CODEOCRACY: How the EU's Green Deal Creates Systemic Change & Counters Authoritarian Drift
Using distributed networks to build a digital wall says the quiet part out loud
The EU's Green Deal transformed from a climate and circular economy initiative into legislation that uses computer code to assert strategic autonomy, strengthen national security, enforce EU standards, and counter nearby corruption. Systemic change is often promised, seldom delivered. But, if new EU laws work as intended, I think we have to call encoded technology the cause and systemic change the effect. The legislation champions values-based trade through supply chain tracing—which combined with Web3’s transparency—checks authoritarianism. I argue that the EU’s climate legislation—especially the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR) is a case study on how distributed networks can drive systemic change. I’m saying that supply chain tracing on distributed networks accelerates sustainability, strengthens democracy, makes human rights visible and reshapes global power.
Understanding Web3 is like explaining how to use a smartphone to someone who's never seen one. But, the ripening of Web3 technology, with its potential for transparent and decentralized systems, is how climate policy became central to the EU's thinking about economy, security, values, and democracy. Russia's invasion of Ukraine, COVID-19 disruptions, a swaggering China and Web3’s readiness catalyzed this shift. The EU responded to the new geopolitical threats with a huge strategic flex that leveraged its economic weight and market power to expand and toughen its climate plan by building a digital wall. Supply chain tracing on distributed networks now addresses climate, counters geopolitical threats, and promotes European values. In other words, supply chain tracing code is how they counter strongmen.
The EU's structural power and the Web3 capabilities embedded in the ESPR are tools for systemic change. Web3 frameworks and associated transparency drive the circular economy transition, enhance sustainability, and counter anything that does not match EU values. The EU's Green Deal strategy of "growth without consumption" addresses climate change by establishing circular systems to capture the economic value wasted in linear systems of take, make, waste. This approach addresses environmental concerns and acknowledges geopolitical implications; recovering and reusing imported minerals weakens the resource monopolies exploited by authoritarian regimes. By decoupling prosperity from raw materials imports and integrating supply chain tracing via distributed networks, the EU establishes circular economies, reduces carbon emissions, and undermines the economic pillars of authoritarianism.
Governance in Code
Web3 technologies are redefining governance. If distributed networks are simply protocols and code, governance becomes whatever communities choose. On-chain tracing systems can create and manage resilient, low-carbon supply chains, enforce sustainability standards, track resource flows and emissions, and maintain product lifecycle databases. The ESPR deploys these innovations, with Web3's smart contracts and distributed ledgers to activate systemic change.
"Agents" are a distinctive feature of Web3's AI and blockchain innovations, enabling dynamic, automated interactions without human intervention. In AI, agents are powerful because they can make final decisions autonomously. In blockchain contexts, agents—in the form of smart contracts—enforce policies and automate processes. Automations are key to achieving change at scale.
These agent-based systems are particularly powerful when applied to supply chains. Supply chain tracing systems are emerging as a new kind of exploitation-free digital institution—decentralized, transparent, and resistant to manipulation. The ESPR provides unprecedented visibility into supply chains, making it increasingly difficult for any actor, autocratic or otherwise, to hide environmental abuses, resource exploitation, or corruption. Transactions and resource transfers become visible and verifiable. Agent-based systems automate compliance, sustainability, and ethical standards. By embedding climate goals and democratic values into transactions, the ESPR creates an economic infrastructure inherently resistant to manipulation and cronyism.
The EU's Moral Authority and Global Politics
Over 80% of EU citizens back Green Deal policies as vital to maintaining quality of life. Internal support matters—especially as the U.S. and China fall behind climate commitments. The EU leverages public support to assert cross-border ESPR compliance for suppliers. Put simply, the EU is building a digital wall against products and countries that don’t share their values. I see this as a big plank in the realignment of trade among democracies with democracies and autocracies with autocracies.
Supply chain tracing across the product lifecycle—enabled by distributed networks—creates the circumstances to foster circularity. Tracking products from raw materials to end-of-life upholds environmental and ethical standards, reduces emissions, flexes EU values and prevents authoritarian regimes from exploiting opaque production processes.
Democracy by Design
The EU and US seem headed in different directions on climate and governance. The US Chamber of Commerce is suing the SEC and California over new climate disclosure rules. Project 2025 consolidates executive power and undermines democratic checks and balances. Conversely, the EU's "encoded government" embeds democratic principles, climate objectives, and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) directly into trade. Transparency, accountability, and climate remediation are a compelling alternative to authoritarianism and denial masquerading as freedom.
While the EU reinforces both climate goals and democratic values, the U.S. and China prioritize futuristic climate tech over immediate action. The EU’s transparent rules and distributed networks resist regulatory manipulation and autocratic capture. Encoding rules systemically harmonizes enforcement, buffers political shifts and prevents corporate capture of regulators. By making it harder to conceal environmental harm, traceability checks unfair enrichment and power consolidation.
The Fourth Industrial Revolution
The Fourth Industrial Revolution embeds technology and automation everywhere. The Metaverse creates life-like virtual experiences. AI makes the best expertise almost free. Distributed networks like Holochain create public technology infrastructure that enables community-based collaboration, management, and market ecosystems by delivering on promises around people, data, and money. This increases makers' bargaining power, shifts control to the network's edges, and drives systemic change.
Governance in Code is Normalizing
Governance in code is not a new concept. Estonia's X-Road forms the backbone of its popular e-governance system. Switzerland's Zug blockchain-based voting, and Taiwan's vTaiwan platform foster public participation in lawmaking. Blockchain-like capabilities are essential to digital governance at scale. Given the complexity of supply chains, the need for robust compliance mechanisms, and the sheer scale of the EU's €16.7 trillion GDP and €2.5 trillion in imports, the same is true for trade. This shift toward algorithmic governance enables real-time, data-driven compliance systems that function as builders, police, accountants, librarians, and trade negotiators to ensure the Green Deal's success. The EU's model is compelling and the public is likely to love the common sense of it. Authoritarians are likely to hate it.
Networks vs Networks
The EU's Green Deal, a climate initiative reconstructed into a digital wall, is a transformative leap in systemic problem-solving. By addressing a global crisis like climate change, we can fortify open societies and activate linked solutions. Encoding policies and operations in distributed networks, the EU creates transparent, accountable economic structures that redefine the balance between environmental sustainability, economic prosperity, and democratic governance via systems that repel bad guys. The EU's Green Deal demonstrates how distributed technologies can drive systemic change by strengthening democracy and open societies while tackling climate change and aligning economic growth within environmental limits.
Anne Applebaum writes that autocracies are now networks of actors. "If you're fighting the dictator of Belarus, that means he's backed by the Russians, and he has business deals with China, and he has support in the United Nations from Cuba. This network that they've created as a group is stronger than any one of them is alone."
Only networks can disrupt networks.
Disclosure: I’m working on a project to trace raw materials and handmades on Holochain.