EU isn't ever going to have its own "tech" industry as long as US has full access to EU markets and IMHO the ChatControl thing is totally unrelated.

Anyone who has a "tech" industry besides US has it thanks to trade barriers and embargoes because otherwise doesn't make sense to have it. The product doesn't have a considerable marginal cost to distribute, doesn't make sense to have it made in more than one place. 50 US states don't have EU regulations and yet everything is still happening in SV only, the rest of the "tech" in US is about as developed as in the rest of the world and they all feed into SV one way or another. Also, there's no way for competition as the capital in US(which can come from Europe, Arabs etc. too) can provide the services at loss for 10-20 years until drives everyone out of business.

EU tried to be open for business and have sovereignty through things like privacy and data control laws but the end result was that whoever is worth their salt goes to SV and sell it in EU from there and when tangental industries like VW or Mercedes need top talent for their software there's no one left or those who are still in EU are not doing things that transfers well into their niche.

ChatControl, IMHO is just some career move of some politicians from the ultra low corruption small northern countries where people trust the government way too much. They appear to believe that they can solve some issues with it. Not that different from all the governments who want control and each one wants as much control as possible.

I think the age control attempts are much more interesting and consequential. Why? Because bots don't have age. If implemented in a way that preserves anonymity while ensuring that the things are written by a real person(or at least has someone responsible for it even if its AI written) it can actually solve the bot problem and social manipulation problems like people from other countries pushing an agenda that doesn't actually have organic roots in the society.

Anyway, the issues are real and the risk are real and I think its a good idea to seek methods to mitigate the risks while keeping in mind that even if you currently like the government in few years the people who you don't like might be in power so, be careful.

At this level it really is a case of purpose-of-the-system-is-what-it-does. The EU is clearly not interested in building up a tech sector. Factions in the EU, yes. EU as a block, no. They've shown less than no interest; the EU would be a great place to build software companies if the governments weren't hostile to the idea of large tech companies which is where the market wants to go. Nice place to live. Software companies tend to migrate to the US.

I suspect that in the halls of power they would rather interpret "digital sovereignty" as a state where they, the sovereigns, have power in the digital world to mess with EU citizens online lives. It seems very optimistic to think that the EU is suddenly going to get interested in supporting software companies. Even philosophically, why bother changing suddenly just to do something they can ask the Americans to do? Economies require specialisation, everyone can't do everything.

It isn't even a bad thing that the EU doesn't have a thriving software ecosystem but for the fact it appears to be driven by governmental hostility to freedom. Good companies can come from the US. Bad companies can come from the EU. They already have a good FOSS ecosystem. The only problem is the EU seems to be more likely to bring in something like chat control and beat down anyone who achieves enormous success.

That’s a fairly sensible writeup.

The issue with these types of battles, is that each side tends to resort to extreme hyperbole.

That basically gives the other side ammunition for wholesale dismissal.

It’s important (IMNSHO) to have reasonable, sane discussions, and avoid falling into the “screeching monkey” trap.

In real life countries can have sovereignty. In cyberspace only individuals can have sovereignty.

Otherwise you’re just choosing who misuses their privilege to your data.

> It is time for Europe to develop a coherent tech strategy. Can we build digital sovereignty while simultaneously undermining the protocols that enable it?

We should. The problem is that politics is messy and with lots of opposing views. See the GDPR versus this Chat Control absurdity. But _principles_ are those that stick, and I think that the principle that communication should be private _always_ should become sort of constitutional within the EU. We are the ones that vote, we are the ones that need to signal that we don't want to give up privacy for whatever "security" some, completely uninformed, want to promise.

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Ministers are making laws for themselves, especially their police services.

Montesquieu warned about the seperation of powers between the legislator and the executive, but it seems that it is still not the case at the EU level.

I really wish it were as easy as presented in this article.

Realistically speaking, we'll probably see some minor changes thrt address concerns of some opposing member states (or maybe there will be some bribery behind the scenes) to win majority support.

And at the same time Ursula von der Leyen keeps deleting work messages … to free storage

> Can we build digital sovereignty

We did. Cookie banners have persisted for well over a decade, so that's a proven track record.

The truly mind-blowing thing to me is that chat control literally goes against the constitutions of a lot of EU countries. Pooling sovereignty is one thing. Voting for regulations that you then need to implement as local laws where those local laws would directly contradict the constitution is something else.

I don’t assume malice where stupidity suffices though.

Brightball's comment here is relevant in this context as well. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45579968

We build robust encryption, then comes the naive-ignorant wave of "why do we need this? let's remove it" because policymakers don't grasp the extent of it, nor have any clue how it works and why.

IMHO, the position statements of VPN companies like this one suffer from a conflation of "private communication" with "business of providing private communication 'as a service', for profit"

AFAICT, "Chat Control" did not target the notion of "private communication"

It targeted third parties, e.g., "VPNs", providing "private communication" to the public "as a service", for profit

IMO, there is a difference and using third parties for "private communication" has consequences