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It's already happening.
> They are politically and societally paralyzed from building even basic things like datacenters which are essentially just industrial compute factories and the foundation for anything pertaining to data sovereignty and technology sovereignty.
No, they are not entirely blind to the consequences of this buildout and are trying to find a balance between environmental concerns and technological progress.
I agree that we should probably do more but to use words like 'societally paralyzed' is rather uninformed about what actual democracies look like.
edit: never mind, I just checked your comment history, this seems to be some thing that you are repeating over and over and getting the same kind of answers but you just keep doing it.
Even though they could use SpaceX launch capacity to deploy such a constellation, Europe has no such plans.
Your comment seems to reinforce the parent's opinion about societal paralyzation.
Europe can claim to be cleaner or more democratic, but it doesn't change that they get nothing done.
Your claim makes as much sense as saying that the US can't even build airliners. Sure they can't build good ones. That was a decision to replace the technically capable management at Boeing with an army of MBAs. Sure Airbus are a decade ahead but the US can still build them.
The thing which many people forget was that, up until the current POTUS decided to reverse course, we were best buddies. We've invested a huge amount of money in US-based companies and generally worked together to increase the size of the pie for everyone.
Our current global share of AI compute is estimated at 5%, US at 78%, China 11%.
We're projected to briefly rise to 8% around 2028, and back to 5% for 2031.
That does not look like sovereignty and independence from the US.
I'm hearing a whole lot of noise, frustration and anger from the construction side that it's getting really hard to build data centres in the US now that the public are coming out hard. Especially in DEEP "red" states.
You must be trolling. Even US cloud providers have multiple regions in Europe, and the likes of Eutelsat precede SpaceX for a couple of decades and have been around for half a century already.
> Europe can claim to be cleaner or more democratic, but it doesn't change that they get nothing done.
I don't think you're noticing the US is plunging into self-imposed irrelevance. It can't even manage to properly fight a war anymore,as can be attested by the whole Iran fiasco. But keep parroting your alt right pipeline tropes pushed by Russian bots. Don't forget to complain how Europe is freezing and how minority rights are a societal problem.
I've noticed this with people in tech who spend too much time on Twitter. They have a very weird view of Europe. It used to be the Fox New boomers but it has spread to people who you'd assume were pretty smart.
To be honest it's part of the reason I left Twitter and only visit this site rarely. Sucks as I've had some awesome discussions here in the past.
My suspicion is that it's related to the drop in standards in tech since the big ramp up in the 2010s and the way Meta and the crypto folks don't want regulation so a lot of their employees have a vested interested in bashing the organisation capable of actually introducing some good regulation.
Everytime something about EU tech sovereignty is posted, comments with sentiments like OP are posted within the first several minutes. Because they're outrageous (anger-inducing) they get a lot of comments telling them off, an resultingly will be presented prominently on the page.
How much effort and resources does it really cost to have some bots doing this kind of stuff on a couple of well-visited platforms? As techies we should understand that it's basically costs no resources, time and effort. Therefore we should expect these kinds of influence operations on public forums like these.
As for Europe, this [1] is a graph of the EU's share of the global GDP, PPP adjusted. It's been in steady decline for decades. And so discussing the decline of Europe, at least relative to the rest of the world, is hardly outrageous.
[1] - https://www.statista.com/statistics/253512/share-of-the-eu-i...
That's fun, here's the US's version of that graph.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/270267/united-states-sha...
Notice that both show the same downward trend?
Do you know what's behind that trend? It's because it's a graph of the global share. The share drops if the GDP of other members is increasing faster. Someone like, say, China.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/270439/chinas-share-of-g...
China is doing brilliantly since the 80s, to the point it overthrew the US as the global hegemon. India is also doing well, albeit in a far less impressive way
https://www.statista.com/statistics/271328/indias-share-of-g...
I'm not sure you understood the point, which is that relative trends are irrelevant.
If there's a single member who outgrows everyone and increases its share of the global market, of course all other members will see their relative share shrink.
Churchill: Madam, would you sleep with me for $1 million?
Woman: Why Winston, yes I would.
Churchill: How about $10?
Woman: What sort of woman do you think I am?
Churchill: We've already established that. Now we're just negotiating the price.
Something I'd emphasize is that the main reason that China/India are rising is simply because relative tech disparities between nations are fading rapidly. And once you have at least remotely comparable tech, the size of your economy is going to be heavily dependent upon your population. The US has 340 million people. China and India have about 1400 million. That's a losing battle. But notably the EU has 450 million. That's well below China/India, but well ahead of the US. That should count for something, but for some reason it seemingly does not.
Except it does work. Of course you're never going to make dyed in the wool supporters of Israel xor Gaza switch sides with propaganda. This is obvious, as you imply.
What propaganda does do is crowd out the middleground nuanced opinions, which will bounce back and forth between condemning Israel or Hamas based on what each one is actually doing, in favor of the "opposing" extremist views wherein each camp can do no wrong. The extremist views each then feed on the other's popularity to boost its own, ultimately supporting unrestrained maximalist actions by both sides.
