Under Secretary of State Sarah B. Rogers on dismantling the "Censorship Industrial Complex"

The conversation was recorded at USA House during the hosts' first visit to Davos. It opens with light banter about a 300-year-old rented house with low beams, lodging far from the venue, and a running joke about an invitation that did not get "lost in the mail this time." The first guest is introduced as Sarah Rogers, Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy at the State Department, and the hosts ask whether the role comes with a set mandate or one the officeholder defines.

The guest, identifying herself as the Under Secretary, says friends and family congratulated her on the nomination and then quietly asked what the job was. She separates traditional diplomacy, meaning relations between the American government and foreign governments (ambassadors, deals, ending wars), from the public kind.

Public diplomacy addresses the relationship between the American government and foreign publics.

In her account, the office grew in importance with the internet. Under the Biden administration it took on "mushrooming concerns" about so-called disinformation and alleged malign influences on how foreign publics see America. Her portfolio covers how the government deals with the internet and the information ecosystem. It also covers soft-power programs: educational, cultural and sports diplomacy, including a role in this summer's World Cup, the upcoming LA Olympics, and the Fulbright program and similar exchanges.

One host frames the main topic as tension between American free-speech standards and European regulation. In that framing, US tech companies have recently moved back toward a strong free-speech posture after a few years when the principle "kind of got lost" in the industry. The guest agrees that some large American platforms had leaned toward moderation that matched prevailing US norms, and says both the country and the platforms have since shifted back toward "a less-censurious approach." She adds that her first official trip was to Europe, and that a large fine under the Digital Services Act was imposed on X while she was there.

She traces the gap back to the American founding and the First Amendment, saying America has taken a much stronger approach to free speech than "even most of the West." Because much online communication now crosses borders, new technocratic regulatory frameworks in Europe run into US speech commitments.

She describes the UK Online Safety Act in three parts: age-gating obligations on a broad range of content ("almost any content that's upsetting"), required risk assessments, and in some cases removal of content the UK deems illegal. Her central objection is jurisdictional. Whole categories of speech are illegal in the UK but not in the United States, where the platforms are based, where their original users and executives are, and where their primary regulator sits. She says the regulator Ofcom is now actively litigating against several American websites. She describes these as sites that do not target the UK, do not sell goods there, and mainly host American users discussing American politics.

She calls the DSA similar but broader. It requires every EU member state to adopt at least a minimum hate-speech prohibition, and she says the statutory wording is "much vaguer than American lawyers are accustomed to." Her argument rests on the US First Amendment's "chilling effect" doctrine. Speech regulation has to be precise, because a vague ban chills speech, especially when the ban falls on large, risk-averse companies. She compares this to how it "becomes illegal to make jokes around the water cooler." She notes that the DSA also covers non-speech matters such as transparency and competition. She also describes a cultural difference: Europe leans more on technocratic regulation to decide what is acceptable, while America emphasizes "rugged individualism and individual conscience."

A participant states the US position this way: no one is telling Europe it cannot build its own Facebook, Instagram, X or TikTok, or set whatever standards it likes on them. The objection is to American platforms and their users being fined for following American standards.