Welcome to the third issue of Horizon Futures Watch. Here, we delve into two interrelated themes that may frequently be paired together (or seen in isolation): the future of green skills and the future of big tech.  

Sustainability meets technological progress. A focus on green skills may be amplified with the entrance of innovative, data-driven technologies. Technology may sometimes be viewed as the answer to the need for more sustainable processes, while green skills may provide the essential human touch necessary to ensure these advancements are effectively and ethically applied. But is this always the case? And is there a universally optimal balance between the two? Such questions are explored in the six different projects that follow.

An overview of the latest selection of news about foresight projects and topics opens the issue. The Foresight in the Field section presents a report on the EEA’s recently published Horizon Scanning – Tips and Tricks.

The evolving complexity of global challenges is increasingly affecting the steering of European Research and Innovation which aims at addressing important present and future societal concerns. The idea of ‘watching futures’ to anticipate future possibilities and analyse the consequences of current choices to inform and shape a forward-looking EU R&I policy is continuously gaining ground.

In this light, as part of the ‘European R&I foresight and public engagement for Horizon Europe’ study launched by the European Commission in connection to the Horizon Europe Foresight Network, a second series of online workshops will take place during October – November 2023.

The workshops, which will run for two hours each, will discuss insights stemming from thematic policy briefs compiled by expert panels, addressing possible future scenarios for critical issues (i.e., Interpretation of Criminal and Lawful Activities, Green Skills and Jobs, Big Tech, etc.). Following the presentation of each policy brief, each workshop will feature two focus groups: one involving the group of experts from the panel who developed the policy brief and one including representatives from topic-relevant EU-funded R&I projects. All events will foster extensive engagement with participants, including policymakers.

Big Tech is rewiring the world. These very large private companies are leaders in research and development (R&D) and now wield unprecedented and unparalleled influence in the economy and beyhond. In this redefined world, Europe faces a number of agenda-setting questions. This policy brief aims to anticipate the implications of ‘Big Tech’ for Europe’s future by 2040.

The future(s) of Big Tech: Questions, challenges, strategies for Europe

Big Tech are here to stay. But they do not stay the same. They have a hunger for innovation. In terms of R&D, the top 5 US Big Tech spend in a single year more than the double of what the EU-27 committed collectively to the Horizon Europe, which runs for seven years. Big Tech corporates leverage cloud infrastructure, digital platform business models, and increasingly AI technologies to capture expansive market positions and to achieve superior performance. Another obvious fact is that these economic titans are not from Europe.

A set of questions thus suggest themselves: In a market-driven economy, does it matter for Europe? If it matters, will conventional remedies like regulation and competition policy be enough to cope with the ramifications? Is it time to go post-neoliberal phase and engage in informational industrial activism of a disruptive kind? Or, on the contrary, will bottom-up decentralised entrepreneurial incrementalism sort out any temporary European competitiveness and governance failures?

In a new report to the European Commission, these four questions are dealt with by means of a scenario-building exercise. Four authors, who also counted with inputs from 30 experts from industry and academia, make an attempt to anticipate how the European Union can regain its edge in a world re-wired by Big Tech.

Four scenarios put forward alternative challenges for the year 2040 from a Research & Innovation perspective (see Box). Scenario 1 ‘Winners Tech All’ is a world of high openness and mega-economies of scale and scope. In contrast, scenario 2 ‘Pax Technologica’ could be seen as a robustly negotiated multipolar environment. Scenario 3, ‘Re-matching’, envisions the recovery of a mixed tech economy where alternatives to incumbent Big Tech are viable. Finally, Scenario 4 is called ‘Closet Liberalism’and portrays a low-obstruction/wide-arena world where self-organised economic dynamics propel Europe back onto the global competitive map.

The policy implications are considered. The policy posture across scenarios and strategic stances for each scenario is rooted in three basic premises, i.e. the imperative to: protect pluralism (economic and societal), maintain a cosmopolitan outlook (in world affairs), and safeguard natural commons (including Earth and orbital resources). Based on these assumptions and the scenario analysis, number of strategic conclusions are drawn.

Out of the general and scenario-specific portfolios that were generated, a number headline policy options can be considered:

- The EU should reinforce and develop its own regulations and anti-monopolistic actions to constrain the market power of Big Tech Companies, but these are not sufficient to ensure autonomous economic development and well-being in the EU;

- It is needed that a new generation of European productive actors emerges to generate a productive capacity of the old continent in new infrastructuring fields, and if these are built as cross-European state-owned entities this is an option not to be disregarded.

