LA dependence on European companies towards American technology suppliers is not recent and even dates back to several decades.
Far from improving by a burst of both customers and their computer providers and European political authorities, the situation has only deteriorate over the years, under the cross -effect of the American technological advance and the concentration of its actors. A situation that places Europe in an unprecedented position of economic and strategic vulnerability which has become even more disturbing with the arrival [le 20 janvier] From Donald Trump to the White House.
The news of the takeover of VMware by Broadcom, in November 2023, offers us an almost caricatured illustration of this situation: a few months ago, the American giant of the Broadcom software paid $ 61 billion to get their hands on another giant American, VMware, specialist in virtualization, an essential technology for the operation of latest generation data centers, and therefore the famous Cloud Computing.
Disconcerting naivety
Benefiting from an archiminant position on the virtualization market thanks to the technological advance of VMware and its wide dissemination in the world, Broadcom has unilaterally decided to increase the price of its licenses, by going so far as to multiply them by 10. A decision that caused the ire of its customers, but which has not really moved the political class, whether French or European, which has often been kept away from these issues, sometimes unconscious, or even 'A disconcerting naivety (and sometimes guilty), vis-à-vis certain threats, in particular those relating to the loss of our digital sovereignty.
This incredible but nevertheless predictable case is far from being the only one to threaten not only digital sovereignty but also that of the whole European economy, as our dependence on actors who have become essential and uncontrollable is now great.
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Source: Lemonde