Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced Tuesday his government will ban children under the age of 16 from accessing social media. “Platforms will be required to implement effective age verification systems — not just check boxes, but real barriers that work,” Sánchez said during an address to the plenary session of the World Government Summit in Dubai. “Today our children are exposed to a space they were never meant to navigate alone … We will protect [minors] from the digital Wild West.” The proposed ban, which is set to be approved by the country’s Council of Ministers next week, will amend a draft bill currently being debated in the Spanish parliament. Whereas the current version of the legislation seeks to restrict access to social media to users aged 16 and older, the new amendment would expressly prohibit minors from registering on platforms. Spain joins a growing chorus of European countries hardening their approach to restricting kids online. Denmark announced plans for a ban on under-15’s last fall, and the French government is pushing to have a similar ban in place as soon as September. In Portugal, the governing center-right Social Democratic Party on Monday submitted draft legislation that would require under-16’s to obtain parental consent to access social media. Spain’s ban is included in a wider package of measures that Sánchez argued are necessary to “regain control” of the digital space. “Governments must stop turning a blind eye to the toxic content being shared,” he said. That includes a legislative proposal to hold social media executives legally accountable for the illegal content shared on their platforms, with a new tool to track the spread of disinformation, hate speech or child pornography on social networks. It also proposes criminalizing the manipulation of algorithms and amplification of illegal content. “We will investigate platforms whose algorithms amplify disinformation in exchange for profit,” Sánchez said, adding that “spreading hate must come at a cost — a legal cost, as well as an economic and ethical cost — that platforms can no longer afford to ignore.” The EU’s Digital Services Act requires platforms to mitigate risks from online content. The European Commission works “hand in hand” with EU countries on protections for kids online and the enforcement of these measures “towards the very large platforms is the responsibility of the Commission,” Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier said Tuesday when asked about Sánchez’s announcement. The EU executive in December imposed a €120 million fine on Elon Musk’s X for failing to comply with transparency obligations, and a probe into the platform’s efforts to counter the spread of illegal content and disinformation is ongoing.

BRUSSELS — The European Commission opened a fresh investigation Monday into Elon Musk’s X following an explosion of non-consensual sexualized deepfakes created by the artificial intelligence chatbot Grok. The Commission will decide whether X met EU requirements to protect users when it integrated Grok into the social media platform and its underlying algorithm. X is already under investigation on several fronts under the EU’s Digital Services Act, which regulates social media platforms, and was in December fined €120 million for lapses in transparency. Penalties can reach up to 6 percent of X’s annual global revenue. The new investigation will look into whether the company properly assessed and mitigated the risks of integrating Grok, particularly those of “manipulated sexually explicit images” including some that “may amount to child sexual abuse material,” the Commission said. But the investigation “is much broader” than these images, a senior Commission official said during a briefing. The chatbot may have generated as many as 3 million non-consensual sexual images and 20,000 child sexual abuse images in the 11 days before it made changes to stop the spread of such photos, an estimate by civil society found. On top of the new investigation, the Commission will expand a 2023 probe to look into the impact of X’s decision, announced last week, to switch the algorithm for its social media platform to a Grok-based system. The Commission said Monday it could take interim steps — for example, order X to change its algorithms or shut down the chatbot — “in the absence of meaningful adjustments to the X service,” something the EU has so far shied away from doing for Musk’s platform. The threshold for such measures is “really high,” a second senior Commission official said. The image-generating feature of Grok went viral just before the end of 2025, as users instructed the chatbot to alter images of real people. This led to global outcry and calls from EU lawmakers to ban nudification AI apps as well as crack down on Grok. The platform did restrict the chatbot’s image generation abilities in January, initially by limiting them to paid subscribers of Grok. The Commission said at the time it was assessing whether changes made to Grok were sufficient. EU officials found initial changes insufficient and voiced their concerns to the platform, after which the platform took further steps. “I dare say that without our interaction, probably none of these kind of changes that they have done would have appeared,” the second official said. X did not immediately respond to POLITICO’s request for comment.

