Taking a view from outside the USA, European companies just had Fable taken away due to US export controls, and before that Anthropic announced it is holding their data for 30 days. There is immediate value to these firms to build their infrastructure around an AI that won’t be pulled away from them. And outside of Europe, other countries are more price sensitive and don’t have the same fear of building relationships with Chinese companies.
There is no such thing as a relationship with "chinese companies". In China there is just the State, and that is it.
If the world needs any more evidence of Europe's short-sightedness, it would be them running to China to spite the US (instead of creating fertile grounds for their own tech).
No one is running to China to "spite the US". Recent geopolitical developments have shown the US to be a violent, unpredictable and unreliable partner.
No doubt there are some feelings involved in geopolitics. However, if your mental model of global trade and politics doesn't go beyond comparing Europe to a toddler having tantrum, then you just might miss some important nuances.
You don't need no guarantee nor even trust if you have openweights, that's the beauty of it.
The real question is: what guarantee do we have from Trump that he won't pull away the software (and hardware) our society is built on?
Previously we could pretend to rely on the international order as shaped by the US itself, and as an extension on the guarantees of the US president. But with Trump, even Xi sounds like a standup guy.
So as Europe, we must scramble to disentangle the core of our societies from AWS, Google, Microsoft, Apple, etc. etc.
