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 seen by Reuters 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 – 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.”
The cable said the Trump administration was pushing for “a more assertive international data policy” and that diplomats should “counter unnecessarily burdensome regulations, such as data localization mandates.
The State Department did not provide comment on the cable. However, it said the U.S. strongly supports cross-border data flows that promote growth and innovation while protecting privacy, safety, and free expression and stands ready to partner with countries that share those goals.
“We seek to counter unnecessarily burdensome regulations, such as data localization mandates,” it added.
Data sovereignty initiatives have gathered pace, particularly in Europe, as tensions have flared between the U.S. and the European Union over Washington’s protectionist trade policies and support for far-right political parties.