The world needs more, not fewer, risk-taking tech entrepreneurs

Up until the dawn of modern telecommunication, messages were usually delivered by human envoys. During a war, for example, a messenger would be sent from one camp to another and, if found to be bearing unfriendly news, he often ended up as a casualty himself, a victim typically of beheading — until the advent of the gun.

In the age of the internet, the practice of shooting the messenger is taking on a new form: blaming the news media or a tech entrepreneur for disseminating unwanted information about a favored cause, ideology, personality or organization, and even bringing criminal charges against them. This is becoming a common occurrence just when the world needs more, not fewer, tech innovators and entrepreneurs.

The arrest of Telegram founder Pavel Durov, all of 39 years old, in France is a case in point. Last week, he was released on a bail of €5 million ($5.5 million) after four days of detention in France, but he is banned from leaving the country and likely faces a lengthy trial there. The Paris Public Prosecutor’s Office announced that he faces 12 charges, including illegal transactions, child sexual abuse, fraud and refusal to cooperate with authorities.

It is not just young Durov, unschooled in geopolitical skullduggery, who has received a rude awakening. With troubling frequency, the chief executives of tech companies are finding themselves in the crosshairs of attacks from both the left and the right, facing allegations that range from colluding with the White House to kowtowing to leaders of America’s adversaries.

The chief executives of tech companies are finding themselves in the crosshairs of attacks from both the left and the right

Arnab Neil Sengupta

They are being accused, as in the case of the Dubai-based Telegram, of being simultaneously at the Kremlin’s beck and call and acting as a tool of the Kremlin’s sworn enemy, the Ukrainian government. Even though, as a recent media report noted: “In Russia, Telegram channels widely cover subjects that are otherwise strictly censored in state media. That includes everything from front-line reports of the conflict in Ukraine to trials of Kremlin critics and manifestos dispatched from political prisoners.”

For his part, Elon Musk, practically from his first day as the owner of X, has drawn flak from an array of critics, most of them ideological allies of the previous management, whom he accused of stifling free speech and engaging in censorship. Since then, the circle of Musk’s political enemies on both sides of the Atlantic has only expanded, particularly after his declaration in May 2022 via X that while in the past he had voted Democratic, in the future he could no longer support the party and would vote Republican instead.

These days, almost no major American or European newsroom is complete without at least one full-time reporter assigned to the Elon Musk beat, which involves doing serial hatchet jobs on the CEO of Tesla, SpaceX and X but failing to make a dent in his net worth.

Now rewind to April this year, when the House of Representatives passed legislation that would ban TikTok in the US if the popular social media platform’s China-based owner did not sell its stake within a year. Shou Zi Chew, the TikTok CEO who has been grilled by US legislators twice since March 2023, has vowed to “continue to do all we can, including exercising our legal rights, to protect” the platform.

During the second congressional hearing held earlier this year, which focused on the safety of children on social media platforms, Shou was not the only big-tech baron in the line of fire. There was also Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Snap’s Evan Spiegel, X’s Linda Yaccarino and Discord’s Jason Citron, with Zuckerberg taking the most heat.

For all the bipartisan rebuke the chief executives received, both Republican and Democratic lawmakers understand the necessity to explore ways of dealing with media companies that would not result in a total ban or threaten free speech. They also understand the importance of attracting abrasive tech geniuses with a libertarian streak like Musk and offering them tacit guarantees of freedom from law-enforcement harassment, including arrest.

After all, it is not just the threat of new products that keeps America’s capitalist engine in motion: the role played by foreign-born scientists and engineers who grow into American entrepreneurs and senior management can hardly be overstated.

The picture is somewhat different on the other side of the Atlantic. Admittedly, European countries are not unabashedly hostile to entrepreneurship and libertarianism, or else French President Emmanuel Macron would not have bothered to state in a tweet in the context of Durov’s arrest that “France is deeply committed to freedom of expression and communication, to innovation, and to the spirit of entrepreneurship.”

According to Statista, across Europe, the share of the adult population involved in the early stage of a startup varies between 14 percent in Latvia and 2.6 percent in Poland. In 2023, 10.8 percent of France’s adult population was involved in a business startup, either as nascent entrepreneurs or as owner-managers of new firms.

What European sticklers may have failed to notice is that the combined worth of the US tech giants is now $11.8 trillion

Arnab Neil Sengupta

Historically, Europe has been a global leader in technology and entrepreneurship. “Today, however, Europe as a whole lags not only the US but also China in high-impact entrepreneurship. And many large European countries, such as France, Spain, Italy and Germany, have a deficit of super-entrepreneurs,” the City Journal, a publication of the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, said in 2022, referring to the nearly 2,500 individuals in the world who have built up billion-dollar fortunes by creating new firms or growing small businesses into large, successful ventures.

In a recent report, The Wall Street Journal linked Durov’s arrest to “France’s new hard line,” which it said “reflects growing concern, particularly in Europe, about the threat that big digital companies pose to society.” A French law signed this year requires online platforms to cooperate with authorities in rooting out content blamed for the spread of misinformation, antisemitism, racism and illegal commerce, the report said. Telegram says it has been complying with the EU’s Digital Services Act, which requires cooperation with authorities in countering the spread of illegal content.

What European sticklers for rules and order may have failed to notice is that, since early 2019, the combined worth of the US tech giants has more than tripled to $11.8 trillion. “Add in Nvidia, the only other American firm valued in the trillions, thanks to its pivotal role in generative artificial intelligence, and they fetch more than one and a half times the value of America’s next 25 firms put together,” The Economist reported last month in an article entitled “Why America’s tech giants have got bigger and stronger.”

It is hard to imagine a European leader or a Brussels bureaucrat today echoing the sentiments expressed by Singapore’s Lee Hsien Loong in a wide-ranging interview before stepping down as head of government in May. Not only did he praise the contributions of foreign talents in the country’s progress, but he also referred specifically to the engineering and management graduates from India’s elite Indian Institutes of Technology and Indian Institutes of Management who have moved to the island city-state. “If I can get such a pool, come here and work here, it is a tremendous plus for us,” he told Channel News Asia.

It would be a pity if European politicians and governments’ relationship with tech entrepreneurs is treated not as an exemplar but rather as a cautionary tale for other countries, including those of the Arab world, about how not to fall behind in global competition.

A stronger European commitment “to freedom of expression and communication, to innovation, and to the spirit of entrepreneurship,” to quote Macron, can potentially give birth to startups that can break down the walls that US tech giants Apple, Amazon, Alphabet and Meta have erected around their fiefs. But that commitment must necessarily take the form of action coupled with a welcoming attitude, not just carefully worded posts on X or Telegram.

• Arnab Neil Sengupta is a senior editor at Arab News. X: @arnabnsg