Donald Trump’s shocking victory in the 2024 Presidential Election has had wide-ranging effects throughout the US and across international waters. From his proposed tariffs to his promises to declare a national emergency to mobilize military forces to enact his mass deportations, the president-elect’s plans are forcing companies and governments worldwide to batten down the hatches effectively.
His victory has even influenced tech CEOs in Europe, who, at the recent Web Summit conference in Lisbon, Portugal, continually returned to Trump as a point of emphasis.
Andy Yen, CEO of Swiss VPN developer Proton, says Europe should echo American protectionism and adopt a more “Europe-first” approach to technology — in part to reverse the trend of the last two decades, during which much of the Western world’s most important technologies, from web browsing to smartphones, have become dominated by a handful of large US tech firms.
“It’s time for Europe to step up,” Yen said on the sidelines of Web Summit. “It’s time to be bold. It’s time to be more aggressive. And the time is now, because we now have a leader in the US.that is ‘America-first,’ so I think our European leaders should be ‘Europe-first.'”
Fighting Back Against US Big Tech
Proton’s Yen urged the EU not to water down its attempts to rein in America’s tech giants.
“Europe has been thinking in a very globalist mindset. They’re thinking we need to be fair to everybody, we need to open our market to everybody, we need to play fair because we believe in fairness,” he said.
“Well, guess what? The Americans and the Chinese didn’t get the memo. They have been playing extremely unfairly for the last 20 years. And now they have a president that is extremely ‘America-first.'”
Mitchell Baker, former CEO of the American open internet non-profit Mozilla Foundation, said the EU’s DMA has led to meaningful changes for the Firefox browser. Activity has increased since Google implemented a “choice screen” on Android phones, enabling users to select their search engine.
“The change in Firefox’s new users and market share on Android is noticeable,” Baker said.
“That’s nice for us — but it’s also an indicator of how much power and centralized distribution that these companies have.”
She added, “This change in usage because of one choice screen isn’t the full picture. But it is an indicator of the kind of things that consumers can’t choose and that businesses can’t build successfully because of the way the tech industry is structured right now.”
AI Sovereignty
Another theme that attracted much chatter at Web Summit was the idea of “AI sovereignty,” — which refers to countries and regions localizing critical computing infrastructure behind AI services.
“They’re gradually reducing our revenue — we’re still relying on them — and that reduces our capacity to do things,” Christian Kroll, CEO of sustainability-focused search engine Ecosia, said about facing stiff competition from US-based tech juggernaut Microsoft in AI. “Microsoft is a very fierce competitor.”
Shelley McKinley, chief legal officer of code repository platform GitHub, said she can’t predict what Trump will do in his second term, but that businesses are planning for various scenarios in the meantime.
“We will learn in the next few months what President-elect Trump will say, and in January, we will start seeing some of what President Trump does in this area,” McKinley said during a panel earlier this week.
“I do think it is important that we all, as a society, as businesses, as people, continue to think about the different scenarios,” she added. “I think, as with any political change, as with any world change, we’re still all thinking about what are all of the scenarios we might operate.”
