Switzerland should identify points where tech policy initiatives of global powers converge and intersect with the expertise areas of Geneva-based organisations. By convening regulators and experts, it should give a new relevance to the International Geneva as a knowledge centre informing tech laws’ enforcement, starting with the 2027 AI summit.
10.Juli 2025
The Federal Council recently announced its intention to organise an international conference on AI in Geneva in 2027. This raises the question of Switzerland’s role in tackling global challenges caused by digital technologies.
Tech policy: Big power politics
In April, the Swiss executive postponed the announcement of draft rules applicable to online platforms, most likely for fear of antagonising the United States, while it negotiated a deal following Trump’s ‘liberation day’. In Brussels, people talk about tech sovereignty and about building data centres in Europe to achieve the Old World’s cloud independence from America. On both sides of the Atlantic, TikTok is banned from public officials’ mobile devices due to concerns over the app being used as a spying tool by the Chinese Government. One thing is clear : tech policy is a lot about ‘big power politics’.
The United States, the European Union and China have fundamentally different approaches to the governmental measures on the regulation of the digital economy. The US largely favours a market-driven approach. The EU’s approach focuses on the protection of citizens’ fundamental rights. China’s approach is said to be state-driven. In addition to these ideological differences in public entities’ approach to tech, discussions of a geopolitical nature in a more traditional sense are increasingly taking place. This is notably the case when data centers are coined as ‘critical infrastructure’ or the access to certain data is said to be of a defence interest.
Switzerland’s role : Positioning Geneva as a knowledge centre, informing tech laws’ enforcement
Switzerland should facilitate achieving a consensus among important players on issues, on which positions already converge to some extent. In doing so, it should focus on issues tackled by Geneva-based UN agencies and involve these organisations’ specialists in discussing best practices for the implementation of existing regulatory frameworks. This approach to tech diplomacy would help to break silos in which UN agencies work and help them contribute to actual policy implementation, thus stimulating the International Geneva’s relevance in an otherwise challenging context. For this approach to be successful, it is crucial for the personnel directly involved in tech laws’ enforcement to participate in Switzerland-facilitated meetings. It should not be only international relations specialists within various jurisdictions’ technology regulators who participate in such conferences. The outlined approach to tech diplomacy would correspond to Switzerland’s DNA of providing a neutral platform for international conversations and increase Geneva’s relevance for tech diplomacy and tackling digitalisation’s negative effects.
One timely topic, where such discussions could be fruitful, concerns the protection of minors online. Recently, the US Supreme Court declared a Texas bill aimed at verifying the identity of porn websites’ users to protect underaged individuals to be compliant with the second amendment of the US Constitution, which guarantees freedom of speech. A few weeks earlier, the European Commission opened formal investigations under the EU’s Digital Services Act to protect minors from pornographic content. While this might not have been the case for pornographic content itself, online platforms’ effects on the mental health of teenagers more broadly were discussed at least one side event of the World Health Assembly (WHA) in Geneva this year. However, current WHA attendees are mostly health specialists who, contrary to platform regulators, have little or no direct agency over online platforms.
Switzerland must help ensure that no gap is created between Geneva-based organisations’ expert knowledge and the realities of tech law’s enforcement. It should focus on this during the summit on Artificial Intelligence it aims to organise in 2027. It should also encourage its international partners to send technology regulation enforcers to recurring relevant international conferences such as the World Health Assembly. And, well, Switzerland should itself adopt tech rules, especially applicable to online platforms.
