First, buy European: procurement rules must prioritize European providers for critical infrastructure, as is standard practice in the United States and Asia. Second, build European: the private sector must invest in developing European alternatives, rather than relying on subsidies or waiting for government intervention. And third, fund European: a dedicated fund should support the development of Europe's technology stack, with public bodies acting as launching customers to create initial demand and prove viabilit

Her proposed solution, embodied in the Eurostack Foundation, is not more regulation but an industrial strategy focused on three pillars:

While Brussels focuses on regulating consumer-facing services, the underlying infrastructure has been handed over entirely. "What Europeans don't realize is that while they regulate e-commerce and app stores, the digital infrastructure on which everything rests is now owned by non-Europeans," she says.

For Cristina Caffarra, founder of the Eurostack Foundation and a competition economist, Europe's predicament is both alarming and self-inflicted. She estimates that 90 percent of Europe's digital infrastructure (cloud, compute, and software) is now controlled by non-European, predominantly American, companies.

If a major American cloud provider were to restrict European access or cease operations, the consequences would be immediate and severe. This fragility has created a market opportunity that American hyperscalers are now exploiting.

A recent analysis by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute found that of 64 crucial technologies, China leads in 57 and the United States in the remaining seven. Europe leads in none.

The scale of Europe's technological deficit makes migrations like Austria’s daunting for most organisations.

Its use is strictly limited to external communication with parties that still rely on it, such as the European Commission. Even then, strict rules apply: no sensitive information may be discussed on Teams, and usage is kept to an absolute minimum. This hybrid approach reflects a pragmatic recognition that complete independence is not always immediately possible when external partners remain locked into US platforms.

Yet the Austrian case also illustrates the practical limits of digital sovereignty. Nextcloud now serves as the primary collaboration platform for internal communication and file sharing, but Microsoft Teams has not been banned entirely.

"You don't achieve digital sovereignty overnight," Ollrom tells The Register. "You have to do this in many steps, but you have to start with the first step. Don't just talk about it, but execute it."

The decision has triggered a ripple effect, as several other Austrian ministries have since begun implementing Nextcloud. For Zinnagl and Ollrom, this proves that one organization willing to take the first step can inspire others to follow.

Austria's Federal Ministry for Economy, Energy and Tourism is a case in point. The ministry recently completed a migration of 1,200 employees to the European open-source collaboration platform Nextcloud, but the project was not a migration away from an existing US cloud provider. It was a deliberate choice not to adopt one

Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) before deploying any new technology that is "likely to result in a high risk to the rights and freedoms of natural persons." When conducted for US hyperscaler services, these DPIAs invariably flag the CLOUD Act as a significant, often unacceptable, risk. This legal obligation is increasingly becoming the primary driver of public bodies to seek alternatives.

If the US provider manages the keys, as is common in many standard cloud services, they can be forced to decrypt the data for authorities, making such safeguards moot.

Furthermore, these warrants often come with a gag order, legally prohibiting the provider from informing their customer that their data has been accessed. This renders any contractual clauses requiring transparency or notification effectively meaningless.

This creates a risk that is difficult, if not impossible, to mitigate contractually. Any private contract between a European customer and a US cloud provider is ultimately subordinate to US federal law. A warrant issued under the CLOUD Act legally compels an American company to hand over data, overriding any contractual commitments of data residency or privacy.

This places European organizations in a precarious position, as it directly clashes with Europe's own stringent privacy regulation, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

The core of the problem lies in a direct and irreconcilable legal conflict. The US CLOUD Act of 2018 allows American authorities to compel US-based technology companies to provide requested data, regardless of where that data is stored globally

grappling with its technological autonomy

urope’s quest for digital sovereignty is hampered by a 90 per cent dependency on US cloud infrastructure, claims Cristina Caffarra, a competition expert and a driving force behind the Eurostack initiative.

Plus–Minus–Next ist eine einfache dreiteilige Reflexionsstruktur. Sie stammt von Anne-Laure Le Cunff und wurde über ihr Projekt Ness Labs und später ihr Buch Tiny Experiments bekannt. Der Kern ist schnell erklärt:

Next ist kein zusätzlicher Aufgabenstapel. Es ist auch keine Zielplanung. Next beantwortet eine engere Frage: Was mache ich nächste Woche leicht anders als diese Woche?

