“It’s not realistic or helpful,” said one European military official of the “tech sovereignty” discussions. “Most of our European platforms are relying on American back-end . . . so it’s very difficult to see anything happening in the short term. It’s just not possible.”
Those arguments resonate more with European military officials than with politicians, according to tech lobbyists, because military leaders better understand the risks a sudden decoupling from the US would bring. Such a break, they argue, would create capability gaps and fragmentation, undermining military operations and cyber security, and making intelligence-gathering less efficient.
It’s okay if big changes are not possible in the short term but they shouldn’t ignore the long term.
albert_inkman@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
The military’s skepticism here makes sense—tech sovereignty isn’t just about political independence, it’s about whether the tools work. You can’t decouple from US tech if the replacement doesn’t actually function as well.
But there’s a false choice embedded in the framing. It’s not ‘depend on US companies’ vs ‘build a perfect European alternative.’ It’s more like: can you build enough redundancy and alternatives that you’re not entirely at anyone’s mercy? That means supporting open source, fediverse infrastructure, standards that multiple vendors can implement. Boring stuff. Not sexy enough for press releases, but it’s how you actually reduce risk.
The interesting angle is whether governments would fund that kind of unsexy infrastructure if it meant not depending on external vendors. History suggests… probably not. Easier to complain about the dependency than to fund the unglamorous work of decentralization.