European military officials are concerned that discussions about “tech sovereignty” could have serious consequences for the continent’s security, given their armies’ reliance on US software and networks to run critical systems.
Beyond US weapons and infrastructure such as intelligence satellites and command and control systems, officials point to the role of American technology companies in securing communications, gathering intelligence and storing data for the continent’s armies. Any moves to restrict US companies’ access to the European market could undermine the continent’s security, they warn.
“It’s not realistic or helpful,” said one European military official of the “tech sovereignty” discussions. “Most of our European platforms are relying on American back-end . . . so it’s very difficult to see anything happening in the short term. It’s just not possible.”
US President Donald Trump’s oscillating rhetoric towards the transatlantic security relationship and his threat last month to invade Greenland have prompted calls from some European capitals, notably Paris, to develop sovereign defence capabilities faster and reduce reliance on US technology.
Emmanuel Macron, president of France, said at the Munich Security Conference this month: “We have to accelerate and clearly deliver all the components of a geopolitical power, in defence, in technology and in the de-risking vis-à-vis all the big powers in order to be much more independent.”
He specifically cited “AI and cloud computing” as examples.
The European Commission this spring will present a “tech sovereignty package” to reduce the EU’s dependencies on US cloud providers and to step up efforts to boost its own tech sector.
Commission president Ursula von der Leyen in Munich also referred to “data . . . tech platforms and information” as examples of areas where the continent needed to “protect our security interests”.
“We have inspiring European defence tech champions; we just need to incentivise them,” she said. “Their journey to market must be rapid.”
But the message triggered a backlash from Europe’s top brass present at the Munich event, said multiple people present in those discussions. “The generals are nervous about this talk,” one of the people said. “That was the key message to the tech guys [in Munich]: we know we need to keep you around.”
Mauro Gilli, professor of military strategy and technology at the Hertie School in Berlin, said there were “a lot of very ambitious views about Europeans becoming independent”. But he warned: “Often these very ambitious goals clash with hard realities.”
The German armed forces last year announced a deal with Google to provide secure cloud services as part of a plan to digitalise the Bundeswehr. Britain’s Ministry of Defence last year awarded US tech company Palantir a £240mn contract for “data analytics capabilities supporting critical strategic, tactical and live operational decision-making across classifications”.
By contrast, Swiss authorities have rejected Palantir’s bid for a government contract because of legal and data privacy concerns. The Swiss example was this month cited by some British MPs questioning the UK government’s reliance on US defence technology.
Defence officials point to the Aegis system designed by Lockheed Martin as an example of foundational US software that Europe could not do without. Many ships in the Norwegian, Spanish and other European navies use it. The future F127 air defence frigate being developed by the Kiel-based shipbuilder TKMS, which the German navy is expected to procure this year, also relies on the Aegis missile detection and targeting system.
Francis Tusa, editor of Defence Analysis, said: “If you have bought Aegis, you have bought into a system of dependency. When the US says it will upgrade the system, you have to follow suit.”
The extent of European dependence on US tech is something that militaries across the continent are trying to assess, said Andrew Turner, a retired air marshal in Britain’s Royal Air Force. “There’ll be an almighty scramble right now to identify areas across the whole defence portfolio where sovereign nations don’t have actual control.”
“A combat aircraft in Europe that is digitally independent of America . . . is almost inconceivable,” Turner said. “Every single one has got some form of American radio, or communications or identification device that is compromised in some way because of its software protocols or its hardware.”
Calls for “tech sovereignty” from the US have been prompted by two schools of thought: one fears the Trump administration could flip so-called digital kill switches onboard fighter jets and other sophisticated weaponry that could render them useless. A second believes Europe should leverage the access to its market for American tech companies by threatening to block them if Washington escalates its trade war.
Before the Greenland crisis was eased, some in the EU were advocating for the European Commission to prepare the so-called anti-coercion instrument against the US, a never-used “trade bazooka” that can restrict digital service providers from the EU’s single market.
US tech companies have stepped up efforts to reassure European businesses and governments that they can rely on their services regardless of who occupies the White House, and to offer workarounds in the event of a potential “kill switch” scenario.
Those arguments resonate more with European military officials than with politicians, according to tech lobbyists, because military leaders better understand the risks a sudden decoupling from the US would bring. Such a break, they argue, would create capability gaps and fragmentation, undermining military operations and cyber security, and making intelligence-gathering less efficient.
“Greenland showed just how much of the digital backbone of European militaries rests on American sovereignty,” said Max Buchan, chief executive of defence tech start-up Valarian. “They realised that they had a bunch of systems that if the Americans shut them off, they couldn’t use them.”
Buchan said it would be unrealistic for Europe to attempt to duplicate tech giants such as Microsoft, Amazon and Google in the short term. Nor would it help to force companies to locate their servers on European soil: “People have started realising that data localisation isn’t the same as data sovereignty.”
One large European defence contractor told the FT that they used Microsoft 365 to manage their business email and document storage. “Should someone decide to cut it off, it would be a difficult moment,” one company executive said.
Industry officials say it is not a coincidence that 15 technology companies, including Microsoft, Amazon and Google, launched a so-called trusted tech alliance at the Munich Security Conference, aiming to reassure governments that they would adhere to a set of common rules on security and data protection “regardless of a supplier’s nationality”.
“National security is closely linked with digital security,” said Kent Walker, chief legal officer at Google, which has a partnership with Nato for secure cloud capabilities.
“We need different players, we need complementary skills in order to win,” Walker told the FT. “That means strengthening digital resilience at a time when threats are bigger than ever.”
