foreign and domestic alike.
The digital “polis” that Vance is claiming it wants to instate in the EU is hence anything but a genuine polis. A genuine polis is constituted of free, grassroots organising that is brokered through participation between citizens that isn’t governed by centralised, algorithmic control that is designed for behaviour modification.
Any digital polis that claims to be truly democratic must enable a significant level of decentralisation of control, precisely so that participation is genuinely represented on the online feeds we spend so much time on.
Anything other than that hosts the very real potential of stunting democratic participation in democratic discourse, producing the theatrical performance of participation at best, or entirely ineffective participation at worst. Both options effectively produce only the illusion of participation.
This poses a foundational threat to the EU because it enables hybrid warfare to be waged on their societies, polarising them and rendering them extremely vulnerable to the divide and conquer strategies of foreign actors. It also poses a threat to any region or country that allows unfettered, unregulated access to US Big Tech platforms.
Who controls the tech-based economy of the future will ostensibly control the future of societies and nation states around the world. And along with controlling the economy of the future, they will control the democratic power that is available to citizenries to hold elite power to account.
In this techno-feudalist arrangement democratic power is gravely endangered by unregulated – and/or unethical – behavioural modification that lies at the heart of the business models of Big Tech platforms. That is, it enables a tech totalitarianism.
Either we find ways to regulate Big Tech, or Big Tech will regulate us. The new US administration appears to have understood this and seized upon the opportunity to wield control – not only over their own citizenry, but that of the EU as well.
Hence while the new US administration purports to be adopting a protectionist and quasi-isolationist stance, in reality their expansionism is digital, and their tech platforms are serving as their battering rams into the polities of the rest of the world.
While the rhetoric of free speech absolutism is being deployed by the new US administration, the subtext is very different. It is about control of our data, behaviours, economies and ultimately our politics.
We are failing to understand this because we are being intentionally distracted by the daily rapid-fire assaults on our sensibilities that overwhelm us. As difficult as it may be, it is critical to take a step back from the noise and gain the perspective necessary to identify the critical signals that indicate what is actually underfoot.
Is it corporate grift on a global scale, or the great betrayal? Perhaps – as argued in this piece – it is both. And if it is, what we are witnessing is the US driving a double-edged sword into the heart of the EU, one that cuts into the fabric of European social and political cohesion while rendering the EU vulnerable to foreign threats at the same time.
Time will tell, but what is clear is that many lives, livelihoods and futures around the world may depend heavily on what is currently transpiring in the unquestionable rupture in the transatlantic alliance. DM