https://archive.is/wD0Bz
Can europe escape the tech dominancy of the us? i highly doubt so, it is not difficult but rather a sisyphean task to make your own infra and move everything onto it, without even accounting for the gap in innovation while they are trying to do so given limited resources, manpower, the barrier becomes more impenetrable with every passing day, the best time for such measures was yesterday or maybe 15 years back, now it would be more apt to put this task to hercules himself for execution
the eu has started to sound remarkably like the pakis, "we will institute a commission, we will set up a fact finding" and voila, the problems are solved... maybe they need more regulations and red tapes to protect their curated european garden
Trump has fuelled anxiety among European governments and companies over privacy and data access and prompted concerns that the US could suspend or block the operations of US tech companies in Europe altogether.
Those operations are both deep and wide. Amazon, Microsoft and Google control more than two-thirds of the European cloud computing market. Google and Apple prevail in the mobile phone operating systems in the EU, while Google dominates the global search market. OpenAI’s ChatGPT is the leading artificial intelligence chatbot in Europe, while the social media platforms that millions of Europeans use are mostly US-owned.
Just as in defence, the transatlantic tech dependency has become a geopolitical liability, amplifying long-standing calls for Europe to invest more and even favour its own companies in procurement. In a symbolic nod to the new realisation, Henna Virkkunen, who started in December as the EU’s new tech commissioner — has the moniker “tech sovereignty” added to her title.
The Finnish politician wants to focus on Europe’s independence in areas such as quantum computing, AI and semiconductors. “These are identified as critical technologies and it’s important that we build up our own capacities here,” she told the Financial Times this month.
France’s Mistral AI is an example of Europe’s wider struggles to capitalise on promising starts in next-generation technology.
Once hailed as a potential global leader in AI, it has lost ground to US rivals backed by Big Tech groups and, like many others, was taken aback by the capability of China’s DeepSeek. Meanwhile, the bloc is struggling to balance the challenge of regulating AI with the need to attract enough investment and talent to increase the computing capacity in the bloc.
That leads directly back to cloud computing, an immediate priority when it comes to reducing reliance on US tech groups. As more governments, companies and citizens move data from on-premise servers to a cloud-based environment, data centres and their associated cabling have become critical infrastructure for modern life.
US companies dominate the European cloud market, prompting worries among European policymakers and industry leaders that US law, particularly the Cloud Act, could embolden the Trump administration to exert more leverage over European data — even if it is stored on servers located in Europe.
That is worrisome because Washington has also moved from complaining about EU regulation and enforcement actions on tech to challenging those decisions and “coupling that with threats around tariffs, sometimes even tying it to security decisions that could negatively impact the continent”, says Zach Meyers, of the Centre on Regulation in Europe (CERRE) think-tank.
Key institutions, including the European Commission, are now in talks with players such as OVHcloud to transition some of their cloud services away from US companies in order to enhance Europe’s digital autonomy.
While he refrained from confirming he would push for such clauses in the forthcoming cloud initiative, Séjourné did say that action was needed in areas in the private sector where Europe was totally dependent on one country, arguing that “in tech, we’re very, very dependent on the Americans”.
Marc Ferracci, the French industry minister, has been more specific, telling reporters that “Buy European” clauses should be applied to critical industries, adding that for him “cloud data centres, especially server infrastructure, is such a critical industry”.
Faced with the prospect of the playing field being tilted away from them, Big Tech is putting up a fight. In recent months, Microsoft, Google and Amazon have all announced so-called sovereign cloud offerings, designed to keep data and operational control within a specific geography, to reassure their European customers.
Microsoft’s top legal officer previously told the FT that if necessary, the company would take the US government to court to protect European customers’ access to its services, positioning itself as a “source of digital stability during a period of geopolitical volatility”.
Google is rolling out “air-gapped” solutions — where a client’s data does not have to be connected to other networks — and beefing up its sovereign cloud options in the EU. Amazon has introduced new sovereign controls and established independent governance for its European organisation.
In private conversations, several Big Tech lobbyists and executives also express confidence in their ability to continue dominating the European market given the paucity of homegrown alternatives and the lack of urgency among many consumers.
For Roure, of the CCIA, real sovereignty is more about managing dependencies by expanding free choice. “The true priority should be avoiding [a situation where] European users are locked in by a single cloud vendor and ensuring healthy competition — not forcing the use of certain companies at the expense of efficiency.”
But Big Tech’s latest initiatives have been met with some scepticism. Von Thun, at the Open Markets Institute, calls them “sovereignty washing” and warns Europeans “not to trust or treat it as a substitute for the actions needed to ensure true digital sovereignty”.
But investment is a key stumbling block to achieving those goals, even if more public procurement favoured European tech companies. EuroStack argues that investment of €300bn is needed over the next decade. Other estimates put the amount as high as €5tn.
Even if the EU could pool public and private financing to boost its digital infrastructure, as officials and researchers have argued it should, that risks taking too much time or not materialising at all.
The obvious example of this, cited so frequently it has turned into a cliché, is the Franco-German Gaia-X initiative, a network of linked cloud providers that hoped to challenge US cloud dominance in Europe.
“The EU has tried to use industrial policy in things like cloud computing in the past and they have been thoroughly unsuccessful,” says Meyers, of the CERRE think-tank. “The idea that we just need to try again but try harder seems to me an idea that requires a bit more scrutiny.”
“What we lack is not chips and data centres,” said Christian Klein, chief executive of Germany’s SAP, Europe’s biggest software group, on a recent call with reporters.
“We are lacking the people and the talent who can apply AI in the context of what we need in Europe.”
Other European officials and diplomats stress that the bloc is set to tread more cautiously. But as on the issue of defence spending, the tanker is slowly turning. “Europe sometimes wakes up late, but when it is awake, things happen,” says another senior EU official of the tech sovereignty debate.
Revcolevschi agrees. “This is truly on the agenda of our leaders,” he says, adding that increased awareness among chief executives and top politicians is now cascading down the decision-making ladder.
“Cloud, AI, digital . . . like defence, these are the dynamics for the next 20 years.”
they have talked bigly, the proof of the pudding though as ever would lay in its eating
