AI Agents Governance, Quantum Encryption & South Korea Smart Cities

The State of Tech — The European Edition of Monday 13 April 2026: Enterprise organizations deploy AI agents at scale while governance frameworks lag dangerously behind, creating serious compliance and security risks for European companies under GDPR and the EU AI Act. A PwC study reveals that 74% of AI's economic value is captured by just 20% of companies, threatening to lock in structural inequality across Europe's SME-heavy economy. The episode also covers accelerating quantum threats to encryption infrastructure, the escalating global AI arms race between superpowers, South Korea's strategic smart city exports to Southeast Asia, and growing public backlash against data center construction in the US and Europe.