Entscheidend ist die Reihenfolge. Zuerst wird gesammelt, ohne sofort zu reagieren. Erst danach wird eine Konsequenz gezogen.

Eine der schlichtesten und zugleich brauchbarsten Formen dafür ist die Methode Plus–Minus–Next.

But [it] has expanded drastically after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. That saw what we call the shadow fleet explode to some 900-1,200 vessels globally.

When we organise our culture around renewal, we devalue the quieter labour of holding things together, of getting through

I am not uninterested in change. I am uninterested in pretending that it is always available, or that it arrives at midnight. So, this is how I have entered 2026. Not with a clean page but with a pen hovering over old ink, writing in the margins where I can. I am not starting again, I am continuing, carefully. Happy New Year. Same old life.

Vlam.ai

In terms of the EU's digital rulebook, it has already started in May with the deletion of a core compliance element in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) - the obligation to keep records of your processing activities.

If your blog is installed in a subdirectory but you’ve set a different wp_siteurl, you don’t need the redirect — index.php will handle it automatically.

Using a subdirectory for your blog For WebFinger to function properly, it needs to be mapped to the root directory of your blog’s URL.

When he said that the whole meaning of a (clear) conception consists in the entire set of its practical consequences, he had in mind that a meaningful conception must have some sort of experiential "cash value", must somehow be capable of being related to some sort of collection of possible empirical observations under specifiable conditions.

Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking (1907), Hackett Publishing 1981: ISBN 0-915145-05-7, Dover 1995: ISBN 0-486-28270-8

"There can be no difference that doesn't make a difference."— Pragmatism (1907), p. 45

William James, who had an equally impressive beard, took Peirce's ideas and made them more immediately practical. He asked: what difference does a belief make to your actual life, right now? He was interested in beliefs that help us deal with our experiences successfully.

it's that some approaches produce stable results and others don't; some approximations work better than others.

Stories can produce results that slogans and demands can't. Reality, in the form of how people actually respond, pushed Weymouth to correct his formula.

Aristotle called practical wisdom phronesis. It's the ability to discern what works in particular situations, not through abstract principle alone, but through experience and judgement. It's knowing what to do, and when, in specific circumstances.

This is why I count myself as a Pragmatist. It's a philosophical tradition that views language and thought as tools for problem-solving and action, not for trying to create a mirror of reality. At its core is an understanding that you cannot know the world without having a perspective. This does not make all perspectives somehow “equally valid” but instead means that you should test your approaches against reality, observe what works, revise what doesn't, and gradually get better at navigating the world as it actually is.

De visie, die interbestuurlijk tot stand is gekomen, sluit aan op de Nederlandse Digitaliseringsstrategie waarin digitale weerbaarheid en autonomie van de overheid een van de prioriteiten is. Hiermee wordt ook voortgebouwd op de Agenda Digitale Open Strategische Autonomie.

Binnen Europa samenwerken aan het bouwen aan veilige, betrouwbare Europese alternatieven.

Investeren in digitaal vakmanschap om onze kennis en capaciteit te vergroten.

Open standaarden en open source stimuleren om lock-ins te voorkomen.

IT-inkoop bundelen: als 1 overheid betere voorwaarden afdwingen bij leveranciers.

Cloudbeleid aanscherpen: veilige opslag van overheidsdata onder Europees recht.

Cloudbeleid aanscherpen: veilige opslag van overheidsdata onder Europees recht. IT-inkoop bundelen: als 1 overheid betere voorwaarden afdwingen bij leveranciers. Open standaarden en open source stimuleren om lock-ins te voorkomen. Versnellen van modernisering van verouderde systemen om risico’s te verkleinen. Investeren in digitaal vakmanschap om onze kennis en capaciteit te vergroten. Binnen Europa samenwerken aan het bouwen aan veilige, betrouwbare Europese alternatieven.

