The Sofia Globe Monday digest: December 1

A lot of other things happened this week. Juan Orlando Hernández was pardoned by Trump – which raises the question of what the real cost of drug trafficking actually is, and what this says about US strategic planning toward Venezuela. Amazon pours $50 billion into AI supercomputing for defence – well, Bulgaria has some of the best minds in this domain, and if there was ever a time to minimize that advantage, the time is now.

The European Commission decided to refer Bulgaria, Lithuania, Portugal, and Sweden to the Court of Justice of the European Union for failing to meet their air-pollutant emission-reduction commitments under the NEC Directive – personally, I’m happy to see that Sweden is not the best country in the world after all.

Airbus grounded 20 per cent of the global fleet of airplanes after realising that solar storms can actually damage certain aspects of their A320 safety systems. Meanwhile NASA is still burying its head in the sand, ignoring the fact that the cat buries its litter there – so the truth still stinks.

Like I said: a lot of things happened this past week. And, as you already noticed, this is not the usual Monday digest.

Why?

Because I want to focus on two things only – two things that overshadow everything else.

I have never had great faith in political unions, but I’ve always admired the ambition behind them. The idea that disparate peoples might bind themselves to a shared framework of rules, rights, and responsibilities is one of the noblest experiments in human history. Even the Romans – corrupt, violent, but effective – understood that a common legal order is what transforms a territory into a civilization.

Yet lately, I observe the current continental project with the same sinking feeling I’ve reserved for empires that mistook their fragility for invincibility. Late Byzantium had this disease: convinced divine protection made them immortal while the Ottomans quietly sharpened their knives outside the city walls.

What unsettles me isn’t simply that the union is drifting – it’s that the drift has become normalized. The union is no longer guided by principle, but by the restless pursuit of short-term convenience wrapped in the language of necessity.

It is exactly what Thucydides warned about: civilizations fall when they start confusing the urgent for the important, and the convenient for the just.

The shift is subtle but unmistakable.

A society that once prided itself on protecting individual rights now openly toys with diluting them, provided the sacrifice can be justified by economic urgency or technological lust. Environmental commitments – once presented as moral leadership – are now negotiable, softened whenever political discomfort outweighs ecological reason. And security – the oldest obsession of politics – has returned with a swagger, demanding resources and obedience in quantities previously unimaginable.

I do not raise objections from sentimentality.

I raise them because history is full of societies that believed “just a small exception” was harmless.

Ask the Venetians after 1500. Ask the late Habsburgs. Ask the Weimar Republic. They all thought the slope wasn’t slippery – until they found themselves at the bottom.

This week, the European Union finally answered the burning question of our time:

How can we make George Orwell look like he lacked ambition?

While the world teeters on the edge of autonomous warfare and economic collapse, Brussels decided the real enemy is a 15-year-old with an Instagram account.

In a stunning display of bureaucratic parenting, the EU has moved to ban social media for anyone under 16, effectively nationalizing the concept of “grounding your kids.” At the same time, they quietly greenlit the erosion of digital privacy under the holy banner of “thinking of the children.”

The message is clear: The State is now the only parent that matters, and it wants to read your diary.

Hannah Arendt warned precisely about this – that when bureaucracies claim to protect you “for your own good,” they usually mean “for their own power.”

While Europe builds digital cages, the rest of the world builds the future.

Amazon pours billions into militarized AI.

Chinese robotaxis are finally profitable.

We legislate usage; they legislate dominance.

It’s the same tired European pattern: regulate first, understand later, compete never.

Let’s start with the social media fiasco.

Social media was never the problem – just like the world was never the problem. (Honestly, the world is a perfect place; the people are fucked.)

Social media without accountability is the problem.

The solution is not to remove the kids from social media.
The solution is to remove the adults from kids’ social media and build accountability that way.

Yes, parents will probably need to approve kids’ accounts – but doing this actually involves the parents (wow, parents involved in 2025 – who would’ve guessed?). That builds the first layer of the wall around the kids’ garden. It won’t stop psychopaths or pedophiles completely, but at least you didn’t alienate your future voter base and you protected kids in their natural habitat instead of telling them they can’t have a cookie.

And along comes the second layer of the wall: Accountability.
For every paedophile or violation of the first layer, the social media company that allowed it pays 10 million euro – invested directly in kids’ education.
Trust me, the garden will be clean and functional.

Banning kids under 16 from social media is like asking me at 16 not to play with LEGO.
Policy in first gear, driven by people who can’t even drive.

And the second thing: really? Chat control?
I mean, really?

This reminds me of that Danish MP decades ago who wanted to introduce a tax every time people had sex…
Oh wait – Alexa, Siri, Gemini, everyone already knows when everyone is having sex.
Once again: policy and intellectual impotence by the divers.

How about the EU actually does something for its citizens and creates a revenue-sharing law for data monetization? Fucking encrypt everything, and every time Google, Apple, Meta, and the rest of the gang want to use my data, they need to give me an offer on X% of the value of that data.

This is not about privacy – it’s about control.

And control belongs to European citizens, not in the pockets of policymakers who think surveillance is a shortcut to relevance.

So yes, this week’s digest is a bit different.

A bit angrier.

But completely honest.

And these days, honesty is the last luxury citizens are allowed to have.

COLLISION ZONES

The Nanny State vs. The Encryption Imperative

The EU’s simultaneous push for a 16+ social-media ban and Chat Control collides directly with the technical reality of encryption. You cannot have a secure digital economy while mandating “backdoors” for scanning teenagers’ messages. The EU is choosing surveillance over security, guaranteeing that European digital infrastructure will be untrusted by the global market.

Bulgaria must exploit this by becoming an “Encryption Safe Harbor,” legislating that code is speech and refusal to scan is a protected right.

Bio-Verification vs. Anonymity

The requirement to enforce age limits collides with the fundamental structure of the open internet. To ban a 15-year-old, you must verify the 40-year-old – which means the end of anonymity. The collision here is between privacy and compliance.
The EU has chosen compliance.

Bulgaria must choose privacy, developing zero-knowledge-proof identity wallets that verify age without revealing identity to the platform.

Why It Matters to Bulgaria

The “Privacy Haven” Strategy

With the EU mandating mass surveillance, there is a massive market opening for a jurisdiction that refuses to play along. Bulgaria should position itself as the Delaware of digital privacy, offering legal shields for companies that use true end-to-end encryption.

The “Unfiltered” Talent Pipeline

While Western Europe disconnects its youth, Bulgaria must double down on digital immersion. We cannot afford to protect our children from the tools that will define their economic future. The Ministry of Education must explicitly reject the “ban” approach in schools, instead integrating AI and social-graph analysis into the curriculum.

THE BOTTOM LINE

The EU has spent this week building a digital monster, treating its citizens like children and its children like prisoners. Bulgaria must not join this kindergarten.

Our advantage lies in being the adult in the room – the nation that accepts the risks of freedom in exchange for the rewards of innovation.

While Brussels scans chats and checks IDs, we must build the servers, write the code, and keep the lights on for the free world.

Ignore the ban. Build the network.