When Bureaucrats Pick Fights with Billionaires
Welcome to the new world order, where regulatory frameworks meet raw political power.
Thierry Breton, the man who spent years threatening Elon Musk with sternly worded letters, just got banned from America. The Trump administration slapped visa restrictions on the former EU Commissioner for alleged “censorship” of American speech. Musk’s response to Breton’s DSA compliance threats? A meme telling him to “fuck your own face.” Then Musk helped elect a president who banned Breton from the United States.
I’ve spent the last decade working across the AI landscape. I’ve watched Europe perfect the art of regulation while America built trillion-dollar companies. The Breton saga is just the latest symptom of a deeper dysfunction: European institutional machinery has become structurally and intellectually incapable of competing in a fast-moving technological landscape.
The sanctions
On December 23, 2025, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced visa bans against five individuals for leading organized efforts to coerce American platforms to censor, demonetize, and suppress American viewpoints. The targets: Thierry Breton (former EU Commissioner), Imran Ahmed (CEO of Center for Countering Digital Hate), Clare Melford (Global Disinformation Index), and two leaders of Germany’s HateAid.
State Department officials called Breton the “mastermind” of the Digital Services Act and cited his August 2024 letter to Musk, sent hours before Musk’s planned Trump interview, as evidence of using EU law to threaten American companies.
The European Commission “strongly condemned” the decision. Breton invoked McCarthy. All of it on X, of course (oh the irony!). But here’s what matters: the bans exist. Breton can’t enter America. The EU issued press releases. One side makes laws; the other side makes travel plans impossible.
Two engineers, two paths
Here’s what kills me about Thierry Breton. The man graduated from Supélec in 1979, one of the best engineering schools in France, at a time when computing was actually exciting. He had every opportunity to build something.
Instead, he became a professional manager, then a minister, then an EU bureaucrat.
Compare that to another engineer: Elon Musk. Physics degree from Penn, dropped out of Stanford’s PhD program after two days to start companies. Built PayPal. Built SpaceX when everyone said private rockets were impossible. Built Tesla when everyone said EVs were a joke. Current net worth: somewhere between $648 billion and $754 billion. The first person ever to exceed $300 billion, then $400 billion, then $500 billion, then $600 billion, then $700 billion.
Breton’s path: engineer → manager → bureaucrat → visa-banned former official. Musk’s path: engineer → founder → founder → founder → richest person in human history.
One builds. One regulates. Guess which one is banned from entering the other’s country?
Breton’s actual track record
Let’s talk about what Breton actually accomplished.
At Atos (2008-2019), he executed the classic European playbook: aggressive acquisitions funded by debt. He bought Siemens IT Solutions for €850 million, Bull for €620 million, and Syntel for $3.4 billion in 2018. By 2019, Atos had approximately €11 billion in revenue and was included in the CAC 40.
Then, Breton departed to become an EU Commissioner, reportedly selling tens of millions in shares.
What happened next? Atos collapsed. The company racked up €4.65 billion in debt, posted a record €3.44 billion loss in 2023, and watched its share price crater by over 97% from its 2017 peak. A succession of CEOs followed Breton. The French government is now negotiating to buy strategic assets for €700 million, a fire sale for a company once valued at approximately $15 billion.
Breton’s response in March 2024? “I have no responsibility, zero.” He claims he left the company “with no debt.”
This is the man who sent letters threatening Elon Musk. The same man who oversaw the debt-fueled acquisition spree that destroyed Atos. The champion of European “digital sovereignty.”
The Breton-Musk confrontation
The clashes between Breton and Musk followed a predictable script: Breton issues threats wrapped in regulatory language; Musk mocks him publicly; repeat.
When Twitter withdrew from the EU’s voluntary disinformation code in May 2023, Breton warned of consequences. After the Hamas attacks in October 2023, he gave Musk a 24-hour ultimatum about misinformation, threatening “penalties” for non-compliance.
The August 2024 letter was peak Breton. He warned of “potentially serious consequences” and threatened “full use of our toolbox.” The European Commission distanced itself almost immediately. One EU official reportedly said DSA implementation was “too important to be misused by an attention-seeking politician in search of his next big job.”
Musk’s response? This. Breton resigned one month later.
The EU did eventually fine X €120 million in December 2025 for DSA violations, its first-ever DSA penalty. Context: that’s pocket change for a company Musk bought for $44 billion. The fine is a cost of doing business, not a deterrent.
The next generation: Cédric O and the revolving door
Think Breton is bad? Meet Cédric O, the prototype for Europe’s next generation of tech-regulatory grifters.
