"What we do in these next few months will determine whether Europe’s liberal democracy survives or is for ever lost. Investing in defence will be for naught if foreign powers – whether the US, Russia, or China – can boost authoritarian collaborators within the EU’s borders.
The EU must immediately switch off the tech companies’ algorithms on its soil, at least until they are proven safe for democracy. Without that artificial amplification, extreme material will again have to compete with the deluge of cat videos and other things posted by people on digital platforms at that same instant. With X and other platforms upgraded to a pre-algorithm state, Musk’s posts will no longer be forced in to people’s feeds. We will still have digital platforms, but extremism will again be niche rather than the norm.
Ursula von der Leyen last year pledged to introduce a “democracy shield” to protect Europe from foreign electoral manipulation. Von der Leyen’s first step should be to shut down recommender algorithms. One way of doing that is to put political pressure on Ireland, which is responsible for enforcing Europe’s tough data law on most big tech firms but has not delivered. Instead, Dublin, according to the whistleblower Sarah Wynn-Williams, has been the tech industry’s lapdog. But von der Leyen should activate the commission’s decisive powers, too.
The democracy shield risks becoming a hodgepodge of timid half measures. Europe’s national capitals must demand immediate action both from the commission and from Ireland. Trump cannot be allowed to hold the hidden levers of Europe’s internal political debate. Europeans must have the freedom to communicate with one another without foreign censorship and interference. This crisis is at least as urgent as rearmament."
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/apr/15/us-europe-military-spending-trump-ireland
Securing Medical 
