Secretary of State Marco Rubio is fighting to ensure American tech companies retain sovereignty over foreign national’s data, Reuters reported Wednesday.
An internal diplomatic Rubio signed criticized the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) as a prime example of imposing “unnecessarily burdensome data processing restrictions and cross-border data flow requirements,” according to Reuters. The message also said that laws attempting to take control of data from American tech companies would “disrupt global data flows, increase costs and cybersecurity risks, limit Artificial Intelligence (AI) and cloud services, and expand government control in ways that can undermine civil liberties and enable censorship.”
The cable also reportedly accused the Chinese government of packaging its technology with “restrictive data policies” in order to grow its sphere of influence, as well as its “access to international data for surveillance and strategic leverage,” Reuters reported. Diplomats have been tasked with tracking “proposals to restrict cross-border data flows and supplied talking points promoting the Global Cross-Border Privacy Rules Forum,” in order to “support the free flow of data and effective data protection and privacy globally.”
The Forum, established in 2022, states on its website that one of its goals is “facilitating data protection and the free flow of data globally.”
The Trump Administration launched “freedom.gov” in February 2026, reportedly an “online portal” to provide access to banned content in Europe, according to Reuters. The project’s website states, “Information is power. Reclaim your human right to free expression. Get ready.”
A State Department spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation post-publication that the department does not comment on material which is reportedly leaked.
The spokesperson added that the U.S. generally staunchly backs international data flows that benefit economic growth and innovation as long as they also take into account privacy, safety and free speech. The U.S. also seeks to oppose regulations deemed to impose an unnecessary burden and to partner with other countries on data policy, the spokesperson told the DCNF.
Rubio has focused his energy against foreign censorship during the second Trump administration. In December 2025, the secretary wrote in an X post that the department would “take steps to bar leading figures of the global censorship-industrial complex from entering the United States.” Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy Sarah Rogers echoed the sentiment, writing in an X post, “if you spend your career fomenting censorship of American speech, you’re unwelcome on American soil.”
Meanwhile, European leaders continue to crack down on speech. On a Feb 18. visit to India, French President Emmanuel Macron said, “Free speech is pure bullshit if nobody knows how you are guided to this so-called free speech, especially when it is guided from one hate speech to another.”
Tech companies have also attacked American freedom of speech abroad. The House Judiciary Committee released a report in February 2026 detailing tech companies “censoring Americans’ speech in the U.S.” in order to comply with the EU’s “Digital Services Act,” including the censorship of factual information. According to the report, the campaign began as early as 2015, when the European Commission began pressuring platforms to “censor speech more aggressively.”
Rubio axed the State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC) in April 2025, an agency supposedly established to “diminish the influence of international terrorist organizations.” The secretary wrote in a press release that the agency “spent millions of dollars to actively silence and censor the voices of Americans they were supposed to be serving.” Rubio said the GEC was “antithetical to the very principles we should be upholding” and it was “inconceivable it was taking place in America.”
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect the comment from the State Department spokesperson sent post-publication.
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