INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
As history tells us, the break-up of &Big Oil& and &Big Telco& in the past led to more competition and innovation
What to do in the era of &Big Tech?& Living in 2019, we know more than ever before about how Big Tech, particularly in the shape of
Facebook, Twitter and Google — as the prime arbiters of information and social media online — have shaped and affected politics today
At the same time, we&re about to face several huge sea-changes in the global system, not least of which will be the next U.S
election, Brexit, the rise of China and challenges of the climate crisis.
Speaking at Web Summit in Lisbon this week, former U.K
Prime Minister Tony Blair brought out a new report from the Institute which bears his name to address the turmoil of Western politics from
the prism of the backlash against globalisation after the 2007-2008 financial crisis, the rise of populist movements and the effects
technology is having on society, politicians and policymakers.
A policy framework designed for the offline world may have served many people
well for many decades, but in an age of exponential technology, is it fit for purpose?
Platform companies like Facebook, aggregators like
Google, Amazon and Uber have, says the Institute, stripped traditional gatekeepers of their power, delivered real progress for consumers and
businesses and increased many freedoms
But they have also brought significant economic upheaval and heightened cultural pressures, along with huge unknowns about the future
The tech wolf has also now concentrated power in the hands of a relatively small number of companies that &all too often wield it clumsily
and without sufficient legitimacy.&
This comes at a time when the West lead on technology is &facing a clear and present challenge from
determined Russian aggression and a concerted push from China to take a global lead in AI.&
Blair Institute makes it plain in its new report
(&A New Deal for Big Tech: Next-Generation Regulation Fit for the Internet Age&) that the current set of regulations designed for legacy
industries is &a poor fit for the pace and scale of the Internet& and a new approach, based on stronger accountability coupled with more
freedom to innovate, might be the best way to align private incentives with the public interest.
Blair is calling for a &new generation of
regulator& that can take an international outlook, have technical expertise comparable with the big tech companies and be fluent in the same
fundamentals of &Big Tech.&
But how? How is all this going to operate? What are Blair views on Russia, disinformation on Facebook and
Twitter, and whether tech will have an effect on the outcome of Brexit?
TechCrunch sat down with Mr Blair for the following, exclusive,
interview.
Mike Butcher (MB): You&ve released this new report into regulating Big Tech
Do you want to outline its main thrust?
Tony Blair (TB): Essentially what we&re saying is: there no way &big tech& is going to avoid
regulation, and regulation that will treat them almost like public utilities because of their power, their reach and their impact
But the question is about getting the right form of regulation
So what we&re trying to do is to make sure that it the kind of regulation of big tech that recognizes that [big tech has] actually brought
enormous benefits to people, but at the same time protects people, whether it on issues around privacy, competition [and] making sure that
consumers get adequate access — all of those types of things — and translate this into a set of proper principles
What I say to the big tech companies is that even though you may not want to have a lot to do with politics, as you can see — and I&ve
been saying this for several years to them — it going to come your way
Because you&re just too powerful not to be under some system of objective regulation, and you can&t just regulate yourselves.
MB: On that
note, many big tech companies have actually called for regulation, but do you think that a &sop& to governments in order to allow them to
build even bigger monopolies? Because then everybody will have to be regulated, including smaller companies?
TB: I think the whole point
about regulation is that it can be bad or it can be good
So you really want to make sure that the regulation you&re introducing is not an imposition on the companies for providing the service they
do, but it is giving people proper protection and it recognizing, as I say, the power that these companies have
People won&t find it acceptable that things continue without proper regulation
The fact that Mark Zuckerberg comes out in favor of regulation… I mean, I think that good
But the question is what type of regulation
And there, obviously, he and Facebook should have an input
But they can&t decide that
That — in the end — got to be decided by policymakers
And one thing my institute — which Chris [Chris Yiu, executive director, Technology and Public Policy] heads up, which is based in London
but has strong links in Silicon Valley and elsewhere in the world — is to say there needs to be a dialogue between what I call the
&change-makers& and the policy-makers that leads to good policy.
MB: But national governments making policy on their own surely isn&t going
to address the issue, given Big Tech is global? What institutions can address this? Some sort of supranational body?
TB: Well, I think,
ultimately, on certain issues you&ll need a global agreement
For example cybersecurity, I think we&ll, for sure, need that.
MB: There no &United Nations Declaration& for arms control on cybersecurity
for instance.
TB: The one thing I&m noticing about cyber, even in the last year… the number of people I meet whose companies have been
subject to actual attacks… In the end, if every country is going to want to protect its business and every country will recognize
ultimately that if the big players don&t come together and agree some rules then… I mean, it just anarchy.
In regards to regulation, I
would like to see Europe and America create a new transatlantic partnership around regulation
This is one of the reasons I&m so opposed to Brexit… You are taking Britain out of that conversation with Europe at the very time that it
needs to be in it.
MB: The pace of change at this point is now exponential
The rise of AI, quantum computing etc
Politicians have known about the rapid, changing nature of technology for a number of years
What do you think has been stopping them from grappling with the subject?