O was Macron’s campaign treasurer in 2017, then his adviser at the Élysée, then Secretary of State for Digital Affairs from 2019 to 2022. He was the architect of France’s “start-up nation” initiative and championed a €3 billion state investment in AI. During his time in government, he was a reliable critic of US tech and a stalwart proponent of regulation.
Here’s where it gets interesting. In April 2023, barely a year after leaving government, O co-founded Mistral AI (read: “was given a golden ticket in exchange of his services”). His initial investment: €176.10 for 17,610 shares at one centime each.
By December 2023, those shares were worth €23 million. By October 2024, with Mistral valued at €6 billion, his stake had grown to approximately €70 million. With Mistral’s latest valuation at €11.7 billion as of September 2025, his stake is certainly worth over €100 million today. Not bad for a “public servant.”
But wait, it gets better. The French ethics watchdog (HATVP) had explicitly forbidden O from lobbying his former colleagues in the French government or taking stakes in tech companies. How did he get around this? He bought the Mistral shares through his consulting firm, Nopeunteo. When asked about this workaround, the HATVP declined to comment. Surprise, surprise.
And what did O do with his newfound position? He lobbied aggressively against the AI Act, the same type of regulation he’d championed as a minister. He organized an open letter signed by 150 European executives warning that the AI Act would “jeopardise Europe’s competitiveness.” He met with EU officials and MEPs to push for exemptions for “foundation models”, exactly the kind of AI that Mistral builds.
The AI Act rapporteur, Brando Benifei, remembers meeting O: “He told me we shouldn’t have strict rules. He was insistent, full of conviction... but he didn’t convince me.”
O’s justification? “I’m fighting for European and French startups because they are our future. I did it in government, now I am doing it for Mistral.” When asked if he considers himself a lobbyist, his answer was quick: “No.”
Here’s the kicker: O sits on the French government’s Interdepartmental Committee on Generative AI, alongside Mistral’s CEO Arthur Mensch. The same committee that advises the government on AI policy, which O is simultaneously lobbying to weaken.
Mistral’s CEO celebrated the final AI Act: “In its final form, the AI Act is perfectly manageable for us.” Mission accomplished.
And what about Mistral’s vaunted “European sovereignty”? Two months after the AI Act passed, Microsoft announced a €15 million investment in Mistral. As Corporate Europe Observatory noted, Mistral “did the dirty work” for Big Tech, lobbying against regulations that would have affected American giants too.
This is the European model: regulate in public, profit in private. Champion sovereignty while selling to Microsoft. Fight for the public interest while turning €176 into €100+ million.
What Europe should do instead
Here’s what I’d tell European policymakers if they’d listen:
Stop regulating what you don’t build. The EU has become a regulatory superpower for an industry it doesn’t have. Only two European companies (SAP, ASML) rank in the global top 25 tech firms by market cap. You can’t regulate your way to innovation.
Fix the capital problem. European venture capital investment lags far behind the US. Money follows opportunity, and opportunity follows freedom.
Stop the revolving door or embrace it honestly. The Cédric O situation is grotesque. Either enforce ethics rules that mean something, or admit that government service is just a stepping stone to private enrichment and let the market judge accordingly.
Build infrastructure at scale. The EU is investing in “distributed” AI infrastructure across member states, while Amazon alone plans to spend more than $100 billion on infrastructure and technology in 2025. Distributed sounds nice; concentrated works.
Accept that speed matters. While the US can pivot quickly, as evidenced by the dramatic policy shifts between administrations, Europe’s approach means that by the time a decision is finally made, the world has often moved on. The AI Act took years to negotiate. GPT-4 shipped in that time.
Stop sending letters to billionaires. It’s embarrassing. Musk responded with a meme. He was right to.
Conclusion
The Breton visa ban is symbolic, but the symbolism matters. Europe spent two decades building regulatory frameworks while America built companies worth more than European GDP. Now those companies have direct political power, and Brussels’ paper threats look increasingly hollow.
Thierry Breton brought regulatory frameworks to a power fight. Cédric O turned government service into a €100+ million payday while lobbying against the regulations he once championed. This is the European model: regulate in public, profit in private, then act surprised when the Americans stop taking your calls.
The EU still has 450 million consumers. It still has talented engineers. It still has the theoretical power to make market access conditional on compliance. But when your regulatory champion is banned from entering the country whose companies he regulates, when your next generation of “public servants” are already positioning for their paydays, and when the world’s richest man responds to your formal letters with obscene memes, it’s time to try something different. Radically different.
Merry Christmas.