Managing Director @CanShieldInst + co-author of The Big Fix. making sovereignty make sense.
Toronto
Joined September 2009
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And sign up for our weekly newsletter, The National Interest, where we make sovereignty make sense. canadianshieldinstitute.ca/n…
Vass Bednar retweeted
Better together.
The best result of this week’s summit in Montreal is a deeper co-ordination of Canadian and European digital sovereignty efforts that allow us to take a big step forward together.
Read the full analysis here: canadianshieldinstitute.ca/u…
Vass Bednar retweeted
The Godfather of Canadian underwater drone companies has just been sold to a foreign entity, apparently without a national security review and despite interest from domestic competitors.
nationalpost.com/opinion/htt…
Vass Bednar retweeted
Carney has been extremely weak on protecting the Canadian technology sector.
In the past year alone the following Canadian tech startups have been acquired by US buyers:
KUBRA-Bill payment software that reaches 40% of Canadians and Americans
$372m
GlobalVision-AI powered packaging inspection for food and pharmaceuticals $195m
HyperLume-Developed data centre interconnects that 10x power efficiency and bandwidth
$92m
PathFactory-AI B2B marketing used by Nvdia, Cisco, and LG
$22m
Conelabs-Photos to 3D models for infrastructure inspection
$ undisclosed
Taalas-Silicon purpose built for AI models
$ pending
Apollo Insurance-AI powered digital insurance broker
$ undisclosed
Welbi-Software for senior living communities
$ undisclosed
HyperYou-AI management and assistance for 911 dispatch centres
RibbonAI-job interview candidate screening AI
$ undisclosed
"Canadians should be upset not only that these multinationals took Canadians’ hard-earned taxpayer dollars and enriched their foreign shareholders, but that governments encouraged this unsustainable model of economic development." Zing.
Opinion: The branch-plant economy is breaking in Canada. Now what? theglobeandmail.com/business…
Vass Bednar retweeted
Online spaces are captured by oligarchs and saturated with slop—and they’re exacerbating humanity’s worst impulses. It’s time to start over. buff.ly/QfAROmv
Was awesome to see our small + mighty think tank mentioned in here 3x. 🤓
Major projects, the trade war and Ottawa’s deluge of planned defence spending shaped many of the asks for this year’s federal budget. The Logic reviewed more than 1,350 submissions to see what business wants.
thelogic.co/news/special-rep…
This is super wonky, and a a very interesting file re: sovereignty concerns. Seems like a space where industry (understandably) wants the gov. to move as fast as possible. What's the right balance? Glad to read @clabrow on it all.
The Financial Data Exchange is the most widely used technical standard for financial data sharing in North America, but Ottawa has questions about its American roots.
thelogic.co/news/open-bankin…
Or as I like to say: the digital economy is big, yo.
Canada buys more in digitally deliverable services from the U.S. than what we sell in autos, steel, aluminum, softwood lumber, potash and electricity.
Read our full analysis here: canadianshieldinstitute.ca/u…
This was really well done. I was glad to read it this weekend.
Globe editorial: Ukraine’s cautionary tale on digital sovereignty theglobeandmail.com/opinion/…
Vass Bednar retweeted
Advertising is the economic engine of the internet, and both Canada and Europe are grappling with the same problem.
Now might be the right time to think about ways that we can build sovereign alternatives to American adtech.
canadianshieldinstitute.ca/u…
Vass Bednar retweeted
Canada should align with Europe in confronting the dominance of U.S. Big Tech.
The upcoming Canada-EU summit offers a rare chance to build a common regulatory front on digital policy.
Ottawa should stop treating the tech giants as untouchable partners and start treating them as powerful interests that need firm rules.
Working with Europe would give Canada more leverage to protect privacy, competition and democratic accountability online.
A coordinated transatlantic approach would also help prevent American platforms from setting the rules for everyone else.
Canada should use the summit to signal that it stands with Europe in demanding stronger oversight of Big Tech.
The latest from the Globe's business commentary, by Keldon Bester, Giorgos Verdi: theglobeandmail.com/business…
This was a blast, and the episode covers so much ground. The show took on the double entendre of "Selling Canada." I was there and I *still* listened this morning, ha. Dan Curiak drops some bombs at ~30:24.
The Live episode of Gloves Off at El Mocambo is up wherever you get your podcasts! We rocked the joint the same way the Rolling Stones, posing as The Cockroaches, did in 1977! youtube.com/watch?v=pq0NUTUI…
Vass Bednar retweeted
Wikipedia, which went online in January, 2001, is now the greatest compendium of human knowledge ever assembled. Yet in the last four years, it has lost 25 per cent of its traffic—more than a billion monthly visitors. Since the site recruits its editors from its audience, this dip also threatens its growth and quality. Many users have been intercepted by A.I. “It’s a cruelly ironic fate,” Julian Lucas writes. Wikipedia was the single most important training corpus in the history of artificial intelligence. Now artificial intelligence is threatening its survival. Read Lucas’s report on the future of Wikipedia: newyorker.com/books/under-re…
Vass Bednar retweeted
US Tech industry's coziness & alignment with Trump WH has the side effect of making countries not want to adopt American technology if they can avoid it. In other words, it surrenders soft power. Elon Musk is making the risks very clear wsj.com/world/ukraine-starli…
Vass Bednar retweeted
We're publishing report cards on Canada's biggest pension funds, looking at how much they invest in Canada.
Today we're looking at PSP Investments. Like many of their peers, their track record of investing in Canada is not great, and details are opaque.
canadianshieldinstitute.ca/r…
Vass Bednar retweeted
The price of eggs punched a hole in the efficiency alone thesis of antitrust ON ITS OWN terms
When the cost of eggs spiked in 2022, economists said bird flu alone was to blame. Anyone who suspected corporate price-fixing was dismissed as a crank.
Inside the alleged egg cartel the experts said couldn’t exist.
politico.com/news/magazine/2…
Vass Bednar retweeted
Ontario Senator Andrew Cardozo says a new-and-improved Canada Post could manage email, business-to-business banking lending, digital verification, and potentially AI governance, as a way to 'reclaim the public interest' with digital systems.
hilltimes.com/2026/10/16/sen…
Vass Bednar retweeted
Extremely alarming, and precisely the kind of change to terms of service that @linamkhan argued should result in algorithmic disgorgement among other remedies. It's essentially the death penalty for an AI model.
Vass Bednar retweeted
Wrote about the "verification tax," the work it takes to make A.I. output usable -- which is putting a very human bottleneck on A.I. automation.
nytimes.com/2026/10/10/busin…
