With Halloween fast approaching, this seems like an opportune time to revisit the issue of European digital sovereignty which is becoming increasingly fraught, especially at this moment in time given the present occupant of the White House.
Strangely, nation states are becoming more and more reluctant to place their trust in US technology companies when the integrity and security of their data, digital infrastructure and services could be at the mercy of the capricious whims of Donald J.
Trump, the president of the United States.
Unsurprisingly, US technology companies have mounted a counter attack.
Not against the dangers represented by Trump to European digital independence, I hasten to add, but to Europe for daring to consider reducing its reliance on US technology to power its digital infrastructure.
This month saw the publication of a study which has a title so long that it would take up half the article to reproduce it, by the European Centre for International Political Economy (ECIPE), that looks at the real-world impact of CADA (the Cloud and AI Development Act).
According to ECIPE, the aim of CADA is to “create a common EU framework for deciding when public authorities, and potentially private organisations in essential sectors, must use cloud services that meet progressively stronger sovereignty requirements”.
The study, commissioned by the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) which counts Meta, Amazon and Google among its members, claimed the estimated economic exposure between 2027 and 2036, dependent on how CADA is implemented, ranges from €35.6 billion to €115 billion to €233 billion.
The study calculates this equates to a cost per person in Ireland ranging from €335 to €856 to €1,457.
The disparity in estimates is mainly down to potential private sector exposure and the report admits the most costly scenario is based on the assumption that a larger share of private organisations in ‘high-criticality’ sectors will need to meet higher assurance levels.
Price versus value The massive increase in costs attributed to that assumption is not countered by potential benefits.
The study notes in a short sentence, almost an aside, that the report “does not monetise potential security, resilience or strategic-autonomy benefits and should therefore not be interpreted as a complete social cost-benefit assessment”.
I may be missing something here, but in the context of digital sovereignty, this seems like quite a significant omission, especially as the report has taken the trouble to monetise the potential negative effects of efforts to achieve those three benefits.
I don’t know about you but when I see the words ‘digital’ and ‘sovereignty’, I assume....
