Posted just two hours ago, the statement by the U.S. Secretary of State marks a troubling inflection point in transatlantic relations. Framed as a defense of free speech, it challenges the legitimacy of European measures designed to counter disinformation and foreign interference at a time of active cognitive warfare.
The statement by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio goes far beyond a technical disagreement over the regulation of digital platforms. It draws a line of fracture across the Atlantic whose strategic implications must be fully understood. That line could, over time, harden into a genuine political and normative wall between Europe and the United States.
Such a situation is unprecedented. For many European nations, it evokes only one historical parallel: the memory of the Berlin Wall, the symbol of a Europe divided by antagonistic power logics. Yet the comparison reveals a fundamental paradox. The wall now taking shape is not meant to contain an external threat; it is being erected against the protective mechanisms Europe has developed in response to a clearly identified contemporary threat: cognitive warfare.
For this is precisely what is at stake. Modern conflict no longer confines itself to military, economic, or energy domains. It now fully occupies the informational, cognitive, and symbolic space. Its targets are no longer only territories or infrastructures, but public opinion itself—its capacity for discernment, its cohesion, and ultimately its free will. Cognitive warfare seeks to distort perceptions of reality, to artificially polarize open societies, and to weaken their collective ability to decide sovereignly.
Under the ambiguous banner of “free speech,” the American position tends to delegitimize European efforts to counter organized, large-scale, transnational disinformation campaigns. Yet these campaigns are neither spontaneous nor neutral. They are embedded in long-term strategies, of which Russian information practices now provide a well-documented example, and they are amplified by platforms that have become structural vectors of cognitive warfare.
It must be stated clearly that the “bridge” now seemingly being built bears no resemblance whatsoever to the one established by the Marshall Plan to save West Berlin from the Soviet blockade.
Where that historic bridge aimed to preserve freedom, stability, and democratic sovereignty in the face of overt coercion, the current dynamic tends instead to **objectively converge with the interests of the Kremlin, by weakening Europe’s capacity to defend itself in the informational domain.
This convergence may be neither claimed nor intended. It is nonetheless strategically legible. By challenging the legitimacy of European safeguards against interference and manipulation, it undermines what European states are fully entitled—and indeed obliged—to regard as matters of sovereignty, informational integrity, and defense, understood in their contemporary sense, which unequivocally includes the cognitive domain.
Labeling these protective measures as “extraterritorial censorship” amounts to denying the very nature of the conflict in which European democracies are now engaged. What is at issue is not freedom of expression as such, but its deliberate instrumentalization as an influence weapon, designed to fracture open societies, erode trust in institutions, and compromise citizens’ free will.
By conflating an absolutist defense of free speech with a refusal to recognize cognitive warfare as a fully-fledged domain of conflict, the United States runs a double risk: weakening its European allies, and exposing its own society to the very same manipulation strategies.
It is deeply troubling that Europe—already on the front line of these threats—now finds itself facing a historic ally that no longer appears as a partner in the defense of democratic resilience, but rather as an increasingly unfriendly counterpart on the decisive issue of informational integrity.
No power is able to design the free will of people. The duty of each is to protect and elevate it.
En attendant la Renaissance 