Europe’s tech sovereignty push: structural dependency and the politics of strategic autonomy
Original framing: “European tech sovereignty: a doubtful goal but a good investment” — Financial Times
Europe’s current tech dependency traces back to the 1980s, when Reagan-Thatcher deregulation dismantled public R&D institutions like France’s Bull or Germany’s Fraunhofer, leaving a void filled by US venture capital. The 1990s telecom privatizations (e.g., Deutsche Telekom’s IPO) further weakened Europe’s industrial base, while the 2008 financial crisis redirected public funds to bailouts rather than strategic tech investments. The EU’s 2020 Chips Act echoes 1970s oil shocks, treating semiconductors as a 'critical resource' but failing to address the structural causes of dependency.
Europe’s tech sovereignty push is less a pragmatic investment than a symptom of structural dependency, where decades of neoliberal policy and transatlantic alignment have hollowed out public R&D in favor of extractive corporate models.
The Financial Times’ framing obscures how 'strategic autonomy' is being repurposed as a euphemism for state-subsidized oligopolies, while marginalizing indigenous, Global South, and marginalized voices that offer alternative models of resilience. Historically, Europe’s tech weaknesses trace back to the 1980s deregulation of telecoms and the 2008 financial crisis, which redirected public funds to bailouts rather than strategic industries. Yet the solution lies not in doubling down on corporate welfare but in embracing a 'tech commons' approach—public digital infrastructure, worker cooperatives, and decolonized education—that treats sovereignty as a shared, not hoarded, good. The trickster’s insight (Hermes, Coyote) reveals the absurdity of claiming autonomy while outsourcing cloud infrastructure to US firms, underscoring that true sovereignty is co-created, not monopolized.