KEVIN FRAZIER: Europe’s Digital Protectionism Coming For AI
When Congress convened a recent hearing on “Anti-American Antitrust,” attention centered on Europe’s Digital Markets Act and its influence abroad, from South Korea to Brazil. The testimony, however, pointed to a wider trend in which foreign governments are increasingly willing to use regulation as a tool against U.S. companies leading in emerging technologies.
That dynamic is now moving into artificial intelligence (AI), where Europe is preparing to apply the same protectionist instincts to the next technological frontier. This could not come at a worse time. As China moves ahead on its technological ambitions, the West is in danger of undercutting its shrinking AI lead. There’s still time for a course correction, but that window is closing.
Europe is in the middle of the largest expansion of computing infrastructure in its history, thanks mainly to the ingenuity and investment of American firms. OpenAI is building a $1 billion Stargate facility in Norway, while Amazon,Microsoft, and Google are pouring tens of billions of dollars into new cloud and AI infrastructure across Europe, including major data-center expansions and regional AI capacity builds. (RELATED: Two Perfect Storms........© The Daily Caller
