Category: Cybersec.cafe

Profit-driven platforms turn users into the product. Europe must build sovereign AI infrastructure or surrender cognitive agency.

AI risk “AI eats its users” in Eurasia Group’s Top Risks for 2026 is not about sentient machines, but human incentives pushing platforms to exploit users, data, and democracies at scale. Platforms capture attention, shape behaviors, and often do so without adequate rules or informed consent, much like social networks before. If AI’s goal shifts to keeping users engaged for monetization rather than helping them, users become the product, just as in social media.

What “AI Eats Its Users” Really Means

“Eating the user” is not a metaphor for Skynet, but for three interlocking dynamics.

First, hyper-personalized manipulation: models optimized not for accuracy or user benefit, but for engagement, addiction, and behavioral nudging in politics, consumption, and opinion-formation. Reinforcement learning loops learn exactly which prompts keep users online and which narratives maximize outrage or conversion.

Second, data and attention arbitrage: platforms using user prompts, private documents, and interaction histories as raw material to train systems, with opaque consent and weak controllability for individuals. This is the classic surveillance capitalism model amplified by AI assistants embedded in productivity suites, browsers, OSes, and search, turning every interaction into training data.

Third, algorithmic power concentration: a small group of frontier model providers sits at the core of information flows, mediating what citizens, workers, and decision-makers see, learn, and believe. This creates de facto infrastructural power without commensurate accountability, similar to social media – but now embedded into work, education, governance, health, and defense.

In this sense, AI does not just “eat” users individually; it erodes the informational substrate of democratic deliberation and potentially rational policy-making.

Attention Economy 2.0

Social media optimized for scrolls and outrage; AI supercharges it with personalized prompts. Models might prioritize engagement over accuracy, delivering fast food answers and dopamine hits per response. Infinite info access meets shrinking judgment: environments reward non-thinking – the predictable outcome of systems designed to capture and monetize our most finite resource: attention.

The Monetization Imperative

With forecasted AI investments reaching $3 trillion by 2030, platforms face intense pressure to deliver returns. Social media monetized through scroll time and ad targeting; AI will likely follow suit, measuring prompt sessions and harvesting query data to fuel revenue models. This profit-maximizing trajectory -while not inevitable – poses a credible risk of users becoming the product once again, their interactions powering the very systems they depend on.

Epic Digital Surrender Deepens

Building on our Epic Digital Surrender: Europe outsourced clouds to American hyperscalers; social networks to US/China; and now we cede AI cognition to US/China stacks that mediate reasoning and decisions. Regulation shines (AI Act, GDPR), but lacks frontier models or compute sovereignty. In short, we users gift US and China with our (limited) attention.

Path Forward: Sovereignty Over Extraction

Beyond rules, Europe must act decisively. Build owned infrastructure: publicly backed GPU clouds and open-ish models accessible to SMEs. Ban extraction: separate assistants from ads and nudges, mandate granular opt-outs from training data use. Establish audit power: independent red-teaming and transparency mandates on non-EU platforms. Harden democracy: treat AI disinformation as cross-border threats and invest in AI literacy for institutions and citizens.

AI sitting in every decision loop demands constitutional terms. Europe must evolve from extractable users to sovereign citizens with agency – or get systematically consumed.

A European Response Beyond “More Regulation”

A credible response must go beyond risk catalogs and compliance checklists.

For a European, sovereignty-focused perspective, at least four axes are non-negotiable:

Build and own essential AI infrastructure
Publicly backed, independently governed European GPU and AI cloud capacity, accessible to startups, academia and SMEs at competitive terms. Strategic support for open(ish) European models and tooling, with clear standards for safety, auditability and interoperability that prevent lock-in without banning scale.​

Hard constraints on extractive business models
Enforce real separation between “assistant” roles and advertising/behavioral targeting – an AI assistant should not double as a persuasion engine. Mandate data minimization, explicit training-consent options for users and enterprises, and robust rights to opt-out of model training without losing access to essential services.​

Radical transparency and auditability
Independent European capabilities to perform red-teaming, systemic risk assessments and content provenance checks on major AI platforms, including non-European ones. Obligations for providers to expose meaningful system cards, training data categories, and interfaces for third-party audit – not just ethics reports.​

Protect the democratic sphere as critical infrastructure
Treat election-related information operations, AI-driven disinformation and influence campaigns as cross-border security threats, not merely content moderation issues. Invest in media literacy, AI literacy and institutional resilience (courts, parliaments, regulators with technical depth), so that human institutions do not become mere consumers of AI-produced narratives.​

If AI is going to sit in the loop of every decision, Europe must define the constitutional terms under which that is acceptable.

