Being dependent on US tech feels the same as when we were dependent on Russian energy: strategically unwise and avoidable. We have alternatives, they just need work.
I think we've been far too complacent about the direction of travel across the Atlantic. Trump and his crew are the new normal, and the key players in Silicon Valley are on board.
Any European government not currently working towards independence from US tech is being almost criminally neglectful.
As a European dev, because I like RISC-V and because of the geopolitical situation I wouldn't bet on x86 in the long term.
Americans for their part would probably be very happy to use made-in-Europe software on their computers whenever applicable.
Well, no one has mentioned computer hardware until you did.
Surely you understand how "all the motherboards are made in Taiwan" is less of an immediate risk to sovereignty than "all of our business and personal data is stored on American servers and subject to US law"
It would be nice if Europe could produce its own computers, but right now no one can except China, so what is your point? That limited sovereignty efforts undertaken in the realm of reality are futile and that enables you to get some cheap shots in for whatever reason?
Well, you can use the old hardware which you've already got if you get cut off from foreign suppliers. But the same is true for software. It's even more true for software.
If the French government and other Europeans were serious about reducing or eliminating dependency on American cloud services, they should switch to older versions of MS Office and MS Windows be done with it. No need to retrain your workers, and a realistic and speedy way to implement it.
That does not make any sense at all. These are full of known security vulnerabilities.
Though at least the Chinese are predictable, unlike dealing with the USA.
I am perplexed by people who use condescending phrases like this. You think we track what you said before?
It’s almost like globalism is not so bad as long as your companies pay their taxes.
Lenovo is Chinese, right? Xiaomi, Samsung... can you really not name one non-US company making computers?
Seemingly, the US might be able to design good computers, but it cannot make them themselves. This should make it easier for others to do the same, design the computer in country X but actually make it somewhere else, just like the US. Yet we're not seeing this at all.
Recently, not so many I suppose. But many of the earliest computers were European, so surely we could get there again at one point, hardly impossible.
Of course the components are not European made. But Dell's components are not US made either.
I can also buy a Japanese or Korean (or Chinese) computer. There is no dependency on a single country.
Also, some partners are more reliable than others. If China becomes as volatile as the US, it would change the risk assessment and stimulate other parts of the industry.
This is a way way more concerning topic. The irony is that China might be the one fixing that dependency + bring prices down.
One bomb on the Netherlands and it is over for nearly all the worldwide supply-chain, 10 or 15 years of regression.
Even worse, they can remotely kill the machines for political reasons.
If you mean assembled then there are lots of very small European companies that make custom build PCs.
Economies of scale in the US, a single language, and cheap transport, mean that the US companies grow very big internally, very easily. And then go international without much effort. The same is not true in Europe, so there's not a huge Dell, HP, or IBM equivalent.
In 2026, the only country on the entire planet that can likely make their own computer with 100% their parts and labour, and is actively trying, is China.
In the 90s and up until the early 00s we used to have quite a few pretty serious contenders, but they are all dead now: ICL, Siemens-Nixdorf, Tulip, Bull, Olivetti, etc.