Law.com: The CLOUD Act, Encryption and the US-UK Standoff in 2026

Law.com/ALM recently published an article by William Li, Counsel at Axiom, examining the escalating encryption dispute between the United States and the United Kingdom—and why in-house counsel must move beyond legal analysis to strategic risk management when perfect compliance becomes impossible.

Li traces the trans-Atlantic standoff from the 2018 CLOUD Act through Apple's January 2025 clash with UK authorities over Advanced Data Protection, revealing how conflicting mandates have placed multinational companies in an untenable position: privacy framed as liberty in one jurisdiction, access as safety in another. The analysis explores how the FTC's August 2025 warning letters transformed domestic consumer protection into an international policy weapon, potentially forcing organizations to choose between weakening encryption or facing regulatory action on both sides of the Atlantic.

Li argues that in-house counsel's role isn't to declare which framework is morally right, but to help executives see beyond rhetoric, assess operational consequences, and devise defensible strategies for navigating what he describes as "the choppy waters of the real world" where today's best practice might be tomorrow's legal requirement—or banned technology.