Reviewing Digital Empires (January 2026)

Digital Empires: The Global Battle to Regulate Technology published in 2023 presents the 21^st digital world as a legal battleground where three ‘empires’ (the U.S., China and the EU) compete for international leadership. Anu Bradford, Professor of Law at Columbia Law School, specializes in the European Union, global economy, and digital regulation. (Though not spelled out as such in the book, ‘digital’ refers to content and infrastructure, while the ‘Internet’ is the communication infrastructure that enables global networking.)

Why 'empires?' Bradford chooses this metaphor to capture the economic, technological and regulatory dominance of these three powers, which by virtue of their geopolitical roles shape the digital world for everyone else. She views the current era of the early 21^st century as an age of great power geopolitics, hearkening back to the bipolar world of the Cold War superpower rivalry between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. The current global order represents a rupture from the 1990s, which were dominated by the U.S. on account of the demise of Soviet communism and the commercialization of the Internet. The briefness of the period of unipolarity is attributable to the rapid ascent of China to superpower status and the emergence of the EU as a regulator of digital technology.

In her comparative analysis of the regulatory regimes of the U.S., EU and China, Bradford focuses on the politics, economics and ultimately law of 21^st century digital technology. Thus, Bradford is writing about more than just the technology sectors, consequently her analysis extends to broader political, economic and legal features of today’s multipolar world order. While well-researched and objective, the book is normatively oriented to the West, particularly the EU. Bradford is not polemical but she is clear in declaring her preferences.

America’s regulatory model is described as market-driven, China’s as state-driven and the EU's as regulatory-driven. Bradford characterizes all three as capitalist varieties of political economy, since all rely, to varying degrees, on capitalist production, commerce and governance. The U.S. and China are obvious choices for ‘empire’ status, but Bradford argues that the EU, despite its relative weakness vis-à-vis the U.S. in innovation and China vis-à-vis the magnitude of its infrastructure, has assumed the role of global leader in developing, adopting and promoting digital standards, e.g., privacy, moderated online content, competition (antitrust) policy and artificial intelligence.(1)

Borrowing from the terminology of antitrust governance, these empires compete horizontally against one another and vertically vis-à-vis tech firms both domestic and foreign. As international trade, investment and migration have political implications, each empire acts principally according to its national interests, or the national interests of its members in the case of the EU. Thus, competing political interests are translated into competing regulatory policies which in turn lock in competing economic benefits. Ultimately, each jurisdiction is held accountable, to varying degrees, to its body politic. Repeated and massive failure to serve its citizenry is injudicious even in authoritarian regimes. In furthering the development of domestic firms, all three governments demonstrate techno-nationalist features, and state aid (by means of subsidies) is one of the most important. Another more specific example of horizontal competition is afforded by the U.S. trade policy to restrict the sale of certain semiconductor chip technology. In addition to horizontal competition, there is vertical competition between the different governments and technology firms (domestic and foreign). An example of vertical competition is the EU’s antitrust policy enforcement decisions against U.S. tech giants.

Unsurprisingly, the competition among governments, between governments and tech firms and among tech firms fails to produce ‘win-win’ results for everyone. Critics characterize these regimes as free-trade imperialism (U.S.), surveillance imperialism (China) and regulatory imperialism (EU). Google might be inclined to regard the EU as an imperialist regulator, Americans would generally agree that China protects its domestic firms at the expense of American firms, and the Chinese would maintain that not only does America subsidize its own companies but it also coordinates with other countries to block the export of ‘national security’ sensitive technology to China. In addition, all three models are criticized for exporting their governance models and imposing their values and agendas on others. Thus, the U.S. and the EU export their humanitarian and democratic values, and the Chinese export their values around conformity, order and social harmony.(2)

With respect to digital content, the U.S. prioritizes free speech(3) while EU places free speech among other fundamental rights such as privacy, personal data protection and protection from hate speech and disinformation. US regulatory orientation is laissez-faire emphasizing innovation and technological progress; EU regulatory orientation is interventionist (but not controlling as in China) prioritizing social goals over tech goals. In response to the criticism that EU regulation stifles innovation, the author counters that the challenges for innovation are much greater in the heterogeneous EU market than they are in the homogeneous US market.

Chinese tech success has debunked two myths: first, that the Internet inherently promotes freedom and second, that tech innovation and progress require laissez-faire regulatory policies. Around the world, countries (autocratic and non-autocratic) have taken notice that the Western model is no longer the sole guide for economic development and technological progress. This has created increasing competition for global leadership between China on one hand and the U.S. and the EU on the other. China's state-driven regulatory model is increasingly popular as the trend away from democratic governments to autocratic governments continues and as China has demonstrated that economic development and technological progress do not require a democratic political system. China's model of state capitalism combined with censorship and surveillance is attractive to autocratic governments. Meanwhile, China’s Digital Silk Road (part of the Belt and Road Initiative) is appealing to less affluent states who want an alternative infrastructural partner to the U.S.

Bradford predicts a convergence between the U.S. and the EU regulatory governance models, with the US moving closer to the EU's rights-driven approach, rather than the EU shifting towards the US free-market approach. For her, online privacy, content moderation, taxation, antitrust and AI regulation are not only preferable under the EU model,(4) but they are more likely to persist as the market-driven approach in the U.S. may gradually give way under public pressure similar to what the American trusts encountered at the turn of the 20^th century.(5)

Looking ahead, Bradford believes that there are two paths by which liberal democracy can degenerate: first, if the U.S. and EU governance models are supplanted by China's and second, if the U.S. and EU lose their respective vertical battles with the tech industry. In China, the vertical relationship between the state and big tech is asymmetric with the state dominating. Such is not the case in the US or the EU. Bradford’s references to omnipotent tech and the global authoritarian turn place this book in the category of warnings about the imminent demise of liberal democratic capitalism.(6)

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