Rules-based International Order

Baroness Lane-Fox of Soho Excerpts

Thursday 16th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lane-Fox of Soho (CB)]

I too thank the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, for her masterful introduction to this debate. I intend to drill down into one of the threats she noted—the one we all face from unregulated technologies and the unchecked influence of technology billionaires. Those threats are eroding the very foundations of accountability, equity and co-operation that sustain our global system.

Elon Musk’s current global dominance exemplifies the dangers of concentrated power in unregulated domains. His Starlink satellite network has become indispensable for global communications, particularly in remote regions and conflict zones. Yet its control rests solely with Musk, allowing his whims to dictate access to vital infrastructure. This monopoly undermines state sovereignty and creates a “tragedy of the commons” where a shared resource is privatised for profit.

X has become a global epicentre for misinformation. Under Elon’s leadership, the platform has abandoned traditional content moderation, dismantled trust and safety teams and replaced verification with paid subscriptions. This has allowed bad actors to amplify lies about politicians, elections, public health and climate change. Musk himself, with 200 million followers, has promoted misleading narratives that have been viewed billions of times. His controversial comments on Taiwan and international affairs highlight the risk of unelected individuals wielding disproportionate influence over our international discourse.

X’s reliance on a crowd-sourced “Community Notes” system to fact check content has proven ineffective. Studies show that this approach fails to curb engagement with misinformation, instead creating a chaotic information landscape where truth is obscured. Musk has a deep aversion to transparency, such as restricting data access for researchers. This further compounds the problem, making it nearly impossible to assess the scale of harm caused by his platform.

Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta is following a similar path. In a recent announcement, Meta revealed it would replace its third-party fact-checking program with a community-driven system akin to X’s. Zuckerberg’s disingenuous justification was that this is a return to “free expression”, but clearly it is a political move aligned with the incoming Trump. By removing fact-checkers and reducing content visibility, Meta is becoming another breeding ground for disinformation. The decision to rely on community moderation not only weakens safeguards against falsehoods but also places the burden of truth-telling on users who may lack expertise or accountability.

Unregulated artificial intelligence compounds these issues. AI systems are already linked to biased decision-making, privacy violations and job displacement. Worse still, authoritarian regimes exploit AI for mass surveillance and censorship, while democratic nations struggle to regulate its misuse. The lack of global AI governance leaves a vacuum where corporations prioritise profit over public safety, fostering inequality and undermining human rights.

We are ill-equipped to address these challenges. By enabling private actors to dominate critical sectors such as digital communications and AI development, we have ceded control over public goods to corporate interests. This shift not only weakens state authority but also exacerbates global inequality and political instability. Mr Musk’s accumulation of power is one of the most stark outcomes of this failure:

In my opinion, it is not sufficient to say that our UK-focused Online Safety Act will mean we are protected. The information ecosystem is global, and the inter-relationship between traditional media and social media is complex. Noise and nonsensical opinions travel fast.

So, what now? Ofcom must accelerate its enforcement of the Online Safety Act road map to ensure platforms comply with their duties as soon as possible. This includes holding companies accountable for illegal content and misinformation through fines or criminal penalties. The Act, however, as this House well knows, has limited powers over disinformation. We need to consider how to address legal but harmful content, such as election disinformation and health-related falsehoods that destabilise society. We should consider including a mandate for transparency in algorithms and a requirement that platforms such as X and Meta publish regular audits on content moderation. In addition, platforms should be legally required to share data with independent researchers to enable real-time monitoring of misinformation trends. This can empower us to identify high-risk narratives.

Secondly, we must bring together the many skills initiatives to ensure our local and our global institutions are equipped with the digital understanding to think through current and future challenges. To counter both foreign interference and domestic vulnerabilities, we need a workforce equipped with cutting-edge technical expertise. Expanding initiatives such as the UK Institute for Technical Skills and Strategy will help us build capacity in cybersecurity, AI governance and digital resilience. But it is not enough. We must also ensure collaboration between universities, employers and training providers. The UK Government, where they are able, must keep up pressure on our multinational partners to also invest in talent.

I want to end with a personal anecdote. In 2022, I was on the board of directors of Twitter and deeply involved in the sale to Elon Musk. As chair of the nomination and governance committee and the compensation committee, we had multiple interactions. In one conversation I had with him, he told me—and I quote directly—that he had “solved the climate crisis by inventing electric vehicles, solved interplanetary travel by inventing SpaceX” and was now going to “save democracy by joining the board of Twitter”. At the time, I was bowled over by the arrogance of his words and thought he was wildly overestimating both his own power and that of the platform. How naive I was. Fast forward to today and we have a man who, through an investment of $250 million in a presidential campaign, has increased his own wealth by $200 billion and has become a figure who dominates global headlines on a near daily basis. He exerts massive cultural and geopolitical influence. It is easy to see him as a cartoon-like supervillain. We do so at our own peril.