The deal creating a majority-American board for TikTok’s U.S. arm puts President Donald Trump’s allies in charge of yet another driver of American culture. The wildly popular short-form-video platform now joins CBS and the social media giant X among the stable of key communication channels that have come under more Trump-friendly management in recent years. The president has also taken more modest swings at reshaping the zeitgeist, from placing his stamp on the Kennedy Center to weighing in on television programming to appointing conservative actors to be his “eyes” and “ears” in Hollywood. But TikTok, which is used by over 200 million Americans according to the company, stands out from the rest because of its huge appeal among teens and pre-teens who form the next rising blocs of voters. For Trump’s critics, that means years of worries about TikTok acting as a vector for Beijing’s propaganda are giving way to fears that its algorithm could soon serve up a flood of far-right, pro-MAGA content to impressionable users. “We’ve seen the platform transfer from one set of owners, where there was one set of concerns about propaganda and privacy, to a new set of owners, where now there’s a new set of concerns about propaganda and privacy,” said Evan Greer, director of the progressive tech group Fight for the Future. Katie Harbath, a tech consultant and former longtime public policy director at Meta, said Trump recognizes “the importance of trying to have friends in these different places,” including TikTok. She said the president “understands the influence it has on what people think — and then ultimately, how people vote.” Trump himself expressed hope late Thursday that the deal could cement his place in young voters’ hearts. TikTok “will now be owned by a group of Great American Patriots and Investors, the Biggest in the World, and will be an important Voice,” the president wrote on his social media network Truth Social. “Along with other factors, it was responsible for my doing so well with the Youth Vote in the 2024 Presidential Election. I only hope that long into the future I will be remembered by those who use and love TikTok.” Spokespeople for TikTok and the White House did not respond to questions about how the deal could impact TikTok’s algorithm or boost right-leaning content on the platform. The long-awaited deal, carefully brokered by the White House, is intended to satisfy national security concerns with TikTok. A bipartisan law passed in 2024 required the platform’s China-based parent company to sell it to U.S. owners or face a full-scale ban. At the forefront of TikTok’s new ownership structure is Larry Ellison, billionaire co-founder and executive chair of the tech giant Oracle and a close Trump ally. Oracle first partnered with TikTok during Trump’s first term, when the president helped broker a deal that tapped Ellison’s company to help run the app’s U.S. operations. An Oracle spokesperson declined to comment. Meanwhile, Skydance Media, a media conglomerate led by Ellison’s son David, made a deal last year that gave it ownership of CBS News, then began making programming and news decisions widely seen as steering the network in a more pro-Trump direction. Those included installing new leadership at CBS and delaying the airing of a report on “60 Minutes” that was critical of Trump’s immigration policies. A spokesperson for Skydance Media did not respond to a request for comment. David Ellison is now vying to purchase the parent company of CNN — and, according to The Wall Street Journal, offered assurances to Trump administration officials that he would “make sweeping changes” to the news network. After Elon Musk purchased Twitter in 2022, he rebranded the social media site as X and ripped away safeguards meant to stop the spread of disinformation and hateful content, while reinstating the accounts of far-right users whom the company had previously banned. (Twitter’s old management had even kicked Trump himself off its platform following the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill insurrection in 2021.) Several studies have since suggested that Musk’s changes prompted an increase in hateful content, pro-Trump content and pro-GOP content across the platform. A spokesperson for X did not respond to a request for comment. Now, some observers on both sides of the political divide say the same phenomenon could repeat under TikTok’s new owners. “What I’m more interested in is just sort of the cultural vibe shift that the change in ownership will bring,” said Harbath. She said TikTok’s fate could mirror what happened when Musk took over Twitter — “before he even made changes, there was kind of a mass exodus of people, particularly on the left, who left Twitter and went to Bluesky.” Only time will tell if TikTok goes the way of X under new management. Tilting its algorithm toward far-right content could cause users to flee the platform, potentially undermining its profitability — a fate some of TikTok’s new owners may be keen to avoid. “I haven’t heard anything to suggest that this is necessarily going to go in the Elon Musk direction,” said Lindsay Gorman, managing director of the German Marshall Fund’s technology program. “Many of these investors were previous investors of TikTok originally.” Alex Bruesewitz, a Trump political adviser and head of X Strategies — the firm that manages the Team Trump TikTok account — said the president “has always been popular on TikTok,” and that people shouldn’t worry that the new owners will tweak its algorithm to boost Republicans. “The Democrats are the party that likes to dictate what social media companies do with their algorithms,” said Bruesewitz. “I don’t think that’s something that the Trump White House is interested in doing. I don’t think that they want to tell platforms how to run their businesses.” Amanda Carey Elliott, a Republican digital consultant, expressed discomfort at the notion of a “Republican billionaire pulling the levers of TikTok in our favor,” fearing it could drive moderates and independents off the app. “That said, you also have to understand where Republicans are coming from on this,” said Elliott. “For years and years, we were subjected to online censorship by platforms controlled by liberal Silicon Valley. Expecting to be censored has literally been built into our DNA, so you’ll probably be hard-pressed to find any Republican clutching their pearls at the thought of the left suddenly waking up one day to find themselves on the wrong side of an algorithm.” John Hendel contributed to this report.

