After years of staring down the world’s biggest tech companies and setting the bar for tough regulation worldwide, Europe has blinked. Under intense pressure from industry and the US government, Brussels is stripping protections from its flagship General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) — including simplifying its infamous cookie permission pop-ups — and relaxing or delaying landmark AI rules in an effort to cut red tape and revive sluggish economic growth. The changes, proposed by the