When a major news publication anonymously posts a claim about an event that hasn’t yet happened – in this case a law promoting tech companies in the EU – it’s fair to wonder why. After all, there may be commercial interests that want to publish this somewhat lame threat in advance for purely scandalous or selfish reasons. But this does not make this claim worth considering.
Citing “officials and lawmakers”, the Journal says the powerful want to discourage “dependence” on the US, in addition to helping their companies, and they do not want to “give up” technologies produced by Silicon Valley giants.
In and around the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last week, the issue on everyone’s minds in Europe was Donald Trump’s bizarre demand that Denmark hand over the land of Greenland to him on a platter – and his threat to impose tariffs against EU countries he feels are failing him, including most of Northern Europe, France, Germany and the UK. Trump has clearly abandoned his most powerful bargaining chip in this standoff: the threat of actual war. This in turn may be because the world’s most powerful people, the Bond vigilantes, have sent a clear message to Trump that they do not want a war over Greenland.
But when tensions were high earlier this week, the EU did something really strange and entertained the possibility of a show of real support against the US through a package of measures known as the “anti-coercion instrument” (ACI). The ACI, also known as the “trade bazooka”, is a collection of tariffs and trade restrictions originally aimed as a weapon in China’s direction. Instead, officials informed that they could christen their bazooka by firing at America
European technological sovereignty is a topic of discussion with real power at the moment, even if at first glance the concept seems to lack a certain physical weight. The Wall Street Journal story on this potential legislation is one of economic defense and deterrence – not any kind of first strike. EU officials are apparently “trembling in fear of a White House executive order that cuts off the region’s access to data centers or email software that businesses and governments need,” the Journal writes.
In contrast, the EU is cutting access to basic technological needs, which really doesn’t seem like something Europe can do. Denying Americans access to phones from Sweden-based Spotify and Finland-based Nokia doesn’t seem like such a serious threat, which is why promoting EU companies seems like a natural focus for any efforts, as it would cause pain by making American tech less competitive. Earlier this month, the European Commission announced a sovereignty-focused “Open Digital Ecosystem Strategy” initiative, which is currently seeking public feedback. The elephant in the room for such an effort would be France-based Mistral as a source of EU-based AI models and some sort of eurozone-centric mobile operating system. DeepMind for AI and Huawei’s HarmonyOS mobile operating system come to mind. Large-scale cloud computing would be difficult in Europe without megacompanies like Amazon and Microsoft.
But a huge hammer for the EU can Consider defeating the US with Netherlands-based ASML (which the Wall Street Journal hasn’t mentioned at all), which is currently the world’s only manufacturer of the lithography machines used to make the GPUs needed for training and running frontier AI models. The monopoly on the machines currently keeping the US economy afloat is an even more powerful piece of economic weaponry than a bazooka (it is at least an economic aircraft carrier, if not a small, strategic economic nuke) and thanks to its recent investment in the Mistral, it is abundantly clear that EU sovereignty is to some extent on ASML’s mind.
And taking active steps toward EU technological sovereignty, at least to some degree, is an idea that is not only making the rounds in the corridors of power, but also has real grassroots support, at least if you judge by the activity on Reddit’s BuyFromEU subreddit. Users there who typically exchange tips for finding locally sourced products are increasingly nervous that they are being banned from the American social media platform they currently use to communicate. Some people are also talking about the relocation of W, the recently announced European social media site, along the lines of X.
And I wish Europe the best of luck in finding an X option to flourish and avoid turning into a cesspool. It’s no easy task, even in the good old United States
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