American investors have closed a $14 billion deal giving them control of the U.S. version of TikTok, raising a host of questions about what’s next for the social media app and its tens of millions of users. Under the new ownership structure, a group of investors led by Silicon Valley giant Oracle and the private equity firm Silver Lake will own more than 80 percent of the company, which draws 66 million daily users in the United States. The deal is intended to insulate the social media company from influence by China, avoiding a ban that Congress had mandated in 2024. TikTok released some information about the deal in a Thursday night announcement, but further details have yet to be made public, including whether it complies with the 2024 law. It is also uncertain whether the agreement sufficiently allays U.S. lawmakers’ concerns that the app endangers national security. Here are five crucial questions remaining about TikTok and its future: WHAT HAPPENS WITH THE ALGORITHM? TikTok’s algorithm has been key to the app’s success, as it’s remarkably effective at curating a continuous feed of videos that keep users scrolling. Lawmakers have expressed concern that the Chinese government could use the algorithm to push propaganda or surveil users, a key reason Congress passed legislation in 2024 requiring TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, to spin off an American version of the app. In announcing the deal Thursday, TikTok said that the new owners “will retrain, test, and update the content recommendation algorithm on U.S. user data.” Those measures may allay some of the national security risks associated with the algorithm, but it’s unclear if they go far enough to satisfy the 2024 law, which prohibits “cooperation” between ByteDance and the U.S. version of TikTok on operating the algorithm. Previous reports indicated that the U.S. version of TikTok would license the algorithm from ByteDance, which could be another legal stumbling block if the agreement involves continued coordination between the two companies. “The central issue is whether the TikTok U.S. entity actually owns and controls the recommendation system, or whether it is merely licensing it,” said Chris Krebs, former director of the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. “A license means ByteDance still retains leverage over what the U.S. platform shows its 170 million users.” WILL TIKTOK STILL BE BANNED ON GOVERNMENT DEVICES? Former President Joe Biden signed the No TikTok on Government Devices Act in 2022 to prohibit the use of the app on federal phones, tablets and other devices, and at least 39 states, including California and New York, passed similar bans. The House and Senate also have their own rules banning TikTok on federal devices. (President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, the White House and California Gov. Gavin Newsom all have active TikTok accounts, however.) Even with the deal in place, reversing the government device bans would require new legislation from federal and state lawmakers, which could prove to be a tall order. “The state bans presumably still can stay,” said Alan Rozenshtein, a former attorney adviser in the Justice Department’s national security division under President Barack Obama. “From a legal perspective, the president can’t overturn [the federal law].” COULD COMPANIES ENABLING TIKTOK STILL FACE CRIPPLING FINES UNDER A FUTURE ADMINISTRATION? TikTok temporarily went dark in the United States in January 2025 after the law forcing a sale or ban took effect. The app came back online a short time later after then President-elect Trump promised that no company, such as app stores or internet service providers, would face the law’s daily fine of $5,000 per user for flouting the ban, a penalty that could quickly add up to billions of dollars. But legal experts have consistently said an executive order or presidential promise doesn’t trump a law, especially one already upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. According to Rozenshtein, the 2024 law leaves open the possibility that a future administration could declare the new arrangement illegal. There’s a five-year statute of limitations for the government to challenge violations of federal laws. “Imagine a situation in which the new venture sells itself back to ByteDance — obviously you’d want the next president to be able to say you’re clearly not divested anymore,” Rozenshtein told POLITICO. “If a [future] president had those powers, then presumably the president would also have the powers to say: ‘This thing that my predecessor did was a lie to begin with, so obviously I’m yanking it.’” DOES THE DEAL ADDRESS THE NATIONAL SECURITY CONCERNS? A White House official previously told POLITICO that the deal would resolve Congress’ national security concerns because the Chinese government would not have access to American users’ data, and because ByteDance would have less than 20 percent ownership of the U.S. app. Even so, congressional Republicans have vowed to review the deal to ensure it follows the law. “I don’t know what the framework says — but anything short of that, the president would be violating congressional intent,” Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) told POLITICO in September. St. John’s University internet law professor Kate Klonick said the law has enough wiggle room, and gives enough deference to the president, that the deal could pass muster for the time being. “The [deal] is probably sufficient for the law, because the law was sufficiently vague — but for the letter of the law, not the spirit of the law,” she said. “What people thought at the time were serious national security concerns [in 2024] now seems to kind of have been forgotten.” HOW DOES THE DEAL ADDRESS CONCERNS ABOUT CHINA ACCESSING PEOPLE’S DATA? Under the 2024 law, ByteDance and TikTok can’t enter into any data-sharing agreements. Thursday’s announcement says the new American venture will store user data in Oracle’s cloud, where it “will operate a comprehensive data privacy and cybersecurity program that is audited and certified by third party cybersecurity experts.” That might be enough, according to Adam Conner, vice president for technology policy at the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank. “The data sharing question operationally should be solved by this [deal],” he told POLITICO. However, Conner noted that particulars around the operation of the algorithm and advertising may lead to violations of the law.