Of course this little graph fails to account for the fact that the EU took on the burden of paying for 50 years of back maintenance in former USSR countries. And on balance the change has been very positive. It will take at least another 30 years to reach parity.
They are often unfounded and obviously incorrect when made towards old accounts with established history of posting.
It's _been_ happening. Why do you think something that delivers jobs, boosts the economy, and is an easier and easier political and popular sell everyday, is unlikely?
> They are politically and societally paralyzed from building even basic things like datacenters
That's also happening. It's just that we're not as gung-ho about doing things at any cost.
From what I saw Europe has no plan to launch a large constellation that could become an alternative to Starlink. The ambition apparently does not exist.
Trump may accidentally be the best thing that happened to Europe. (I think a lot of the Chinese give him credit, due to his behavior in his first term.)
The only reason the US is not paralyzed is because the government is completely disregarding the views of voters on the topic. I struggle to see that as better.
(before someone says it: yes, I think the anti-data center sentiment is overblown. But the answer is convincing voters of why it’s good, not ignoring them)
It's really strange to see that for so many people "tech" means just a handful of US megacorporations, none of which produce critical products like medical equipment or marine engines or industrial robots or railway signaling systems.
While the overarching opinion of AI might be more negative, there's plenty of people pushing for exactly what you're describing, despite hurdles in regulation and also a fragmented market.
What's pretty clear from talking to companies of every size is that most leaders now understand how important it is.
Countries like China, Russia have largely blocked western tech and as a result domestic technology companies developed to suck up demand. Some things like having a unified capital market would help Europe. This is something they could work to solving, it's more a political question.
Meaningful local computer power could only survive realistically if exceptionally high demand (multiples of that of AI data centers) could be generated within weeks/months to get the semiconductor companies to pivot and sell the components mainly though other channels.
64GB laptops are no longer in stores. 32 GB is probably going to get squeezed out soon. For prebuilt desktops it's the same. That's no basis for meaningful local, decentralized compute.
Collaborative native software that works peer-to-peer without servers, no large-scale data breaches because there are no giant databases of PII, for things that really do benefit from being hosted (e.g. photo sharing or community notice boards) they could be run by municipalities or local community groups.
This analagous to distributed cloud infrastructure that for 99.9% of companies could be replaced with a few servers and a 2-3 node postgres system.
Last I checked they were everywhere in Europe.
How did they get there in the first place if they're so allergic to them?
It seems you've been living under a rock. Europe is already started investing those billions on non-US providers, and the US is already complaining it's not fair.
https://www.euronews.com/2026/09/30/us-ambassador-slams-eus-...
> They are politically and societally paralyzed from building even basic things like (...)
You're spending too much time in your alt-right pipeline. Europe already mobilized to cover around 80% of Ukraine's external aid, and is providing Ukraine with long range missiles and even drone technology, which the US conspicuously lacks.
Even this week there were news reports that Ukraine was now looking at Eutelsat to replace StarLink.
Trump,remaining true to his Russian asset fame, has been undermining the US in multiple fronts including diplomacy and defence treaties, and is literally pressuring Ukraine to capitulate to Russia. The sole reason why this plan hasn't succeeded is the fact that, unlike your claim, Europe stepped up and silently filled the role and responsibilities that the US held previously in NATO and Europe's security infrastructure. Therefore, Trump's threats to withhold support now lack any weight, rendering these threats completely ineffective. Thanks to Europe.
Europe's work was so successful to the point where Trump himself is throwing desperate lifelines at Putin's regime with actions such as lifting self-imposed blockaded to buy diesel straight from Putin, and demanding Zelensky resigned for Ukraine's success in attacking Russia's critical infrastructure. That tells you all there is to know on how far Europe stepped up.
https://www.eunews.it/en/2026/08/12/data-centres-nearly-2800...
Lmao. Says the country that is to politically paralyzed to even maintain roads and sewers.
For the cynical but factually curious look up the history of the ARC project, and NJ governor Chris Christie who canned it - this was to upgrade the tunnel that hosts the biggest train lines in the country (Northeast Corridor). Guess what - it has to happen, just at a much higher costs.
The United States fails at infrastructure because it's too decentralized. You don't build with anything four year terms and corrupt politicians. It's too short-term.
If you look at my list you see it includes both EU and non-Eu countries. IMO the non-EU country's mindset is more like that of its nearest neighbours who are in the EU. Ireland is far more like the UK than it is like any of the EU countries mentioned.
I would be interested to hear a definition of that "mindset" that includes all EU countries that excludes the UK, Norway. Switzerland, Iceland etc.
German here, to be fair, we have our difficulties with that too, thanks to 40 years of neoliberalism and tax-cutting orgies eroding the financial base making that possible.
I'm not talking about replacement. I'm talking about basic maintenance, because turns out when you don't go and, say, regularly paint over steel parts to save money, eventually rust will creep in and force an expensive replacement of the entire structure that would not have been needed with regular maintenance.
Your enemy is always your best teacher. Pay attention when they demonstrate a new skill.