A weekly digest - part serious, part not - in partnership with The Sofia Globe
The beauty of living in Plovdiv versus Sweden is the sunny sky at the beginning of December. This week was all about blue skies and long walks filled with reflection - the kind where your thoughts stretch out until reality decides to interrupt. We also discovered that the planned demonstration was literally under our windows. Between the chanting of people outside and the buzzing drones above (we counted eight of them), we stood at the window waiting for our internet connection to come back.
Running a 5G router at home does not go well with half the neighbourhood sharing the same cell tower while live-streaming to TikTok. Apparently, revolution now comes in vertical video format. And with that… to the brief.
It seems the EU is becoming the best content creator for tabloids these days. In France, farmers escalated their protests - literally - by dumping piles of manure on police vehicles in furious rejection of EU policies they say are killing their livelihoods. Something Bulgarian farmers (those who survived the year of joining the EU) know quite a lot about.
Farmers are the backbone of our nutrition. If you’ve ever eaten a Plovdiv tomato, you know exactly what I’m talking about. If we lose the ability to serve the land through farming, we lose one of the most important aspects of our societal health and heritage - and no regulation has ever grown a tomato.
Still in the EU, this week I discovered that in 2024 the EU fined US tech companies €3.8B, while public European internet tech companies paid only €3.2B in income tax.
Let that sink in.
The EU now makes more money punishing American tech than taxing its own. As long as the cup is attached to the plastic bottle, I guess we’re on the right track - you just have to wonder: the right track to where?
The true entrepreneurial spirit will recognise this as an opportunity. The EU does not have an answer to Microsoft, Google, or the rest. We’re locked in a loop of thought fixation, proudly regulating what we cannot build, while our workforce development strategy depends entirely on technology that doesn’t belong to us.
And this brings us neatly to the next level of European absurdity. Chancellor Merz is now using a German startup that deploys AI to scan social media for insults - and then sues people.
Yes. That’s not satire. That’s governance.
What happened to leadership? Freedom of speech is becoming increasingly naked - except instead of elephant skin, it’s now wrapped in emotional bubble wrap. Everything is offensive, everyone is fragile, and context has been declared a dangerous substance. We replaced resilience with hypersensitivity and called it progress. When the state outsources offence detection to algorithms, you’re no longer governing - you’re moderating comments.
This is also where Elon Musk’s comment lands uncomfortably close to the truth: “The NGO bureaucracy controls Europe, depriving people of democracy.”
Hard to disagree when you look at the last decade. Power has quietly migrated from elected institutions to unelected structures, committees, panels, NGOs, and compliance layers that answer to no one and everyone at the same time. Democracy wasn’t overthrown - it was suffocated by process.
Listening to the JPMorgan CEO explain how this approach is driving investment and innovation out of Europe should raise a red flag. But I’m not sure EU leadership can see much right now with their heads buried so deep up their own arses.
Politics, much like fashion (unfortunately), suffers when the designers can’t think outside the box - or worse, can’t rethink the box itself. Then we’re locked into a paradigm driven by entropy. Yes, yes, I know - entropy is a powerful force. But can Bulgaria find a way to suppress it and use it against itself? (It works in kung fu.)
Looking at the latest EU youth unemployment figures - topping 15.2% - something needs to be done, and soon. Regulating speech won’t create jobs. Neither will fines.
From EU stupidity to US stupidity: applying for entry to the US will soon require five years of back emails, all social media accounts (yes, including Pornhub and PornTube), passwords to everything you own, names of friends and family, phone numbers, addresses, DNA, and probably a sperm sample. (I added the sperm - but they’re already asking for everything else, so why not.)
Meanwhile, getting a European into China is basically: “Hello, welcome, please don’t overstay your visa.”
I get where the US administration is coming from, but swinging from one extreme to the other never creates balance - it just produces a new flavour of insanity.
Maybe this is all preparation for what Google’s CEO hinted at this week: AI consuming and digesting everything in its path. “People will need to adjust accordingly,” he said.
Adjust to what, exactly? To Google shaping every thought I should have?
Trump just signed an executive order federally protecting AI companies from state law violations. Let that sink in. This places AI robber-barons above the state, effectively creating a new nobility class. Feudalism is back - just with better servers. That probably explains why AI companies now feel entitled to do whatever the fuck they want.
And, in Europe, we proudly deploy AI to chase down “you’re an idiot” comments.
Which makes the latest Europol report unintentionally hilarious. In a 48-page document, Europol warns that AI and robots may brainwash humans, trigger a human–machine war around 2035, and lead to a human uprising with populist calls to “put people first.”
Read that again. Putting people first is now framed as a dangerous populist outcome. Apparently, when humans resist being replaced, surveilled, moderated, and automated out of existence, that’s extremism. Owning things, thinking independently, and preferring humans over machines are now suspicious behaviours. Noted.
Disney, meanwhile, just signed a $1B contract with OpenAI, allowing Disney characters to be used across Sora. I’m not sure whether this is an attempt to open-source Disney’s long-dead innovation engine or simply squeeze nostalgia for one more drop of value. Either way, we’re about to be surrounded by Disney and Marvel characters everywhere.
It’s time to create a Bulgarian superhero - preferably one immune to regulation, moderation, and NGO oversight.
COLLISION ZONES
Wealth Creation vs. Wealth Extraction The revelation that the EU collected €3.8B in fines from US tech giants while its own public tech sector paid only €3.2B in income tax is the definitive economic paradox of 2024. It represents a collision between Building the Future and Fining the Builders. We are now in a reality where the EU makes more money punishing American success than taxing European innovation.
The Takeaway: You cannot regulate your way to prosperity. As long as our strategy is "policing the platform" rather than "owning the platform," we remain digital serfs celebrating that our chains are made of recycled plastic.
Governance vs. Content Moderation Chancellor Merz deploying AI to scan social media for insults marks a dangerous shift from Political Leadership to Algorithmic Nannying. We have replaced societal resilience with institutional hypersensitivity. Freedom of speech is being suffocated not by tanks, but by "offence detection" software.
The Takeaway: When a government spends its resources chasing down "you’re an idiot" comments, it ceases to be a government and becomes a Reddit moderator with a police force.
The Human vs. The "Risk Factor" The Europol report warning that "putting people first" could lead to a populist uprising creates a collision between Human Agency and Systemic Control. We have reached a point where wanting to prioritize humans over machines is flagged as extremism.
The Takeaway: If independent thinking and owning property are now considered "suspicious behaviours," then the system isn't protecting us from radicals - it is defining humanity itself as the radical element.
THE BOTTOM LINE
This week was a brutal lesson in Misplaced Priorities.
While France drowns in manure and the US builds a digital feudal system where AI barons sit above the law, Europe is busy ensuring bottle caps stay attached to plastic bottles. We are proudly regulating what we cannot build and taxing what we do not own.
The gap between reality and policy has never been wider. The US is demanding your DNA to enter the country, China is quietly dominating via pragmatism, and Europe is terrified that "putting people first" is a dangerous idea.
Bulgaria cannot afford to be a passive participant in this absurdity. We cannot survive by following rules written by people who think censorship is progress and stagnation is stability.
The world is moving toward a clash between the automated state and the independent human. We need to stop looking for a saviour in Brussels or Silicon Valley. It is time to create our own superhero - one that is immune to regulation, allergic to bureaucracy, and fundamentally ungovernable by algorithms.