Source: WIRED Backchannel
European tech leaders are moving beyond rhetorical sovereignty to concrete action. They're shifting how the continent approaches AI development—not just regulating it, but building capability. The ambition mirrors past EU efforts to construct digital champions (Galileo, battery tech), but AI's capital intensity and talent drain make execution far harder than previous industrial policy. If Europe builds even modest indigenous LLMs and inference capabilities, it fragments the global AI market and forces U.S. companies to rebuild distribution and partnerships region-by-region.