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By MARK SCOTT

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HOWDY CAMPERS, THIS IS DIGITAL BRIDGE. I’m Mark Scott, POLITICO’s chief technology correspondent, and for anyone in Berlin, I’ll be in town next Tuesday to speak on a panel about what harms and risks around artificial intelligence we should really be focusing on. Reach out if you want to chat over coffee.

Grab a pew and let’s get to work:

— The next EU-U.S. Trade and Technology Council gathering is upon us. Here’s everything you need to know, and why officials are already playing down expectations.

— Ukraine has more experience fighting state-backed disinformation than almost any other country, but are the country’s hard-fought lessons replicable?

— The European Union’s AI Act is done. What happens next? I’ve got the timeline for you.

TTC REDUX: SEE EVERYONE IN APRIL, OK?

WHAT DO YOU CALL A GROUP OF SENIOR EU AND UNITED STATES OFFICIALS? A group? A gaggle? A phalanx? Whatever the correct term is, one thing is clear: Next Tuesday’s biannual EU-U.S. Trade and Technology Council meeting in Washington should not be seen — in any way — as a summit. From discussions with policymakers preparing for the January 30 event, it’s clear the upcoming meeting is more of a low-key, informal talking shop, and not a high-level event with all the glitz that goes along with that. There will be no official communiqué, no formal readout (just joint press releases), and no overarching theme to sing from the rafters.

OK, let’s talk logistics. The event will take place at the U.S. State Department and will include more formal discussions (see below) followed by an informal lunch. EU digital chief Margrethe Vestager will hold a separate event with U.S. Commerce Department Secretary Gina Raimondo at the Atlantic Council (at 3 p.m. ET); EU trade chief Valdis Dombrovskis will attend a gathering at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce at about 8 a.m. ET. Both U.S. and EU officials will participate in a stakeholder meeting on January 30, while Vestager and Dombrovskis will tag-team another event at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, on January 31, at 12:30 p.m. ET.

Now that’s out of the way, what exactly will be the thrust of this latest iteration of the Trade and Technology Council? Both sides continue to play up how beneficial these meetings are, in terms of building personal bonds between the likes of U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his European counterparts. But the main output expected from Tuesday’s gathering will be to announce the next EU-U.S. Trade and Technology summit (the last one before the EU and U.S. elections) will take place in Belgium sometime in April. That’s not a ringing endorsement for what is supposed to be a major set-piece event to demonstrate transatlantic cooperation.

Still, there will be some cheerleading on what has been achieved since the last summit in northern Sweden. Expect praise for the G7’s generative artificial intelligence code of conduct — an idea that began at the last transatlantic get-together. Expect adulation for EU-U.S. industry work on next-generation telecommunication standards, which were already announced at a White House event in October. Expect an emphasis on ongoing work around sustainable trade and electric vehicle standards, and informal discussions on so-called critical raw materials and social media platforms’ response to the Middle East crisis.

What won’t be discussed — although it’s clearly the one thing that matters — is the ongoing EU-U.S. trade dispute on steel. Those stalled negotiations have been postponed until after the U.S. elections in November, when there could be both a new president in the White House and a new head of the European Commission. Officials tell me the January 30 event is best viewed as a pitstop on the way to the next Trade and Technology Council gathering in Belgium later this ppring. By then, policymakers hope to finish outstanding items like shared definitions and methodologies for AI and, potentially, greater cooperation on social media governance.

To say that both industry and civil society groups are underwhelmed by all of this is an understatement. Officials, too, acknowledge that events — most recently the October 7 Hamas attacks and the unresolved steel trade disputes — have scuppered what was supposed to be a lap of honor for the last Trade and Technology Council event in the U.S. before November’s election. This has become a pattern. First, it was the Ukraine war, then it was the AUKUS standoff, and then it was China and AI. Previous transatlantic gatherings have been sideswiped by global elections. At this point, it’s not surprising the latest iteration, too, would fall victim to the same problem.

But given the possible upcoming change in U.S. administration and Commission leadership, it’s fair to question what this has all been for. Are EU and U.S. officials closer now than they were during Donald Trump’s presidency? Yes. But that’s not exactly a high bar. Are there legitimate reasons to foster greater transatlantic tech and trade ties — highlighted this week by both Washington and Brussels discussing potential new export controls and economic security packages? Again: yes.

What is still missing is a way to institutionalize the Trade and Technology Council so that it becomes part of the furniture, and not just one-off set-pieces. That thorny question, alas, will not be on the table with senior officials meet in Foggy Bottom next week.

DIGITAL DEMOCRACY: WE DON’T TAKE FOREIGN INTERFERENCE SERIOUSLY

THE PUBLIC AWARENESS OF ONLINE DISINFORMATION is a double-edged sword. People’s understanding that what they view on social media and via unattributable websites may not be legit has done more for digital literacy than decades of government efforts to boost such scrutiny. Yet the alleged proliferation of Kremlin-backed digital agents, presumed sophisticated online targeting campaigns and enough social media bots to shake a stick at has left many now wondering what the fuss is all about. If state-backed interference is everywhere — and Western democracy, so far, has mostly held up — then what’s the problem?

To that, I point to the clear experience of Ukraine. Even before Russia invaded almost two years ago, the Eastern European country spent a decade, dating back to the annexation of Crimea in 2014, if not earlier, facing an onslaught of Kremlin-backed interference. There were the snazzy state-sponsored television channels. There were covert online efforts to paint all Ukrainians as Nazis. There were global campaigns — worth, annually, billions of dollars — to present Russia as the innocent victim and Ukraine as the blood-thirsty aggressor. In short, online disinformation, for Ukraine, isn’t a sideshow; it is the show.