TikTok has closed a $14 billion deal establishing a U.S. subsidiary of the platform to avoid a ban, the company said Thursday. The new owners will include the U.S. private equity firm Silver Lake, Abu Dhabi-based artificial intelligence company MGX and Oracle, a tech giant co-founded by Larry Ellison, an ally of President Donald Trump. They will each hold a 15 percent stake in the U.S. joint venture. The deal allows TikTok’s Beijing-based parent company, ByteDance, to maintain a nearly 20 percent stake. The Dell Family Office, investment firm of Chair and CEO of Dell Technologies Michael Dell, is also an investor. Congress passed a law in April 2024 requiring the sale of TikTok to a U.S. buyer before Jan. 19, 2025, or banning it, citing national security concerns about the app’s ties to China. But Trump delayed the ban from taking effect five times last year while a deal was negotiated to divest the app to American owners. Trump signed an executive order in September approving the deal and giving the parties until Friday to formalize the terms. The deal matches an internal memo distributed by TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew last month, who said the agreement would be finalized by Thursday. The U.S. version will operate as an independent entity, governed by a seven-member board including TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, Oracle Executive Vice President Kenneth Glueck, Timothy Dattels, senior adviser of TPG Global; Mark Dooley, managing director at Susquehanna International Group; Silver Lake Co-CEO Egon Durban, DXC Technology CEO Raul Fernandez; and David Scott, chief strategy and safety officer at MGX. Adam Presser, head of operations and trust and safety at TikTok, will now serve as CEO of the joint venture. Trump praised the deal in a Truth Social post Thursday evening. “I am so happy to have helped in saving TikTok! It will now be owned by a group of Great American Patriots and Investors, the Biggest in the World, and will be an important Voice,” Trump wrote. Trump said in September that Chinese President Xi Jinping had agreed to the deal, but Chinese officials provided an ambiguous narrative, signaling that any deal would be a drawn out process. China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the country “respects the wishes of enterprises” and welcomes them to reach “solutions that comply with Chinese laws and regulations and balance interests.” The president thanked Xi in his Truth Social post “for working with us and, ultimately, approving the Deal.” “He could have gone the other way, but didn’t, and is appreciated for his decision,” Trump wrote. Trump previously described the deal as a “qualified divestiture,” meaning the sale would fully sever ByteDance’s control over the platform and therefore make TikTok legal under the U.S. law. China hawks on Capitol Hill have championed this issue over national security concerns and fears that the Chinese-controlled app subjects users to government surveillance and content manipulation. While they’ve vowed to scrutinize the potential deal to ensure it adheres to the law, they seemed prepared to accept Trump’s claim the deal would resolve concerns over national security and control. Vice President JD Vance confirmed that the U.S. owners would have control over the app’s algorithm, which is at the heart of the platform’s success. “The U.S. company will have control over how the algorithm pushes content to users and that was a very important part of it,” Vance said during the September executive order signing in the Oval Office. “We thought it was necessary for the national security level element of the law.” According to the company release, the U.S. version will retrain and update the platform’s algorithm based on U.S. user data. Oracle will control the algorithm within its U.S. cloud environment. “President Trump got played by Xi Jinping. He got terrible advice from his staff on these negotiations. This isn’t the Art of the Deal, it’s the art of the steal. Xi Jinping can’t believe his luck,” Michael Sobolik, senior fellow at the right-leaning Hudson Institute and an expert on U.S.-China policy, told POLITICO.

A clash between Poland’s right-wing president and its centrist ruling coalition over the European Union’s flagship social media law is putting the country further at risk of multimillion euro fines from Brussels. President Karol Nawrocki is holding up a bill that would implement the EU’s Digital Services Act, a tech law that allows regulators to police how social media firms moderate content. Nawrocki, an ally of U.S. President Donald Trump, said in a statement that the law would “give control of content on the internet to officials subordinate to the government, not to independent courts.” The government coalition led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk, Nawrocki’s rival, warned this further exposed them to the risk of EU fines as high as €9.5 million. Deputy Digital Minister Dariusz Standerski said in a TV interview that, “since the president decided to veto this law, I’m assuming he is also willing to have these costs [of a potential fine] charged to the budget of the President’s Office.” Nawrocki’s refusal to sign the bill brings back bad memories of Warsaw’s years-long clash with Brussels over the rule of law, a conflict that began when Nawrocki’s Law and Justice party rose to power in 2015 and started reforming the country’s courts and regulators. The EU imposed €320 million in penalties on Poland from 2021-2023. Warsaw was already in a fight with the Commission over its slow implementation of the tech rulebook since 2024, when the EU executive put Poland on notice for delaying the law’s implementation and for not designating a responsible authority. In May last year Brussels took Warsaw to court over the issue. If the EU imposes new fines over the rollout of digital rules, it would “reignite debates reminiscent of the rule-of-law mechanism and frozen funds disputes,” said Jakub Szymik, founder of Warsaw-based non-profit watchdog group CEE Digital Democracy Watch. Failure to implement the tech law could in the long run even lead to fines and penalties accruing over time, as happened when Warsaw refused to reform its courts during the earlier rule of law crisis. The European Commission said in a statement that it “will not comment on national legislative procedures.” It added that “implementing the [Digital Services Act] into national law is essential to allow users in Poland to benefit from the same DSA rights.” “This is why we have an ongoing infringement procedure against Poland” for its “failure to designate and empower” a responsible authority, the statement said. Under the tech platforms law, countries were supposed to designate a national authority to oversee the rules by February 2024. Poland is the only EU country that hasn’t moved to at least formally agree on which regulator that should be. The European Commission is the chief regulator for a group of very large online platforms, including Elon Musk’s X, Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, Google’s YouTube, Chinese-owned TikTok and Shein and others. But national governments have the power to enforce the law on smaller platforms and certify third parties for dispute resolution, among other things. National laws allow users to exercise their rights to appeal to online platforms and challenge decisions. When blocking the bill last Friday, Nawrocki said a new version could be ready within two months. But that was “very unlikely … given that work on the current version has been ongoing for nearly two years and no concrete alternative has been presented” by the president, said Szymik, the NGO official. The Digital Services Act has become a flashpoint in the political fight between Brussels and Washington over how to police online platforms. The EU imposed its first-ever fine under the law on X in December, prompting the U.S. administration to sanction former EU Commissioner Thierry Breton and four other Europeans. Nawrocki last week likened the law to “the construction of the Ministry of Truth from George Orwell’s novel 1984,” a criticism that echoed claims by Trump and his top MAGA officials that the law censored conservatives and right-wingers. Bartosz Brzeziński contributed reporting.

