The White House announced today the creation of a new intelligence task force dedicated to one mission: reverse-engineering exactly how European regulators keep finding creative ways to fine American tech companies billions of dollars.
“Nobody fines like Europe,” the president said during a Rose Garden press conference. “They’ve got a playbook. A beautiful playbook. And we’re going to find out what’s in it.”
The initiative, officially called Operation Regulatory Archaeology, will deploy a team of economists, lawyers, and one guy who “really understands the internet” to Brussels, where they plan to conduct interviews with EU officials. When asked whether this constituted espionage, a White House spokesperson clarified that it was simply “aggressive fact-finding with a budget.”
The timing is not coincidental. Google, Apple, Meta, and Amazon have collectively paid the EU over $40 billion in fines over the past decade—amounts that would make a small nation’s GDP blush. The president wants those fines “entirely reversed,” though he has not explained the legal mechanism by which an American president might accomplish this.
EU Commission officials responded with a shrug so audible it registered on seismographs across the continent. One Brussels insider noted that the Europeans have simply been following their own rulebook all along, but acknowledged that Americans rarely read the fine print—which, ironically, is exactly why they keep getting fined.
The task force begins work next month. Bring your own espresso.