TransatlanTech Insider—December 2025 Edition
Welcome to the December edition of the TransatlanTech Insider.
If 2025 saw a storm gathering between the Atlantic’s shores, in December that storm broke. The European Commission’s two-year investigation into Elon Musk’s X under the bloc’s Digital Services Act (DSA) concluded this month with the Act’s first-ever noncompliance decision and a whopping €120 million fine on X. The decision found that X violated the DSA’s transparency requirements through its pay-for-play blue check marks that replaced Twitter’s verification system; the opacity of its online advertising library; and “unnecessary barriers” to researcher access. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President JD Vance decried the decision as attacking US tech companies and the American people for not “censoring” content. The same day, the White House released its National Security Strategy (NSS), with a dose of derision for Europe, even as the document positions US technology as a tool for diplomatic influence.
But whereas US President Donald Trump’s first-term NSS set the stage for great-power tech competition with Beijing, in this new NSS document China is viewed chiefly as an economic rival. So much so, perhaps, that the president announced he would lift export restrictions and allow NVIDIA to sell its vaunted H200 AI chip to China, fueling Beijing’s AI ambitions in the interest of short-term, higher-margin profits. This deregulatory approach to AI—contrasting sharply with the Commission’s at times ponderous rulemaking—got yet another jolt when Trump signed an executive order seeking to forbid state-level AI laws that conflict with White House policy and withholding broadband funding from the states in question.
In this edition, GMF Technology shares highlights from our keynote conversation on AI and defense technology at the NATO Parliamentary Assembly’s Transatlantic Forum, as well as from our second Transatlantic Technology Exchange. We also break down the EU’s new Apply AI Strategy and report out from the jury of the final round of the SPRIN-D Deepfake Challenge. Subscribe to receive future newsletter editions, follow us on X, and visit our webpage to learn more.
Featured this Month
Lindsay Gorman Hosts Fireside Chat with Eric Schmidt at NATO Parliamentary Assembly
Lindsay Gorman spoke with Eric Schmidt, former CEO and Chairman of Google and Chair and CEO of Relativity Space, for a keynote conversation on the future of defense technology and innovation in the age of AI at the NATO Parliamentary Assembly’s Transatlantic Forum. Schmidt and Gorman discussed NATO's future needs, how Europe’s tech talent is driving change, and how advances in AI could reshape the future of security.
The discussion anchored the closing day of the forum, which brought together more than 130 elected representatives from NATO's 32 allied member states. Gorman joined a select group of policy experts and industry leaders hosting the Forum’s keynote conversations.
GMF Holds Second Transatlantic Technology Exchange (TTX)
GMF Technology hosted the second edition of the Transatlantic Tech Exchange (TTX), which brought a bipartisan delegation of US state lawmakers to Brussels and Paris to exchange perspectives with European counterparts on public-interest AI and data. Over the three-day study tour, Rep. Doug Fiefia (Utah), Del. Michelle Maldonado (Virginia), and Sen. Michael O. Moore (Massachusetts) met with lawmakers, government officials, technologists, and civil-society stakeholders at the forefront of European AI innovation and policymaking.
In Brussels, the delegation discussed implementation of the EU AI Act with AI Office Director Lucilla Sioli and exchanged views on AI competitiveness, data protection, and the EU’s Digital Omnibus with Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) Brando Benifei, Eva Maydell, and Damien Boeselager. The group then traveled to Paris for a meeting with French Special Envoy for AI Anne Bouverot on France’s AI strategy and the Paris AI Action Summit as well as a discussion with French Member of Parliament Éric Bothorel on trustworthy AI and strategic technology autonomy.
TTX is designed to build a community of practice among European and US lawmakers at the forefront of tech and innovation policy and legislation. A signature initiative of GMF Technology, TTX aims to deepen mutual understanding of US and EU policy and innovation environments while uncovering areas of alignment to advance competitive technology and democratic values on both sides of the Atlantic. The thematic focus of this year’s TTX is the AI Value Chain: the natural resources, industrial and network infrastructure, data, and public and private investments and inputs that together create the machine-learning systems known or marketed as AI.
A second study tour in spring 2026 will bring a delegation of MEPs focused on the AI value chain to Washington, DC, and Boston, Massachusetts. To complement the study tours, GMF Technology is releasing a series of publications analyzing the future of transatlantic AI innovation and policy.
Adrienne Goldstein and Alexandra Pugh Analyze Europe’s Strategy to Adopt AI
Senior Program Coordinator Adrienne Goldstein and Program Coordinator Alexandra Pugh unpack the EU’s new AI adoption strategy in their piece “The EU’s Adoption Bet: Breaking Down Brussels’ Apply AI Strategy”. Building on the bloc’s AI Action Plan, the €1 billion Apply AI Strategy aims to boost AI integration in strategic economic sectors while bolstering European competitiveness and improving AI policymaking. The strategy also reaffirms the EU’s commitment to technological sovereignty, Goldstein and Pugh write, setting the stage for questions for US and transatlantic tech companies as Brussels strives to build its own AI stack.
Lindsay Gorman Judges SPRIN-D Challenge on AI and Deepfakes
Lindsay Gorman served on the jury for the final round of the Deepfake Detection and Prevention Challenge conducted by SPRIN-D, Germany’s Federal Agency for Disruptive Innovation. Participating teams were tasked with developing a technical prototype that reliably detects deepfake images or creates authentication mechanisms for digital content. The prototypes must be adaptable to new deepfake techniques and fit for use in variety of media contexts, such as social media, news websites, and videoconferencing systems.
The jury selected Cinematic Context Aware AI Image Detection, founded by a film director, as the winner of the challenge. The prototype used deep learning models inspired by the cinematographic cues, alongside an adaptive meta-model to achieve the highest recognition rates for both authentic and AI-generated images.
