Decoupling would be painful and certainly hardware would be the most difficult challenge. However, consider that for all those companies you mentioned, Chinese alternatives are starting to appear and will be very competitive in the next few years. Europe also has some key strategic cards to play when it comes to hardware, such as access to TSMC.
The most likely scenario in my view is that Europe will be a consumer/bystander in the AI race, not a protagonist. For that, you don't need a lot of hardware. China and the US will compete for the European market, with the US already far ahead and earning billions from European customers. But it can lose that post in the future, either through crazy foreign policy or simply being outcompeted by the Chinese.
Look, I support Europe's push for computational sovereignty. It's frankly long overdue. But Europeans still consistently underestimate the scope and difficulty of that task, and it must be undertaken simultaneously with building military and energy sovereignty while China's eating their economic lunch.
There isn't the money, the attention bandwidth, the industry, the IP, the skilled labor with know-how, the tools, or the raw materials to do all of those.
> Chinese alternatives are starting to appear
Maybe, but they are seriously handicapped and not competitive. And certainly when it comes to inference: They also don't have the hardware capacity to supply their own market and the European market.
> will be very competitive in the next few years
Maybe. More likely they'll only be competitive in 10+ years.
> Europe also has some key strategic cards to play when it comes to hardware, such as access to TSMC.
Then why haven't they played them? Both Japan and America got commitments for significant domestic advanced node fab and packaging facilities from TSMC. Europe only got 40k WSPMs of already-outdated 12nm+ lines.
Further: Which European company is designing or will soon design competitive CPUs/GPUs/switching to hand off to TSMC? Will a European company cut in line for cutting-edge tools, conjure up IP and know-how from nothing, and start selling HBM and DRAM, too? And will all these fantasy companies be decoupling from US EDA tools, as well?
Finally: If you're saying that Europe will be able to outplay the US in a zero-sum game for access to TSMC wafer spins, you might want to consider also the strategic cards that the US can play to prevent that.
> Europe will be a consumer/bystander in the AI race, not a protagonist
That's not just likely, that's absolutely guaranteed. Sorry, Mr. Draghi.
> For that, you don't need a lot of hardware
How do you serve inference at scale without a lot of hardware? If both US and China are supply-constrained for GPUs that they're turning into high-value-added products/services, why would they give Europe any hardware at all?
If I can turn a $100k GPU into $1M of value, there aren't enough GPUs in the world, your companies don't have the fiscal firepower to be price-setters, and your products/services compete with mine on global markets--why the fuck would I sell you any GPUs? Charity?
And if the plan is for European computing to remain totally dependent on US and CN... what are we even talking about here?
> But it can lose that post in the future
Sure, nothing lasts forever. But I thought this was about European computational sovereignty, not dependence on the US specifically. I guess not: Depending on the US is a crisis, but depending on Qatar and China is A-OK. What could go wrong?
The most likely scenario in my view is that Europe will be a consumer/bystander in the AI race, not a protagonist. For that, you don't need a lot of hardware. China and the US will compete for the European market, with the US already far ahead and earning billions from European customers. But it can lose that post in the future, either through crazy foreign policy or simply being outcompeted by the Chinese.