At the Digital Summit in Berlin, the chancellor touted AI’s potential — and gave U.S. cloud services a blank check.
Can Germany — and Europe — still catch up in digital technology? The prospects look promising if you ask the chancellor. As political tensions rise, Germany wants to make and enforce decisions independently, “in line with our values and security interests”, Merz said in his speech at the Digital Summit.
That, he told the business, trade association and government officials in attendance, is “the essence of digital sovereignty”. Above all, it requires a determined, strategic effort to build up domestic capabilities. Germany must be able to produce and control everything from hardware to software on its own terms. Merz laid out ambitious goals with passion — then added a caveat: “This cannot mean that we strive for autarky.”
