This analysis was first published in SvD Näringsliv, in Swedish, on January 22nd, 2026. This piece was translated from Swedish by Claude. Some phrasing may differ from a human translation.
It’s in your phone, your work computer, and your running watch. Avoiding American technology is virtually impossible. As the rift between the US and the EU deepens, that dependence is becoming a problem. But there are ways for Europe to take back control.
It is known as “The Great Firewall of China.”
A play on words blending the Great Wall of China with a technical firewall. In practice it is a system of regulations combined with censorship and digital surveillance. Using digital services in China means submitting to it — both as a company and as a user. In a dictatorship, these are demands you can impose.
The system has made it impossible for companies like YouTube and Facebook to establish themselves in the country, even though attempts have been made. Instead, a parallel ecosystem of domestic services has emerged. WeChat from Tencent is today both the platform for chatting with friends, ordering food, and paying for goods.
In Europe, the situation is nearly the opposite.
Borders have been wide open, and the European ecosystem of tech companies weak. Of all the tech companies that the EU considered large enough to require regulation under the DMA legislative package, just one was European: the travel booking service Booking.com. Perhaps not the tech giant the average person is most worried about or exposed to.
As relations between the EU and the US become increasingly frosty, many are now wondering whether it is safe to rely on all the digital services we have made ourselves dependent on. Will they always be available? And at what price?
The idea is called “digital sovereignty” and is not new. We should have independence for fundamental digital services, to ensure there are no disruptions to communication or information. The mere thought that the rift between the US and Europe could deepen further has made the concept highly topical.
The big question is how to get there. And it may be worth looking east to be reminded that it is possible.
There are many ideas Europe could try, without introducing either dictatorship or censorship. Take something as bureaucratic as public procurement, for example.
Billions upon billions are spent annually on public IT systems — often with limited success. Saying that half the money spent must go to Swedish or European companies would create revenues that businesses can build products around. It is not something that can be introduced overnight, but such a signal could become a cornerstone for new products and service providers.
Communication is another area. If Facebook Messenger and Apple iMessage stopped working — how quickly could you reach your loved ones?
One alternative would be for a country to pay for an account on the more independent service Signal — for all its citizens. There are other similar alternatives too. Whatever service one chose, the point would be to give all citizens a communication platform that is not tied to a large American tech company.
Getting people to change habits is hard, however. In the book “Enshittification,” author Cory Doctorow discusses the concept of “switching costs” — people’s reluctance to start afresh with digital services. If you have all your messages with friends on one service, you are likely reluctant to switch. That is a “switching cost.” And it means that current market leaders tend to stay in that position.
The policy response to solve this is called “interoperability.”
This means, for example, that users should be able to extract all their data, images, or communications from one service and easily transfer them to another. Europe could require interoperability from American players as a condition of operating here. This is included in the DMA legislative package — but it only applies to a handful of actors.
Finally, there are pure economic pressure tools. Tax arrangements like “The Double Irish” — a favourable Irish tax structure exploited by many tech companies — could be dismantled.
It is also possible to vote with your wallet, as the Danish pension fund Akademikerpension did this week. They are planning to sell their holdings in American government bonds. The EU owns around 40 percent of the US national debt. Swedish Alecta has also sold the majority of its American government securities.
Many global index funds are today, despite the name, almost 75 percent American. You most likely own American tech shares in your pension, whether you chose them or not.
The proposals above are merely a thought experiment in which protectionism is balanced against realism. Moves like these could have major consequences in other areas too — trade and tariffs, for example.
But in a country like Sweden, it is at the same time reasonable to review what digital resilience actually looks like. We almost certainly do not want to — as China has done — expel American tech giants from the country. But what happens if they expel us? That may be an unlikely scenario, but it is not impossible.
