I never thought my love of techno and my work in democratic theory would end up in the same essay. Then, an Italian mayor named Silvia Salis organised a rave and emerged as Meloni's biggest contender.

An underreported skill in politics: using international legitimacy to bury a domestic crisis. Sánchez this week is a clinic in narrative displacement: don’t rebut a damaging frame, change the arena where the questions get asked.

The demand for European tech is real. The infrastructure, the awareness, and the political will haven't fully caught up yet. Is "digital sovereignty" about to become a campaign slogan? www.techpolicy.press/almost-two-t...

Two landmark verdicts in a week against Meta: one in California for #addictively designing platforms harming children’s mental health, and one in New Mexico for concealing child sexual #exploitation. What are the implications for Europe?

VdL says Europe must “shape the new world.” Kallas says the rulebook has been “thrown out the window.” Both are right in diagnosis. Neither names who threw it. That silence is exactly why nobody believes Europe will actually do what it says.

Iran named Mojtaba Khamenei to succeed his father Ali Khamenei as supreme leader, signaling that hardliners remain firmly in charge, as the week-old U.S.-Israeli war with Iran sent oil prices surging and Asian stock markets into a nosedive. Follow our live coverage: reut.rs/4d98ssP

AI didn’t kill the demand for trustworthy information, it exploded it, argues @shuwei.bsky.social. Billions of people can now reach knowledge but still can’t make sense of it. The companies filling that gap right now aren’t exactly trustworthy. The market is wide open. 👇🏼

"If the defense department is demanding the use of AI for mass surveillance or autonomous warfare that we, the public, find unacceptable, that should tell us we need to pass new legal restrictions on those military activities." https://bit.ly/4blSRF0

Belgium’s defence minister says US-Israel strikes are “righteous “. Iran says the same about its proxies. Russia says the same about Ukraine. International law exists precisely because everyone thinks their cause is just, and that’s why “it’s righteous” has never been a legal basis for force.

Know an interesting book about diplomacy or global affairs you want to review for @haguediplomacyjrnl.bsky.social ? 📚 For 2026, we particularly welcome book reviews that explore perspectives from the global majority. More info here: www.universiteitleiden.nl/hjd/journal/...

About right time to recommend again the last episode of "Post truth be told" on wether and how the EU has a strategy to counter foreign interference...

EU leaders spent years framing the energy crisis as a matter of principle: Russia violated int’l law, destabilised the rules-based order. Now gas prices double, triggered by illegal US-Israel strikes, and Brussels endorses. The incoherence is absolutely astounding. @vonderleyen.ec.europa.eu

“preventive war has no legal basis” theconversation.com/neither-pree...

US officials skeptical of regime change in Tehran after Khamenei killing, say sources reut.rs/4l2wasX

“Historically, Washington’s poorly informed assumptions on Iran have set back core US interests. Most notable was the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which lacked adequate preparation & manpower to manage a stable transition & insulate the new government from Iranian influence” 🔗 www.cfr.org/reports/lead...

Once again, EU leadership utterly fails to address the illegal and reckless use of force employed by US and Israel, this time in Iran. I’m grateful to be surrounded by scholars who are brave and honest, two qualities much needed at the top of EU institutions.

Anthropic says it will challenge Pentagon's supply chain risk designation in court reut.rs/4u0Jy4P

The @europarl.europa.eu is “going nowhere” on the digital euro. Meanwhile, the EU still pays Visa & Mastercard over €13.5 billion a year to process its own payments. We’re “renting core infrastructure” as put by @ecb.europa.eu exec in a recent interview with me: sophiepomme.com/reshaping-eu...

Amodei’s statement today deserves careful reading. @anthropic.com says it refuses to enable mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons on democratic grounds. One of the largest tech companies is publicly defending civil liberties against government pressure, and this is meaningful.

Truth functions like a social contract: invisible until broken. The moment we stop maintaining it collectively, politics turn into theatre, and the audience forgets it ever had a say.

Orbán is playing two games: calling for a “fact-finding mission” in a formal letter to EU Council president Costa, while accusing Zelenskyy of interfering in Hungarian elections on social media. The gap between his diplomatic and political tone tells you everything about what’s driving this crisis.

Despite all the chatter, social media bans for teens lack evidence! New paper out in Nature Health. (1) Harms from social media are real & serious. (2) We need regulatory action but bans are not nuanced, do not empower youth, & are not supported by evidence. www.nature.com/articles/s44...

A new study finds that longer daily social media use was associated with predominantly negative outcomes for 60% of adolescents, but not all platforms are the same. The variances point to the opportunity for more nuanced regulation than blanket bans, writes Tim Bernard.

more than a betting market, Polymarket is a massive data bank of public opinions

As promised, #RECLAIM project is over, but "Post-Truth be Told" is not. Episode 12 covers the EU’s turn to FIMI. @lucasproto.bsky.social @ruthferrero.bsky.social and @sophiepomme.com discussed what is at stake for Europe in the current "global marketplace of ideas" open.spotify.com/episode/0dcJ...

Know an interesting book you want to review for @haguediplomacyjrnl.bsky.social ? 📚 For 2026, we particularly welcome submissions that explore shifts in international order. More info here: www.universiteitleiden.nl/hjd/journal/...