- The EU Framework Programme and national research and innovation (R&I) budgets should be benchmarked not only against their past performance but also compared to the spending and strategies of Big Tech;

- ‘Big bet’ investments are needed in Europe, coupled with more serendipity-inducing experimental approaches.

Scenario sketches

Scenario 1: Winners tech all

This is a story of modernisation orchestrated around digital high-tech. The economy is not run by Big Tech but on infrastructures these private companies own and hone. Growing dependencies can be tolerated because benefits are shared and businesses are empowered to pursue their plans. The operating framework inherited from Globalisation assures a modicum of stability, namely informal institutions like the G7 or the G20 and formal institutions like the IMF and the World Bank. The US remains the sole superpower and maintains its role as agenda-setter. The room for manoeuvre for the EU is limited and it takes its place in the international division of labour.

Scenario 2: Pax technologica

The economy is a negotiated tension between pro-global business interests and pro-local (local referring to groups of countries with aligned interests cooperating and competing with each other, forming coopetitive clubs) political constraints. The drive to take advantage of economies of scale and scope has been tamed by enhanced regulation and hardened borders. Supply-chains are splintered and directed towards suppliers within the mega-regions composed of preferential partners, increasing costs but reducing uncertainty. Existing large tech firms must accommodate each other. Existing platform models are entrenched but are forced to grant access to their digital and logistic facilities, leading newcomers to not investing in their own subversive infrastructure. Stability is a value, not so much efficiency. The US retains its role as an economic-financial and political-military switchboard, but for a diminishing part of the globe. China is still challenging the dominance of the US both politically and economically. Other regional powers emerge. The EU is a switchboard of external and internal pressures, and this is the “Brussels Consensus”.

Scenario 3: Re-matching

What shapes the development of individual nations regions is their own path in a pluralist international scene. Pro-active productive policy makes sense, especially if coordinated among players. After years of blitz-scaling the tide turned, and Big Tech went into a fizzdown. Cross-regional/trans-sectoral innovative players gained mass and found expansive growth niches at key intersections of a complex (mix) economy with an active role of the public sector associated to national governments and international organizations. Commons governance generate citizen engagement and global fragmentation is controlled. An overstretched self-consumed US has to divide protagonism with other world powers. The EU is a network builder, it supports the catalysing and protection of the new core-inputs of the modernising economy.

Scenario 4: Closet liberalism

In this world commercial and financial integration proceeds and power continues to trespass national borders and overwhelm States. Large multinationals are seen to have a large impact in public governance, but tech monopolies matured becoming expensive and bad quality. There is a mesh of networks and competing authorities create an opportunity for decentralisation, especially at the local and city levels. The US serves its own interests and is more reluctant to assume its responsibilities in global public good provision. The EU preaches the superiority of the market order, but inside the EU everyone tries to re-interpret the rules of the game in its own benefit (fiscal responsibility is for the population not for businesses).

MOBI stretches the legal dimension, searching for normative responses to Big Tech’s composite power threats to free market competition and European democratic values.

Hexa-X’s 6G flagship research is shaping the design of European wireless technologies to be environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable, while ensuring competitiveness in the global market.

In a world pervaded by the rapid entrance and development of new technologies, the pace at which ethical concerns are addressed is not always in sync. TechEthos, a Horizon 2020 project, wants to facilitate “ethics-by-design” in order to push forward ethical and societal values into the design and development of new and emerging technologies at the very beginning of the process.

The sixth Horizon Futures Watch Dissemination Workshop held on November 8 2023 explored futures of Big Tech in Europe. Contemporary societies increasingly rely on Big Tech for different functions, such as work, communication, consumption, and self-expression.

"Big tech" companies, often referred to as the giants in the technology industry, have a significant impact on the global market, economy, and society. Decision makers, regulators and stakeholders grapple with the challenges of uneven competition and the political and ethical implications arising from the actions of these major players, as well as their data usage practices. In addition, the majority of large high-tech corporations are not headquartered in Europe.

Questions regarding the challenges posed by the future of Big Tech abound: Should Europe try to develop its own Big Tech as well? Should Big Tech be left free to carry on unimpeded? Should governments impose detailed standards of conduct? Foresight experts investigated what the situation could look like in 2040 and the implications for the future of Big Tech in research and innovation policy.