Het is volstrekt onbegrijpelijk en onverantwoordelijk dat X het de facto communicatiekanaal van onze overheid lijkt te zijn. Wie bijvoorbeeld de berichten van minister David van Weel over Venezuela wil lezen, kan daarover niets lezen op de officiële website van Buitenlandse Zaken, maar wel op X

Alsof er geen alternatieven zijn en men werkelijk niet zonder kan: het platform wordt volledig gedomineerd door extreemrechts en heeft een marktaandeel van slechts 4 procent in Europa.

Ondanks de voortdurende misdragingen en de openlijke digitale oorlogsverklaring aan Europa blijven onze regeringsleiders, politici en journalisten stug doorposten op X. De Franse president Macron bestond het zelfs om zijn veroordeling van het inreisverbod voor Thierry Breton en zijn vier collega’s te posten op… X.

Het verliezen van de trouwdatum heeft een grote emotionele impact, laat het stel weten. Volgens de man en vrouw ligt de fout buiten hun verantwoordelijkheid en heeft de aanwezige trouwambtenaar van de gemeente het nagelaten om het echtpaar tijdens de huwelijksvoltrekking op de fout te wijzen.

Het was een bijzondere dag

We moeten technologie niet alleen gebruiken, maar ook vormgeven om echte soevereiniteit te bereiken.’

Wat financiering van het EDIC betreft, worden verschillende opties onderzocht, van lidmaatschapsmodellen tot het EU Sovereign Tech Fund en de oprichting van een Europese open marktplaats. Adriana Groh, medeoprichter van het Duitse Sovereign Tech Fund, legde uit hoe haar organisatie betrokken was bij de oprichting van het EDIC. ‘Inmiddels heeft het fonds een vaste plaats gekregen in een agentschap dat, als onderdeel van het EDIC, ook Europese middelen ontvangt. We investeren al in gedeelde infrastructuur die door heel Europa wordt gebruikt – in Frankrijk, Italië, Nederland, Polen en Duitsland. Met de toevoeging van Europese budgetten wordt onze missie nu ook op Europees niveau ondersteund.’

Eén van de belangrijkste prioriteiten van het afgelopen jaar was de integratie van LaSuite Docs in openDesk.

k zei tegen hen: vraag al je bedrijven om een kopie van hun data op een Europese cloud te bewaren, voor de zekerheid. Dat is minimale beveiliging. Je kunt nog steeds met AWS werken als je wilt, maar zorg dat je een kopie hebt onder Europese jurisdictie.’

Mijn Bureau, de Franse variant LaSuite en het Duitse openDesk.

AI-top in Parijs ging en daar publiekelijk zei dat als wij Amerikaanse bedrijven beboeten, zij de NAVO zullen verlaten

Marieke Mol, projectleider van het DC-EDIC namens het ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken

voormalig Franse ambassadeur voor digitale zaken Henri Verdier, die werd geïntroduceerd als de founding father van het EDIC

Art de Blaauw, CIO Rijk bij BZK

We are aware that AWS, as the largest player, cannot be exactly matched, but we are confident that we do not have to compromise on security and availability with a European counterpart.

That is not currently planned. We primarily want our services within Europe to run on European infrastructure with a view to digital independence, greater control and as little vendor lock-in as possible.

The most crucial services run redundantly, both within AWS and in a Belgian data centre. In the event of a serious incident at AWS, zone signing, zone distribution and the database can be deployed immediately.

Everything related to registering and managing the .be, .vlaanderen and .brussels domains runs within AWS, except for the name servers. The latter are the “GPS” servers that ensure that when you type in a domain name, you are sent to the correct IP address. These are spread across the globe.

It is important that the nameserver infrastructure, which has never run on AWS, is not interrupted

Peter Vergote, legal advisor at DNS Belgium: "Our data and processes at AWS are located on European soil, spread across multiple data centres. This is perfectly in line with European legislation such as GDPR and NIS2 .

The migration away from AWS is still in its early stages. The market is currently being surveyed. The transition will begin in 2027 and is expected to be completed in the second half of 2027.

