AAs the new Federal Chancellor, Olaf Scholz has to deal with his own “uncharted territory”, as an overwhelmed Angela Merkel once called the Internet. Only today the digital terrain looks much more rugged and dangerous. Merkel tolerated the shenanigans of Mark Zuckerberg and the arrogance of Eric Schmidt. But the earlier problems of digital society — some surveillance here, some behavioral manipulation there — were at least predictable. With the convergence of technology, finance and energy – that highly explosive combination also known by the acronym “crypto” – Scholz now faces a far more difficult task, a complexity of entirely different proportions. Neither German nor European politics is prepared for this.
The exact political color of the new terrain is not yet known, but its populist orientation is obvious. And while Merkel only had to deal with the fact that Yanis Varoufakis, the controversial Greek finance minister, was toying with the idea of his own digital currency at the height of the euro crisis, the problems that Scholz and other European leaders will soon have to grapple with could well be , come from anywhere.
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