WARSAW — Poland’s nationalist President Karol Nawrocki on Friday sided with his ally U.S. President Donald Trump to veto legislation on enforcing the EU’s social media law, which is hated by the American administration. Trump and his top MAGA officials condemn the EU’s Digital Services Act — which seeks to force big platforms like Elon Musk’s X, Facebook, Instagram to moderate content — as a form of “Orwellian” censorship against conservative and right-wingers. The presidential veto stops national regulators in Warsaw from implementing the DSA and sets Nawrocki up for a a clash with centrist pro-EU Prime Minister Donald Tusk. Tusk’s parliamentary majority passed the legislation introducing the DSA in Poland. Nawrocki argued that while the bill’s stated aim of protecting citizens — particularly minors — was legitimate, the Polish bill would grant excessive power to government officials over online content, resulting in “administrative censorship.”  “I want this to be stated clearly: a situation in which what is allowed on the internet is decided by an official subordinate to the government resembles the construction of the Ministry of Truth from George Orwell’s novel 1984,” Nawrocki said in a statement — echoing the U.S.’s stance on the law. Nawrocki also warned that allowing authorities to decide what constitutes truth or disinformation would erode freedom of expression “step by step.” He called for a revised draft that would protect children while ensuring that disputes over online speech are settled by independent courts. Deputy Prime Minister and Digital Affairs Minister Krzysztof Gawkowski dismissed Nawrocki’s position, accusing the president of undermining online safety and siding with digital platforms.  “The president has vetoed online safety,” Gawkowski told a press briefing Friday afternoon, arguing the law would have protected children from predators, families from disinformation and users from opaque algorithms.  The minister also rejected Nawrocki’s Orwellian comparisons, saying the bill explicitly relied on ordinary courts rather than officials to rule on online content. Gawkowski said Poland is now among the few EU countries without national legislation enabling effective enforcement of the DSA and pledged that the government would continue to pursue new rules. The clash comes as enforcement of the social media law has become a flashpoint in EU-U.S. relations.  Brussels has already fined Elon Musk’s X €120 million for breaching the law, prompting a furious response from Washington, including travel bans imposed by the Trump administration on former EU Commissioner Thierry Breton, an architect of the tech law, and four disinformation experts. The DSA allows fines of up to 6 percent of a company’s global revenue and, as a measure of last resort, temporary bans on platforms. Earlier this week, the European Commission expanded its investigation into X’s AI service Grok after it started posting a wave of non-consensual sexualized pictures of people in response to X users’ requests. The European Commission’s digital spokesperson Thomas Regnier said the EU executive would not comment on national legislative procedures. “Implementing the DSA into national law is essential to allow users in Poland to benefit from the same DSA rights, such as challenging platforms if their content is deleted or their account suspended,” he said. “This is why we have an ongoing infringement procedure against Poland. We have referred Poland to the Court of Justice of the EU for failure to designate and empower the Digital Services Coordinator,” in May 2025, Regnier added. Gawkowski said that the government would make a quick decision on what to do next with the vetoed bill but declined to offer specifics on what a new bill would look like were it to be submitted to parliament again. Tusk four-party coalition does not have enough votes in parliament to override Nawrocki’s vetoes. That has created a political deadlock over key legislation efforts by the government, which stands for reelection next year. Nawrocki, meanwhile, is aiming to help the Law and Justice (PiS) political party he’s aligned with to retake power after losing to Tusk in 2023. Mathieu Pollet contributed reporting.

