The EU tech sovereignty plan

3 hours ago

The European Commission's Tech Sovereignty Plan allocates significant resources to semiconductors, cloud infrastructure, AI, and data centers, while open source and native openweb initiatives like the Fediverse receive minimal attention.
Social infrastructure, including federated systems and community-based platforms, is largely overlooked in favor of technical systems, revealing a misunderstanding of digital sovereignty as merely industrial rather than social.
Open source is treated as a procurement strategy without adequate support for the communities and governance needed to sustain it, risking 'open-source washing' and undermining long-term digital autonomy.
The plan's focus on hardware and software ignores the importance of social protocols, public digital commons, and shared public spaces, potentially replicating corporate platforms under European control without increasing citizen freedom.
Institutional incompetence in understanding grassroots digital culture and commons-based governance poses a challenge, requiring engagement to prevent vacuums that could be filled by nationalist or authoritarian forces.

Hasty Briefsbeta