The securitization of the EU’s digital tech regulation

Regulation is a prominent tool in what Kruck and Weiss call the Regulatory Security State. Safeguarding security entails shaping tech companies’ behaviour through arms-length rules, rather than wielding state capacity directly – a power shift away from state actors. As I argue, this dynamic also works in reverse: securitization of digital technology imposes security provision – a traditional state rationale – on regulatory domains hitherto dominated by commercial motivations. There is not only more regulation in security; there also is more security in regulation. This dynamic challenges the EU’s global regulatory entanglements. I use budding EU regulation of artificial intelligence (AI) to illustrate this struggle: do AI’s military implications weigh so heavily that its regulation should largely be seen through that lens? And should a transatlantic security alliance trump EU ambitions to craft its own AI governance approach? This fight is undecided yet. But given AI’s general-purpose character, its outcome will reverberate throughout society at large.