From “Users” to “Citizens with Agency”

For cybersec.cafe’s audience, the key message is that the “AI eats its users” scenario is not a distant, abstract risk. It is already visible in the concentration of AI traffic around a tiny set of platforms; the reuse of enterprise and personal data to train models without granular, intelligible consent; and the dependence of European businesses, administrations and even regulators on AI services whose strategic roadmap is set in Silicon Valley or Shenzhen.​

An European answer cannot just aim to “protect users”. It must aim to create citizens with agency in an AI-mediated world: people, institutions and companies that can choose, contest, switch and, when necessary, build their own cognitive infrastructure instead of being quietly consumed by someone else’s model.​

Belgium’s top Cyber Chief just dropped a bombshell: Europe has “lost the internet” to US tech titans, ceding control of clouds, AI, and cyber defenses to American hyperscalers. While the continent dreams of data sovereignty, reality bites – keeping info 100% in the EU is “keep on dreaming,” says Miguel De Bruycker of the Centre for Cybersecurity Belgium.

Digital Domain Disaster

US giants dominate Europe’s digital pipes, from AWS to AI tools vital for fending off Russian DDoS waves hammering EU.

De Bruycker slams EU regulations like the AI Act for “blocking” homegrown innovation, urging an Airbus-style cyber push instead of futile US-bashing. Geopolitically, this leaves Europe hooked on Yankee clouds amid Trump-era tensions, where even cyber rescue ops lean on Silicon Valley saviors.​

Italy’s Pasta Power Play – Enter Italy, Europe’s carb conqueror!

While digital sovereignty crumbles, Rome scores a geopolitical win: Trump slashes proposed 92% tariffs on Italian pasta to as low as 2.3% (for Molisana) after Meloni’s lobbying blitz. Facing a $770M US export hit, Italy flipped the script – Garofalo duties drop to 13.98%, others to 9.09%, dodging a spaghetti apocalypse.​

Carbs vs. Clouds Showdown

In a nutshell: EU lost cloud/internet to US hyperscalers, cyber defenses rely on US amid Russian attacks – but carb sovereignty is achieved, our delicious pasta can now flood US shelves unscathed. With our priorities now intact, our politicians should pivot to rebuilding cyber forts, and we responsible Europeans should demand it: fund startups, ditch overregulation, reclaim the cloud. Sovereignty starts at home, one bite… sorry one byte (sorry for the lapsus) at a time.

Europe’s Innovation Trap

Europe lacks the muscle to innovate at scale, trapped in regulatory quicksand while China engineers export empires despite its property woes.​

EU trails US and China in AI, semis, quantum patents – replicating breakthroughs takes twice as long. Digital sovereignty dreams demand €500B+ for cloud/AI parity, but fragmentation kills density. Even Mercosur deal stalls amid farm lobbies, leaving export niches like pasta as lifelines – not tech.

Without US market lobbying wins, “cavoli amari” indeed (cavoli amari – sorry for the Italian here – is traslated to “bitter cabbages,” and I cannot find a more appropriate way to put it: it’s our idiomatic “sour grapes” or “what a pickle”, evoking the sour regret of missed opportunities or tough breaks).​

China’s Export Juggernaut

China masks 5-year property crash by prioritizing tech: high-tech output, trade surplus via solar, EVs, batteries.

Builds “Chinese alternatives” ecosystem – state-scale fabs, AI niches like surveillance – exporting self-sufficiency at low prices, leapfrogging petrodollar traps in Africa/LatAm.​

Deeper Geopolitical (sour) Bite

Pasta tariffs slashed? Cute win, but superficial – EU’s real frailty is innovation drought, forcing US dependency and failed diversification (no Mercosur yet). China, crisis-hit yet resilient, exports not just goods but autonomy blueprints. Politicians: Scale like Airbus for cyber/cloud.

Us Europeans: Demand VC floods, reg cuts. Reclaim bytes before carbs are all we export.​

The Case for Liability and the Hidden Costs of Security Features

A Call for Vendor Accountability

Sixteen years ago I just started my career in Information Security (cyber was not a thing yet) and I remember that Bruce Schneier, a renowned security expert, was arguing that software vendors should be held liable for the security flaws in their products. In a 2008 article, Schneier highlighted the economic inefficiencies stemming from insecure software, noting that the costs of these insecurities are unfairly borne by users and organizations rather than the vendors themselves.

Despite the passage of time, the landscape has not significantly changed. So many vendors continue to transfer (yes transfer as in a Risk Management Strategy) the risk of security breaches to their clients, leaving them to deal with the eventual fallout. Schneier’s argument remains compelling today.

By making vendors financially responsible for security breaches, we can realign incentives to prioritize secure software development. This shift is crucial in an era where data breaches are increasingly common and costly.

Something changed with the California Consumer Privacy Act back in 2018. It was a good beginning (I know it wasn’t enough but we have to start somewhere). The introduction of the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) is another step in the right direction.

