The veil of hypocrisy surrounding the Trump administration’s reasons for imposing tariffs and the European Commission’s recent weak show of strength highlight the EU’s structural problem: the absence — in the technology sector and beyond — of a strategically realistic vision by Andrea Monti – Originally published in Italian on Italian Tech
‘Action beats reaction’ is a well-established principle in conflict theory. From chivalric duels to Blitzkrieg (lightning war), acting first gives a strategic and tactical advantage over one’s opponent. While the attacker knows exactly what is about to happen and how, the target inevitably loses time trying to understand, organise and react. As long as the initiative is in the hands of those who moved first, it is extremely difficult to effectively counter the opponent’s actions because one will inevitably find oneself ‘chasing’ or having to fight at times and in places decided by the other side.
Big Tech and control of the initiative
Seizing the initiative is not a principle that applies only in armed conflict because it is applicable, and is applied, in the world of industry and, in particular, by Big Tech. Twenty-five years ago, in an interview with David Sheff, Jeff Bezos explained his success by saying that while others worry about understanding what Amazon does, Amazon thinks about doing new things. Our secret, he said, ‘is that we are not obsessed with competition. We have always been obsessed with serving our customers better, while our competitors were obsessed with Amazon’.
Break things and move fast has long been Facebook’s motto.
‘Better to ask for forgiveness than permission’ is a long-standing mantra in the world of information technology: it has enabled the spread of technologies such as search engines and generative artificial intelligence, which, objectively speaking, would never have left the laboratories if we had had to wait for clear rules on the use of content and data.
The EU’s strategic mistake was not to control the political initiative on technology
Dominance over initiative is not achieved by chance but is the result of careful preparation based on gathering information and understanding the weaknesses of the (near and distant) enemy. This concept is summarised in the ‘presentable’ version of an adage used in the British army: adequate preparation prevents failure. And it seems that Big Tech has widely applied this rule, if it is true that it manages its strategies with an approach based on the preventive occupation of spaces and the containment of institutional attempts to ‘liberate’ them, granting only what is strictly necessary.
However, to be adequately prepared, one must be pragmatic: start with the facts and build strategies on them, not the other way around, as Europe has historically done since the first directive on personal data protection was adopted in 1995.
That directive, improperly associated with ‘privacy’, laid the foundations for the ‘thirty-year war’ over data that is still being fought today between the US and the 27 EU countries.
For a long time, the conflict was kept low-key, with national data protection authorities tasked with making forays into this or that specific issue, imposing million-euro fines but without addressing the root causes. However, it is only recently, with the addition of regulations on digital services and the digital market to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), that the EU has stepped up its use of rules as a tool of lawfare — the geopolitical application of law.
As if that were not enough, European hyper-regulation has resulted in further directives and regulations on critical infrastructure, financial market resilience and data governance. These measures are already having a heavy bureaucratic impact on administration and markets, but — as in the case of the GDPR — the effects will only become noticeable to most people when it is too late.
A historical example of what could happen is provided by the regulation on personal data protection.
Enacted in 2016 (and therefore conceived at the dawn of the 2000s), it came into force in 2018, and only now are there tentative admissions of its inadequacy and the need to streamline it. In the meantime, as Mario Draghi has pointed out, money and — above all — the development of technologies, products and new markets in Member States have been sacrificed on the altar of ‘rules’.
In short, while Europe was making rules, the rest of the world, in both the East and the West, was building the technological and political future.
The need for a medium- to long-term technology strategy
It was quite clear that the attack on US interests in the data sector would sooner or later trigger harsh reactions, and this was pointed out on many occasions. Nevertheless, the EU systematically underestimated this scenario or — which is the same thing — overestimated its own capacity to respond.
The consequences of this short-sightedness are there for all to see: against all rationality, the Commission continues to include Big Tech among the possible targets of counter-tariffs without, in the meantime, planning a real parallel strategy for technological independence and decoupling from US services.
Yet, in the automotive sector, the decision to abandon a well-established technology that is fundamental to European industry was taken without hesitation, on the grounds that the long-term benefits would outweigh the inevitable short-term problems.
The fact that things have not gone exactly as planned in the transition to electric vehicles does not change the terms of the question: only by setting goals for the future can we manage the events (even tumultuous ones) of the present.
It is therefore clear that Europe cannot rid itself of the sprawling presence of foreign software and services in the immediate future, but this does not prevent us from planning a medium-term strategy now to achieve this result.
Such a challenge is truly momentous, given that, technologically speaking, the EU must navigate between the Scylla of the United States and the Charybdis of China, avoiding crashing under the blows of either. But without repeating things that have already been said, there are systemic measures that can be adopted immediately. Just think of the structural obligation to use open source software in public administrations and to manage the life cycle of hardware and software not on the basis of the strategies of those who produce them, but taking into account the interests of those who have to use them. On the one hand, this would significantly strengthen the Union’s autonomy, and on the other, it would trigger a virtuous process of wealth redistribution by keeping licence and royalty costs within Member States, which otherwise end up overseas.
In other words, it would make more sense to impose a decisive shift in technology development policies that enhances internal markets and reduces foreign dependence. This would be a structural choice with lasting effects against attacks from external fronts, whether Western or otherwise, both in terms of the economy and national security.
What role for technology tariffs?
Technology tariffs could also have a place in such a scenario, but only if they are part of a strategy aimed at opening up a different front, controlled in terms of if, where and when by the EU, in which the US would be transformed from attacker to attacked.
The fear, however, is that the strategy devised in Brussels is that of ‘addà passa a nuttata’ (let’s wait and see what happens tonight) that Eduardo theorised in Napoli Milionaria, betting that they can hold out long enough for something — anything — to happen on the other side of the Atlantic that will allow them to see the sun rise.
Provided they can hold out long enough to see the dawn, it is true that after darkness there must inevitably be light. But it is also true that light mercilessly illuminates everything that is left behind, including the rubble.