Germany and Europe face a rapidly deepening digital dependency on the United States, a situation that carries significant geopolitical risks, according to German tech billionaire Ralph Dommermuth. In a recent interview with Focus magazine, Dommermuth voiced concerns that Europe’s economic reliance on US tech giants has reached a “multilayered and total” state, threatening to erode the continent’s digital wealth.
The dominance extends across the entire value chain, from chip design and server infrastructure to cloud platforms, artificial intelligence models, online marketplaces and application development. Dommermuth argues this control results in a progressive loss of digital value creation for Europe. He specifically highlighted the looming prospect of a second Trump presidency as a catalyst for reassessing the vulnerabilities inherent in this dependence. “What happens when this dependency is used against us?” he questioned, underscoring the potential for weaponization of digital control.
Dommermuth proposes a two-pronged approach to reclaiming some digital autonomy. Firstly, he advocates for establishing clear “sovereignty criteria” acting as boundaries for European digital infrastructure. Secondly, he suggests mirroring the US model, where government procurement serves as a major anchor customer, effectively subsidizing and fostering domestic technological growth. Furthermore, he proposes a mandate requiring applications offered within Europe to be operated from cloud computing centers predominantly owned and controlled by EU citizens after reaching a specified revenue threshold – a move designed to directly challenge US cloud dominance.
Despite these proposed solutions, Dommermuth’s assessment remains starkly pessimistic. He believes a large-scale, unified effort, either financially or politically, is unrealistic within Germany or Europe. He attributes this failure to a prolonged period of complacency, accusing policymakers of “turning a blind eye” to potentially problematic practices by US tech conglomerates-including questionable tax models and disregard for data protection regulations. This negligence, he warns, has allowed these companies to become overwhelmingly powerful and increasingly aligned with a Trump administration fervently committed to protecting their global technological hegemony. “The genie is out of the bottle” he concluded, suggesting a point of no return may have been reached.