Flynn Coleman is an international human rights attorney. She is a visiting scholar in the Women, Peace, and Leadership Program at Columbia University’s Climate School and the author of “A Human Algorithm.” Roman Oleksiv was 11 years old when he stood before the European Parliament and, in a calm voice, described the last time he saw his mother. She was under the rubble of a hospital in Vinnytsia, Ukraine, hit by a Russian missile in July 2022. He could see her hair beneath the stone. He touched it. He said goodbye. That’s when Ievgeniia Razumkova, the interpreter translating his words, stopped mid-sentence. Her eyes filled with tears, she shook her head. “Sorry,” she said. “I’m a bit emotional as well.” A colleague then stepped in to finish, as Ievgeniia, still crying, placed her hand on the boy’s shoulder. He nodded and continued on. That moment is what makes us human. A translation algorithm would not have stopped. It would have rendered Roman’s testimony with perfect fluency and zero hesitation. It would have delivered the words “the last time I saw my mother” just as it would the sentence “hello, my name is Roman.” Same tone. Same rhythm. No recognition. Today, we are building a world that treats translation — and increasingly everything else — as a problem to be solved. Translation apps now handle billions of words a day. Real-time tools let tourists order coffee in any language. Babel, we are told, is finally being fixed. All of this has its place. But translation was never just a technical challenge. It is an act of witnessing. An interpreter does not merely convert words from one language to another. They carry meaning across the chasm between us. They hear what silences say. They make split-second ethical and semantic decisions over which synonym preserves dignity, when a pause holds more truth than a sentence, whether to soften a phrase that would shatter a survivor. When Ievgeniia broke down in Strasbourg, she was not failing. She was doing her job. Her face told a room full of diplomats what no algorithm could: “This matters. This child’s suffering is real. Pay attention.” I have spent years working in international human rights law, war crimes tribunals, genocide prevention — all the imperfect architecture we try to rebuild after atrocity. In these spaces, everything hinges on language. One word can determine whether a survivor is believed. The difference between “I saw” and “I was made to see,” or between “they did this” and “this happened.” Roman Oleksiv has undergone 36 surgeries. Burns cover nearly half his body. He was 7 years old when that missile hit. And when he described touching his dead mother’s hair, he needed someone in that room who could hold the weight of what he was saying — not just linguistically but humanly. Ievgeniia did that. And when she could not continue, another person stepped forward. There is a reason interpreters in trauma proceedings receive psychological support. The best ones describe their work as a sacred burden. They absorb something. They metabolize horror, so it can cross from one language to another without losing its force. Interpreters are not alone in this either. There are moments when trauma surgeons pause before delivering devastating news, journalists choose to lower their cameras, and judges listen longer than procedure requires. These are professions where humanity is not a flaw — it is the point. This is not inefficiency. It is care made visible. Algorithms process language as pattern, not communion. They have no understanding that another mind exists. They do not know that when Roman said goodbye, he was not describing a social gesture — he was performing the final ritual of love he would ever share with his mother, in the rubble of a hospital. Translation apps do serve real purposes, and generative AI is becoming more proficient every day. But we should be honest about the trade we are making. When we treat human interpreters — and any human act of care — as inefficiencies to be optimized away, we lose that pause before “the last time I saw my mother.” We lose the hand on the shoulder. We lose the tears that say: “This child is not a data point. What happened to him is an atrocity.” My work studying crimes against humanity has taught me that some frictions should not be smoothed. Some pauses are how we recognize one another as human. They are echoes in the dark, asking: “I am still here. Are you?” When an interpreter breaks, they are not breaking down. They are breaking open — making room for unbearable truth to enter, and for all of us to see it. Roman deserved someone who could help us stand in his deepest pain, so that we might all lift it together. A machine could not do that. A machine, by design, does not stop.

