Nick Clegg, the former global affairs chief at Meta, has sounded a warning over the growing entanglement of politics and technology, describing it as a troubling development for the internet’s future.

Speaking Friday on CNBC’s Squawk Box, Clegg argued that innovation and governance are best kept apart.

“I generally don’t think that politics and tech innovation mixes very well,” he said. “I think it’s quite good when they kind of keep each other at a certain, respectful distance.”

His caution came at a moment when President Donald Trump’s new agreement with China over TikTok has once again placed a consumer app at the center of a global power struggle. The deal, announced in an executive order on Thursday, creates a joint-venture company to manage TikTok’s U.S. operations, with Oracle tasked to control cloud services and oversee security.

A Forced Sale Born Out of Politics

TikTok’s future in the U.S. has been contested for years. Washington lawmakers have long argued that ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, poses national security risks because of potential access to American user data. During his first term, the Trump administration escalated those concerns into action, threatening to ban the app outright unless it was placed under U.S. oversight. The Joe Biden administration upheld the move with the signing of legislation designed to force TikTok’s divestment.

That ultimatum effectively forced ByteDance to accept a restructuring — widely seen as a political maneuver as much as a security measure. Oracle, a company with longstanding ties to Washington, emerged as a trusted custodian of TikTok’s U.S. data. The arrangement was designed to calm fears of surveillance while preserving the app’s availability to millions of American users.

ByteDance and Chinese officials have so far refrained from commenting on Trump’s latest executive order, but the lack of response underscores the delicate balance Beijing must strike: defending a successful global product without appearing to capitulate to U.S. pressure.

Clegg highlighted two critical areas where scrutiny is needed: the safety of American data and control of TikTok’s algorithm. The latter, he argued, will be “quite difficult” to share or replicate, given how closely algorithms are tied to a company’s intellectual property.

He also warned that government-driven efforts to silo data risk triggering a global domino effect. Citing India’s “hard data localization” law, Clegg said if every country starts demanding that data remain within its borders, “the open data flows that drive the internet will start eroding.”

Tech and Nationalism: A Growing Collision

The TikTok saga underlines a wider trend of national security increasingly becoming inseparable from technology policy. Both Washington and Beijing have embraced nationalist tech agendas. The U.S. has poured billions into reshoring semiconductor production and restricting Chinese access to advanced chips, while China has doubled down on state-driven programs to achieve self-reliance in areas like artificial intelligence and cloud infrastructure. Beijing has also restricted the operations of many U.S. tech companies in China.

This rivalry makes neutrality nearly impossible for global tech firms. Companies that once operated on the premise of borderless innovation are now forced to align with the strategic priorities of the nations where they operate. The TikTok case is just one in a series of battles — from Huawei’s exclusion from Western telecom networks to U.S. restrictions on Nvidia’s chip exports to China — that show how deeply entangled national security and technology have become.

Clegg pointed to India as a potential turning point in the global debate. He described the image of Prime Minister Narendra Modi standing alongside Chinese President Xi Jinping as “striking,” warning that if India follows China’s lead in walling off its digital ecosystem, the vision of a free and open internet could unravel.

“If India starts emulating China and starts trying to sort of cut off India, much like China has done from the rest of the internet … I think that would be terrible for the kind of global open principles that the internet was based on,” Clegg said.

The Internet’s Future in Question

Trump’s TikTok deal may address Washington’s immediate concerns, but it leaves unanswered questions about the direction of the global internet. Analysts note that each forced restructuring, ban, or localization effort nudges the web further away from its founding principles of openness.

Clegg believes the major risk is that political imperatives will continue to outweigh technical neutrality. In that scenario, technology firms — no matter how innovative — will be pulled into the gravitational field of state power, eroding the very openness that made the internet transformative in the first place.

As Bitcoin mining profits increase dramatically in 2025, more investors are looking for free cloud mining apps that will allow them to make crypto money without costly hardware or their electricity bill. These apps have become a success way that opens the passive income stream for both new and seasoned users.

FY Energy is the one that tops all of them. The company with a $20 free trial, daily payouts, and clean mining locations is changing the mining for free cloud apps to a new business model. Comparison to other platforms is shown below.

1. FY Energy — The Leading Free Cloud Mining App

FY Energy is a safe choice for a user as it was ranked the top mining app of 2025. It creates a winning scenario and caters to professionals by offering them a trial with zero risk and powerful high-yield contracts additionally.

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How FY Energy Wins Here: FY Energy is different from other apps as it allows trial mining combined with high-profit scalable contracts, making it possible to have the best of both worlds.

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FY Energy Contract Packages

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2. StormGain — Built-in Exchange but Limited Free Mining

StormGain is a platform for trading that has an integrated wallet and mining feature.

• Strengths: User-friendly app, wallet integration, and instant exchange access.
• Weaknesses: Free mining is limited every day, with very low returns.
• How FY Energy Wins Here: FY Energy’s $20 free trial offers a true daily profit, that is, a daily income far more than the one you get from the free mining.

3. Genesis Mining — Established but Outdated

Genesis Mining is the company that started cloud mining the longest time ago, and it still operates data centers all over the world.

