Tulsi Gabbard Fends Off Europe's Antitech Tyrants—for Now

Convincing the U.K. to stand down on backdoor access to Apple's encryption is a big win. The next battle will be fought over age verification.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has been busy lately, and she's receiving plenty of media coverage as a result: Her new Russiagate disclosures shed light on shady behavior from intelligence officials in the final days of Barack Obama's presidency, which had the effect of casting some doubt on the legitimacy of Donald Trump's 2016 victory. The details are a bit complicated, but essentially, national security experts knew that Russia had not hacked U.S. voting machines, and thus the impact of Russian interference on the 2016 result was negligible. Obama was not entirely satisfied with this conclusion and told them to take another crack at it. Shortly thereafter, news stories in the mainstream media began to allege sinister Russian involvement in the election outcome, sourced to anonymous intelligence officials.

Over time, these anonymously sourced and often unspecific claims about direct Russian interference mutated into the social media influence conspiracy, which held that Russian bots and accounts on Facebook had swung the election to Trump. This theory was enthusiastically embraced by intelligence officials and gullible mainstream media reporters; it too eventually died, once the limited scope of the social media influence became clearer.

More transparency around this subject—which generates wall-to-wall coverage in conservative media—is certainly welcome. Gabbard's efforts to further unmask efforts by federal bureaucrats to redact intelligence relating to COVID-19's origins is also welcome. I interviewed The Daily Caller's Emily Kopp about this today on Rising.

These two stories are getting all the attention, but there's something else Gabbard pulled off this week that deserves praise: She has allegedly persuaded the United Kingdom to drop its backdoor encryption mandate for Apple's iPhone.

Over the past few months, I've been working closely with our partners in the UK, alongside @POTUS and @VP, to ensure Americans' private data remains private and our Constitutional rights and civil liberties are protected.

As a result, the UK has agreed to drop its mandate for…

— DNI Tulsi Gabbard (@DNIGabbard) August 19, 2025

This is a huge deal, and also a harbinger of diplomatic battles to come.

For context, the U.K. wanted Apple to agree to add what's called a "backdoor" that would allow the government to access customers' personal data. Defenders of such policies point to ticking-time-bomb scenarios, i.e., What if the police needed to break into your laptop in order to foil a terrorist attack? and similar situations. The arguments against the backdoor, of course, are obvious: The government can't really be trusted to only access people's personal information under such circumstances; people who live in free societies have to come to regret surrendering their civil liberties in exchange for nebulous safety guarantees; malicious foreign actors, terrorists, and authoritarians could actually benefit from the existence of backdoors, if they were able to hack them.

On this last point, Reason's Joe Lancaster reminds us that "there is no way to introduce an intentional flaw to data encryption that cannot be exploited by bad actors." In an article on the backdoor encryption fight, he points out that the U.K. is effectively asking Apple to "build an unbreakable lock and give law enforcement a key."

This is not good at all, so it's a relief that Gabbard was able to get the U.K. to back down. Credit where credit is due: Sen. Ron Wyden (D–Ore.), one of the most consistent defenders of privacy and free speech when it comes to tech issues, also pressed for this outcome, as did Vice President J.D. Vance, who has frequently called out European politicians for trying to browbeat American tech companies into adopting un-American policies.

And that is very much where the tech sector is headed. Already, several European countries have launched an age-verification app in anticipation of European Union regulations that will require users to verify their age. The intentions are noble; no one wants underage kids accessing porn sites or harmful content. It's impossible, though, to have an age-verification requirement that only applies to kids—by its very nature, age verification is something everyone will have to submit to in order for it to work at all. This will effectively de-anonymize the internet, as well as create more opportunities for government collection of personal data.

And while Europe is leading the way in terms of bad tech policies that will compromise the user experience, thwart privacy protections, and empower censors, many U.S. political figures are just as bad. State authorities like Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill (R) are fighting tooth and nail to punish tech companies for failing to implement age verification. Domestically, the GOP's reflexive won't someone think of the children style of governance is going to lead it to embrace antitech policies that are clearly recognized as backward and hostile to the First Amendment when pushed by European counterparts.

In any case, fending off international bureaucrats who want to bully American tech companies into making their products worse is a good use of U.S. diplomatic might, though the war at home will be equally vexing for fans of tech freedom in the future.

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