TB: It partly generational
It partly because politicians don&t often understand the technology
Some of it is like rocket science
So that part of the problem
And the other problem is that I think the change-makers — the tech developers — their basic attitude, often, to government, is just to
just &keep away from it.& And I completely get it
They&ve got to engage with government today, and that why we&re trying, through the Institute, to establish that dialogue
And you know, if that doesn&t happen, you&ll find, as we did during the 19th-century industrial revolution, how long it took politics to
catch up with the fact that the world was being revolutionized
It took decades to catch up
For a long time, society was subject to one change, and politics was still debating things that were from a different era
I mean, if you look at British politics today, with this debate where, on one side is Brexit, one on the other side is — basically — who
spends more money in the next Parliament… we could have had this debate at any point in the last 30 years
It got no relevance, really, to how the world changing.
MB: Are you concerned about how social media has enabled populism?
TB: Yes, I think
social media is a revolutionary phenomenon and it revolutionized everything, including politics
And we&ve got to work out ways of dealing with that because it is rupturing politics in a serious way.
The problem is that political leaders
are always trying to &step out in front,& but not so much that they lose touch with their people
So that a calibration, all the time, between leadership and listening
If the &listening& part of it becomes &instrumentalized& through social media, then the risk is that politicians just lose their compass
They don&t know where they&re going, they are just buffeted by waves of opinion
And then, if you&re not careful, what happens is that the people who rise to the top in those circumstances are the people who ride
that.
MB: Should Twitter shut down Trump account?
TB: Well how that going to help? I mean, honestly, I don&t think that relevant.
MB:
Facebook has said it going to be changing its policy on political advertising, and won&t be regulating disinformation on political ads
What your opinion on that?
TB: My opinion is that it very hard, if you&re Facebook, to stop people having political ads
But, to me, the the whole concept that Facebook is &self patrolling& as to what should come on the internet or not, is an indication of why
you need proper regulation
The decision as to whether something fit for consumption or not shouldn&t be left to a few thousand people employed by Facebook, you know,
sitting and looking at crazy stuff on Facebook all day
I mean, this is to me just a further indication of why you&ve got to put everything within a proper system of regulation
Otherwise, it not actually fair to ask the company to do that
How can they decide what is a political ad or not? But someone should.
MB: What do you think of Twitter decision not to take any political
advertising?
TB: In some ways I understand that, and in some ways I welcome that, but I think Facebook in a slightly different position just
in terms of scale, right?
MB: China is deploying technology in its society at a huge, exponential rate, in terms of things like facial
recognition and the surveillance of its population
Its ability to hoover-up all this data is effectively giving it enormous power to create, possibly, the next, powerful AI, because the more
data you have the more you can improve an AI
Do you think that the Western approach, with its tradition of more democratic institutions that have moved more slowly than a
command-and-control system, means that we are effectively going to be left behind by political systems that err towards the more
dictatorial?
TB: Well I think there a huge debate that going to go on about China, more generally, in the West, which is what I call the
debate about whether you &decouple.& Do you accept that there two systems that are going to remain very distinct, also in technology? This
is part of what underpins the Huawei debate regarding 5G
Or do you try to get to what Henry Kissinger calls a form of &cooperative competition?& Now, I prefer the latter, not the former course,
because I think decoupling is very difficult
But, what that means, in my view, is that the West has got to get its act together, because otherwise China will achieve superiority in AI
and, in some regards, it already is
If you think of all the devices that we use in the West that are Chinese… You can see this with [the rise of] TikTok, for instance.
MB:
general election is now on and people are using technology to &get out the vote.& There is a lot of talk about &tactical voting& and lots of
tactical voting recommendation websites appearing
Do you favour any particular approach?
TB: So, here where technology obviously has a beneficial purpose
If people decide that they want to vote tactically — and I completely understand that because of Brexit being mixed up [in the election],
and frankly, dissatisfaction with both main parties — then web sites that tell you how to do that intelligently and provide the
You&ve got ones from Best For Britain, People Vote, Gina Miller has one and there are others
Yeah, fine, people should look at them I think.
MB: Parliament Intelligence and Security Committee has been prevented by Number 10 from
releasing its intelligence report and it allegedly contains information about how Russia affected British politics and society using
technological means in the last few years
What are your concerns about Russia incursion into U.K
politics using technology?
TB: I think this is not just a Russian question, although there been a lot of focus on what Russia has done
You&ve got to put all of this out on the table and I think, again, Western governments should be cooperating together to say… if there is
outside interference — and I don&t really know the scale of it because you&ve got to go into the detail — how people are influencing
media, how people are using techniques to try and influence voters, from the outside, trying to destabilize your politics… all of it
should be out in the open
Because that the best way of stopping it, and then you can take action against people who are doing it
But this is another reason why I think this is a slightly different form of cybersecurity, if you like, but it somewhat akin to it
Because, in the end, if you&ve got people, for example, changing their votes — particularly in tight-run elections — changing their
votes on the basis of misinformation that coming from a foreign government that deliberately trying to destabilize your politics, then at
least you should know about it
Now, this is going to be a big big issue for the future.
