Photonics Beyond the Hype: Where Europe Actually Stands Today

Why light is no longer a future promise, but a present infrastructure choice

From future promise to present constraint

For years, photonics has been presented as a technology of the future — elegant, powerful and perpetually just over the horizon. It appears in research agendas and innovation strategies alongside quantum computing and other long-term breakthroughs. As a result, it is still widely perceived as experimental rather than structural.

That framing is becoming increasingly misleading. The renewed relevance of photonics is not driven by scientific novelty, but by a far more pragmatic force: the physical limits of electronic infrastructure. Modern digital systems are no longer constrained by how fast chips can calculate, but by how much energy is required to move data between them — inside servers, across racks and throughout data centers.

At that point, the discussion shifts from performance to physics. Digital infrastructure, ultimately, is a physical system. And every physical system encounters limits — not economic limits, not regulatory limits, but thermodynamic ones.

“The amount of energy required to move data around inside a data center is becoming a larger problem than the computation itself. Optical interconnects are no longer a luxury; they are the only way to break through the ‘power wall’ of modern AI clusters.”
Ian Young
Senior Fellow and Director of Exploratory Integrated Circuits, Intel

Lagarde as Europe’s Moral Compass

Why the ECB Now Speaks the Language of Strategy While Politics Falls Silent

Europe has entered an unfamiliar phase of its economic history. Not because growth has collapsed or inflation has spiralled out of control, but because the institution that now speaks most clearly about Europe’s future is not an elected government, not a council of ministers and not the European Commission — but a central bank.

In recent months, the voice cutting through Europe’s economic fog has been that of Christine Lagarde. Increasingly, her interventions no longer sound like monetary fine-tuning. They sound like warnings about direction, capability and time.

“The world will not wait for Europe. Another six years of inaction and lost growth would not just be disappointing; it would be irresponsible.”
Christine Lagarde, President, European Central Bank

Interview — Professor Martijn Heck

The Unintended Diplomat of Light

I travelled to Eindhoven for a conversation about chips. Not to analyse schematics or count transistors, but to understand what technology truly represents today. In a world where geopolitical power is increasingly exercised through machines, the chip is no longer a technical object — it has become a strategic crossroads.

The interview with Professor Martijn Heck therefore did not begin with a prepared list of questions. That list remained closed. Instead, the conversation unfolded organically, revealing how difficult it has become to maintain perspective. Chips now touch energy systems, security, data flows, defence, education and sovereignty all at once. Anyone attempting to impose order quickly discovers how fragmented the landscape has become.

Halfway through the conversation, Heck raised a fair question: whether I sufficiently understood the technology itself. It was not a test, nor a correction, but a concern. Because speaking about chips without understanding their physics means missing the core. Yet precisely in that moment it became clear what this interview was really about — not the chip itself, but Europe’s position in a world where the United States speaks loudly and China builds quietly.

“Electrons are like a crowd trying to run through a narrow corridor — they collide, generate heat and slow each other down. Photons move through open space. They don’t interact, they don’t heat up and they travel at the speed of light.”

Prof. Dr. Martijn Heck
Professor of Photonic Integration — Eindhoven University of Technology