The SSO Tax: A Barrier to Security

One issue that exemplifies the misalignment of incentives in the software industry is the so-called Single Sign-On (SSO) tax. The SSO tax refers to the additional charges that software vendors impose for providing SSO functionality, a feature that enhances security by allowing users to access multiple applications with a single set of credentials. While SSO can significantly improve security and streamline user experience, many vendors place it behind expensive paywalls.
You can find some examples in the SSO Wall of Shame. Increases range from +10% to 49900%. I really like their example: “Imagine buying a car and the manufacturer asks for an extra payment to unlock 100% of the braking power. Not offering security features if they already exist in your product means a vendor doesn’t care about your security.”
Sadly, the result is that this pricing strategy not only hinders the adoption of essential security features but also exacerbates the economic burden on smaller organizations, which are often the least equipped to handle security breaches.

The Privacy by Design and Privacy by Default Principles

The European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) introduced 8 years ago the principles of Privacy by Design and Privacy by Default, which mandate that data protection measures should be integrated into the development of business processes and systems from the outset. In particular, Privacy by Default mandates that the highest privacy settings should be the default configuration, which includes robust authentication mechanisms.

In short, these principles aim to ensure that personal data is adequately protected throughout its lifecycle, minimizing risks and enhancing user trust.
Am I the only one seeing this, or could charging these kinds of fees for basic security features like SSO or MFA be seen as contrary to these principles?

The Cyber Resilience Act: Another Step Forward

The European Union’s Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) is a recent legislative effort aimed at improving cybersecurity for products with digital components. The CRA introduces mandatory cybersecurity requirements for manufacturers and retailers, ensuring that products are secure throughout their lifecycle. This includes harmonized rules for bringing products to market, obligations for planning, design, development, and maintenance, and a duty of care for the entire lifecycle of such products.While the CRA is a significant step in the right direction, it is not enough on its own. The Act addresses many issues, such as the low level of cybersecurity in many products and the lack of adequate security updates. However, it does not fully resolve the problem of vendor accountability. The CRA mandates that products must meet certain cybersecurity standards, but it does not go far enough in holding vendors accountable for breaches caused by their products.

Conclusion: Aligning Incentives for Better Security

The call for vendor liability in the event of security breaches is more relevant than ever.
The current economic model does not incentivize vendors to prioritize security. By imposing liability, we can ensure that vendors take the necessary steps to secure their products, ultimately benefiting consumers and the broader market. Moreover, the SSO tax and similar practices undermine the principles of Security/Privacy by Design and by Default.
In conclusion, holding vendors accountable will force them to eliminate additional costs for essential security features. This would be a critical step towards a safer digital environment.
It is time for policymakers, industry leaders, and Data Protection Authorities to create a framework that prioritizes security and fairness for all users.

The Parkerian Hexad

Yesterday, the first of May, Fabrizio Cilli and I engaged in a deep discussion about the adequacy of the CIA triad in today’s cybersecurity practices, particularly in the context of AI, OT, and connected devices, where safety is a significant concern. Our conversation was sparked by a thought-provoking post, which suggested to dust off the Parkerian Hexad that foresee the addition of three dimensions to the traditional CIA Triad, emphasizing the need to expand our security models to ensure AI systems are also safe for human use.

CIA-S

Tom Cornelius’ alternative model, the CIAS, incorporates Safety into the traditional CIA Triad. This model acknowledges the limitations of the CIA Triad in the era of AI, IoT, and OT, where the safety component becomes essential for guiding risk management decisions. Also this model reflects a growing recognition that cybersecurity Risk Assessment frameworks must evolve to address the complexities of modern technology.

Different dimensions

In my humble opinion, Safety and the CIA components may indeed operate on different dimensions. A breach in integrity, for example, could have direct implications for safety, showing that these aspects are intertwined yet distinct. When considering risk, it’s clear that cyber risk and safety risk are two interlinked concerns that must be assessed together.

An integrated multidimensional Physical-Cyber security approach

Today, I had the opportunity to read Enrico Frumento’s work, which presents an integrated IT-OT assessment and governance model for improved holistic cybersecurity
This approach considers the IT and the physical world as separate with an overlap, – and this resonates with our discussion

Moreover this approach also introduces the idea of evaluating a different dimension of safety, as well as another dimension of trust, which is becoming increasingly relevant in the AI field.

This leads us to a multi-layered cyber risk analysis framework, such as the one depicted in the image below. This framework calls for a comprehensive approach to cybersecurity, covering layers from the geographic and physical levels up to the government layer. Each layer represents a domain of existence and a potential vector for cyber threats, requiring a thorough analysis to secure all fronts.

Incorporating Safety and Trust into this multi-layered model is a logical step, as it allows us to address the nuanced ways in which different layers can impact human safety.

For instance, a vulnerability at the network layer could compromise the safety of an OT system, leading to real-world consequences. By adding Safety as an explicit layer or dimension to this framework, we ensure that risk analyses account for potential physical harm to individuals and society, not just data and system integrity.

Conclusion

In conclusion, while the CIA Triad has served as a foundational model for cybersecurity and has stood the test of time, the evolution of technology demands that we expand our frameworks to include Safety and Trust.

A multi-layered approach might provide a logical structure for such an expansion, ensuring that we can protect against both digital and physical threats in an increasingly interconnected world.