Thank you so much for that.
We are not a policy organization and we have refrained in our work...we have focused specifically on having a neutral attitude toward policy so that we can have a more sober capacity for risk assessment. We usually leave the policies in the hands of the experts—that's you all.
I have said this before, but I think it bears repeating. I spoke to a four-star marine general here in the United States, who commanded NATO's forces. His name is General John Allen. I asked him, “General, have you ever won a battle without a map of the battlefield?” He said it has never happened. That's what's happening with the current attempts to control social media. We have no idea what to control. We can't determine signal from noise.
Parliamentarians like you are being deliberately misled by the platforms you're supposed to be managing. As the threats emerge in the platforms, the incentives for the platforms to manage those threats are limited. They're limited because managing threats isn't their business model. They're limited by their shareholders, so I don't blame them. It's not totally their fault. Okay, I blame them a bit, but I will say that, really, the conversations we need to have need to be informed by data, and Parliament has the right to demand that data. It has the right to be able to see how the things.... Its job is to manage. It needs to be able to see those things.
I think the most important part of how we manage the threats of the future relies on a capacity for rapid research. That is the function I would most recommend that Parliament adopt—