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NO SOVEREIGNTY WITHOUT INNOVATION

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15 August 2025


1. Trump’s Fake Narrative

It is fake news for Trump to tell us in Europe that we are stealing America’s money and jobs - though the goods trade surplus of around $300 billion is real. What he doesn’t say is that this is dwarfed by Europe’s deficit in services, and the far greater threat: Europe’s sovereignty is compromised by its reliance on American service providers - especially in B2B software, cloud computing, and cybersecurity.


When you think of the American empire’s rise, you picture military milestones: Soviet collapse, Iraq War, 9/11, the endless wars from Yugoslavia to Ukraine, and now the Gaza geno, Iran, Pakistan, Armenia - chaos and misery everywhere.

2. The Cyber Space Empire

But what about the empire in cyberspace?

When people speak of “the cloud,” we seldom appreciate that we’re seeing only the tip of the iceberg of how software collects, processes, stores, and distributes our data.

The cloud isn’t something in the sky, it’s physical infrastructure: underground cables, data centres, Blackwell comouters, GPU chips, on land and sea.

Of all digital B2B spending, only about 15% is visible as subscriptions or software use. The rest goes into infrastructure - data centres, compute hardware, energy usage (Microsoft is involved in restarting Three Mile Island for example). These hidden costs are massive.

3. Real Estate Without Borders

In geopolitical thinking, borders on a map define power. But this cyber “real estate” transcends borders, it runs right through smartphones, laptops, business servers, and down to the very CPU itself.

As Yanis Varoufakis puts it, this new cyber-land is owned by the new landlords and rented out via software-as-a-service. What are the implications of this ownership for the security of our data and the strategic leverage or misuse of same to our commercial disadvantage?

4. Europe’s Digital Dependence – Hard Facts

Here are some figures few people grasp about American dominance in the cyber sector:

5. Market Power and Geopolitics

An estimated 83% of Europe’s enterprise spending on software and cloud goes to American suppliers, amounting to €264 billion annually.

That figure about matches Europe’s goods surplus with the US and equals its oil and gas spending. No wonder that the “Mag7” tech giants completely overshadow European competition - today they account for a third of the S&P 500 - growing from 20% just two years ago - with roughly 63% average gains in 2024. 

America has the immense market, the deep deep funds, the startup infrastructure both legal and process, the can-do attitude and the advantage of three decades of outstanding achievements and experience.

6. The Cost of Dependency

This tech dominance supports millions of high-paying American jobs - two million, by some estimates. In contrast, if Europe kept just 15% of that spend local, it could create half a million jobs, boost tax receipts, and revitalise the velocity of money..

Yet, much of this money funnels through Ireland and tax havens, escaping scrutiny and taxation.

7. The Security Risk You Don’t See

Given technology’s economic primacy, its dominant over all other sectors of the economy, European dependence on American tech is a gaping strategic vulnerability. Today, software is bought as annual subscriptions, not owned outright as was the case before the cloud, and access to your data is governed by US law.

Under the CLOUD Act, American agencies can legally access data stored by US-based services, so no wonder this is a sovereignty crisis and one of that few realise and still fewer properly understand..

8. First-hand Reality

During my time at Airbus, we faced hundreds or thousands of daily intrusion attempts - officially from Russia or China. We recruited French PhD mathematicians from Paris-Saclay, Ecole Normale Supeiure ENS, and the Sorbonne, and grew in-house our cyber experts. We - together with Thales and Athos - developed the encryption and sniffing capabilities needed to protect our data. 

This was later all scooped up by the US, able to offer far more interesting and well-paid jobs. This STEM brain drain is so severe that it endangers Europe’s sovereignty in the decade ahead.

9. The Tax and Transparency Black Hole

Equally alarming, this European spend flows through Ireland and then into offshore fiscal sanctuaries - it is untaxed, untraceable, and unaccounted for.

10. Leadership Vacuum

Despite this existential crisis, Europe lacks independent-minded leadership needed to reverse the trend. Frankly put, our politicians at home and in the EU have been easily bought out - or left with little choice - by American money and soft power. Plus, with tariffs in place and protectionism rising, meaningful rebalancing remains an utter fantasy. 

The need for sovereignty in tech is urgent yet political will is absent - we have been well and truly vassalised.

Some Additional Context & Implications:

European reliance on US cloud providers raises fears around data access and control .

Only about 15% of the European cloud market is held by local firms, underscoring the dominance of these American hyperscalers .

In response, the EU is exploring digital sovereignty frameworks like EuroStack and Gaia‑X.

The AWS European Sovereign Cloud promises EU-only operation and €7.8 billion backing to 2040.

Public concern is mounting: surveys show over 70% of European businesses worry about US cloud provider access to their data.

Microsoft's pledge to defend European services from US political interference adds a layer of reassurance, or perhaps this is imagined.

References by Section

5. Market Power and Geopolitics

7. The Security Risk You Don’t See

Additional Context & Implications


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