Beltug Priorities Compass, where sovereignty and the search for European alternatives are among the ten most important topics for Belgian CIOs and digital leaders.

At the same time, DNS Belgium wants to inspire other organisations in Belgium and Europe with its AWS exit. Technological dependence on, or possible access and influence by non-European players, is a growing concern among Belgian companies.

Since 2017, the system that processes the registrations of .be domain names has been located in AWS's European data centres.

Ook andere landen hebben inmiddels hun samenwerking met de Verenigde Staten ingeperkt, uit zorg dat gedeelde informatie wordt gebruikt voor militaire acties die mogelijk botsen met internationaal recht en mensenrechten. Canada en het Verenigd Koninkrijk hebben de regels voor informatie-uitwisseling aangescherpt, terwijl Frankrijk openlijk afstand heeft genomen van Amerikaanse militaire drugsoperaties buiten een internationaal en juridisch kader. Binnen de Europese Unie is afgesproken dat lidstaten geen gegevens delen die kunnen bijdragen aan dodelijke acties op zee.

They repeatedly blamed "bugs" in Google Docs and browsers for issues that were clearly their own misuse of tools

It’s a somewhat unsatisfying process, but if you get the right answer eventually, it does feel like progress, and you didn’t need to use up another human’s time.

Lefkowitz vergelijkt het met een gokkast: de uitzonderlijke keer dat je de jackpot wint zal je zeker bijblijven, maar van de veel talrijkere keren dat je je inzet kwijt was zul je je veel minder herinneren. Van een casino weten we dat het huis altijd wint, maar Lefkowitz suggereert dat de situatie met AI vergelijkbaar is. We onthouden de zeldzame successen en vergeten het vele gepruts.

In augustus 2025 schreef de Amerikaanse programmeur Glyph Lefkowitz hier een stuk over met als titel The Futzing Fraction: de ‘prutsfactor’.

By 1947 Frisch had accumulated roughly 130 filled notebooks

t was reported that a staggering one billion PCs were still running Windows 10, even though a full half were eligible to upgrade to the AI-satured Windows 11.

Chinese producers are close to being monopolists not only in rare earths, but also electronics products, batteries, and many types of active pharmaceutical ingredients

When these nuts open, it looks like China is producing a big wave of new products. These are its breakthroughs in drones, electric vehicles, and robotics. Years from now we may see greater success in biotech as well. I am keen to follow along China’s progress in electromagnetism over the next decade. China’s industrial ecosystem is leading the way in replacing combustion with electromagnetic processes. Everything is now drone, as the combination of cheaper batteries and better permanent magnets displaces the engine.

Alexander Grothendieck used an analogy of a walnut to describe different approaches to mathematics, which might also apply to technology development. Some mathematicians crack their problems by finding the right spot to insert a chisel before making a clean strike. Grothendieck described his own approach as coming up with general solutions, as if he were immersing the walnut in a bath for such a long time that mere hand pressure would be enough to open it. The US comes up with exquisite and expensive solutions to its technology problems. China’s industrial ecosystem is more like a rising sea, softening many nuts at once.

Alexander Grothendieck

Our view is that China’s industrial success has roots in deep infrastructure. That includes not only ports and rail, it also includes data connectivity, electrification, and process knowledge. China’s strength lies in a robust manufacturing ecosystem full of self-reinforcing parts.

The electric vehicle industry is the sharp tip of the spear of China’s global success. Chinese EVs have greater functionalities than western models while selling at lower price points. A rule of thumb is that it takes five years from an American, German, or Japanese automaker to dream up a new car design and launch that model on the roads; in China, it’s closer to 18 months. The Chinese market is full of demanding customers as well as fast-iterating automotive suppliers

China’s automotive success is biting into Germany more than anywhere else. I keep a scrapbook filled with mournful remarks that German executives offer to newspapers. “Most of what German Mittelstand firms do these days, Chinese companies can do just as well,” said a consultant to the Financial Times. “In my sector they look at the price-point of the market leader and sell for roughly half of that,” the boss of a medical devicemaker told the Economist. It’s never hard to find parades of gloomy Germans. Now more than ever it looks like their core competences are threatened by Chinese firms.

