Context: Europe has fallen far behind in AI innovation and investment. Its focus on regulation rather than opportunities as a maker and a user (productivity gains) of technology only serves to widen the gap. That applies to the EU as well as the UK, where different regulatory and quasi-regulatory entities enjoy certain liberties and do not always excercise them to the benefit of their country’s economy.
What’s new: Europe’s regulatory zeal has now drawn the ire of one of the most influential Republican politicians, Sen. Ted Cruz from Texas. In a recent letter that was just released yesterday, he asked the Department of Justice (DOJ) whether a UK government-funded entity hosting an AI regulation event in San Francisco was out of compliance with a U.S. law requiring the registration of foreign agents working to influence U.S. policy, which goes back to 1938 when the U.S. wanted to put a curb on Nazi propaganda. The letter goes beyond this formality and lashes out at European governments on multiple grounds, even including politically-motivated measures against Elon Musk’s X (formerly known as Twitter).
Direct impact: It is not known whether the registration Sen. Cruz deemed necessary was in place when the event took place on December 21 (the date of the letter) and 22 (link to UK government website). It presumably wasn’t, in which case the question is what the consequences should be. Should the outgoing Biden-Harris Administration refuse to act, the incoming Administration will presumably follow up and may impose sanctions that would be a clear message to the UK government that such activities are not welcome on U.S. soil.
Wider ramifications: The letter serves as an indication of what backlash to excessive regulation (and regulation targeted at particular U.S. companies) Europe may have to expect during President Donald Trump’s second term, where he will be able to count on his party’s majority in both chambers of Congress.
First, here is Senator Cruz’s letter:
The key legal basis for Sen. Cruz’s inquiry is the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), a law intended to provide transparency when foreign organizations engage in lobbying in the United States. That applies to governmental entities as well as formally independent agents who are paid for it by foreign governments.
To Sen. Cruz it is clear that one UK organization named Centre for the Governance of Artificial Intelligence (“Centre”) has definitely failed to abide by U.S. law, given that it lacks a FARA registration depsite having “engag[ed] in political activities requiring registration, such as providing public comments on the administration’s requests for information regarding national AI policies, speaking before the U.S. Senate AI Insight Forum, and Centre staff having personally lobbied policymakers in Washington, D.C.”
The Centre has received government grants. It may also have other sources of funding, but there appears to be no question that it falls under foreign agent registration duties.
The AI Safety Institute is undoubtedly a government entity. It’s the UK’s AI regulator, comparable to the AI Office, a new unit of the European Commission (EC). Prior to the recent San Francisco conference, the AI Safety Institute may have engaged in U.S. lobbying only through the Centre, which is why it may not have had to register before, but that conference was “led by … the AI Safety Institute” according to the letter.
Sen. Cruz, as (for now) Ranking Member (i.e., minority leader, but potentially the next chair) of the the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation now wants to see any documents and, more generally, communications relating to a hypothetical FARA registration by the Centre. The first item on the list is “[d]ocuments sufficient to show the original registration date of the Centre as an agent of a foreign principal pursuant to FARA.” If the Centre still hasn’t registered, or if it did so only after acting as the primary host of the recent San Francisco event, sanctions would loom large.
But what this is about to an even greater extent is that Sen. Cruz suspects the Biden-Harris Administration of having colluded with European governments in ways that harm U.S. interests (and in the case of Elon Musk’s X, a particular company), or at least having condoned such activities:
“Even more concerning, the administration is coordinating with the UK and EU on AI initiatives despite having been given no such explicit direction from Congress. In April, the U.S. signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the UK to align their approaches to evaluating AI models, systems, and agents and in September, the administration entered into the first global treaty on AI with the EU and ten other non-member states. (Thus far, the administration has failed to provide the MOU to Congress or submit this treaty to the Senate for ratification. Moreover, Europeans are crossing the pond to “reach out to key public and private stakeholders” about their efforts to control AI development. The EU has opened a digital technology field office in San Francisco to ‘further reinforce the EU’s work’ and the UK is opening a San Franscico office for its AI Safety Institute.”
The formal part of his recent inquiry is UK-specific, but not only the above paragraph makes reference to European governments in general. It also talks about “[t]he extreme approach European governments have taken to AI regulation,” quoting a member of the European Commission in connection with AI-enabled disinformation affecting elections. Sen. Cruz sees the following agenda behind those statements and activities:
“People who peddle such hyperbole are doing so not just to gain control over AI’s development, but to also gain control over information flow and a citizen’s ability to communicate with others free from government intrusion.”
Sen. Cruz accuses the outgoing Administration of imposing similar censorship-enabling restrictions in the U.S., such as the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) AI Risk Management Framework Generative AI Profile.
With a view to the global competitive landscape, Sen. Cruz expreses concern about “efforts to tie this country’s AI policies to foreign countries’ agendas … set[ting] the U.S. behind China in the race to lead AI innovation.”
The UK government, the European Commission and the governments of EU Member States should pay attention to this development. They may have had, to a certain extent, an ally in the Biden-Harris Administration, but a lot of things will change next month in U.S. politics when POTUS 45 comes back as POTUS 47, and Sen. Cruz will be one of the leaders of the new Senate majority.