WASHINGTON ¨C President Donald Trump¡¯s administration has ordered U.S. diplomats to lobby against attempts to regulate U.S. tech companies¡¯ handling of foreigners¡¯ data, saying in an internal diplomatic cable that such efforts could interfere with artificial intelligence-related services.
Experts say the move signals the Trump administration is reverting to a more confrontational approach as some foreign countries seek limits around how Silicon Valley firms process and store their citizens¡¯ personal information ¡ª initiatives often described as ¡°data sovereignty¡± or ¡°data localization.¡±
In the State Department cable, dated February 18 and signed by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the agency said such laws would ¡°disrupt global data flows, increase costs and cybersecurity risks, limit Artificial Intelligence (AI) and cloud services, and expand government control in ways that can undermine civil liberties and enable censorship.¡±
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