I believe that Chinese technological success is now the rule rather than the exception. There are two fields in which China is substantially behind the west: semiconductors and aviation. The chip sector is gingerly attempting to expand under the weight of US restrictions; meanwhile, China’s answer to Airbus and Boeing is on a very long runway. I grant that these are two critical technologies, but China has attained technological leadership almost everywhere else. And I believe its technological momentum will continue rolling onwards to engulf more of their western competitors over the next decade.

I’ve had Silicon Valley friends tell me that they are planning a trip to China nearly every month this year. Silicon Valley respects and fears companies from only one other country. Game recognizes game, so to speak. Tech founders may begrudge China’s restrictions; and some companies have suffered directly from IP theft. But they also recognize that Chinese companies can move even faster than they do with their teams of motivated workers; and Chinese manufacturers are far ahead of US capabilities on anything involving physical production. Some founders and VCs are impressed with the fact that Chinese AI companies have gotten this far while suffering American tech restrictions, while leading in open-source to boot.

Since the US is much more services-driven, Americans may be using AI to produce more powerpoints and lawsuits; China, by virtue of being the global manufacturer, has the option to scale up production of more electronics, more drones, and more munitions.

Rather than building superintelligence, Chinese companies have been more interested in embedding AI into robots and manufacturing lines.

The Communist Party lives for whole-of-society efforts.

Silicon Valley has not demonstrated joined-up thinking for deploying AI.

China’s capacity, which was one-third US levels in 2000 and more than two-and-a-half times US levels in 2024. Beijing is building so much solar, coal, and nuclear to make sure that no data center shall be in want. Though the US has done a superb job building data centers, it hasn’t prepared enough for other bottlenecks. Especially not as Trump’s dislike of wind turbines has removed this source of growth. Speaking of Trump’s whimsy, he has also been generous with selling close-to-leading chips to Beijing. That’s another reason that data centers might not represent a US advantage for long.

One advantage for Beijing is that much of the global AI talent is Chinese. We can tell from the CVs of researchers as well as occasional disclosures from top labs (for example from Meta) that a large percentage of AI researchers earned their degrees from Chinese universities. American labs may be able to declare that “our Chinese are better than their Chinese.” But some of these Chinese researchers may decide to repatriate. I know that many of them prefer to stay in the US: their compensation might be higher by an order of magnitude, they have access to compute, and they can work with top peers. 5But they may also tire of the uncertainty created by Trump’s immigration policy. It’s never worth forgetting that at the dawn of the Cold War, the US deported Qian Xuesen, the CalTech professor who then built missile delivery systems for Beijing. Or these Chinese researchers expect life in Shanghai to be safer or more fun than in San Francisco. Or they miss mom. People move for all sorts of reasons, so I’m reluctant to believe that the US has a durable talent advantage.

it’s not obvious that the US will have a monopoly on this technology, just as it could not keep it over the bomb.

Chinese efforts are doggedly in pursuit, sometimes a bit closer to US models, sometimes a bit further. By virtue of being open-source (or at least open-weight), the Chinese models have found receptive customers overseas, sometimes with American tech companies.

I am skeptical of the decisive strategic advantage when I filter it through my main preoccupation: understanding China’s technology trajectories. On AI, China is behind the US, but not by years

It also forces thinking to be obsessively short term. People start losing interest in problems of the next five or ten years, because superintelligence will have already changed everything. The big political and technological questions we need to discuss are only those that matter to the speed of AI development. Furthermore, we must sprint towards a post-superintelligence world even though we have no real idea what it will bring.

Effective altruists used to be known for their insistence on thinking about the very long run; much more of the movement now is concerned about the development of AI in the next year.

If you buy the potential of AI, then you might worry about the corgi-fication of humanity by way of biological weapons. This hope also helps to explain the semiconductor controls unveiled by the Biden administration in 2022. If the policymakers believe that DSA is within reach, then it makes sense to throw almost everything into grasping it while blocking the adversary from the same. And it barely matters if these controls stimulate Chinese companies to invent alternatives to American technologies, because the competition will be won in years, not decades.