One trillion US dollars of gross domestic product (GDP) has been surpassed. Poland has entered the ranks of the world’s 20 largest economies, symbolically ending a phase of chasing the West that has lasted more than three decades. The Polish Development Fund’s (PFR) new strategy seeks to address the challenge of avoiding the medium-level development trap and transitioning from the role of subcontractor to that of investor. This year marks a turning point in Polish economic history. After years of transformation, reforms and overcoming civilizational deficits, Poland has reached a point that the generation of ‘89 could only dream of. GDP crossed the symbolic barrier of US$1 trillion, and we proudly enter the exclusive club of the world’s 20 largest economies. Diversified Polish exports are breaking records, and innovative companies are conquering global markets. Sound like a happy ending? Not necessarily. Via PFR Investing for future generations Poland’s past success invites tougher challenges in a brutal world. The cheap labor growth model is dead; demographics are relentless. PFR analyses highlight declining employment as a core issue — without bold changes, stagnation looms. Piotr Matczuk, PFR president, says Poland needs an impetus for resilience, innovation and growth. PFR’s 2026-2030 strategy is that roadmap, urging a shift to high gear. On Dec. 10, it unveiled investments for future generations. Geopolitics enters the balance sheet PFR’s strategy marks a paradigm shift: integrating economics with security. Business now anchors state security, with “economic and defence resilience” as a core pillar — viewing security spending as essential insurance, not cost. > The PFR’s strategy is clear: the competitiveness of the Polish economy depends > directly on access to cheap and clean energy. PFR has invested in WB Electronics, Poland’s defense leader in command systems and drones. It expands beyond arms via dual-use tech: algorithms, encrypted communications and autonomous drones often from civilian startups. This spring’s PFR Deep Tech program backs venture capital (VC) for scaling these firms; IDA targets innovations for logistics, cybersecurity and future defense. The focus is Poland’s technological sovereignty. Controlling key security links — from ammo to artificial intelligence — ensures economic maturity resilient to geopolitical shocks. > Poland needs a boost to our resilience, innovation and growth rate. That is > why the new strategy emphasizes investment in new technologies, infrastructure > and the financial security of Poles. We want the PFR to be a catalyst for > change and a partner of choice — an institution that invests for future > generations, sets quality standards in development financing and supports > Polish entrepreneurs in boosting their international presence. > > Piotr Matczuk, President, PFR Piotr Matczuk, President, PFR / Via PFR Energy: to be or not to be for the industry If defense is the shield, then energy is the bloodstream. The PFR’s strategy is clear: the competitiveness of the Polish economy depends directly on access to cheap and clean energy. Without accelerating the transformation, Polish companies, instead of increasing their share in foreign markets, may lose their position. This is why the fund wants to enter the game as an investor where the risks are high, but the stakes are even higher — into an investment gap that the commercial market alone will not fill.  The concept of local content, in other words the participation of domestic companies in the supply chain, is key to the new strategy. This is where the circle closes. The Baltic Hub is not just a container terminal. Investment in the T5 installation terminal is the foundation, as the Polish offshore will not be built with the appropriate participation of a domestic port. This is a classic example of how the PFR works: building ‘hard’ infrastructure that becomes a springboard for a whole new sector of the economy.  The end of being a subcontractor: capital emancipation Taking inspiration from, among others, France’s Tibi Initiative, in mid-November 2025 the Polish minister of finance and economy, Andrzej Domański, announced the Innovate Poland program. The PFR plays a leading role in what will be the largest initiative in the history of the Polish economy to invest in innovative projects. Thanks to cooperation with Bank Gospodarstwa Krajowego (BGK), PZU and the European Investment Fund, Innovate Poland is already worth 4 billion złoty, and the program multiplier may reach as much as 3-4. The combined development and private capital will be invested by experienced VC and private equity funds. The aim is to further Poland’s economic development — driven by innovative companies that make a profit. In the first phase, it is expected to finance up to 250 companies at various stages of development. Via PFR The expansion of Polish companies abroad is also part of the effort for advancement in the global hierarchy. Their support is one of the pillars of the new PFR strategy. For three decades, Poland has played the role of the assembly plant of Europe — solid, cheap and hard-working. However, the highest margins, flowing from having a global brand and market control, went overseas. Polish companies need to stop being anonymous subcontractors and become owners of assets in foreign markets.  Here, the PFR acts as financial leverage. The support for the Trend Group is a prime example of this maturing process. This is a transaction with a symbolic dimension: it reverses the investment vector of the 1990s, when German capital was consolidating Polish assets. Today, it is Polish entities that are increasingly becoming leaders in offering industrial solutions in the European Union. > Polish companies need to stop being anonymous subcontractors and become owners > of assets in foreign markets. However, these ambitions extend beyond the Western direction. The strategy strongly emphasizes Poland’s role in the future reconstruction of Ukraine and the consolidation of the Central and Eastern European region. The involvement of the PFR in the operations of the Euvic Group on the Ukrainian IT market is a good example. In the digital world, big players have more power, and the PFR strives to ensure that the decision-making centers of those growing giants remain in Poland. Most importantly, Polish businesses are no longer alone in this struggle. The strategy institutionalizes the concept of ‘Team Poland’. In this initiative, the PFR provides capital; BGK, a state development bank, offers debt solutions; the KUKE, an insurance company, insures the risk; and the Polish Investment and Trade Agency provides promotional support. Acting like a one-stop shop, all these institutions enable Polish capital to compete as a partner in the global league. This is part of the Polish government’s modern economic diplomacy strategy, led by Domański. Capital for generations. From an employee to a stakeholder in the economy  All grand plans need fuel. Mature economies like the Netherlands and the United Kingdom harness citizens’ savings via capital markets. PFR’s strategy boldly demands Poland’s success create generational wealth: turning the average Kowalski from an employee into a stakeholder. Diagnosis is brutal: Poles save little (6.38 percent compared with the EU’s 14.32 percent in Q1 2024) and inefficiently, favoring low-interest deposits. Employee Capital Plans (PPK) drive cultural change. Hard data demonstrate this: 67 percent average returns over five years crush traditional savings. It’s a virtuous cycle — PPK capital feeds stock markets, finances company growth and loops profits back to future pensioners. An architect, not a firefighter  The new PFR strategy for 2026-30 is a clear signal of a paradigm shift. The company, which many Polish entrepreneurs still see as a firefighter extinguishing the flames of the pandemic with billions from the Anti-Covid Financial Shields, is definitively taking off its helmet and putting on an engineer’s hard hat. It is shifting from interventionist to creator mode, abandoning the role of ‘night watchman’ of the Polish economy to that of its ‘chief architect’. This is an ambitious attempt to establish an institution in Poland that not only provides capital, but also actively shapes the country’s economic landscape, setting the direction for development for decades to come.

