IMAGINING TOMORROW: BUSINESS FUTURES | 21 OCTOBER 1, 2023 “Digital technology is connecting the world, while geopolitics is fragmenting it,” laments Tatjana Mäkinen, a senior policy analyst at Technology 4 Equality (T4E), which was set up in 2019 to advocate for cyber openness and transparency. “A few years ago, only the likes of China, Russia and Turkey were imposing onerous nationalist restrictions on data. Now, it seems everyone’s caught up in tit-for-tat responses. Moving data across borders has become difficult, global supply chains are more challenging to manage, and Digital Rights Management (DRM) and Intellectual Property (IP) protection have become a legal minefield.” The new, stringent, French regulations were hastily approved after the terrorist attacks on July 14, 2023, when hijacked outside-broadcast drones—allegedly hacked from servers based in North Africa—were crashed into Bastille Day events in Marseilles and Paris. The laws were the sort of response voters had demanded when they elected the populist La France au Travail coalition to form the new government. During the campaign, the party had stressed that it is as important to secure virtual borders as physical borders—as online trade grows in importance, transactions are increasingly made in virtual money or cryptocurrency, and cybercrime is rampant. THTHEE W WORLDORLD OF OF REDESIGNING THE IMAGINATION THE AGE OF ““TETECHCHNONO--PPOLOLIITTIICSCS”” LIFE ECONOMY (IN)SECURITY