In her book Digital Empires: The Global Battle to Regulate Technology, Anu Bradford examines three competing regulatory approaches governing the digital economy—the American market-driven model, the Chinese state-driven model, and the European rights-driven regulatory model—and discusses how governments and tech companies navigate the inevitable conflicts that arise when these regulatory approaches collide in the international domain. Each digital empire is advancing a competing vision for the digital economy while attempting to expand its sphere of influence in the digital world. Which digital empire will prevail in the contest for global influence remains an open question, yet their contrasting strategies are increasingly clear. In the midst of these unfolding regulatory battles, governments, tech companies, and digital citizens are making important choices that will shape the future ethos of the digital society. Digital Empires lays bare the choices we face as societies and individuals, explains the forces that shape those choices, and illuminates the immense stakes involved for everyone who uses digital technologies.

Anu Bradford is Henry L. Moses Professor of Law and International Organizations at Columbia Law School. She is also a director for Columbia’s European Legal Studies Center and a Senior Scholar at Jerome A. Chazen Institute for Global Business at Columbia Business School. She is an expert on international trade law, European Union law, digital regulation, and comparative and international antitrust law. Bradford is the author of “The Brussels Effect: How the European Union Rules the World” (OUP 2020), which was named one of the Best Books of 2020 by Foreign Affairs. Her next book “Digital Empires: The Global Battle to Regulate Technology” was published by the OUP in September 2023.