That’s the feeling I took from a report out this week from the European Center of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats and Atlantic Council on what lessons other democracies can take from how Kyiv has responded over the last decade to Russia’s coordinated online interference campaigns. Researchers spent time in Ukraine talking to government officials, fact-checking groups and disinformation nonprofits to figure out how the country had tackled the Russian threat, and what others could take from that experience.

“It’s better if we prepare before the situation gets escalated even further,” Jakub Kalenský, co-author of the report and researcher at the Hybrid Threats Center in Helsinki, told me. “Russia is not exactly hiding it. If they succeed in Ukraine, they want to take it further. Baltic countries, Poland, central and eastern European countries might be next.” That includes spending more on combating state-sponsored interference; providing space for as many groups as possible to fight such disinformation; and pushing governments to clamp down on or censor those who expressly promote Russian narratives aimed at undermining Western democracies.

The Ukrainians take this stuff seriously. Even before the 2022 invasion, Kyiv outlawed some overtly pro-Kremlin media. Officials worked with civil society groups to foster information-sharing. Politicians were quick to debunk as much Russian disinformation as possible — under the theory that it’s best to quell any such rumors, quickly, even if that potentially provides a bigger audience to those claims. “No reaction is usually more harmful than a bad reaction,” Kalenský added.

Given the limited sources available to Ukrainians compared to Russia, local disinformation warriors had to turn to new tactics. One, subsequently adopted by the so-called North Atlantic Fellas Organization, was humor. Roman Osadchuk, a researcher at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab and co-author of the research, said that because Russians often took them too seriously, that haughtiness gave Ukrainians a way in to undermine Kremlin propaganda. “When you’re ridiculing them, you are stealing their thunder and they become extremely irritated,” he told me via Zoom while sheltering in a bunker during a recent air raid in Ukraine.

Given Ukraine’s ongoing conflict with Russia, it’s not surprising that Kyiv takes this side of warfare very seriously — arguably more so than anywhere in the Western world. But is it replicable in, say, the U.S. or Germany, where free speech and public discourse (even if it’s pro-Russian) are fundamental rights? In part, it comes down to reshaping the disinformation discussion away from bells and whistles like deepfake AI videos or covert social media campaigns. In essence, online foreign interference should be viewed — like traditional warfare — as a direct threat to national security. Many in military circles understand that. So far, the wider public is less convinced.

BY THE NUMBERS

NEXT STEPS FOR EUROPE’S AI ACT

HALLELUJAH. WE FINALLY HAVE THE TEXTof the EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act. But the fun has only just begun. Next, members of the European Parliament and representatives from EU member countries must ratify the text. That’s expected to happen by the end of February. Only 20 days after that rubber-stamping will the proposals officially become law. In the short term, the European Commission announced Wednesday the creation of a so-called AI Office, or central repository to oversee so-called general-purpose AI models and check how companies would comply with the new rules. Details on how that’s all going to work with come “in the following months.”

That’s not all. Officially, the AI Act won’t be enforceable for another two years, so that takes us to early 2026. How the technology will look by then is anyone’s guess. Specific prohibitions — like AI-based social scoring — will be outlawed within six months of ratification (think August 2024). Rules around general-purpose AI will take effect within 12 months (think February 2025). Over that period, Brussels will have to staff up its AI Office, member countries will have to fund national regulators, and companies will have to decide what parts of their AI work falls into scope — and how they will comply with all these new rules. Giddy up.

WONK OF THE WEEK

GIVEN THIS WEEK’S FOCUS ON TRANSATLANTIC RELATIONS, we’re turning our attention to Eileen Donahoe, special envoy and coordinator for digital freedom (that’s a long title!) in the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Cyberspace and Digital Policy.

The Stanford and Harvard graduate was most recently executive director at Stanford University’s Global Digital Policy Incubator, and was previously U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Council during Barack Obama’s presidency. Her current government role focuses on promoting digital freedom around the world.

“There’s so much at stake when it comes to AI governance, digital inclusion, and protection of human rights and democracy in the digital context,” Donahoe said when appointed last year.

THEY SAID WHAT, NOW?

“Today’s proposal sets out our plan to de-risk — rather than decouple — our economic interdependencies on technologies we need the most,”said Margrethe Vestager,Europe’s digital chief, after unveiling new proposalsaround technologies critical to the bloc’s economic prosperity and potential limits on how foreign companies can invest in strategic industries. “And to assert the EU’s position as a leader in the global technology race.”

WHAT I’M READING

— Irish politician Paschal Donohoe outlines how Dublin is approaching the use of artificial intelligence in the country’s public sector. Take a look here.

— The creation of a dedicated division within the U.S. State Department focused on cyberspace and digital policy elevated understanding, both internally and externally, about the agency’s response to these issues, according to a report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

— Google and Meta provided updates on how they are changing their services to comply with Europe’s revamp to its competition rules. Read more here and here.

— The United Nations’ high-level advisory body on AI is seeking feedback on its interim report published last month. You can submit your feedback here.

— U.S. export controls around the semiconductor supply chain are lackluster, but expanding out these checks for national security concerns risks alienating would-be allies, argue Onni Aarne, Tim Fist and Caleb Withers for the Center for a New American Security.

— The International Association of Privacy Professionals outlines its 2024 predictions for global data protection trends, broken down by country. Read more here.

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