Europe’s quest for digital sovereignty is hampered by a 90 per cent dependency on US cloud infrastructure, claims Cristina Caffarra, a competition expert and a driving force behind the Eurostack initiative.
While Brussels champions policy initiatives and American tech giants market their own ‘sovereign’ solutions, a handful of public authorities in Austria, Germany, and France, alongside the International Criminal Court in The Hague, are taking concrete steps to regain control over their IT.
If the EU can throw off the shackles from the US, that would be freedom worth gaining. Unless it is traded in for European oligarchs.
This would be extremely important, but unfortunately it is unlikely to happen with our politicians. On the contrary, they are even signing new deals with companies such as Palantir, thereby providing the US regime with the most sensitive information about EU citizens. So, unfortunately, there is little to be expected in this regard.
Except it is happening in little pieces. You want a quick comprehensive solution, but that won’t happen, but still some things have shifted and others will if leaders stay focused.
And the threat is clear. If Trump wants Greenland, what will western Europe do? The first step is to stabilize basic computer systems. Every military leader on the content understands this kind of fundamental weakness, and corruption is all around but doesn’t control everything… If it did, we would not even see this post.
Yes, it’s true: hope dies last. Perhaps our leaders will finally realize how dangerous it is to be absolutely dependent - and on such an unpredictable regime at that. Many Countries from the East understood the importance of digital sovereignty decades ago and have largely built up their own systems. In Europe, this has been prevented by massive lobbying, but perhaps something will really happen now that we are being blackmailed because of our self-inflicted dependence.
It would be so great if the world actually had the resolve to pull that off.
It is what should happen but I am not holding my breath.
I wonder what the data center owning oligarchs are going to think in a year when the only customer they can sell their product to is the US? Maybe bankrolling the current regime wasn’t such a great idea after all.
