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Digital Sovereignty or Digital Iron Curtain?
Europe’s digital sovereignty claims are strong on ambition but short on execution.
Got your popcorn? There is a new drama unfolding in the AI series.
Palantir is leaving France — just not yet
Anthropic suspended access to its latest Claude models — Fable 5 and Mythos 5 — in response to an “export control directive” from the US government prohibiting use of the models by anyone who is not a US national.
France reacted with its familiar refrain of national sovereignty: France must build its own AI. Or at least Europe should. This is related to the US CLOUD Act of 2018. Under this legislation, American authorities can compel any US-based technology company to hand over data they control, regardless of where in the world that data physically sits.
A few days later, France announced that its decade-long contract between the Direction Générale de la Sécurité Intérieure (DGSI) — the domestic intelligence service under the authority of the Ministry of the Interior — and Palantir was over because of the national sovereignty issues.
Palantir reacted, vexed: they had learned about the announcement on Instagram, and the contract was still valid. The contract had in fact…
