Present discussions about European Digital Sovereignty underline the fact of an almost complete dependence of Europe and in particular of Germany on US technology – regarding
- shear computational power (supercomputers, data centers),
- classic IT, office and ERP applications (dominated by Microsoft, Google, Meta, …)
- as well as AI models and related computational capacities
- and, last but not least, the combination of robotics and defense systems with AI.
The standard recipe is a call for money to build more computation centers on European soil.
Actually, most of such centers presently under construction are planned to be eventually used by US companies. This is a sign of schizophrenia of European and German politicians or – even worse – a total lack of understanding of what happens in the fields of IT/AI and of what digital sovereignty really requires. Certainly not more data centers of Google, Microsoft or Meta in Germany. At least, this should not be a top priority item on an agenda for European independence of US monopolists.
Related concerns of European experts working in the fields of IT and AI culminated last week in the publication “https://europe2031.ai/“. The paper and the scenario described in it was triggered by the present failure of European governments to take and scale counter-measures against a coming US-dominance in the little remaining interval of time – if there is any at all. Visitors of this blog have probably read the paper, already.
From my perspective as a former IT consultant, I want to add three points which the scenario in the “Europe31.ai” paper does not cover to the extent these points deserve.
The first point is “education“:
AI is predominantly the result of certain types of SW, the development of artificial neural networks, the theory of artificial neural networks and advanced ideas about learning and learning algorithms. But, and this is sometimes totally underestimated, AI is also based on a lot of mathematics (in particular regarding Linear Algebra, analysis of data distributions in multiple dimensions, differential geometry, theory of graphs, optimization problems and advanced statistics). If you do not believe it, take a regular look at the papers published by American and Chines universities.
Top hardware is also an important aspect, but as China has shown with its recent CPU-based supercomputer LineShine and “DeepSeek” not a predominant factor. You can build sufficient supercomputer power also based on previous generations of hardware. What is much more important is the bundling and focusing of efforts in the field of AI – as well as the support of administrative institutions of solution oriented thinking and start-ups. Regarding these points we have, unfortunately, a lot to learn from China and investment companies in the US.
And: As in any high-tech field, real progress in the field of Machine Learning and LLM-based AI was and is achieved by clever ideas.
Proof: Consider the impact of transformer based neural networks on the development of present LLM systems. One idea, enormous consequences. And new emerging tech giants.
However and naturally: Clever ideas in turn require educated people.
Consequence: European AI Sovereignty requires at least as much investment in the education of people as in hardware.
Now, compare this with the fact that the present conservative government of Germany plans NOT to rise the state’s budget for supporting and helping students (Bafög) who do not have rich parents or parents with academic background.
A rise in support for extremely high costs for student apartments in German cities and a general increase of the support sum according to the inflation rate has been declined by a minister who – according to the press – made a paid career in their party and jobs in attached organizations already during their years as students; for related criticism see e.g. here, here and here and many more press articles. Its a shame – and I find no other word for it.
The decline came, although the level of financial support for students had and has already for several years been below minimum social standards guaranteed to other groups of citizens in Germany.
The obvious stupidity of such a budget planning remembers strongly of the Kohl era when theoretical physicists were told that Germany did not need theoretical researchers, but application oriented engineers. As if this had ever been a contradiction … My first diploma exam (in astrophysics) started with such a statement of the examining professors – uttered with a grain of pity for my generation. 15 years later the very same economy (not science) advisors, who once had told Kohl their “wisdom” about German engineering, suddenly found out that Germany did not receive enough Nobel prizes and that the best educated academic people had left Germany to work abroad. And advised chancellor Merkel to start initiatives on theoretical education and research. Well done …
Well, as a relatively old person with a PhD in physics, who can look back on more than 35 professional years in IT, you automatically think of the 5 apes in action, which unfortunately have become so characteristic of conservative German governments during the last 3 decades:
(1) Don’t hear and listen (to warnings of scientists), (2) don’t see (but ignore obvious developments in high tech realms), (3) don’t speak (about problems and long term strategy or e.g. about the self-inflicted dependency on Russian gas during the Merkel period and avoid any discussion about not having invested e.g. in digitization and AI), (4) don’t understand (because a substantial lack of MINT scientists among politicians), (5) don’t pick up ideas beyond a conservative ideology of the last century (let the market alone do its job).
As an elderly, rather conservative person, I do not utter this criticism lightheartedly. But the politicians of my generation (Merkel era) have totally failed to make my country, Germany, fit for the challenges of the time once called “future” – which now is the present time. Not to speak of today’s future …