American expansionist threat has supercharged Europe’s thrust for tech sovereignty
As Washington tears up the old playbook of transatlantic cooperation, Brussels is forced to look elsewhere to break free from its dependence on the US.
This year’s Munich Security Conference unfolded under the shadow of a transatlantic rift that has spilled beyond tariffs and territory into the technological foundations of power.
What began as Washington’s renewed pressure campaign surrounding Greenland has morphed into a more fundamental strategic shift inside Europe – a material push to reduce dependence on American digital infrastructure, semiconductors, cloud systems, and defence-adjacent technologies.
For years, European discussions about technological sovereignty revolved around its internal competitiveness, allied supply chains, and prioritised flagship digital regulation.
But the watershed moment Trump’s Greenland threat unleashed was when Washington demonstrated its willingness to leverage economic and security instruments simultaneously against allies, transforming Brussels’ slow-burn policy frameworks into an urgent need to de-risk from US technology providers.
What’s changing
France’s announcement to shift away from US platforms, such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams, was an early signal that EU digital sovereignty may be moving from rhetoric to implementation, and an open invitation for others to follow.
While Brussels has stopped short of compelling public administrations to abandon American platforms, the direction of travel is clear.
Policy debates increasingly frame Europe’s dependence on companies such as Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Meta and Apple less as a neutral platform competition problem, and more as a security vulnerability.
In that spirit, the European Commission announced a package to boost homegrown technology this spring, following a cybersecurity proposal in January that, if approved, could be used to root out suppliers that pose security risks, including from America.
These post-Greenland developments constitute a higher-priority, more visible layer of the EU’s earlier efforts to de-risk tech, including through EuroStack, a loosely defined initiative to foster European alternatives across cloud computing, AI and semiconductors.
It is accompanied by “a deep regulatory housecleaning”, aimed at harmonising rules within the EU single market, as well as a renewed and more targeted effort to mobilise the EU’s vast pool of household savings into capital markets, including to unlock better innovation financing.
All in all, critical emerging technologies – AI, quantum technologies and semiconductors – traditionally framed around ethics and regulation, are being increasingly repositioned as instruments of strategic capacity building.
In Munich, US officials have countered Europe’s push for technology sovereignty from the US with a clear message: it’s China they should worry about.
Europe has also been cautioned that it risked undermining its own competitiveness drive by curbing US Big Tech.
Both have some merit, but continuous EU tech de-risking could also hurt the US market share in the EU.
Moreover, European policymakers remain acutely aware that the US remains indispensable in defence, intelligence, and even commercial tech, and the aim thus isn’t to sever transatlantic cooperation outright.
Rather, the post-Greenland landscape has laid bare that even longstanding alliances cannot fully compensate for structural asymmetries.
Wary allies
The lesson European leaders have drawn is that if the US is increasingly willing to behave as a unilateral geoeconomic actor – using tariffs, export controls, or market access restrictions to coerce even allies – then it must hedge its bets, treating technological capability as an insurance policy against geopolitical coercion.
This reality is forcing EU member states off the geopolitical autopilot – reminded succinctly by Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan – that has defined much of the transatlantic relationship for decades.
Washington has made plain that Europe must assume far greater responsibility for its own defence, while economic alignment can no longer be treated as automatic.
As a result, EU capitals are being compelled to manage policy in real time – making choices they once deferred and confronting risks they once ignored – rather than assuming that legacy commitments will indefinitely hold.
Making meaningful strides towards Europe’s tech sovereignty will also demand institutional rewiring that Brussels has historically struggled to deliver.
The bloc has produced ambitious frameworks before, but carrying political commitment beyond the crisis moment and towards meaningful results will require a level of orchestrated and sustained effort.
A failure to deliver would leave middle powers with sovereignty aspirations with no credible path to achieve them – to their own strategic detriment.
Meanwhile, the implications for transatlantic relations will depend on how the transition is managed.
American firms in Europe could face tighter procurement rules, localisation requirements, and data governance restrictions.
Should Europe’s autonomy push be portrayed as disloyalty rather than risk management, it could trigger further decoupling.
Both sides could lose if that happens, ceding more ground to China, which has already been expanding its presence in Arctic infrastructure, its footprint in digital standards-setting, and its dominance of rare earth supply chains.
So, the ultimate challenge on both sides of the Atlantic will be to construct a model of shared resilience rather than that of technological fragmentation.
At the same time, a more technologically capable Europe could ultimately strengthen the Western alliance by reducing asymmetry and making cooperation more balanced and durable, ensuring that the partnership remains a choice rather than a constraint.