Anu Bradford Keynote Speaker

• Remaking the Global Economic Order: How to Navigate the Storm

Today, global companies are facing unprecedented geopolitical upheaval. We have entered a new era of deglobalization where roiling trade and technology wars are remaking the global economic order. We are witnessing the decoupling of the digital economy, rupturing of Transatlantic alliance, and the unraveling of global supply chains. Governments are retreating into protectionism and techno-nationalism as concerns over national security and self-sufficiency replace their commitment to global cooperation and economic openness. In her keynote, Anu Bradford will help make sense of these developments, giving governments and companies tools to navigate the challenges ahead.

• Digital Empires: The Global Battle to Regulate Technology

The global battle among the three dominant digital powers—the United States, China, and the European Union—is intensifying. All three regimes are racing to regulate tech companies, with each advancing a competing vision for the digital economy while attempting to expand its sphere of influence in the digital world. In her talk based on her award-winning book Digital Empires, Bradford explores a rivalry that will shape the world in the decades to come. She lays the choices we face as companies, societies, and individuals, explains the forces that shape those choices, and illuminates the immense stakes involved for everyone who uses digital technologies.

• The Race to Regulate Artificial Intelligence

The coming years will reveal not just winners and losers in a race to develop AI technologies. What will also be revealed is winners and losers among competing regulatory approaches that govern those technologies. These approaches will varyingly empower tech companies, governments, or digital citizens. In her talk focusing on the United States, China, and the European Union, Bradford shows how efforts to govern AI involve trade-offs that are vital for individuals and societies, presenting governments with difficult choices. How governments go about those choices will determine whether the unfolding AI revolution will serve democracy and deliver unprecedented economy prosperity or lead to grave societal harms, or even unprecedented catastrophe.

• The Contest for AI Supremacy: The Winner Doesn’t Take All

The race over technological supremacy in the age of artificial intelligence is intensifying as tech companies and governments are racing to seize opportunities that the AI revolution presents. This AI race is often viewed as a two-way contest between the leading technological and economic superpowers—the United States and China—whereas the rest of the world is seen as being at the mercy of this great power rivalry. Bradford identifies the winners and losers in this race, while explaining why no single country will be able to claim a complete victory in the near future. However, the pursuit of that elusive victory is dramatically shaping AI development and the global digital economy.

• European Strategic Autonomy and Digital Sovereignty

Today, the European Union faces daunting challenges to its economic and national security. There is a growing concern that the continent lacks the hard power to defend itself against a resurgent Russia. European economic leverage is also waning with the decline of its competitiveness and growing dependence on American and Chinese technologies. As a result, the EU has embarked on a quest for greater strategic autonomy and digital sovereignty. In her talk, Bradford assesses the risks and challenges Europe is facing. She also lays out the path forward for the EU, showing how the continent needs at the same time more effective markets and stronger government intervention in order to revitalize its economy and re-establish itself as a resilient and sovereign geopolitical actor in control of its own destiny.

• Enhancing European Tech Competitiveness

The EU’s far-reaching tech regulation is often seen as impeding innovation, explaining the EU’s inability to nurture tech companies and compete with the United States and China in the tech race. In her talk, Bradford challenges the common view that more stringent regulation of the digital economy inevitably undermines technological progress. Instead, she reveals more foundational features of the American legal and technological ecosystem that have paved the way for U.S. tech companies’ rise to global prominence—features that the EU has not been able to replicate to date. This leads her to lay out a set of policy reforms that are necessary for European tech companies to innovate and for the digital economies and societies in Europe to thrive.

• The Brussels Effect

For many observers, the European Union is mired in a deep crisis, battling sluggish economic growth and rising geopolitical insecurity. The EU is also viewed as being at the mercy of the escalating trade and tech war between the leading technology powers, the US and China. As a result, the EU is seen as a declining power on the world stage. In her talk based on her award-winning book The Brussels Effect, Anu Bradford challenges this narrative of the EU’s weakness. Instead, she shows how the EU remains an influential superpower through its regulations that shape the world in its image due to a phenomenon she calls the “Brussels Effect”. Her talk reveals how the EU has acquired such power, why multinational companies use EU standards as global standards, and why the EU does not need to surrender its status as a global regulatory hegemon even as it navigates today’s economic and geopolitical upheaval.