Europe Should Build AI Leverage, Not an AI Wall
At a signing ceremony at the US State Department on June 23, the European Union formally joined “Pax Silica”, the US-led effort to secure artificial-intelligence (AI) supply chains and reduce Western dependence on China. That was the right move. But it sits uneasily beside Brussels’ proposed Cloud and AI Development Act (CADA), the centrepiece of the European Technological Sovereignty Package presented by the European Commission on June 3.
CADA would steer sensitive EU public-sector cloud and AI work away from providers tied to non-EU countries, including the United States. In the name of sovereignty, it could cut Europe off from state-of-the-art American AI in precisely the domains where the best technology matters most: Cybersecurity, intelligence, defence and other national-security functions.
That should concern Europeans. Europe needs greater technological capacity and less strategic dependence. But it also needs access to the strongest tools available, especially as Chinese models narrow the gap with the American frontier. Sovereignty should not mean regulating Europe into second-best systems.