Europe wants to end its dangerous reliance on US internet technology

Summary

Imagine the internet suddenly stops working. Payment systems in your local food store go down. Healthcare systems in the regional hospital flatline. Your work software tools, and all the information they contain, disappear. You reach out for information but struggle to communicate with family and friends, or to get the latest updates on what is happening, as social media platforms are all down. Just as someone can pull the plug on your computer, it’s possible to shut down the system it connects to. This isn’t an outlandish scenario. Technical failures, cyber-attacks and natural disasters can all bring down key parts of the internet. And as the US government makes increasing demands of European leaders, it is possible to imagine Europe losing access to the digital infrastructure provided by US firms as part of the geopolitical bargaining process. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the EU’s president, Ursula von der Leyen, has highlighted the “structural imperative” for Europe to “build a new form of independence” – including in its technological capacity and security. And, in fact, moves are already being made across the continent to start regaining some independence from US technology. A small number of US-headquartered big tech companies now control a large proportion of the world’s cloud computing infrastructure, that is the global network of remote servers that store, manage and process all our apps and data. Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud are reported to hold about 70% of the European market, while European cloud providers have only 15%. My research supports the idea that relying on a few global providers increases vulnerabilty for Europe’s private and public sectors – including the risk of cloud computing disruption, whether caused by technical issues, geopolitical disputes or malicious activity. Two recent examples – both the result of apparent technical failures – were the hours‑long AWS incident in October 2025, w...