Is Digital Sovereignty (Still) Possible? with José Ignacio Torreblanca [PODCAST]

Can Europe attain digital sovereignty? What are the limits of the EU’s regulatory power? Is the dichotomy between sovereignty and a colony unavoidable? And what is Europe’s digital grand strategy? Leszek Jazdzewski (Fundacja Liberte!) talks with Dr José Ignacio Torreblanca, a Senior Adviser and Distinguished Policy Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

Leszek Jazdzewski (LJ): Given your expertise on digital sovereignty, do you share the doubt implied by the question, “Is digital sovereignty still possible?” Or has that opportunity already passed?

José Ignacio Torreblanca (JIT): I approach this conversation from the perspective of foreign and security policy, which is the specific angle we contribute at the European Council on Foreign Relations. While there are many excellent experts from the industry, technology, and regulation sectors, our added value lies in viewing sovereignty in political and policy terms rather than strictly material or industrial ones.

I believe the framing of the question is significant. Whether it is currently possible is something we must determine, but achieving digital sovereignty is absolutely essential and necessary. It is unavoidable. While defining sovereignty and the practical steps to achieve it are complicated questions, our starting point must be the recognition that we live in a world where technological dependencies are being weaponized. Just as we pursued energy security and resilience by finding alternatives, we must now do the same with technology.

We are quite late in this endeavor. While energy security efforts began in the 1970s, we are only at the beginning of this process regarding technology. We were caught by surprise when the United States began weaponizing these dependencies. We had been focused on Russia and China, particularly regarding disinformation and foreign interference, and did not realize that our closest ally was also willing to utilize these dependencies. This realization has been a significant shock, which is why this field is relatively new in terms of policy development and practical solutions.

LJ: How do you define sovereignty within the digital domain compared to traditional international relations, especially considering that absolute sovereignty is often regarded as a myth?

JIT: I believe it is important to recognize that, much like our discussions on strategic autonomy, sovereignty exists on a continuum between full autarky and full dependency. Achieving complete independence is exceptionally difficult, and even if it were possible, one might choose not to pursue it to avoid isolation. The benchmark we utilize at the European Council on Foreign Relations is not the mastery of one hundred percent of the technologies required for daily life, as that is impossible. Digital technologies now underlie every policy sector—including energy, finance, health, and education—making autonomy in this field far more complex than in energy.

The true benchmark is our ability to measure our vulnerability to coercion by third actors. If they attempt to coerce us, we must determine which instruments and strategies we can deploy to deter that aggression. This is the perspective we are introducing to the discussion. While engineers may suggest that significant investment over a decade could produce a European technology stack, we must address the immediate risks.

We should consider technology in the same way we approach trade; interdependencies can be weaponized by both sides. When the United States utilizes sanctions or threats, we must consider our own anti-coercion instruments. Currently, we are closer to a state of full dependency than autarky, as we are nearly ninety percent dependent on external technologies. While we identify how to move away from such absolute dependency, we must also address very concrete questions: What happens when a figure like Elon Musk interferes in a national election? What is our recourse if the United States sanctions European officials or orders companies like Microsoft to ban services to the International Criminal Court?

We must determine how to retaliate, deter, and mitigate such actions. This requires a diplomatic and economic security language. If I were forming a team to address this, I would include not only engineers and lawyers, but also diplomats, economic security experts, and perhaps military personnel. We saw with Denmark that deterrence does not always require the threat of winning a war; it requires the ability to impose a cost that is above zero. We must signal that we are willing to impose costs to deter our allies and adversaries from weaponizing these dependencies against us. That is the logic we must begin applying to the digital field.

LJ: How can you persuade individuals to adopt alternative technologies when big tech is framed as a consumer choice driven by business and convenience? Furthermore, since European alternatives often seem like a utopia, are they truly available, or should we redefine our framework entirely?

JIT: Your point regarding the consumer-driven nature of this issue is precisely correct. We find ourselves in this vulnerable position because we approached technology through the logic of welfare consumerism; there is nothing inherently wrong with wanting good products at low prices. However, our competition policies failed to prevent these companies from growing so large that they now stifle innovation. Big tech often uses its massive resources to influence regulation, preventing new entrants from succeeding in the market.

We must move beyond the narrative that regulation opposes innovation. In reality, healthy regulation creates a market where new players can emerge. The problem becomes a matter of sovereignty and democracy when, for example, the European Parliament passes the Digital Services Act or the AI Act with a significant majority, and a foreign government then pressures us to change those laws. When a government threatens democratic processes to protect corporate interests, regulation becomes a fundamental democratic issue.