Based on the discussions stemming from the foresight experts, 4 scenarios were conceived:  

• Winner techs all – The economy depends on infrastructures owned and honed by Big Tech. This growing reliance is balanced by benefit sharing arrangements and empowerment of businesses. Stability is underpinned by the existing framework of Globalisation, supported by both informal (G7, G20) and formal institutions (IMF, World Bank). The US continues as the dominant superpower, setting the global agenda, while the EU's role is more constrained, fitting into the international labour division. 
• Pax technologica – The economy balances between pro-global business interests and pro-local political constraints, where 'local' refers to cooperative yet competitive groups of countries. Despite the drive for economies of scale and scope, increased regulation and stricter borders have led to more fragmented supply chains focused on suppliers within mega-regions of preferential partners, prioritizing stability over efficiency. The EU acts as a nexus for these external and internal pressures, embodying the "Brussels Consensus." 
• Re-match – The development of nations and regions is shaped by their unique paths in a diverse international landscape, where proactive and coordinated policies are increasingly relevant. After a period of rapid expansion, Big Tech's growth has slowed, giving way to innovative cross-regional and trans-sectoral entities that thrive in a complex economy with active public sector involvement. The EU plays a key role in fostering network building and protecting vital components of the modern economy, balancing citizen engagement and global fragmentation. 
• Closet liberalism – In this scenario, commercial and financial integration advances, with power increasingly crossing national borders and impacting state sovereignty. Large multinationals, particularly tech monopolies, influence public governance, though their maturity leads to higher costs and poorer quality. This environment, characterized by a network of competition authorities, presents opportunities for decentralization, particularly at local and city levels, while the US prioritizes its interests and the EU advocates for market order, with internal members reinterpreting rules for their benefit. 

Overall, the experts concluded that Europe needs its own leading actors in the digital world. The key question remains how compatible they would be in an existing market and what they would mean for competition and equality in Europe. EU-based research and development startups receive a lot of offers from bigger tech giants, calling for closer monitoring of the global connectivity of ecosystems to avoid the gobbling up of in-house expertise.

Grappling with Big Tech scenarios raised issues tied to ethics, for which project TechEthos provided feedback. This project, which seeks to create ethical guidelines for emerging technologies, aims to define potential ethical implications of future technologies. They believed the scenarios were well defined but lacked a focus on societal and ethical implications. When examining technological risks, the scenarios focused on whether specific technologies prioritised the achievement of their intended functions, rather than considering the ethical implications and transformations these technologies might undergo. Their pointers turned toward copyright issues and the ways in which creative generative companies are restructuring their human labour. They asked scenario experts how a responsible innovative model for Big Tech might look so that new narratives can be strived towards.

Project PLUS offered a step in that direction by analysing how the platform economy affects work, welfare, and social protection, employing an innovative approach that spans multiple cities. From drone deliveries to automated driving systems, from the artificial intelligence of home assistant devices to the digitization of agriculture, they stressed that today it is the major platform economy players like Amazon, rather than the public sector, which develop patents for new technologies. This could be a feature of scenarios with a prominent role for the EU.

One participant argued in favour of building the capacity for data analysis for public purposes. While the business sector can do this efficiently, the public sector lags behind. They argued that the public sector should be empowered with the capacity to exploit data this way. At the same time, a greater effort is needed to use data repositories in Europe. However, large companies already have a big head start, thus increasing the competition with existing big data infrastructures.

The capability to exploit data proves as important as the technologies themselves, indicating that the future of Big Tech will not only be shaped by technological advancements but also by the mastery of data utilisation. This intertwining of data exploitation and technology underscores the potential for even greater influence and innovation in the years ahead.

This project aims at:

i) providing timely foresight intelligence and forward-looking policy briefs to the European Commission for purposes of R&I policy on the following topics:

• Futures of interpenetration of criminal and lawful economic activities 
• Futures of Science for Policy in Europe 
• Futures of using nature in rural and marine contexts in Europe
• Futures of Social Confrontations
• Futures of Green Skills and Jobs
• Futures of Big Tech
• Futures of innovation and IP regulation

ii) providing a hub for Europe’s R&I foresight community and a space in which foresight agencies and researchers can share knowledge and tools;

iii) networking EU supported R&I projects with important foresight elements and promoting their results to policymakers, including via Horizon Futures Watch quarterly newsletters;

iv) promoting broad public engagement with foresight for R&I policy, including stakeholders as well as the public and covering all sections of society, from scientists and engineers to policy-makers, artists, intellectuals and engaged citizens.