Silicon Valley’s views on AI made more sense to me after I learned the term “decisive strategic advantage.” It was first used by Nick Bostrom’s 2014 book Superintelligence, which defined it as a technology sufficient to achieve “complete world domination.” How might anyone gain a DSA? A superintelligence might develop cyber advantages that cripple the adversary’s command-and-control capabilities. Or the superintelligence could self-recursively improve such that the lab or state that controls it gains an insurmountable scientific advantage. Once an AI reaches a certain capability threshold, it might need only weeks or hours to evolve into a superintelligence. 3 And if an American lab builds it, it might help to lock in the dominance of another American century.

Tech folks may be the worst-traveled segment of American elites

The two most insular cities I’ve lived in are San Francisco and Beijing. They are places where people are willing to risk apocalypse every day in order to reach utopia. Though Beijing is open only to a narrow slice of newcomers — the young, smart, and Han — its elites must think about the rest of the country and the rest of the world. San Francisco is more open, but when people move there, they stop thinking about the world at large.

Portfolio managers want to be right on average, but everyone is wrong three times a day before breakfast. So they relentlessly seek new information sources; consensus is rare, since there are always contrarians betting against the rest of the market. Tech cares less for dissent. Its movements are more herdlike, in which companies and startups chase one big technology at a time. Startups don’t need dissent; they want workers who can grind until the network effects kick in. VCs don’t like dissent, showing again and again that many have thin skins. That contributes to a culture I think of as Silicon Valley’s soft Leninism. When political winds shift, most people fall in line, most prominently this year as many tech voices embraced the right.

There’s a general lack of cultural awareness in the Bay Area.

The Bay Area has all sorts of autistic tendencies. Though Silicon Valley values the ability to move fast, the rest of society has paid more attention to instances in which tech wants to break things.

The well-rounded type might struggle to stand out relative to people who are exceptionally talented in a technical domain

Narrowness of mind is something that makes me uneasy about the tech world. Effective altruists, for example, began with sound ideas like concern for animal welfare as well as cost-benefit analyses for charitable giving. But these solid premises have launched some of its members towards intellectual worlds very distant from moral intuitions that most people hold; they’ve also sent a few into jail.

Tech has organizations I think of as internal civic institutions

favorite part of Silicon Valley is the cultivation of community. Tech founders are a close-knit group, always offering help to each other, but they circulate actively amidst the broader community too

Venture capitalists are chasing younger and younger founders: the median age of the latest Y Combinator cohort is only 24, down from 30 just three years ago.

People like to make fun of San Francisco for not drinking; well, that works pretty well for me. I enjoy board games and appreciate that it’s easier to find other players. I like SF house parties, where people take off their shoes at the entrance and enter a space in which speech can be heard over music, which feels so much more civilized than descending into a loud bar in New York. It’s easy to fall into a nerdy conversation almost immediately with someone young and earnest. The Bay Area has converged on Asian-American modes of socializing (though it lacks the emphasis on food). I find it charming that a San Francisco home that is poorly furnished and strewn with pizza boxes could be owned by a billionaire who can’t get around to setting up a bed for his mattress.

Coverage of Silicon Valley increasingly reminds me of coverage of China, where a legacy media reporter might parachute in, write a dispatch on something that looks deranged, and leave without moving past caricature.

I’m struck that some east coast folks insist to me that driverless cars can’t work and won’t be accepted, even as these vehicles populate the streets of the Bay Area.

Today, AI dictates everything in San Francisco while the tech scene plays a much larger political role in the United States. I can’t get over how strange it all feels. In the midst of California’s natural beauty, nerds are trying to build God in a Box; meanwhile, Peter Thiel hovers in the background presenting lectures on the nature of the Antichrist. This eldritch setting feels more appropriate for a Gothic horror novel than for real life.

the Communist Party and Silicon Valley are two of the most powerful forces shaping our world today. Their initiatives increase their own centrality while weakening the agency of whole nation states.

al in de eerste helft van de 15e eeuw genoemd,