LONDON — On the face of it, the new MI6 chief’s first speech featured many of the same villains and heroes as those of her predecessors. But in her first public outing Monday, Blaise Metreweli, the first female head of the U.K.’s foreign intelligence service, sent a strong signal that she intends to put her own stamp on the role – as she highlighted a wave of inter-connected threats to western democracies. Speaking at MI6’s HQ in London, Metreweli, who took over from Richard Moore in October, highlighted a confluence of geo-political and technological disruptions, warning “the frontline is everywhere” and adding “we are now operating in a space between peace and war.” In a speech shot through with references to a shifting transatlantic order and the growth of disinformation, Metreweli made noticeably scant  reference to the historically close relationship with the U.S. in intelligence gathering — the mainstay of the U.K.’s intelligence compact for decades. Instead, she highlighted that a “new bloc and identities are forming and alliances reshaping.” That will be widely seen to reflect an official acknowledgement that the second Donald Trump administration has necessitated a shift in the security services towards cultivating more multilateral relationships. By comparison with a lengthy passage on the seriousness of the Russia threat to Britain, China got away only with a light mention of its cyber attack tendencies towards the U.K. — and was referred to more flatteringly as “a country where a central transformation  is  taking place this century.” Westminster hawks will note that Metreweli — who grew up in Hong Kong and  so knows the Chinese system close-up — walked gingerly around the risk of conflict in the  South China Sea and Beijing’s espionage activities targeting British politicians – and even its royals. In a carefully-placed line, she reflected that she was  “going to break with tradition and won’t give you a global threat tour.” Moore, her predecessor, was known for that approach, which delighted those who enjoyed a plain-speaking MI6 boss giving pithy analysis of global tensions and their fallout, but frustrated some in the Foreign Office who believed the affable Moore could be too unguarded in his comments on geo-politics. The implicit suggestion from the new chief was that China needs to be handled differently to the forthright engagement with “aggressive, expansionist and revisionist” Russia. The reasons may well lie in the aftermath of a bruising argument within Whitehall about how to handle the recent case of two Britons who were arrested for spying for China, and with a growth-boosting visit to Beijing by the prime minister scheduled for 2026. Sources in the service suggest the aim of the China strategy is to avoid confrontation, the better to further intelligence-gathering and have a more productive economic relationship with Beijing. More hardline interpreters of the Secret Intelligence Service will raise eyebrows at her suggestion that the “convening power” of the service would enable it to “ defuse tensions.” But there was no doubt about Metreweli’s deep concern at the impacts of social-media disinformation and distortion, in a framing which seemed just as worried about U.S. tech titans as conventional state-run threats:  “We are being contested from battlefield to boardroom — and even our brains — as disinformation manipulates our understanding of each other.” Declaring that “some  algorithms become as powerful as states,” seemed to tilt at outfits like Elon Musk’s X and Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta-owned Facebook. Metreweli warned that “hyper personalized tools could become a new vector for conflict and control,” pushing their effects on societies and individuals  in “minutes not months – my service must operate in this new context too.” The new boss used the possessive pronoun, talking about “my service” in her speech several times – another sign that she intends to put a distinctive mark of the job, now that she has, at the age of just 48,  inherited the famous green-ink pen in which the head of the service signs correspondence.  Metreweli is experienced operator in war zones including Iraq who spent a secondment with MI5, the domestic intelligence service, and won the job in large part because of her experience in the top job via MI6’s science and technology “Q”  Branch. She clearly wants to expedite changes in the service – saying agents must be as fluent in computer coding as foreign languages. She is also expected to try and address a tendency in the service to harvest information, without a clear focus on the action that should follow – the product of a glut of intelligence gathered via digital means and AI. She  was keen to stress that the human factor is at the heart of it all — an attempt at reassurance for spies and analysts wondering if they might be replaced by AI agents as the job of gathering intelligence in the era of facial recognition and biometrics gets harder.  Armed with a steely gaze Metreweli speaks fluent human, occasionally with a small smile. She is also the first incumbent of the job to wear a very large costume jewelry beetle brooch on her sombre navy attire. No small amount of attention in Moscow and Beijing could go into decoding that.