Alena Kudzko, Executive Director, GLOBSEC US Foundation
Alexandr Burilkov, Assistant Director for Research, GLOBSEC GeoTech Center
The dramatic shift in global geopolitical environment has become a defining theme in policy discussions across Europe and beyond it. Among the most consequential – and politically sensitive – questions arising from this new reality concerns how to ensure the resilience of Europe’s technological infrastructure and refine the terms of engagement with the companies that underpin it.
Externally, China has solidified its status as a global tech power, advancing a governance model that is fundamentally at odds with European values. Beijing’s approach is rooted in civil-military-tech fusion, state-directed capital, and the export of tech infrastructure with limited user control or security safeguards coupled with minimal restrictions on data collection and use, both domestically and abroad. Meanwhile, Russia, Iran, and North Korea are employing leaner, more targeted and disruptive tactics – digital sabotage, offensive cyber operations, infrastructure infiltration, and asymmetric coercion – all designed to probe and exploit the vulnerabilities of open societies.
Simultaneously, the transatlantic alliance is navigating new strains. What was once a strategic constant is becoming increasingly fluid. Differences in threat perception, policy preferences, and strategic priorities between the U.S. and Europe are surfacing more rapidly and profoundly than many in Europe had anticipated.
Beneath these developments lies a deeper structural transformation: modern power is increasingly tech-driven and enabled by the private sector. Technology now underpins not only economic competitiveness but also national security and societal resilience. Much of Europe’s essential infrastructure – from cloud services and software powering public institutions and defense systems to communications networks and cybersecurity platforms – is provided by private-sector actors. Critical infrastructure is therefore frequently international and commercially operated, functioning alongside traditional state sovereignty.
This tech-defined infrastructure is both a vulnerability increasingly targeted by adversaries and a vital source of societal and economic resilience. The central challenge for Europe is to strengthen that resilience while effectively managing risk in a rapidly evolving threat landscape. Doing so will require deeper, more structured collaboration with technology providers and renewed efforts to build institutional trust. A key component of this process is finding ways to continue engaging in a robust manner with long-standing American tech partners that have played a vital role in fostering open, secure, and innovative digital ecosystems.
Calls for greater technological autonomy reflect the current political climate. However, autarky is neither economically viable nor strategically optimal. A more forward-looking and pragmatic approach lies in rebalancing interdependence: enhancing shared governance, clarifying mutual expectations, and deepening trust through transparent, rules-based cooperation.
Rather than diminishing collaboration with foreign providers – especially those from allied democracies – Europe should prioritize, where possible, building more robust frameworks to guide and govern these partnerships. Such frameworks can help manage risk, reinforce shared commitments, and institutionalize trust between public and private actors on both sides of the Atlantic.
Despite growing doubts about the trajectory of the transatlantic relationship, many core commonalities endure. The U.S. and Europe still share infrastructure, face similar adversaries, and remain exposed to parallel risks. In this context, strategic alignment on fostering resilience of technology-defined infrastructure can reinforce both European capacity and transatlantic stability.
Cooperation with trusted private-sector providers is essential – not only to navigate divergence but also to preserve long-term strategic cohesion. Joint investment in resilience, alignment on risk management, and sustained collaboration on essential infrastructure security can help anchor the alliance, even as political trust is tested. If approached deliberately, technology can still act as a shock absorber in the transatlantic relationship. In an era marked by China’s technological assertiveness, alongside growing vulnerability to cyber threats and sabotage of infrastructure, continued alignment among democratic partners will be indispensable.
Across Europe, the United States, and other allied democracies, governments and the tech sector are already drawing closer. This paper builds on that momentum. It explores how governments and trusted technology providers can align more closely in response to geopolitical instability and new technological realities.
This paper proposes a framework for such a recalibration. We first look at how the strategic environment surrounding Europe has changed, then we examine existing structural deficiencies and gaps in relations between governments and tech companies, and finally we propose recommendations on how this framework can be adjusted to address these deficiencies with the ultimate goals for Europe (but also other liberal democracies) to have a more resilient tech infrastructure.
In doing so, the paper draws on three instructive, if imperfect, precedents forged in periods of high geopolitical pressure. First, Cold War-era industrial policy, which aligned private-sector innovation with strategic goals. Second, Nordic total defense models, which embed public-private coordination into national security planning. And third, the growing recognition in Europe (and beyond) that tech infrastructure, whether physical, cloud-based, or algorithmic, now constitutes essential infrastructure requiring commensurate protection.
The aim is not to replicate these models wholesale, but to extract relevant lessons from historical settings marked by strategic confrontation, institutional stress, and simultaneous reliance on private enterprise. Understanding how firms and governments have responded to past moments of strategic uncertainty can inform more effective public–private collaboration under today’s different – but analogous – conditions.
Ultimately, the objective is not technological sovereignty in a traditional sense, but institutional resilience fit for the present. Europe must ensure that its most vital systems – defense, communications, and public services – are governed by robust public–private arrangements, flexible enough to deliver the needed competitive capabilities and robust enough to withstand external coercion, internal disruption, and uncertainty among allies. The challenge is to secure the infrastructure Europe cannot afford to lose – without losing the trusted partners it continues to need.
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