Europe’s digital dependence: the fragility of sovereignty under American tech power Concentration of US technological power exposes Europe to systemic risk and undermines strategic political autonomy.
by Michael Lamonaca, 28 November 2025
The central paradox defining Europe’s digital future is that the continent, which prides itself on leading global efforts for data privacy and regulatory control, remains structurally and politically addicted to the very American technology platforms and cloud services it seeks to regulate. This dependence, driven by decades of under-investment and fragmented internal markets, has resulted in a critical concentration of core digital infrastructure—from operating systems and social platforms to advanced chip design and cloud computing—under US corporate control. This dynamic creates a fundamental Risk Mode scenario for the European Union, exposing its institutional fragility and making it susceptible to the economic and political coercion inherent in foreign technological concentration. The commitment to digital sovereignty is a political aspiration that is being undermined by a daily technological reality.
The Unseen Mechanics driving this dependence are primarily structural and capitalistic. Firstly, the network effects inherent in digital platforms create a winner-take-all scenario that favors early movers, which were overwhelmingly American. These companies, backed by deeper pools of US venture capital and a unified domestic market, achieved critical mass before Europe could compete. Secondly, the massive economies of scale required for cutting-edge fields, particularly hyperscale cloud infrastructure (Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud) and leading-edge semiconductor manufacturing (Nvidia, AMD), make it economically prohibitive for European competitors to reach parity without state-level intervention and continental integration. This structural disparity means that key sectors of the European economy, including finance, government services, and defense, have become reliant on data processing and storage solutions governed by foreign jurisdictions, placing European data under potential surveillance or retrieval based on US laws like the CLOUD Act.
The Human Layer of this addiction is rooted in the strategic behaviors of European policymakers, corporate consumers, and consumers. European politicians and regulators attempt to exert power through regulation (the GDPR being the prime example) but remain hesitant to implement protectionist policies that would truly block US competition, fearing economic disruption and slow technological adoption. Corporate consumers prioritize immediate efficiency, scalability, and integration with existing tools, often overriding nationalistic impulses when choosing cloud providers. Meanwhile, European consumers remain overwhelmingly loyal to US-developed apps (Google Search, WhatsApp, Instagram), reinforcing the network effects. This collective human behavior reveals a continent-wide consumption addiction: the convenience and quality offered by US tech outweigh the abstract political goal of digital autonomy, confirming that market choices are consistently undermining strategic political goals.
Historical and Cross-Disciplinary Parallels show that this technological dependence is a recurring feature of geopolitical power shifts. The current reliance on US tech mirrors the Post-WWII dependence of Western Europe on American military guarantees and economic assistance (the Marshall Plan), where security was traded for a degree of political and economic subservience. A closer analogy is the energy dependence Europe cultivated with Russia in the late 20th century, which provided cheap efficiency but created an ultimate single point of failure that was leveraged for political coercion. The current situation is similar: European institutions traded short-term digital efficiency and scale for long-term strategic fragility, placing their digital fate in the hands of the very economic giants whose power they are trying to limit.
The Divergent Narratives highlight the strategic schism within the EU. The “Digital Sovereignty Camp” (led by France and Germany) advocates for massive public investment in European cloud and semiconductor initiatives (like GAIA-X) to build indigenous alternatives, viewing dependence as an existential security risk. Conversely, the “Pragmatist Camp” (often smaller Nordic and Eastern nations) argues that relying on US hyperscalers is the fastest and most efficient way to digitally transform, and that effective regulation is a sufficient defense, viewing competition as more important than nationalistic barriers. Outside the EU, the US State Department frames its tech giants as natural allies and vital components of shared democratic infrastructure, subtly using this narrative to argue against restrictive EU digital trade policies, thus using the perception of “shared values” as a tool of soft coercion.
The Verification Challenge in addressing this dependence is separating genuine technological progress toward autonomy from political window dressing. When European initiatives like GAIA-X secure funding, the real obstacle is verifying whether the technology they deploy truly displaces US dominance or merely ends up building layers on top of existing US cloud infrastructure, effectively outsourcing core technology components. Furthermore, regulatory attempts to foster local champions often face the challenge of scale: verification of whether a newly formed European tech entity can genuinely compete with the US giants without creating domestic monopolies is difficult, often leading to slow implementation and a widening technological gap.
The Consequence Zone reveals the multi-scalar threat posed by this digital addiction. At the micro-scale, the reliance on US platforms creates an asymmetric information flow, enabling US entities to track European consumer behavior and market trends more effectively than European competitors can. At the institutional scale, this dependence erodes Europe’s ability to enforce its own policies; if a core US cloud provider were forced to exit the EU market due to regulatory disputes, the resulting economic chaos would likely force a swift political concession, demonstrating the power of technological leverage. The long-term consequence is the erasure of digital industrial policy, leading to a permanent structural dependency that undermines the continent’s strategic autonomy in the defining technological domain of the 21st century.
Europe’s dangerous and structural reliance on American technological power, cemented by capitalist network effects and a lack of unified investment, exposes the continent to critical systemic fragility and limits its capacity to assert digital sovereignty in an era defined by great power competition.
Tags: AI, Technology, Geopolitics, Digital Sovereignty, Concentration, Fragility, Risk Mode