A one-word answer to why EU lost control of Big Tech: Ireland

My favourite bit of interviewing Dr. Johnny Ryan was when he yelled “just off a plane, so if you know the answer, I will lose my mind if you ask me to repeat myself for the recording again” at me. It didn’t make it to the final interview, which was published on EUobserver .

Ryan is, among the much needed group of people who speak up against Big Tech, one of the more eloquent and direct. His work at the Irish Council of Civil Liberties’ Enforce includes major investigations into the many, many, many ills of online advertising/surveillance capitalism, a radical belief in the underutilised potential of GDPR (the EU’s main data rights law) and now, a plea to have Ireland recuse itself from all digital files in its upcoming EU council presidency. For those who don’t know (I didn’t), the answer to why the EU has not been able to crack down on Big Tech more is simple. Ireland’s job, by way of how the GDPR was drafted, is to defend the rest of Europe when it comes to the tech companies headquartered there. Meta, Google, TikTok, Microsoft, LinkedIn, X, Apple all picked Ireland. So did most of their AI activity. Which means, in Ryan’s words: “Ireland is responsible for defending the rest of Europe when those companies abuse Europeans’ data.” And surprise surprise, they’re not doing so adequately. Quite the opposite: “Ireland is not just waving at Russian submarines as they pass by,” Ryan says, adding: “We are letting actors that are not your friends plant flags on your soldiers and your judges and your politicians.” In a recent talk titled ‘How we avoid dystopia’, he said “Ireland is so much more than a tax haven. It’s a tax haven, but it is also the back door through which these firms from the US primarily, but China as well, get into Europe’s market and get into our kids’ heads and get into our politics.” According to Ryan, it has gotten to the point where the country should not be trusted to handle the legislation that would fall on their plate during the presidency: Digital Omnibus, the AI Omnibus, the implementing acts of the AI Act, the Cloud and AI Development Act, the Digital Networks Act, and the GDPR. “This is a single member state that can’t trust itself to do the right thing on a whole tranche of files,” Ryan says. “Ireland cannot fix this itself. This cannot come from inside the country.

Key points

• Ryan is, among the much needed group of people who speak up against Big Tech, one of the more eloquent and direct.
• His work at the Irish Council of Civil Liberties’ Enforce includes major investigations into the many, many, many ills of online advertising/surveillance capitalism, a radical belief in the underut…
• For those who don’t know (I didn’t), the answer to why the EU has not been able to crack down on Big Tech more is simple.
• Ireland’s job, by way of how the GDPR was drafted, is to defend the rest of Europe when it comes to the tech companies headquartered there.
• Meta, Google, TikTok, Microsoft, LinkedIn, X, Apple all picked Ireland.