Media Mentions
Lindsay Gorman in Nikkei Asia on the Future of Quantum Computing and Defense
While policymakers often talk about next-generation technologies as a race to a winner-take-all finish, such as with artificial intelligence, high-end chips and 6G, "universal fault-tolerant quantum computing may be the one frontier technology for which that description is truly apt," Gorman said in “China's Quantum Leap Will Eclipse US Aircraft Carriers, Analysts Say”.
Lindsay Gorman in The Chosun Daily on the US National Security Strategy
“This NSS views U.S. technological leadership as essential to economic and military strength,” Gorman said in “U.S. Strategy Shifts Focus to China, Urges South Korea to Redesign Security with Nuclear Options”. “Specifically, it positions U.S. technology as an explicit tool for diplomatic influence alongside defense procurement and emphasizes that the ultimate U.S. interest in Asia is economic, nearly abandoning the framework of great power competition with China.”
Lindsay Gorman in the Wyoming Star on AI and National Security
“The biggest-picture national security risk associated with AI is that an autocratic competitor outpaces us, creates strategic industrial dependencies, and is able to write the rules of the road on the AI systems that will define modern life,” Gorman said in “The Great Build-Out: Politics of Data Center Construction”. “At the same time, such actors are increasingly wielding AI-enabled tools to conduct cyberattacks that can undermine US competitiveness and national security.”
Julia Tréhu and Adrienne Goldstein in AufRuhr on Transatlantic AI Policy (translated from German)
“Our project, ‘Transatlantic Technology Exchange’”, said Tréhu, “is committed to developing technology in the public interest. Among other things, it is about the question of how risks can be avoided without creating unnecessary hurdles for technological developments.”
“If the EU and the US work together and learn from each other, they can ensure that the opportunities and burdens of artificial intelligence are distributed more fairly,” Goldstein said.
Byte-Sized Bulletin
AI and Democracy
- US lawmakers reintroduced the AI Civil Rights Act, which would establish federal protections against AI algorithm discrimination in areas including employment, housing, and health care. The bill previously died in committee after its introduction in September 2024.
- The European Parliament approved a nonbinding resolution calling for an EU-wide minimum age of 16 to use social media and AI companions, with teens 13 to 16 years old able to use the services with parental consent. The resolution carries no legal weight, with formal proposals from the European Commission and years-long negotiations with member states and the parliament needed to pass legislation.
- The Walt Disney Company agreed to license characters from Star Wars, Pixar, and Marvel franchises to OpenAI for use in ChatGPT and Sora, the company’s AI video and image generator. The deal follows Disney’s cease-and-desist letter to Google, which accused the tech giant of unlawfully training AI models on Disney’s copyrighted works.
US-EU-China Technology Competition
- The European Council and the European Parliament agreed on new foreign direct investment screening rules, which will require EU countries to screen investments in fields including AI, quantum technologies, and semiconductors amid increasing concern over ownership of strategic technologies and critical infrastructure.
- The United States will allow NVIDIA to sell H200 chips to approved customers in China, President Trump said in a Truth Social post. He added that “$25% will be paid to the United States of America,” and that the US Commerce Department was in the process of finalizing the arrangement.
- China-based Wingtech appealed the decision revoking its control of Nexperia, its chipmaking subsidiary, to the Netherlands’ Supreme Court. The move comes after the Dutch government seized control of Nexperia in September, citing concerns over imminent transfer of chip production and technical knowledge to China.
Allied Coordination and Competitiveness
- The US government will invest up to $150 million in semiconductor startup xLight, marking the Trump administration’s latest equity stake in a US firm. The move sets up a potential contest between xLight and the Dutch chip giant ASML, which currently dominates lithography manufacturing.
- Ukraine is developing a large language model intended for public- and private-sector applications using Google’s open-weight Gemma framework. The project will initially train on Google’s computing infrastructure before being deployed on local data centers.
- The US Department of Defense launched GenAI.mil, a generative AI platform offering commercial AI models and agentic tools to around 3 million US service members, civilian employees, and contractors. The rollout aims to support organizational, intelligence, and warfighting use cases.
The Download
- Lindsay Gorman spoke at a closed-door roundtable on US-China technology competition organized by the UK Government Office for Science, where she highlighted the importance of transatlantic cooperation in building robust innovation ecosystems and confronting China’s cyber and IP theft.
- Lindsay Gorman briefed the Global Coalition on Telecommunications on China’s push to develop 6G, spotlighting risks and vulnerabilities from the use of components produced in China in European countries’ technology stacks.
- Lindsay Gorman contributed a quick-read reaction to GMF’s expert analysis of the Trump Administration’s National Security Strategy. In her piece, “Technology: An Export for US Global Influence?”, she notes that US technology—such as defense sales—is now imagined as a tool for diplomatic influence, as the administration narrows the aperture on basic science to focus on military-relevant technologies.
- Julia Tréhu spoke on US semiconductor export restrictions and the future of the CHIPS and Science Act on a panel discussion organized by Italy’s Istituto Affari Internazionali and Intesa Sanpaolo.
- Sharinee Jagtiani spoke at an expert discussion on EU-India relations organized by the Bundeskanzler-Helmut-Schmidt-Stiftung, where she emphasized the importance of EU-India technology cooperation.
- Dylan Welch spoke at a closed-door roundtable hosted by the German Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin on the challenges of digital authoritarianism. The discussion examined emerging technological approaches and policy responses to authoritarian actors’ leveraging of digital tools to advance their interests and erode digital freedom.
GMF Technology is dedicated to ensuring that democracies together win the strategic technology competition with autocrats.
Alexandra Pugh coordinated this month’s TransatlanTech Insider.