I’d like to expose the lack of technical expertise behind British online child safety policies, challenge Ofcom’s credibility, and explain why existing parental controls should be prioritised over compulsory identity verification. To anyone with expertise in online child safety, this is more word soup from another British MP. I’ve advised the British government on these matters, and I can say with confidence that despite their confident statements, politicians demonstrate a lack of basic technical knowledge. The same applies to Ofcom. After multiple meetings with Ofcom and the British Home Office about SMS fraud, I was told the Home Office would write to Ofcom asking it to stop misleading the public about SMS fraud because it was siding with mobile operators instead of the public. During my final meeting with Ofcom, I asked why it continued to repeat claims I’d already demonstrated were technically false, including through testing that involved every UK mobile network operator. My experience has left me convinced that Ofcom is causing more harm than good. The same problem is evident in the debate about online child safety. Smartphones already have excellent parental controls that millions of parents and schools use to block unsuitable apps, websites and services, restrict content and set time limits. Yet politicians and Ofcom continue to demand that tech companies redesign their services for children while pushing compulsory identity verification. They ignore existing parental controls that allow parents to protect their children without forcing everyone else to surrender their privacy and online anonymity. If child safety was really a top priority, why aren’t they teaching parents how to use these controls? Journalists should be asking politicians and regulators two simple questions. Why aren’t you educating parents about the parental controls already built into smartphones, which independent technical experts in child safety and mobile security consider highly effective? And why are you demanding that social media and other companies make their content safe for children while simultaneously arguing that children should be banned from those same services? You need to pick one. Making every adult service safe for every child is technically impossible. Preventing children from accessing unsuitable services is already possible through smartphone parental controls. Parents can decide what’s appropriate for their own children without forcing an entire country to surrender its privacy and online anonymity. The relentless push for compulsory identity verification, while ignoring existing parental controls, tells me that protecting children isn’t the real priority.

Jensen Huang told CBS News that AI executives like Dario Amodei and Sam Altman promote doomsday scenarios to escape existing legal liabilities. Huang said the public should read between the lines: AI developers aren’t asking for stricter oversight. They’re lobbying to be exempt from existing laws covering product liability, enforcement of contracts and unauthorised access. I made the same point when the first security incident was reported. Jensen said that existing laws already cover computer misuse, damage caused by software and system failures. Promoting fear of existential threats is a deliberate public relations tactic because it helps companies replace corporate liability with laws written specifically for AI and approved by governments. Those laws protect developers from responsibility when their systems fail or cause harm. Politicians reinforce this protection by invoking competition between countries. Ted Cruz uses the AI race against China to excuse harms before they happen, saying that regulatory delays will leave the United States behind its foreign rivals. I described this as giving tech companies a get out of jail free card for every harm they cause and every law they break in the name of a so-called race against China. Cruz said if there are going to be killer robots, he wants American killer robots. That treats the prospect of harm as acceptable provided America produces the technology first. By presenting AI development as an urgent national security priority, politicians give tech companies permission to bypass safety standards, disregard environmental damage and avoid legal accountability. Huang’s statements deserve scepticism because he has his own commercial interests. However, his assessment of executives’ motives is accurate. Tech developers and politicians manufacture fears of existential threats and competition over national security to replace normal legal liability with specially written regulations that protect their power.

AI doesn’t commit crimes. People do. Saying “AI hacked a company” is like saying a rock broke into a car. The tool didn’t decide to act, accept risk or assume liability. The media needs to stop reporting AI as the perpetrator. If Google builds, deploys or controls the system, Google owns the consequences. Blaming “AI” removes the human and corporate actor from the sentence. That removes accountability with it.