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Meta is investing hundreds of billions in AI infrastructure. China is making artificial intelligence increasingly affordable. As these two strategies collide, Europe may face its greatest technological challenge yet: can digital sovereignty survive the economics of everyday choice?
Universities were built upon openness, collaboration and scientific exchange. Yet as semiconductors, photonics and artificial intelligence become strategic technologies, Europe increasingly faces a difficult question: how open can science remain when knowledge itself becomes infrastructure?
Europe’s challenge is no longer simply competing with foreign companies. It is increasingly competing with state-backed industrial ecosystems. As strategic industries shift from products to infrastructure, Europe faces difficult questions about resilience, sovereignty and the future of open markets.
Artificial intelligence is often discussed as a software revolution. Increasingly, however, AI is revealing itself as something much larger: an industrial system built upon energy, semiconductors, infrastructure and global supply chains. As intelligence scales, the real competition may shift from algorithms toward the ecosystems capable of sustaining them.
China rarely dominates Western headlines in the same way as Silicon Valley or Brussels, yet few countries shape the global future of artificial intelligence as quietly and consistently. While public debate in Europe and the United States often focuses on regulation, ethics and market competition, China has taken a different path. It treats AI not as a standalone sector, but as a strategic foundation for national power.
