Apple CEO Tim Cook suggested today that for the average person to have their data privacy protected, technology needs to be regulated by the government. “We all have to be intellectually honest, and we have to admit that what we’re doing isn’t working,” Cook said at the Time 100 Summit today in New York. “Technology needs to be regulated. There are now too many examples where the no rails have resulted in a great damage to society.”

He pointed to Europe’s stringent GDPR data privacy rules as an example that US lawmakers could slowly emulate, while suggesting that Europe could continue to improve on those rules as well. “Europe is more likely to come up with something. GDPR is a step in the right direction,” Cook added.

“We are advocating strongly for regulation — I do not see another path at this point,” Cook said.

“I refuse to have one because it shouldn’t exist”

At the same time, Cook says Apple is also responsible for improving data privacy for users — a topic that’s recently become part of the company’s marketing strategy as well. “We cannot look for the government to solve all of our problems,” he said. He also told Time that “Apple doesn’t have a PAC [political action committee],” meaning an organization that helps fund political candidates. “Apple’s probably the only large company, or one of the few, I would think that doesn’t have a PAC. I refuse to have one because it shouldn’t exist.”

“The company donates zero to political candidates,” Cook stressed.

Cook says he believes individual donations are more transparent than a PAC, saying that he personally makes donations to causes he believes in. As one example, he described how 300-plus Apple employees were allowed to stay in the US because of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy, and as the CEO, he publicly supported these people.

Cook was also asked by Time about a study that showed how people touch their screens thousands of times a day. He replied humorously, “Well, you shouldn’t be doing that.” (Here’s more about the screen time debate.) He later added, “If you’re looking at your phone more than you’re looking at people’s eyes, you’re doing the wrong thing. We don’t want people using their phones all the time. This has never been an objective for us.”