I think things feel worse now because the climb out of this hole is even steeper. The second Trump presidency marks a permanent shift in American geopolitical strategy, and the US government will now more or less give carte blanche to any American corporation that successfully undermines European autonomy.

As a result, the US government will protect and encourage hostile actions against European autonomy and sovereignty committed by large corporations, which incidentally also own almost the entire media ecosystem on which Europe runs its modern processes.

This allows these companies to further grow capabilities to directly influence Europeans not just according to their profit margins, but according to US foreign policy. There is now a concentrated effort to turn Europeans against each other, and they are starting with the EU.

This is not to say there is a conspiracy or a shadow cabinet directing these actions. It is fairly simple.

These big companies want more profits.

The engineers in these companies are a collection of ambitious, well connected individuals, or they become well connected, who have drunk the Kool Aid that they are somehow building meritocratic institutions around these corporations. If you read interviews with DOGE staff members, you can see how deeply these ideas run inside these companies, how the belief that the state is the source of all incompetence and that only data driven, profit oriented organizations can provide essential services with higher quality is widespread, even if at the cost of due diligence. I am paraphrasing with some liberty. I do think that to some extent many of these engineers know exactly the harm they are doing to society, but the paycheck keeps them quiet.

Then comes the US government and its new foreign policy.

Suddenly, for everyone involved, European autonomy no longer serves their interests. We are now being bombarded in many places with anti EU rhetoric. Far right parties are being openly supported by American companies. A blacklisted group of foreign organizations and individuals continues to push for chat control, and there is a continuous effort to weaken our environmental protections.

The important task now is to inform our neighbors about what is happening. We need to talk to people, examine these issues, and convince them that supporting European companies and a European economy will create more jobs than any American promise. Important as well to, not only highlight the danger to democracy, but also keep the conversation grounded on bread and butter issues. AI can serve society, but only if society owns it! And economies of scale can helps us if we build this as part of the European project, and not strictly nationally. We need to spread this key idea as far as possible. AI cannot be in American hands no matter how convenient is now. Again, I think focusing on job growth from actually building these technologies in our land, and then controlling the transition to a more balanced society, is a strong card to play. We can then tax AI and robots to serve our same society.

Quite frankly, I do not know whether we can overcome the danger of American social media without soft banning it in some circles. I find it hard not to compare this to Nazi Germany of shoving newspapers in the middle of London with impunity, filled with Nazi propaganda before the war, in an attempt to weaken British resolve and perhaps even convince them that France was either a lost cause or good riddance. America is now quite insistent on breaking us apart, and there are plans to divide us with Russia. At some point, we have to admit to ourselves that we are already at war, and engage in widespread investment of the key technologies and consumer goods we are missing. The cost of delaying this will only grow over time.