It's time for Realpolitik

23 Jan 2025 The Never Normal
Mark Zuckerberg

Now that Donald Trump is in charge of the US, Big Tech will undoubtedly become the barometer of American foreign policy.

Only last summer, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg informed Congress that President Joe Biden had pressured him to censor reports about the virus during the corona pandemic. ‘Zuck’ is clearly not a fan of censorship. Only recently, he abolished Meta’s ‘third-party fact-checking’ program, after which - like Amazon - his company announced that it wanted to phase out its diversity policy. 

Big Tech is fed up with Europe

Many saw it as a charm offensive to win over the newest resident of the White House. But there is more to it. Zuckerberg, together with Trump, is eager to take on Europe and the abundance of EU regulations. In the podcast of the ultra-popular comedian Joe Rogan, he fulminated that 'Brussels is screwin’ with the American industry'. He is not alone in that opinion. The entire American big tech is fed up with Europe’s know-it-all attitude. So the sector has found a wonderful ally in the new president.

The most striking example, however, probably came from Alex Karp, the CEO of Palantir, the notorious company that, among other things, uses artificial intelligence for military applications. Last month he said that every relevant AI company is American. ‘The AI Revolution isn't global - it's American. It should be called the U.S. AI Revolution.”

The race promises to be exciting, though. During the Christmas holidays, Sam Altman of OpenAI undoubtedly choked on his eggnog when the virtually unknown Chinese AI company Deepseek presented its latest AI model. It immediately claimed the most powerful open-source AI model in the world, with significantly lower training costs than any other player in the market. 

Observing from the sidelines

Europe has to stop observing from the sidelines, wagging its condescending finger. It’s striking and somewhat ironic how we keep clinging to the illusion of moral superiority, believing we should and can impose our values on the rest of the world. The era of European colonization and missionary zeal is long gone, however.

The problem is that the information about the US and China that we receive over here, tends to be one-sidedly colored by a European lens. In order to be able to act more strategically and especially tactically, we need a better grasp of reality.

There is no point in investing our energy in being endlessly annoyed by Trump, or blindly hoping that Musk, Zuck and Trump will finally grasp how superior we Europeans are. The time for acute realpolitik has arrived. 

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