The U.S. Journalist Assistance Network has compiled a set of resources with best practices for journalists in the U.S. to protect their data and devices. Full resource list 👇 cpj.org/wp-content/u...

A common belief is that to counter polarisation, we should socialise more with people who think differently. This is untrue. Above a critical level of social connectivity, society naturally becomes more polarised so that social interactions are more comfortable. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Brief “prebunking” videos embedded in Instagram feeds significantly improve users’ ability to recognise common #manipulation techniques and enhance resilience to misinformation at scale, with effects persisting over time across audiences. misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu/article/preb...

Sean Westwood, a political scientist at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, demonstrated an AI chatbot that can reliably impersonate a human participant and evade most known mechanisms built into surveys to detect fake responses. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Almost two-thirds of all card transactions in the EU are now handled by U.S. giants Visa (V.N), opens new tab and Mastercard (MA.N), opens new tab. Dombrovskis said such dominance made the EU vulnerable. www.reuters.com/business/fin...

“the architecture of problem-solving are under threat” said Carney in his iconic speech in Davos. with every column that falls down, a gap takes shape and becomes ready to be filled this is the pivotal moment that Carney refers to: we must build the new infrastructure as the old is taken down.

Thinking of applying for a #PhD? I wrote a guide based on my experience (Oxford, Leiden), covering proposals, supervisors, funding, and what strong applications truly require: 🔗 sophiepomme.com/how-to-apply...

EU member states need to collectively grapple with this necessity, if they are serious about “defending democracy”.

For the EU to regain legitimacy, the solution lies in: “unclogging channels of participation in Europe so politics reflects its increasingly diverse electorate, and the idea of ‘Europe’ becomes less old, white and western European.” as put by @pawelzerka.bsky.social

Europeans want more leadership and protection from the EU according to the latest @ecfr.eu brief. But protection from what? “Defending democracy” has many different meanings across the political spectrum. It’s much more than a “culture war”. It’s a crisis of trust.

Rejection is one of the toughest parts about academia and this post provides some great guidance on how to deal with it (that I will start trying to follow myself). Here's a couple of thoughts that the post triggered, if those happen to be of interest:

power feedback loops on display 👇🏼 if you’re not paying attention to crypto because you think it’s a scam for finance bros… think again

Incredibly well deserved 👏🏼 More attention is crucially needed on the ongoing socioeconomic and political crisis in Venezuela, and to support brave defenders of #democracy around the world.

✨📘 New publication! Thrilled to share my latest chapter: “Undesirable Information Online: Unpacking the Complexity of #Propaganda, #Misinformation, and #Disinformation” out now in The Palgrave Handbook on Cyber Diplomacy. 🔗 link.springer.com/chapter/10.1...

Apparently, I’m not the only one haunted by Orwell. My post on 1984 has become one of my most-read and honestly, I understand why. Reading it today feels uncomfortably familiar. sophiepomme.com/george-orwel...

The lessons from this interview with Norman Foster extend well beyond design and architecture, they are absolutely essential for anyone seeking to navigate a constantly changing world. One more reason why I love design! The teachings are simple yet powerful and applicable virtually everywhere.

What happens when #disinformation becomes a matter of security? My latest piece in @iajournal.bsky.social, one of the most read articles of its September issue, explores this question👇🏼 academic.oup.com/ia/article/1...

Congratulations Moldova! 🇲🇩 My home-away-from-home in Eastern Europe has decidedly chosen a future built on partnership and the rule of law 🙏🏼✨ A huge win for both democracy and the EU! Moldova's pro-EU party wins high-stakes parliamentary election www.euronews.com/2025/09/29/m...

Europe is at a turning point, and the #DigitalEuro might be the next big thing we need for our sovereignty. I spoke with @ecb.europa.eu’s Eric Tak about what it means for citizens, banks, and Europe’s place in the world. Ready to step into the future of payments? 👇🏼 sophiepomme.com/reshaping-eu...

An excellent read in @politico.eu on the situation for the EU, facing mounting pressure to stop Israel's genocide of Palestinians: "Macron wants a big diplomatic win on Palestinian statehood. But Europe is split." www.politico.eu/article/emma...

Once again, the US 🇺🇸 says NO to a UN Security Council draft resolution that would have demanded immediate, unconditional & permanent ceasefire in Gaza 🇵🇸, and immediate, dignified & unconditional release of all hostages held by Hamas & other groups In Favor: 14 Against: 1 (US) Abstain: 0

“the relation between self-organization, life and computing was obvious (…). Those things somehow diverged, and now they are being reunified.” Great read in @quantamagazine.bsky.social to understand why complexity science matters for the future of governance 👉 www.quantamagazine.org/self-assembl...

The SCO summit, China’s military parade, and Europe’s AI strategy: all signs of a changing world order. Here are my takes on EU–China relations and the AI race from last week’s European Guanxi Conference 👉 sophiepomme.com/5-urgent-que...

A small step for European sovereignty in the AI industry? 👀 “cash from ASML could help Mistral make Europe less reliant on U.S. and Chinese AI models” reports ⁦‪@reuters.com‬⁩ on ⁦‪🇳🇱 ASML‬⁩ €1.3 billion investment in ⁦‪🇫🇷 Mistral AI www.reuters.com/world/europe...