Francesca Bria in Noema:
Geopolitical power once flowed through armies and treaties, but today it courses through silicon wafers, server farms and algorithmic systems. These invisible digital infrastructures and architectures shape every aspect of modern life. “The Stack” — interlocking layers of hardware, software, networks and data — has become the operating system of modern political and economic power.
The global race to control the Stack defines the emerging world order. The United States consolidates its dominance through initiatives like Stargate, which fuses AI development directly to proprietary chips and hyperscale data centers, creating insurmountable barriers to competition. China advances through systematic industrial policy and its Digital Silk Road, achieving unprecedented integration from chip design to AI deployment across Asia and beyond. These are deliberate strategies of technological imperialism.
Europe occupies a paradoxical position: a regulatory leader but infrastructurally dependent. We Europeans have set global standards through GDPR and the AI Act. Our research institutions remain world-class. Yet just 4% of global cloud infrastructure is European-owned. European governments, businesses and citizens depend entirely on systems controlled by Amazon, Microsoft and Google — companies subject to the U.S. CLOUD Act’s extraterritorial surveillance requirements. When we use “our” digital services, we’re actually using American infrastructure governed by American law for American interests.
This dependency isn’t abstract — it’s existential.
More here.
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