Europe’s renewed militarism is the other side of the coin of its technological decline. Europe has remained largely absent from almost every strategic technology sector of the twenty-first century. It does not produce advanced semiconductors on any significant scale. It has failed to create smartphones capable of competing globally. It does not control the major digital platforms that organize today’s economy. It plays only a marginal role in the development of artificial intelligence, cloud infrastructure, large language models, battery production, and the technologies driving the energy transition.
While the United States and China compete for global technological leadership, Europe watches from the sidelines. In advanced semiconductor manufacturing, leadership belongs to Taiwan, South Korea, and the United States. The global smartphone market is dominated by Asian and American companies. The world’s leading digital platforms are either American or Chinese. In artificial intelligence, competition has effectively become a duopoly between Washington and Beijing, while China has emerged as the world’s leading holder of patents and the largest investor in the strategic technologies of the future.
Francesco sylos labini 
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