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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
A group of technology companies and lobbyists want the European Commission (EC) to take action to reduce the region's reliance on foreign-owned digital services and infrastructure.
In an open letter to EC President Ursula von der Leyen and Executive Vice-President for Tech Sovereignty Henna Virkkunen, the group of nearly 100 organizations proposed the creation of a sovereign infrastructure fund to invest in key technology and lessen dependence on US corporations.
The letter points to recent events, including the farcical Munich Security Conference, as a sign of "the stark geopolitical reality Europe is now facing," and says that building strategic autonomy in key sectors is now an urgent imperative for European countries.
Signatories include aerospace giant Airbus, France's Dassault Systèmes, European cloud operator OVHcloud, chip designer SiPearl, open source biz Nextcloud, and a host of others including organizations such as the European Startup Network.
OVHcloud said the group was calling "for a collective industrial policy strategy to strengthen Europe's competitiveness and strategic autonomy. We are convinced this is the premise of what we hope will be a larger movement of the entire ecosystem."
Proposals include the sovereign infrastructure fund, which would be able to support public investment, especially in capital-intensive sectors like semiconductors, with "significant additional commitment of funds allocated and/or underwritten" by the European Investment Bank (EIB) and national public funding bodies.
It also suggests there should be a formal requirement for the public sector to "buy European" and source their IT requirements from European-led and assembled solutions, while recognizing that these may involve complex supply chains with foreign components.
[...] This isn't the first time that concerns about US hegemony in technology have been raised. Recently, the DARE project launched to develop hardware and software based on the open RISC-V architecture, backed by EuroHPC JU funding, while fears have been aired about the dominance of American-owned cloud companies in the European market.
Such concerns have been heightened by recent actions, such as the suggestion that the US might cut off access to Starlink internet services in Ukraine as a political bargaining strategy. Starlink owner Elon Musk later denied that this would ever happen.
The letter notes that these issues have already been set out by the EuroStack initiative, made up of many of the companies that signed the letter to EC President von der Leyen. The Register asked the European Commission to comment.
On the other side of the pond, the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) recently published a report claiming that US companies face "substantial financial burdens" due to the European Union's digital regulations.
It says that US tech companies are losing "billions" through having to comply with regulations such as the Digital Markets Act (DMA), and having to obtain user consent for their data to be used for advertising purposes.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday March 23 2025, @12:35PM
Your previous post was not a call for grey thinking.
That last paragraph is a call for absolutes: cowardice and appeasement or making a principled but risky stand against evil. You want "shades of grey"? Then learn to speak in shades of grey.
Rather I think this reveals your line of thinking. The Ukrainian conflict isn't about making Putin mad or not. That's not how wars are won. Will we allow Russia to make a naked territorial grab or will we resist that? Ukraine has already decided to resist and they've been successful for three years.
Nobody is interested in merely pissing off Putin. There may at times be tactical advantage to making him mad - such as encouraging him to make bad decisions or distract his generals during critical stages of a battle. Or it might happen incidentally as a result of thwarting his plans for years. But not for its own sake.
I think rather it's important to consider who gratuitously makes people mad without a plan for winning. That would be Trump.
Bullshit. There's no way to successfully resist Putin without pissing him and his successors off. This FUD propaganda has gone on since the very beginning with Putin playing these brinkmanship games all along (following the usual Soviet playbook on that, I might add). Sorry, it already failed. And as janrinok noted, Russia isn't the only country with nukes. Probably shouldn't piss those other countries off either, right?
And should Putin actually use tactical nukes in Ukraine? It's a blank check for the allies supporting Ukraine. Trump would be forced to support the war for starters. NATO would soon control near Ukraine airspace. And if Putin escalates beyond that? Better hope his nuclear forces aren't just as shoddy as the rest of his military else it'll be a humiliating footnote in history for former Russia!