[mindslight]

> Does the EU simply want to protect consumers or is there an argument that they are the law to unfairly targeting American companies?

Straight out of the corpos' DARVO. The motive isn't really relevant. The fact is that the GDPR creates an individual-empowering legal concept of having some control over the dossiers being kept on us, which is something sorely lacking in the US.

> I'm not interested in defending the trend as much as I am in understanding it

If you're actually interested in understanding, there is a very short answer that is as old as time: power corrupts.

We, by which I mean the collective tech/hacker community (especially those directly working for the surveillance industry), promulgated technical architectures that agglomerated too much centralized power. From that, the vectoralist class / capital taking hold of those reigns of power and using them for oppression of individuals was inevitable (motive: economic extraction).

Of those early individualist ideals, some earnestly believing founders fought and/or retired. Some changed as they became more powerful. And I'm sure some were simply masking from the start. I don't think picking through individuals to suss out the distinction really matters.