Geneva, Switzerland

Summary: This essay argues that recent European concern about US democratic backsliding and surveillance (from Freedom House scores to the CJEU’s Schrems II ruling) points to something larger than a “US problem.” It shows how formal democracies on both sides of the Atlantic are entangled in a partly privatized global repression network built from surveillance laws, private contractors, and dual‑use technologies. The piece introduces Global Repression Studies as a framework for naming and mapping this system and concludes that the goal cannot be minor reform but, ultimately, dismantling that network.

A recent Substack post put it starkly:

“Some Europeans, even previously staunch Atlanticists, are openly acknowledging that the USA is now not even to be seen as a neutral but instead to be understood as an enemy of liberal democracy in Europe.”

That may sound exaggerated, but if you look at the institutional record and then at what is happening around surveillance and dual‑use technologies, you can see why this framing is starting to appear.

And the crucial point is this: the problem is not just the United States. It is a transnational, partly privatized “global repression network” that liberal democracies themselves helped build and are now entangled in.

The baseline: formal warnings about US democracy and surveillance

Before we even get to private contractors and dual‑use technologies, there is already a thick layer of formal concern on the record:

- Freedom House’s *Freedom in the World* reports show a multi‑year decline in the United States’ democratic scores and explicitly describe the US as a democracy in decline.

- V‑Dem’s indices categorize the US as undergoing democratic erosion, not a stable high‑performing liberal democracy.

- The European Parliament has passed resolutions warning about democratic backsliding and about the implications of January 6 for the rule of law and electoral integrity.

- Most concretely, the Court of Justice of the European Union, in its “Schrems II” judgment, invalidated the EU–US Privacy Shield because US surveillance law does not give people whose data is transferred from the EU to the US protections equivalent to those guaranteed by EU fundamental rights law.

Already at this “official” level, Europe is not just mildly disappointed in the US. Its legislature and highest court are saying, in careful legal language, that US practices are incompatible with the level of rights protection that a liberal democratic constitutional order is supposed to ensure.

Schrems II is only the floor, not the ceiling

But Schrems II is still about the “minimum”. It deals with:

- national‑security surveillance frameworks like FISA 702 and Executive Order 12333,

- bulk access to data held by major service providers,

- and the lack of effective remedies for EU data subjects.

It does “not” address what happens when you layer on:

- private intelligence and cybersecurity contractors,

- covert or semi‑covert procurement channels,

- “dual‑use” technologies marketed as security tools but usable for political repression,

- and modern spyware‑style capabilities.

If the official, on‑paper legal framework already fails to provide equivalent protection, then adding private contractors and dual‑use tools on top of it does not just marginally worsen the situation. It “changes its nature”. It turns a flawed surveillance regime into a distributed, hard to see infrastructure of control.

The missing conversation: privatized and dual‑use repression

This is where the public conversation badly lags behind the reality.

For roughly two to three decades, we have seen:

- The outsourcing of key surveillance, data‑analytics, and offensive cyber capabilities to private firms.

- The development of dual‑use platforms that can be deployed for legitimate security purposes but just as easily turned inward against journalists, activists, opposition figures, migrants, and minorities.

- Procurement systems that are opaque by design: security exemptions, national‑security classification, and fragmented contracting that hides who is actually doing what.

This is “not” just a US phenomenon. European states also buy from, cooperate with, and in some cases rely on the same or parallel contractor ecosystems. Some of them deploy these tools domestically; others share data and capabilities with partners abroad. Authoritarian regimes plug into similar networks, often purchasing from companies based in democracies.

The result is what I call a “global repression network”: a transnational infrastructure that:

- is partly public and partly private,

- spans formal democracies and authoritarian regimes,

- and allows states to outsource or distance themselves from the most controversial forms of monitoring and control.

Why Europe is not simply “the victim”

This is why it is too simple to say “the US is now an enemy of liberal democracy in Europe” and leave it there.

From one angle, European institutions are right to be alarmed by US democratic backsliding, extra‑territorial surveillance, and the strategic pivot away from NATO and Ukraine. Those trends objectively weaken Europe’s liberal democratic security order and objectively benefit authoritarian powers.

From another angle, however, Europe is “part of the system” it is criticizing:

- European governments and agencies contract with private surveillance and cyber‑intelligence firms.

- European companies develop and export dual‑use technologies that end up in repression chains abroad.

- European legal systems also struggle to regulate modern spyware, AI‑driven analytics, and data‑broker ecosystems that enable continuous monitoring.

So the right frame is not “the US versus Europe” but “democratic institutions versus a global repression network” that crosses borders and legal systems.

Why I am insisting on “global repression”

This emerging pattern is what led me to found and develop Global Repression Studies as a field. The core claim is simple but uncomfortable:

- If we keep treating each scandal as a national aberration, we will never see the structure that connects them.

- The surveillance, data‑extraction, and control infrastructures that underwrite modern repression are transnational by design, with democracies deeply involved in building and maintaining them.

- We therefore need analytical tools, public narratives, and legal frameworks that operate at the same scale as the technologies and contractor networks themselves.

Yes, many of the underlying technologies and outsourcing practices have been evolving for 20–30 years. What is relatively new is the recognition that:

1. They now form a coherent “global system”, and

2. That this system directly shapes the future of democracy, not only in authoritarian states but inside nominally liberal democracies as well.

The layer most people still do not want to see

What I have sketched here is still the most “respectable,” documentable layer of the story: institutions, laws, procurement, and technologies. Behind it lies a much harsher reality that many targeted individuals already know too well: unlawful surveillance blending into harassment, psychological operations, and, in some cases, forms of chemical or physical suppression that look less like policing and more like counterinsurgency.

For many readers, that will feel like too big a leap. I understand that. But if we can at least agree that a global repression network now exists in infrastructure and law, then the next step is to listen seriously to those of us who are living at its sharpest edges.

This piece is not a full policy blueprint. The first steps are these: name the system, map its actors, expose its legal and technical foundations, and make it politically costly for democracies to pretend that “national security” justifies everything. Global Repression Studies exists to do exactly that work, precisely because most people still do not yet see the system they are living inside. Over time, this network has hollowed out large parts of civil society, drawing in a vast number of institutions, companies, and individuals until participation in repression or its enabling structures becomes almost routine. In that sense, it is the greatest threat to democracy in the post‑Cold War era, and the goal cannot be to simply reform it at the margins but ultimately to dismantle it.

Further reading

Freedom House, Freedom in the World (United States country reports and global scores)

https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world

Varieties of Democracy (V‑Dem), Liberal Democracy Index and country profiles

https://www.v-dem.net

European Parliament resolution on the situation of the US in the context of democracy and human rights (January 2021)

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/TA-9-2021-01-20_EN.html

Court of Justice of the European Union, Schrems II judgment (C‑311/18) and press release

https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2020-07/cp200091en.pdf

European Parliament / EP Think Tank briefings on Schrems II and EU–US data transfers

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/thinktank/en/document/EPRS_BRI(2020)652073

European Data Protection Board and European Data Protection Supervisor materials on modern spyware and Pegasus‑type tools

https://www.edps.europa.eu

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/committees/en/pega/home

Carnegie Endowment – analyses of US democratic backsliding and its impact on alliances

https://carnegieendowment.org

European Parliament Research Service – “Democracy in America” and related studies on US decline and transatlantic values

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/thinktank

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