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Race to the bottom: who will be the Delaware of data science
What we think of data regulation is never far from the surface, with data protection an essential component of that regulation. GDPR is the most well know global regulatory framework, with most organisations abiding by the EU’s regulations. Yet, up until the Ukraine war Eastern European countries were the easiest place to park a data centre beyond most regulators, an example of how unscrupulous operators can side step any legal process. The wider issue comes when a country or US state decides that data needs regulating like finance, and that Delaware and North Dakota’s financial regulations act as a template for data centres.
As machine learning becomes deeply embedded with digital societies data becomes a more paramount lubricant for the global economy, though as with all things data it is often the ability to parse that data that acts as the bottle neck. Regulation is one break on unfettered data use, with the EU’s GDPR and right to forget being a significant examples of how political will can shape how data is used and protected. Yet, as financial regulation shows, there is always the risk that a nation or state wishing to produce a competitive edge can create a regulatory framework which undercuts global regulation.
While offshore tax havens have become a dirty concept, offshore data servers are not publicly…
