As the US weaponises Big Tech, the EU must decide how hard to fight back
Since US President Donald Trump’s return to the White House in January 2025, Europe’s dependencies on US tech have become liabilities; ‘cards’, in Trump’s parlance, to stack a winning geopolitical hand.
The Trump 2.0 administration has used brute force against the EU: restricting access to leading AI models, sanctioning an EU-based International Criminal Court prosecutor and judges (including suspending not only their digital workplace access, but also blocking their bank transfers and access to US software), and banning EU citizens and a former European Commission official tied to online hate speech rules from entering the US.
Washington also spent three months weighing whether to include 17 EU countries in an AI chip export ban initiated under former president Joe Biden, ultimately deciding against it.
Faced with such tech-fuelled hostility from this once staunch ally, the bloc may have little choice but to face down the US by playing its own strategic tech ‘cards’.
