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An anonymously-sourced story in the Wall Street Journal contains the following claim: \u201cThe European Union\u2019s executive arm is currently working on new legislation aimed at promoting tech sovereignty, according to officials familiar with the matter.\u201c\u00a0<\/p>\n
When a major news publication anonymously posts claims about an event that has not yet happened\u2014in this case a law propping up tech companies in the E.U.\u2014it\u2019s appropriate to wonder why. After all, there might be commercial interests that want this somewhat limp threat published beforehand for purely cynical or self-serving reasons. But that doesn\u2019t make the claim not worth contemplating.<\/p>\n
Citing \u201cofficials and lawmakers,\u201d the Journal says powerful people want to discourage \u201cdependencies\u201d on the U.S., in addition to helping their own companies, and they don\u2019t necessarily want to \u201cditch\u201d technologies produced by the Silicon Valley giants.<\/p>\n
In and around the World Economic Forum in Davos Switzerland this past week, the issue on everyone in Europe\u2019s mind was Donald Trump\u2019s bizarre demand that the landmass of Greenland be handed to him on a platter by Denmark\u2014and his threat to introduce tariffs against the E.U. countries that he feels are thwarting him\u2014most of Northern Europe, France, Germany, and the U.K. Trump has apparently abandoned his most powerful bargaining chip in this standoff: the threat of actual war. That in turn may have been because the most powerful people in the world, bond vigilantes, sent a clear message to Trump that they didn\u2019t want war over Greenland. <\/p>\n
But while tensions were higher earlier this week, the E.U. did something truly strange and entertained the possibility of a display of actual backbone against the U.S. via its package of measures known as the \u201cAnti-Coercion Instrument\u201d (ACI). The ACI, also known as the \u201ctrade bazooka,\u201d is a collection of tariffs and trade restrictions originally intended as a weapon brandished in the direction of China. Instead, officials intimated that they might christen their bazooka by firing it at the U.S.\u00a0<\/p>\n
European tech sovereignty is a buzz phrase with real power right now, even if the concept seems to lack a certain material heft at first glance. The Wall Street Journal\u2019s framing for its story on this potential legislation is one of economic defense and deterrence\u2014not some kind of first strike. E.U. officials are apparently quaking with fear of a \u201cWhite House executive order that cuts off the region\u2019s access to data centers or email software that businesses and governments need to function,\u201d the Journal writes.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The reverse, the E.U. cutting off access to basic tech necessities doesn\u2019t really sound like something Europe can do. Denying Americans access to Sweden-based Spotify and phones from Finland-based Nokia doesn\u2019t sound like all that serious of a threat, which is why boosting E.U. companies seems like a natural focus for any effort, as it would cause pain by making U.S. tech less competitive. Earlier this month, the European Commission announced the sovereignty-focused\u00a0 \u201cOpen Digital Ecosystem Strategy\u201d initiative, which is currently soliciting public feedback. The elephants in the room for such an effort would be France-based Mistral as a source of E.U.-based AI models, and some kind of Eurozone-centric mobile operating system. Deepmind for AI and Huawei\u2019s HarmonyOS mobile operating system come to mind. Large scale cloud computing in Europe without megacompanies like Amazon and Microsoft would be trickier.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
But one very large hammer the EU could<\/em> look into whacking the U.S. with (and one that isn\u2019t mentioned at all by the Wall Street Journal) is Netherlands-based ASML, currently the world\u2019s only creator of the lithography machines used to make the GPUs needed for the training and running of frontier AI models. A monopoly on the machines currently keeping the U.S. economy on rails is an even more powerful piece of economic weaponry than a bazooka (it\u2019s an economic aircraft carrier at least, if not a small, tactical economic nuke) and thanks to its recent investment in Mistral, it\u2019s abundantly clear that E.U. sovereignty is on ASML\u2019s mind to some degree. <\/p>\n And taking proactive steps toward E.U. tech sovereignty is, at least to some degree, an idea not just floating around the halls of power, but one with actual grassroots support, at least if you judge from the activity on Reddit\u2019s BuyFromEU subreddit. Users there who normally exchange tips on finding locally sourced products are increasingly paranoid that they\u2019re going to be banned from the U.S. social media platform they\u2019re currently using to communicate. Some are even talking about a move to W, a newly announced European Social Media site along the lines of X. <\/p>\n And I wish Europe all the good luck in the world getting an X alternative to thrive and avoid becoming a cesspool. That\u2019s no easy task, not even here in the good old U.S.A.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n