The Davos lesson nobody wanted to hear
In January 2025, Donald Trump took the stage at the World Economic Forum in Davos. The world expected economics. He delivered domination. Not a commercial proposition. Not an opening for negotiation. A raw display of force: morality does not lead, leverage does.
A few weeks later, the White House published a named list of European targets: Mistral AI, Capgemini, Amadeus, SAP, Spotify. Our technology champions, designated as obstacles to American economic supremacy. Not competitors to watch. Targets to neutralize.
And while Washington was loading the commercial bazooka, European leaders were doing what they do best: reflecting. Consulting. Stalling. Publishing cautious statements about the "necessity of transatlantic dialogue."
Wake up. What is playing out here is not another episode in the usual trade tensions. It is a paradigm shift that directly impacts your IT architectures, your vendor contracts, your technology choices, and the longevity of your information systems.
Act I: European champions in the crosshairs
A named aggression, not a misunderstanding
Trump did not target "the European tech industry" in general. He named specific companies. Mistral AI, Capgemini, SAP, Amadeus, Spotify. This is not classic protectionism. It is a reverse dependency map. Washington is identifying European companies that could constitute credible alternatives to American monopolies and seeking to weaken them before they reach critical mass.
For a CIO or CTO, this list is required reading. For operational reasons, not political ones. If you are evaluating Mistral AI as an alternative to OpenAI, what risks does American pressure place on that choice?
The text that says "you are not allowed"
The Trump administration's official letter to Europe is aggressively blunt, as analyst Gilles Babinet highlighted in his analysis. It effectively says, literally: "You do not have the right, as sovereign states, to adopt standards other than ours."
The regulatory targets are explicit:
- The DSA (Digital Services Act), which holds platforms responsible for content published by their users, including pornographic, child exploitation, or violence-inciting content.
- The DMA (Digital Markets Act), which requires large platforms to make room for smaller ones, directly contrary to the natural monopoly model of Big Tech.
- The 15% minimum tax (OECD Pillar 2), which aims to end the systematic tax evasion of major platforms.
- The Data Act, which mandates data sharing between companies and users and regulates use by foreign actors.
Beneath this offensive, the threat is clear: enforce these texts and we will revisit the freshly negotiated tariffs. This is industrial blackmail backed by military and monetary power. And it must be named as such in order to be countered.
Act II: Permanent coercion and the price of timidity
The European "commercial bazooka": does it actually exist?
After Trump's first term, Europe claimed to have prepared an arsenal of trade reprisals. A "bazooka" ready to be deployed in case of renewed aggression. The burning question today is simple: where is this bazooka, and does anyone have the courage to use it?
Because what is at stake goes beyond taxes or regulation. It is Europe's ability to say "no." To assert a political project that does not reduce itself to a free-trade zone calibrated to American interests. Without a firm response, it is the steamroller of US giants that will prevail, erasing European exceptionalism: a slow cultural, regulatory, and industrial capitulation.
To the major European business leaders who congratulate themselves on the "fiscal peace" negotiated with a 15% tax: congratulations, you traded our future for a few dividends. Because this "peace" is no peace at all. It is an armistice whose terms are dictated by Washington and can be unilaterally broken with every presidential tweet.
To hesitate is to surrender
The European Commission, according to leaks reported by several analysts, has reaffirmed its commitment to implementing the full digital regulatory corpus: DSA, DMA, AI Act, DGA, Data Act, on top of GDPR. A message was reportedly conveyed to American authorities: "Trump is not eternal, but the memory of European institutions is long."
That is encouraging on paper. But the political reality is more nuanced. The Commission is limiting "provocations" by avoiding the announcement of new investigations. It threatens behind closed doors rather than in public. This strategy of calculated timidity has a cost: it sends the signal that Europe is willing to negotiate its own principles.
For IT decision-makers, the consequence is direct. If the enforcement of the DMA, DSA, or AI Act is delayed, diluted, or negotiated under pressure, your compliance assumptions change. Your investments in compliance risk being either premature or insufficient. Regulatory uncertainty itself becomes an operational risk.
Act III: What geopolitics concretely changes in your architectures
Three decisions every CIO must make now
Technological sovereignty will not be voted on in Brussels. It will not be decreed by a European regulation. It will be built in our architecture choices, our budgets, and our contracts. CIOs, CTOs, entrepreneurs: we hold the keys. Not politicians. Us.
Decision 1: Prioritize European solutions that deliver business value. If 100% of your critical stack depends on vendors subject to the Cloud Act, you have a jurisdictional single point of failure. Evaluate Mistral AI against OpenAI, OVHcloud against AWS, with objective criteria of performance, cost, and geopolitical risk.
Decision 2: Harden your architectures to eliminate critical dependencies. Every component that depends on a single vendor subject to a foreign jurisdiction is a vulnerability. Identify these points, quantify the cost of an interruption, plan alternatives. This is not paranoia: it is elementary risk management.
Decision 3: Invest in local excellence, not in subsidized mediocrity. Sovereignty will not be built with subsidies distributed to mediocre projects just because they are European. European Tech will not be saved by reports. It will be saved by execution.
The operational sovereignty framework
To translate these principles into action, here is a four-axis framework I apply with my clients.
Axis 1: Jurisdictional mapping. For each critical service, document the applicable jurisdiction, data access conditions by third parties, and exit mechanisms. This is not an abstract legal exercise: it is your risk matrix.
Axis 2: Multi-vendor architecture. Design your systems for portability. Containerization, standard APIs, managed service abstraction. The upfront cost is higher. The cost of a forced emergency migration is astronomical.
Axis 3: Data sovereignty by classification. Not all data requires the same level of protection. Classify, segment, and apply differentiated placement rules. Public data can go anywhere. NIS2 compliance data stays in Europe, with a European operator.
Axis 4: Active geopolitical monitoring. Integrate geopolitical intelligence into your IT governance processes. Washington's decisions impact your architectures. China-Taiwan tensions impact your semiconductor supply chain. Ignoring these signals is flying blind.
Europe still has a card to play
The picture is bleak but not hopeless. Europe has three structural advantages that its detractors systematically underestimate.
First advantage: the market. Five hundred million consumers, an aggregate GDP that rivals the United States. No American platform can afford to lose access to the European market. That is leverage. It must be used.
Second advantage: the regulatory framework. GDPR, DMA, DSA, AI Act: this corpus is not a brake on innovation. It is a trust standard that the entire world is watching and that many countries are beginning to adopt. European compliance is becoming a global competitive advantage.
Third advantage: human capital. European engineers are among the best in the world. The training systems are excellent. What is missing is not talent. It is the willingness to fund it, retain it, and give it the means to compete.
But these advantages are worthless if nobody has the guts to deploy them. Morality does not lead. Leverage does. Trump said it at Davos. It is time for Europe to hear it, not to imitate American brutality, but to understand that negotiation between powers only works when both parties are prepared to walk away from the table.
Europe, stop negotiating your own dependency. Choose a posture and hold it. It will hurt now. It will reward those who prepared.