May 30, 2022 · 30m · another-podcast
Three ways to say no
0:00 / 0:00
gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this podcast episode, Benedict Evans and Tony Cameron explore why technology companies resist government regulations, categorizing their objections into distinct tiers ranging from commercial inconvenience to mathematical impossibility. The hosts emphasize the need for greater technical literacy among policymakers to evaluate these claims effectively and construct realistic regulatory frameworks.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. The hosts hold 78.9% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
The hosts as informed peer 7.9 Guest teaching 1.6 Guest disagreement 1.1 The hosts pushing back 1.9
speaking balance: gold is the hosts, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 12:43 Challenging the Adversarial Assumption
Tony interrupts to push for institutional empathy and mutual understanding, arguing against Benedict's purely adversarial characterization of regulator-technologist relations.
Hardest push from the hosts ▶ 12:54 Refusal of Institutional Trust FramingBenedict immediately shuts down Tony's premise of building trust between institutions, pointing out that corporate regulation is fundamentally adversarial by nature.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 14:41 Data Flow vs Localization NuanceTony reframes the GDPR debate away from static data storage toward dynamic international data flows, educating on the regulatory disconnect he observed at the European Commission.
The host holds their own ▶ 18:05 Dissecting Paradoxical Encryption PoliciesBenedict demonstrates deep technical fluency by systematically dismantling EU proposals demanding automated message scanning without weakening end-to-end encryption.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | The hosts as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | The hosts pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Category One: Inconvenient Preferences and Opinionated Product Design | 8 | 1 | 1 | 2 | Benedict establishes the conceptual framework of 'Category One' pushback, detailing how tech companies resist inconvenient requirements using historical precedents like the Microsoft browser ballot and Apple's USB-C mandate. Tony is highly collaborative, reinforcing the concept with an anecdote about opinionated product architecture from his time at NationBuilder. | |
| Category Two: Severe Unintended Consequences and Policy Misunderstandings | 8 | 1 | 1 | 2 | Benedict articulates 'Category Two' where regulations cause severe unintended fallout, dissecting California's AB-5 legislation accidentally banning freelance work and the EU Digital Markets Act's messaging interoperability mandate. Tony chimes in agreeably to emphasize the disconnect between legislative intent and technical reality. | |
| Institutional Empathy and Navigating Data Regulatory Complexities | 7 | 4 | 3 | 4 | Tony challenges the tone by advocating for institutional empathy between regulators and engineers, drawing on his experience at the European Commission and highlighting misunderstandings around GDPR data localization. Benedict pushes back on the idealistic hope of building trust, asserting that regulation is inherently adversarial. | |
| Category Three: Demanding the Impossible and Technologically Infeasible | 9 | 0 | 0 | 1 | Benedict thoroughly dominates the segment laying out 'Category Three'—regulators asking for the mathematically and technologically impossible ('gasoline that doesn't burn'). He details Marc Andreessen's 'nerd harder' concept, cryptographic trade-offs, and flawed EU proposals to simultaneously scan encrypted messages while preserving full privacy. | |
| Tech Illiteracy and the Knowledge Gap in Public Policy | 8 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Benedict describes educating a UK government official on why IP addresses cannot function as permanent, unique identity verifiers due to network address translation. Tony supplements this with an anecdote about political campaigns blindly demanding API integrations without understanding technical mechanics. | |
| Category Four: Ideological Objections Versus Engineering Legitimacy | 8 | 2 | 2 | 3 | Benedict introduces a surprise 'Category Four' examining ideological versus engineering legitimacy, arguing tech companies shouldn't disguise personal political preferences as engineering constraints. Tony and Benedict explore the nuance of whether tech platforms are analogous to common carriers like telephone utilities or private venues. | |
| Conclusion: Dissecting Arguments to Ask Better Questions | 7 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Benedict summarizes the taxonomy of technical resistance, emphasizing that regulators must dissect bad arguments from genuine physical and architectural impossibilities. Tony warmly agrees and concludes on the necessity of framing better policy questions. |
Statements from this episode (9)
Evans: Tech firms reflexively claim new regulations will break everything
“The sort of natural reaction of a lot of people in tech, and of course, particularly the people in tech who are actually being told they have to do something, is to say no. And we can't do that. That's a terrible idea, and that will break everything, and that'…”
Evans: Allowing Alternative App Store Payments Wouldn't Break iPhone
“If Apple let every app sign up alternative payment methods inside of their app on the iPhone. It would be annoying, and, you know, there would be some trade-offs around security and privacy, and you can also argue whether anyone would actually do it, which is …”
Evans: Mandating USB-C for iPhone Is Dumb and Doesn't Help Environment
“If they have to replace the lightning port and the iPhone with USB-C. It's dumb. It doesn't actually help the environment. It's annoying. It's probably a less good port than the lightning port Apple uses. It's certainly a bit bigger. But like, guess what? Like…”
Cameron: Many EU regulators have never written code or built software
“One of the reasons when I started my career in the European Commission and I left very quickly is that it all felt, I'm working with some of the smartest people, but it all felt very theoretical. And it was obvious that a lot of these people writing these legi…”
Cameron: Regulating data movement matters more than physical storage locations
“Can we stop talking about localization of data and where the data is stored? And can we talk about the movement and the process of how you get that data flow from one country to another? That's a way more complicated and layered conversation, but it's a way mo…”
Evans: Secure encryption cannot exist with law enforcement backdoors
“There is no theory of what that would be, like, a secure encryption means no one can read it, but the police can read it, ok so it's not secure.”
Evans: Machine learning cannot reliably scan messages for grooming
“Problem two is that's not a simple database look at. That's a quite challenging machine learning problem, and it's not going to work very reliably. Like, it might work 60, 70% of the time, maybe. Massive false positive problem. Actually, we don't really have t…”
Evans: Tech companies historically fought encryption policy with ideology, not engineering
“Far too often, not so much recently, but particularly, you know, until a few years ago, the argument from technology would not, technology companies would not be, no, this is the only way we can stop China from reading your emails, or the only way that we can …”
Evans: Regulators fail to distinguish technical impossibility from commercial inconvenience
“Like, we can't build gasoline that doesn't burn. And that's very different to saying, well, I don't like that, or I don't want to do that, or that's bad for my margins. And I think, you know, the sort of, the thread that I just see over and over again is not U…”