Science and Technology

Tech sovereignty is the new buzzword in Europe as the scale of the continent’s dependence on U.S. tech companies dawns upon its leaders. Europeans are worried that U.S. President Donald Trump, who has exploited trade and defense dependencies, may weaponize tech next— threatening to disrupt or cut off digital services, for example—to extract concessions. None of the researchers, European officials, and experts that Foreign Policy spoke with deemed that possibility to be overly far-fetched.

The European Union has thus begun its tech decoupling from the United States. It will take time, money, and consistent cooperation by EU members who are often split—which means the outcome remains uncertain.

Tech sovereignty is the new buzzword in Europe as the scale of the continent’s dependence on U.S. tech companies dawns upon its leaders. Europeans are worried that U.S. President Donald Trump, who has exploited trade and defense dependencies, may weaponize tech next— threatening to disrupt or cut off digital services, for example—to extract concessions. None of the researchers, European officials, and experts that Foreign Policy spoke with deemed that possibility to be overly far-fetched.

The European Union has thus begun its tech decoupling from the United States. It will take time, money, and consistent cooperation by EU members who are often split—which means the outcome remains uncertain.

There are three different strands to Europe’s tech decoupling: the creation of an attractive European social media alternative, where debate can be held freely without bots and manipulative algorithms; support for domestic manufacturing of semiconductor chips; and the creation of sovereign cloud services that offer computing resources such as physical data storage infrastructure.

Amazon, Google, and Microsoft currently fulfill more than two-thirds of Europe’s cloud computing needs. Most of the continent’s advanced chips come from U.S. companies like Nvidia, and the social media platforms that most Europeans use are also based in the United States. That includes X, which is owned by Elon Musk, who has called for the EU to be abolished and openly amplifies Europe’s far-right voices.

“We need tech sovereignty to take our destiny in our own hands,” said Thomas Regnier, a spokesperson for the European Commission. Regnier is often the person who deals with difficult questions on how the EU........

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