GENEVA – The International Institute for Democratic Evolution and Abstinence (IIIDEA) announced a groundbreaking new committee today, tasked with “closing the technological governance gap” by forming an even larger, more diverse collection of subcommittees. The initiative, dubbed “Project Semantic Overlord,” promises to deliver “actionable frameworks” and “paradigm-shifting white papers” by 2040, or whenever the next big tech trend makes the current frameworks obsolete.

“For too long, the digital realm has operated outside the purview of democratic oversight, by which we mean it operated without our direct, centralized control,” stated Dr. Kendra Finch, IIIDEA’s newly appointed Chief Bureaucracy Officer. “Our goal is not to innovate, but to delineate. Not to build, but to blueprint. Not to understand, but to... well, to meet regularly about understanding.” Dr. Finch highlighted the committee’s commitment to “multi-stakeholder dialogues,” which sources confirm means inviting Google, Apple, and Tencent to present their latest quarterly earnings under the guise of “industry insights.”

The committee’s inaugural meeting reportedly focused on drafting a charter for a subcommittee on “Digital Due Diligence Protocols” and a working group on “Interoperability Metrics for Cross-Platform Regulatory Harmonization.” One attendee, speaking anonymously because he was technically just fetching coffee, noted, “It was mostly acronyms fighting acronyms. Someone mentioned blockchain, and half the room started frantically Googling.” Industry observers, however, praised the move. “It’s fantastic,” commented Apex CEO Brent Stacks, whose company just acquired three rival AI firms and 200 million user datasets without any governmental oversight whatsoever. “The more committees they form, the less time they have to actually regulate anything. It just buys us years to keep building our monopolies unmolested.”

Critics, primarily anyone under 40, suggested the move was akin to commissioning a portrait of a galloping horse by having five blindfolded sculptors each contribute a single hoof. Yet, IIIDEA insists this “democratic project” will ensure global “tech sovereignty” – a term now officially defined by the committee as “the collective ability of nations to vaguely comprehend why their citizens are suddenly obsessed with a new app the committee hasn’t heard of yet, approximately 18 months after its peak.”

The first order of business for Project Semantic Overlord will be deciding whether to use Microsoft Teams or Zoom for its weekly five-hour meetings.