<
https://pluralistic.net/2026/06/25/thieve-different/#your-margin-is-my-opportunity>
“It's not often that someone on a panel says something that makes my jaw drop,
but that's what happened earlier this week when the moderator of a panel I was
on in Toronto described jailbreaking an iPhone as "rampant theft of IP."
Some context: the panel was in Toronto, and the nominal subject was "digital
sovereignty," though all the panelists (except me) interpreted that to mean
"sovereign AI." All of their interventions were focused on how Canada could
build and operate its own AI, which I found very weird, since there is no
AI-related threat to Canadian sovereignty. If Donald Trump ordered OpenAI and
Anthropic to turn off all of Canada's chatbots tomorrow, nothing would change:
every firm, ministry and household would operate as per normal:
https://pluralistic.net/2026/06/18/their-trillions-our-billions/
Now, that's not to say that Canada doesn't have a digital sovereignty problem –
it really does! Donald Trump and US Big Tech have fused into a single entity
and Trump now orders US tech giants to terminate the online accounts of foreign
officials who displease him. When Microsoft turns off your Office365 account,
you lose your working files, your calendar, your address book, your email
archives, and the Outlook email address you use to log in to
every online
service:
https://pluralistic.net/2026/04/01/minilateralism/#own-goal
So while turning off Canada's chatbots would not inflict any real harm on
Canada, M365 terminations could paralyse any federal or provincial ministry,
any structurally important firm, and most Canadian households.
The threat doesn't stop there: Trump can also order Apple and Google to brick
any of Canada's iPhones or Android devices – terminating individual officials'
mobile access, or terminating whole provinces. It's not just iPhones either –
Trump can also brick any
tractor in Canada:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/08/about-those-kill-switched-ukrainian-tractors/
This is the
real digital sovereignty risk, and Canada needs to address it
now. But Canada can't – our hands are tied…by
us. In 2012, we passed a law,
the
Copyright Modernization Act, that criminalizes "jailbreaking," meaning
that Canadian companies can't go into business figuring out how to install
different app stores on phones and consoles, or change the firmware in tractors
to enable independent repair, or reliably export their cloud data to rival
Canadian services:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/26/babyish-radical-extremists/#cancon
Why did we pass this law? Because the Americans promised us free trade and no
tariffs on our exports if we agreed to it. That's a promise Trump tore up, but
we're still holding up our end of the bargain. That's
crazy. It means that
American companies can use Canada's courts to destroy Canadian businesses that
offer the Canadian people tools to help them escape Big Tech's sleazy ripoffs
of their data and cash.”
Via Rod Mesa and Susan ****
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
