Europe Wants to Break Free From American and Chinese Technology. But How?
France and Germany are pushing to reduce their dependence on American and Chinese technology, particularly in artificial intelligence, but face difficult choices about how and where to build domestic alternatives. The effort reflects a broader European push for technological self-reliance that remains short on specifics.
Why this matters: When governments run on foreign-owned infrastructure, they do not fully control their own data or their own decisions. That is the real problem here, not national pride. If European public services, defense systems, or critical databases depend on platforms built in the US or China, those platforms come with strings attached — legal, commercial, and geopolitical. The gap between wanting sovereignty and building it is enormous. Europe has tried this before and largely bought American anyway. Whether France and Germany can make different choices this time depends on money, policy, and willingness to accept slower or messier tools in exchange for ones they actually own.
Who should care: AI governance · Lawyers · Administrators · General readers · Policy
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