Europe’s Digital and Technological Sovereignty: Strengthening the Transatlantic Alliance
At the European Defence & Security Summit in Brussels, one panel cut to the heart of a pressing dilemma: how can Europe secure technological and digital sovereignty in an era where cyber warfare, artificial intelligence, and quantum breakthroughs are reshaping the battlefield? The session, titled “Technological and Digital Sovereignty in Defense: Cyber, AI, and Quantum,” assembled a diverse group of policymakers, defense veterans, and industry leaders. What emerged was not a confident roadmap, but a chorus of anxieties. Europe, the panelists warned, risks becoming strategically dependent on the United States while simultaneously exposed to China’s expanding technological reach. Unless urgent action is taken, the continent could find itself unable to defend its own sovereignty in the digital age.
Caught Between Two Giants
For decades, Europe’s security architecture has rested on American guarantees. But as Bart Groothuis, Member of the European Parliament, argued, this reliance creates vulnerabilities. “The Americans have a clear intent to digitally colonize Europe,” he said. With Washington restricting the export of advanced AI chips, European high-performance computing centers risk becoming “second or third tier.”
The anxiety is not just about technology gaps, but about political leverage. If Europe cannot build sovereign capabilities in critical areas like AI and quantum, it will remain dependent on Washington’s goodwill. A risky position at a time when U.S. attention is shifting toward the Indo-Pacific.
At the same time, China’s growing power looms larger still. Our CEO Jaap van Etten, highlighted the staggering scale of China’s defense ecosystem. “There are at least 120,000 Chinese companies supplying the PLA,” Jaap van Etten explained. “And many of them are already sending advanced technologies to Russia.”
In practice, Europe faces a two-front challenge: reliance on the U.S. for the most advanced chips and infrastructure, while Chinese firms increasingly supply its adversaries with critical technologies.
But this is not a case for Europe to “go it alone.” Building stronger European capabilities is the only way to make transatlantic cooperation more balanced, resilient, and effective.
Cyber and AI: Fighting Blind
Artificial intelligence has become central to defense planning, from analyzing satellite imagery to accelerating battlefield decision-making. But as Gustaf Winroth of the European Commission noted, AI models are only as effective as the data they are trained on. “Every AI model relies on huge amounts of data. For defense, access is limited. Without data, AI is restricted to narrow applications.”
Europe’s lack of access to usable defense data is already limiting progress. Worse, adversaries are moving faster. Datenna has tracked Chinese firms providing Russia with high-tech optics, while Russian companies supply the Chinese military with software to analyze Ukrainian troop movements. This is why Jaap van Etten frames sovereignty as first and foremost a question of visibility. “If you don’t know what your adversaries are doing, you’re shooting blind. It’s like playing whack-a-mole, one against a thousand, blindfolded.”
For Europe, sovereignty in AI and cyber is not only about building algorithms or chips. It is about ensuring that intelligence can be gathered, connected, and acted upon at scale, before adversaries exploit the blind spots. This challenge is not Europe’s alone: the U.S. also struggles with data silos and procurement bottlenecks. Closer transatlantic cooperation on standards, data sharing, and threat intelligence is essential to ensure that alliances move faster than adversaries.
Quantum: Deterrence Under Threat
If AI and cyber define today’s battles, quantum technologies may determine tomorrow’s. They promise to revolutionize communications, navigation, and cryptography. But they also threaten to undermine Europe’s most fundamental security guarantees.
Retired Brigadier General Robbie Boyd warned that quantum sensing could one day expose Europe’s nuclear submarines, the backbone of its deterrent posture. “If quantum exposes our submarines, the UK’s deterrent becomes vulnerable. That forces a fundamental reset, and huge new spending.”
In Sweden, researchers have already demonstrated a quantum compass small enough to fit on a UAV, a breakthrough that could render GPS obsolete. Post-quantum cryptography is another looming frontier. Without it, critical European communications could be compromised.
The anxiety here was not hypothetical. The battlefield in Ukraine has shown that cycles of innovation are measured in months, not decades. Europe’s slow procurement and adoption cycles leave it struggling to keep pace. Similar concerns exist in the U.S. defense ecosystem. Coordinated transatlantic investment in quantum research and post-quantum cryptography could help prevent duplication and accelerate deployment.
Innovation Without Scale
While Europe has world-class researchers and promising startups, its defense ecosystem lacks scale. Fabrice Pothier, CEO of Rasmussen Global, pointed out that Europe’s defence production model is both too slow and too expensive. “Ukraine is innovating faster, because if they fail, they die. Europe’s adoption cycles are decades, not months.”
Financing is another critical weakness. Private investment in U.S. defense innovation outpaces Europe by a factor of three. Robbie Boyd described venture capitalists already preparing to move top European AI and quantum companies to the U.S. without urgent support at home.
The result is a vicious cycle: Europe produces promising startups, but without scale or financing, they migrate across the Atlantic. Sovereignty slips further out of reach, and transatlantic cooperation risks becoming one-sided. Breaking this cycle requires coordinated funding and procurement mechanisms that allow Europe and the U.S. to nurture innovation together, rather than compete for it.
Society Unprepared
Perhaps the most sobering observation came from our CEO, Jaap van Etten, who shifted the discussion from technology to society itself. “Russia is punching us in the face every day, we just don’t feel it,” he said, referring to cyber intrusions, disinformation campaigns, and covert technology transfers.
If European societies are unwilling to confront the reality of being under attack, politicians will struggle to make the hard choices on procurement, financing, and sovereignty. And if citizens do not understand the stakes, transatlantic unity will remain fragile. Raising public awareness, on both sides of the Atlantic, is therefore a prerequisite for building political will.
From Rhetoric to Readiness
What emerged from the Brussels discussion was not despair, but urgency. Europe still has assets: strong research communities, innovative startups, and allies willing to cooperate. But unless these are scaled, financed, and coordinated, they will not be enough. The panel pointed out three immediate priorities:
- Visibility into adversaries’ activities, so Europe and its allies are never fighting blind.
- Shared standards, so intelligence from different providers can connect “like Lego cubes” into a unified picture.
- Joint procurement, to prevent fragmentation and ensure Europe’s efforts add up to more than the sum of their parts.
Sovereignty, in this view, is not about autarky. It is about ensuring that Europe can contribute its share to collective defense, strengthening the transatlantic alliance rather than remaining dependent on it.
A Strategic Crossroads
The panel closed with more questions than answers. Can Europe finance innovation at scale? Can it adopt new technologies at the pace of modern conflict? Can it educate its societies about the threats they already face?
As Bart Groothuis put it bluntly: “We are in dire straits in Europe. We need to wake up geopolitically very soon, or we will face even greater risks.”
The anxieties voiced in Brussels reflect a deeper truth: in the digital age, sovereignty is not an abstract principle but a practical necessity. Whether Europe can achieve it, in close cooperation with its transatlantic allies, will determine not only its role on the global stage, but its ability to defend itself in the decades ahead.