• Strengths: Brand with a history, clear and long-term contracts.
• Weaknesses: No free trial, very few coins (BTC), and contracts usually freeze your money for a long time.
• How FY FY Energy Wins Here: FY Energy has multiple coins and short-term contracts that create instant user access and risk-free trial participation.

4. NiceHash — Marketplace Flexibility but Hardware Dependent

NiceHash is a platform that links up the purchasers and the vendors of computational force.

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• Weaknesses: It is necessary for users to have their mining rigs or to lease a hash power in order to make it too complicated for the beginners.
• How FY Energy Wins Here: FY Energy’s application has no requirement for hardware, no need for any technical skill, and no setup—profits just start automatically.

5. CudoMiner — Multi-Coin but High Energy Costs

CudoMiner is mining software for the desktop that maximizes the user’s profits through coin switching.

• Strengths: The software has good functionalities like multi-coin support, payout flexibility, and optimization features.
• Weaknesses: The program works in a manner that it requires users to have powerful PCs, and the electricity consumption is high and the results vary with market conditions.
• How FY Energy Wins Here: FY Energy provides daily payouts that are known in advance and come from renewable-powered data centers—there are no electricity costs for the users.

6. MinerGate — Beginner-Friendly but Unprofitable

MinerGate is an intuitive application that users are allowed to mine collectively.

• Strengths: Easy setup, a large number of altcoins supported.
• Weaknesses: The problem with mining is that the earnings are extremely low and the hardware is still required.
• How FY Energy Wins Here: FY Energy offers real profits from cloud mining contracts even during the free trial, unlike MinerGate whose returns are negligible.

Conclusion

The first-hand strength of each of the platforms StormGain, Genesis Mining, NiceHash, CudoMiner, and MinerGate is unarguably their respective well-roundedness. While this may be true, these platforms still struggle with the problem of restricted free mining, hardware dependency, as well as issues with the level of profitability being too low.

In every aspect, FY Energy is superior to them with its free trial, high-profit contracts, renewable-powered data centers, and guaranteed daily payouts, the best free cloud mining app in 2025.

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Google has rolled out its new, lower-cost AI Plus plan to more than 40 countries, aiming to bring advanced AI features to markets where its standard $20 monthly subscription has been out of reach.

The plan, first introduced in Indonesia earlier this month at Rp 75,000 (about $4.50), is priced at around $5 per month in most countries. In select markets such as Nepal and Mexico, Google is offering a 50% discount for the first six months.

The rollout includes countries across Africa, Asia, and Latin America, with Angola, Bangladesh, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Egypt, Ghana, Indonesia, Kenya, Mexico, Nepal, Nigeria, Philippines, Senegal, Uganda, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe among those named.

What Google’s AI Plus Plan Offers

Subscribers get access to Gemini 2.5 Pro, Google’s most advanced model, alongside creative tools such as Flow, Whisk, and Veo 3 Fast for image and video generation. The plan also unlocks more capabilities on NotebookLM, Google’s AI research assistant, allows AI use inside Gmail, Docs, and Sheets, and includes 200GB of cloud storage.

The bundle highlights Google’s push to make AI not just an optional add-on, but a seamless part of daily productivity and entertainment.

A Direct Counter to OpenAI

The move comes just one day after OpenAI expanded its sub-$5 ChatGPT Go plan to Indonesia, intensifying competition between the two companies. Both still offer their $20 per month flagship subscriptions, but the cheaper tiers are designed to attract users in markets where affordability drives adoption.

One conspicuous omission from Google’s rollout is India, where OpenAI launched ChatGPT Go earlier this year. Industry analysts note that India remains one of the most critical growth markets for generative AI, though regulatory and infrastructure concerns may explain Google’s delay.

Two Different Strategies: Bundling vs. Pure AI

Google’s approach is built around ecosystem lock-in. By weaving AI into widely used services like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets—and pairing it with cloud storage—Google is tying generative AI to tools that already have billions of users. The strategy mirrors its playbook with Android and Google Workspace, where integration made switching costs high for users and enterprises alike.

OpenAI, by contrast, has focused on a “pure AI” approach. Its ChatGPT products are positioned primarily as conversational assistants and productivity enhancers without a broader ecosystem of default tools. The model allows OpenAI to innovate rapidly in AI capabilities, but leaves it dependent on partnerships—such as its multibillion-dollar tie-up with Microsoft—for distribution and integration.

Emboldening the contrast, Google is betting on breadth, embedding Gemini across everything from email to spreadsheets to creative tools, while OpenAI is betting on depth, doubling down on ChatGPT’s conversational and reasoning abilities as the centerpiece.

Why Emerging Markets Matter

Both companies appear to be converging on the same conclusion: to dominate the AI subscription market, they must first win in emerging economies, where hundreds of millions of potential paying users are price-sensitive.

This mirrors the smartphone wars of the past decade, when affordability in markets like Africa, Asia, and Latin America shaped global leaders. Adoption in these regions could decide which company sets the standard for everyday AI use worldwide.

Google’s bundling strategy may give it a stickier advantage, especially in places where Gmail and Docs are already widely used. OpenAI, meanwhile, will need to convince users that ChatGPT alone is compelling enough to justify the subscription—even without an ecosystem of tools built around it.