- Foreign technology companies cannot be entrusted with meeting Europe’s growing digital needs. This includes American big tech firms.
- Trump rarely hesitates to weaponise technological dependencies or attack the EU’s digital rules. A change of president in the future is unlikely to alter these dynamics.
- The EU should build an independent “stack” of technologies to shield itself from other powers weaponising tech against it. Building this “EuroStack” must begin where such risks are greatest, namely in the domains of space, chips, cloud computing and AI.
- The EU does not need to construct an entirely independent new tech ecosystem to strengthen its defences. Instead, it needs to build “just enough” capabilities in these key areas to extricate itself from its dependencies.
- American backlash against this effort is likely. But Europeans can make strategic concessions where necessary while keeping their eyes fixed on the sovereignty prize.
I think this really points out how futile it can seem:
It is the same picture when it comes to AI models. Mistral AI—Europe’s last hope in the sector—represents 2% of the world’s large language models (LLMs) market. Mistral AI also ranks bottom when it comes to capability benchmarks vis-à-vis its American counterparts, and its funding is dwarfed by companies such as OpenAI. It is indicative of the lack of European AI capabilities that many EU member state governments have chosen to sign strategic partnerships with American AI model providers instead of with European providers. For instance, Estonia and Greece commissioned OpenAI to integrate LLMs in their education systems while the European Parliament uses Anthropic’s Claude model for its archives.
It hurts to read this, same as when a European government announces X BILLIONS invested in weapons for the Ukraine! (Great!) The X Billions will be used to purchase American weapons (Bad)
There is a technology gap and you need to fill the gap with funding, but it seems like many Europeans aren’t willing to settle for less and rather then spend to improve what they offer, they will simply go to America and keep the technology gap there.
Well put. It’s a difficult one, though. The alternative route, of national (i.e. European) champions, can be a slippery slope into protectionism and shoddy standards. By the 1970s British cars were rubbish but the Brits still produced and bought them patriotically. Argentina has spent a century trying to protect its substandard industry and it’s now a poor country.
But I do agree that there’s a balance to be struck. On principle I use Firefox and not Chrome even if it’s 2% slower (which it’s not BTW). We should not be rushing to buy foreign products when the technology gap is still bridgeable.
