Think twice before using American digital tools
Frédéric Pierucci, former Alstom CEO: "Think twice before using American digital tools". The U.S. continues to use its extraterritorial laws to spy on European companies, after socking European firms with anti-corruption fines.
Where does this extraterritorial law come from? "Extraterritoriality means that the Americans have authorized themselves, in essence, to enforce their laws on the rest of the world".
There are in fact two "channels of attachment for any transaction between you and your customers". The first is the dollar: from the moment you use the US dollar, even between countries that have nothing to do with the United States, you come under the purview of US extraterritorial law, the FCPA. "Same thing if, at any point in your transaction, there's a bank in the United States," he adds. The second connection channel is digital. From the moment you use "American digital tools, in your transactions, in your emails, if you negotiate a contract via Teams, the FCPA may apply", warns Frédéric Pierucci.
The problem is that the United States has the means to enforce this law. This is due to the fact that, after the Cold War, intelligence agencies were reoriented towards economic warfare. "If you talk to intelligence people, they'll say that roughly 60% of the resources of the 16 US intelligence agencies are dedicated to economic intelligence."
They're not going to target the Chinese or the Russians, no, they're going to target the major competitors of American companies first. That means European companies like Airbus, Total and Alstom, as well as English, Italian and German companies," says Frédéric Pierucci.
Remember the scandal revealed by Edward Snowden in 2013. We learned that the NSA was working with around a hundred digital companies, "the Gafams (. GAFAM is an acronym for the stocks of American technology companies: Google (Alphabet); Apple; Facebook (Meta); Amazon; and Microsoft ... but not only", ed.) who were asked to massively spy on European companies and citizens. "In certain areas of activity, emails, conversations of these companies, their research topics, their proposals, their offers, their strategies were targeted"...
The United States then passed the Cloud Act in 2018. The aim is to say "that from the moment you store your data on a Cloud provided by Google, Amazon, Microsoft, so an American company, and you are under investigation, these companies are under an obligation to transfer your data to the United States. Then there were other American laws (FISA law) and zero response from Europe. So, yes, we're going to talk about the DSA, the DMA, but that's not going to stop the Americans from applying their laws".
Faced with this extra-territorial legislation, Europe remained divided. "There has been no European unity on this issue. Germany has done nothing; Berlin sees it as a tax they are paying the Americans to continue working with the Chinese and the Russians", before the war in Ukraine. "The Italians, the French, the British and the Chinese have reacted, passing laws to try and protect themselves from this American extraterritoriality.
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