The Narrative: TikTok hearing; Chinese Drones; Stablecoins

March 31, 2023 The Tiktok hearing backfires As expected, Congress tried to turn its cross-examination of Tiktok CEO Shou Chew into a public stoning. Committee members (helped along by Meta lobbying) came in with their minds made up, refused to listen to anything he said, and repeatedly interrupted him. The...

The Narrative: TikTok threat debunked; search disrupted; digital currency problematized

January 16, 2022 IGP paper on TikTok makes waves On January 9 IGP released a threat analysis of TikTok that debunked claims that the popular short video app is a national security threat. Until now, the “ban TikTok” debate has never been subjected to critical scrutiny, and no one has...

The Narrative: Lots of stuff happening!

September 30, 2022 ITU Plenipotentiary Conference The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) is having its Plenipotentiary meeting in Bucharest. These four-year events are always redolent with claims that Russia and China will somehow use the ITU to “take over the internet” (despite the fact that the ITU has no power over...

The Narrative: TikTok Again; Data Localization Fail; Europe Finds Regulatory Nirvana; Digital Advertising Competition

China Hawks Revive Trump’s Tiktok Gambit FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr is trying very hard to revive former President Donald Trump’s TikTok ban. Even as the House January 6 Committee explores the details of a real threat to national security created by the very man who appointed Carr to the FCC...

Would Forced Interop for Messaging be Pro-Competitive?

For the past year, IGP research has been exploring the interaction of competition policy and cybersecurity/privacy concerns, particularly as it pertains to the large platforms. We have shown how privacy and security have become product differentiators in the digital economy. As large platforms such as Apple and Google compete by...

Biden’s Alliance for the Future of the Internet: Mandate for a Split?

Representatives of the Biden administration are now saying that its “Alliance for the Future of the Internet” will be launched "in coming weeks.” Despite our earlier article indicating that the initiative might have some promise, the more we’ve heard, the more pessimistic we are about it. The Alliance has three...

The Narrative: Clashing Cybersecurity Regulations, Monopoly Fines

November 15, 2021 U.S. Incident Reporting Mandate Moves to the NDAA - With a Notable Exception The Cyber Incident Reporting Act of 2021 is a Senate bill that attempts to centralize critical infrastructure incident data in the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA). It is facing pushback from the private sector....