When faced with sanctions or pressure, societies—like the Ukrainians—become smarter and seek alternative solutions. US big tech companies risk losing market share not just through regulation, but because their behavior encourages Europe to develop its own competitive solutions. To achieve this, we must change the ecosystem to break down monopolies. One practical solution is interoperability for social networks. Much like when phone companies were forced to allow customers to keep their numbers when switching providers, we need to allow users to migrate their digital identities between platforms to create a real market.

We do not necessarily need to fund public enterprises to compete with the private sector. Instead, we should create a market where diverse solutions can thrive. Furthermore, in terms of economic security, a government should not depend on a single provider for ninety percent of its needs. By setting limits on such vulnerabilities in public procurement, we create space for European innovation to scale up. Europe produces enough innovation; our challenge is ensuring those solutions can enter the market, scale, and provide consumers with high-quality alternatives at reasonable prices.

LJ: Considering that tech has become securitized and central to the technological cold war between the U.S. and China, why is regulatory power alone—the “Brussels effect”—insufficient to achieve digital sovereignty?

JIT: Regulation is a necessary condition. Contrary to the view that innovation is killed by regulation, Europe is a very good example; compared to the United States, our automotive industry has innovated greatly because of regulations on emissions, quality, and safety. This is also the case for our aeronautic and pharmaceutical industries. Good regulation produces great innovation because you have to become smarter and more efficient.

Regarding the “Brussels effect,” I have no issues with the work of Anu Bradford. The problem is that technology has become securitized or placed under a logic of weaponization; therefore, it is more difficult to engage in exporting this effect and having an impact, even for the Americans themselves. They failed to apply their own regulations on market concentration to their own firms and exported the problem to themselves. They are now realizing that failing to regulate social networks has a great cost in terms of public health, polarization, and political power.

However, we cannot now allow ourselves to get into a big fight with the United States like when they broke the Bell Company into ten companies. That was fine then because it was an internal market and they were not fighting China with the aid of Bell. Today, we cannot break Google into ten entities because that would be resisted politically. It would be viewed as a major act of aggression toward the United States, as they see these big companies as their greatest asset in sustaining supremacy against China.

When the United States National Security Advisor defined the idea of a “small yard and high fence” to deny China access to certain products—specifically AI, quantum computing, and chips—the question is: what is small about that garden? It is huge; it is everything. If you deny access to technology, you deny growth, military power, economic welfare, and social welfare. We are in a technological cold war with China in which technology is the most important dimension. You cannot simply come in and say you are going to break up Google, Apple, or Microsoft, because they will argue that you are destroying their capacity to gain supremacy. This logic plays against the regulatory approach. It is much more complicated than just exporting our standards, which in the past were accepted by big tech companies because those standards did not eat at the core of their business model. That is no longer the case if we shut these things down.

LJ: In the next few years, what can Europe realistically achieve? Given our continued security dependence on the United States, what should our aspirations be for the mid-term?

JIT: The 2023 European Economic Security Strategy provides a clear framework through its “three Ps”: promote, protect, and partner. We must continue to promote our own indigenous technologies; we simply cannot accept the degree of vulnerability we currently face. In the meantime, we must protect ourselves by developing strategies to deter coercion.

Furthermore, we must partner with the rest of the world. One mistake we cannot make is thinking this is only for us. Sometimes, in discussions about strategic autonomy, others perceive it as an exclusive endeavor. I have similar criticisms regarding the idea of a “Eurostack”. If we call it that, partners in Brazil, Australia, Canada, Japan, or South Korea may feel excluded. While we must build this stack at home, it should be presented as a “democracy stack” where others can bring their own solutions. All democracies are facing the same issues with digital services, public space interference, and market concentration in areas like cloud services.

We must be smarter and identify our leverage. As you mentioned, we have a market where these companies make significant profits. We often overlook the fact that our own pension funds are invested in U.S. big tech. We should map our vulnerabilities, but we must also map the vulnerabilities of others and play dynamically with them. This is the language of power. For example, under the Biden administration, we were pressured to restrict the sales of ASML lithography machines to China. That is an asset that can work both ways; if we are pressured, we can leverage what we have in Europe to balance the relationship. We do not need to wait ten years to be totally independent; that is not the right path.

In this process, we will discover that we are more powerful than we realize and that the United States has limits. While they are powerful by GDP, they cannot easily counter others balancing them. The “America First” or “America Only” approach creates a space for realigned items where we can demonstrate we are not helpless. Canada, for instance, is like a miniature European Union; they once bet everything on dependency and are now correcting that. We must find our solution through trial and error, but since this fight has been imposed on us, we cannot reject it.

Read the article: ecfr.eu/article/referees-dont…e-digital-great-game/

This podcast is produced by the European Liberal Forum in collaboration with the Movimento Liberal Social and the Fundacja Liberté!, with the financial support of the European Parliament. Neither the European Parliament nor the European Liberal Forum are responsible for the content or for any use that be made of.