TL;DRThe European Commission has proposed a tech sovereignty package that restricts US cloud providers from processing sensitive government data and launches Chips Act 2.0 to build advanced semiconductor capacity in Europe. The Cloud and AI Development Act creates four sovereignty tiers for public-sector cloud use.
When the Trump administration sanctioned the International Criminal Court’s top prosecutor earlier this year, Microsoft cancelled his email account. The incident was brief and bureaucratic. It was also, for European policymakers, clarifying. If a single American company could cut off a senior international official’s communications at the stroke of a pen, what else could be switched off?
On Wednesday, the European Commission answered that question with legislation. Its tech sovereignty package, the most comprehensive attempt yet to reduce the bloc’s dependence on foreign technology, targets cloud computing, artificial intelligence, semiconductors, and open-source software in a single coordinated push.
“We want to be sure nobody has a kill switch,” Commission Executive Vice-President Henna Virkkunen told CNBC.
The cloud crackdown
