An anonymously-sourced story in the Wall Street Journal contains the following claim: “The European Union’s executive arm is currently working on new legislation aimed at promoting tech sovereignty, according to officials familiar with the matter.“
When a major news publication anonymously posts claims about an event that has not yet happened—in this case a law propping up tech companies in the E.U.—it’s 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’t make the claim not worth contemplating.
Citing “officials and lawmakers,” the Journal says powerful people want to discourage “dependencies” on the U.S., in addition to helping their own companies, and they don’t necessarily want to “ditch” technologies produced by the Silicon Valley giants.
In and around the World Economic Forum in Davos Switzerland this past week, the issue on everyone in Europe’s mind was Donald Trump’s bizarre demand that the landmass of Greenland be handed to him on a platter by Denmark—and his threat to introduce tariffs against the E.U. countries that he feels are thwarting him—most 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’t want war over Greenland.
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 “Anti-Coercion Instrument” (ACI). The ACI, also known as the “trade bazooka,” 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.
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’s framing for its story on this potential legislation is one of economic defense and deterrence—not some kind of first strike. E.U. officials are apparently quaking with 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 to function,” the Journal writes.
The reverse, the E.U. cutting off access to basic tech necessities doesn’t really sound like something Europe can do. Denying Americans access to Sweden-based Spotify and phones from Finland-based Nokia doesn’t 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 “Open Digital Ecosystem Strategy” 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’s HarmonyOS mobile operating system come to mind. Large scale cloud computing in Europe without megacompanies like Amazon and Microsoft would be trickier.
But one very large hammer the EU could look into whacking the U.S. with (and one that isn’t mentioned at all by the Wall Street Journal) is Netherlands-based ASML, currently the world’s 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’s an economic aircraft carrier at least, if not a small, tactical economic nuke) and thanks to its recent investment in Mistral, it’s abundantly clear that E.U. sovereignty is on ASML’s mind to some degree.
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’s BuyFromEU subreddit. Users there who normally exchange tips on finding locally sourced products are increasingly paranoid that they’re going to be banned from the U.S. social media platform they’re 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.
And I wish Europe all the good luck in the world getting an X alternative to thrive and avoid becoming a cesspool. That’s no easy task, not even here in the good old U.S.A.
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