Review of Anu Bradford, Digital Empires: The Global Battle to Regulate Technology (Oxford University Press, 2023)

Abstract

Professor Anu Bradford’s Digital Empires is one of the most comprehensive, accessible, and significant works for understanding the regulation and geopolitics underlying the modern digital world. The book showcases a nuanced analysis of the merits, weaknesses, and long-term relevance of the digital regulatory models of three economic powers (termed “digital empires”), namely, the EU, China, and the US, contextualizing several relevant policy problems, including online content regulation, digital taxation, data privacy, and artificial intelligence regulation. In doing so, Bradford examines broader questions regarding the interplay of markets, states, and human rights in future digital regulation. The big picture question that the book raises—which aspects of digital regulation will “dominate our world” (360)—is important for governments, individuals, the private sector, technical bodies, and the international community as a whole.