Europe The European Union now strikes its own citizens with economic sanctions without trial, without a judge, without any criminal law defining the alleged offense. A Swiss colonel and a German journalist have had their accounts frozen for expressing analyses that displease the European Council; forced to apply for humanitarian waivers in order to feed themselves. These measures, labeled “administrative” to bypass the safeguards of criminal law, nonetheless inflict heavier consequences than a court conviction: a ban on working, on traveling, on receiving the slightest assistance. This drift is part of a methodical three-stage escalation: censorship delegated to the platforms via the DSA, the control infrastructure (digital identity, the digital euro), and now existential punishment through asset freezes. By turning political opinion into grounds for civil death, the EU is shifting from soft power to hard power; and trampling the very principles of the rule of law it claims to defend.
Artificial Intelligence The 2018 U.S. CLOUD Act allows federal authorities to require any American company to hand over data hosted anywhere in the world, including in Europe. OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Microsoft are all subject to it, regardless of where their servers physically sit. Choosing Mistral isn’t enough: as long as access runs through Azure, the model stays hosted on American infrastructure under that same jurisdiction. Sovereignty begins the moment the model runs on infrastructure you control: a dedicated server in France, or Mistral’s own data center in Essonne. In 2026, with Ollama and quantized Mistral Small models, this architecture is no longer reserved for large corporations; it’s within reach of any team that already administers Linux servers.
Digital sovereignty As France settles into a world record for pessimism, our flagship industrial projects like SCAF and IRIS² are sinking into bureaucracy and European compromise. While China and the United States build the future without asking permission, we prefer to turn the precautionary principle into a state religion. This deadlock isn’t technical; it’s cultural. We’ve sacrificed bold ambition for a regulatory comfort that manufactures nihilism. It’s high time we reclaimed the right to dream big and finally put builders ahead of analysts. Because meaning doesn’t come from caution. It comes from audacity owned without apology.
Digital sovereignty Swisscom, majority-owned by the Swiss Confederation, crossed a bright line by funding the pro-e-ID committee and encouraging one of its executives to promote the project publicly, potentially swaying a vote decided by 0.4 percent. Meanwhile, Digitalswitzerland orchestrates a coalition of banks and public bodies to align Switzerland with eIDAS 2.0, all under the banner of “digital leadership.” Palantir, though not directly involved, keeps extending its big data ecosystem across finance and security, creating a structural dependence on American technology. Switzerland did not choose its digital future: it was chosen for her.