Bolted to the Floor, Not Written in the Clouds
Europe wanted technological sovereignty. On June 12, it got a demonstration of technological dependence.
That day, the U.S. government cut non-Americans off from access to two of the world’s most advanced AI models. Brussels’ flagship response to precisely this scenario—the Cloud and AI Development Act (CADA)—would not have helped.
As I argue in “Europe’s Sovereignty Stack: CADA, Compute, and the Limits of Autarky,” Europe needs to do two things instead: remove legal barriers and build serious computing capacity on the continent. That strategy would allow Europe to pursue two complementary goals.
First, it would give Europe leverage through mutual dependence, strengthening its hand in negotiations over access to cutting-edge AI capabilities that it has little realistic chance of developing domestically in the near term. Second, it would reduce dependence on foreign providers for “good enough” AI systems, which will remain economically important across a wide range of applications that do not require state-of-the-art models.