The Trump administration\u2019s sudden decision on 12 June, requiring Anthropic to suspend access to its most advanced models \u2013 Fable 5 and Mythos 5 \u2013 for people outside the United States, hit the global technology market like the digital equivalent of a strategic strait blockade. Just a few days after its much-hyped launch, the technology that was set to define a new phase in the development of AI became inaccessible to Europeans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This event marks a critical juncture, a sort of \u2018wake-up call\u2019 for European decision-makers. Although the reactions of politicians, from Gabriel Attal to Geert Wilders, can be alarmist, they should be viewed through the dispassionate lens of a trend analyst. This is not merely a diplomatic crisis, but above all a necessary wake-up call for European digital sovereignty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Anthropic incident is a painful but valuable lesson. It shows that Europe can no longer rely on the goodwill of its transatlantic partners if it wishes to maintain its autonomy in the age of algorithms. This is a wake-up call which \u2013 if properly harnessed \u2013 could force a genuine overhaul of the architecture of European technological security.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The sudden restriction on exports of the Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models has revealed the harsh truth about who really controls the flow of innovation. For years, Europe had assumed that export controls mainly concerned hardware \u2013 advanced chips and lithography machines. The Anthropic case proves that the focus has shifted to software itself, and specifically to model weights<\/strong>. These parameters are the \u2018brain\u2019 of the AI; the system\u2019s intelligence is encoded within them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Trump administration\u2019s decision did not come out of the blue \u2013 it was the result of a growing dispute between Anthropic and the Pentagon. This sends a key signal: \u2018safety switches\u2019 can be triggered not only for strategic reasons, but also as a result of internal political and business tensions within the US. Control has shifted from physical processors to abstract algorithms, giving Washington a tool to unilaterally shape the global AI landscape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe shutdown of Anthropic\u2019s models can be compared to Iran\u2019s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.\u201d \u2013 Gabriel Attal<\/p>\n\n\n\n Despite the political uproar, being cut off from Anthropic\u2019s models has not brought the European economy to an immediate standstill. This is down to the market\u2019s pragmatism. At present, most business tasks do not require the absolute peak performance of the latest-generation models.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Europe still has alternatives. OpenAI\u2019s GPT 5.5 model, with capabilities comparable to those of Fable 5, remains available for the time being. Open-source solutions lag behind the market leaders by just a few months, which is an acceptable gap for many sectors. What is more, European companies often make purely economic decisions, choosing cheaper Chinese models<\/strong> for specific tasks, rather than the most expensive American pioneers. Today\u2019s market is a game of good value for money<\/strong>, rather than just about coming top in the benchmark rankings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Europe\u2019s dependence on American artificial intelligence is beginning to resemble the concept of nuclear umbrella<\/strong>. It gives a false sense of security and access to state-of-the-art tools, but generates enormous sovereignty costs<\/strong>. By accepting this role, Europe is relinquishing control over key resources for the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We are currently in a brief \u2018window of opportunity\u2019. Unlike mature cloud services, leading AI models have not yet been deeply integrated into critical infrastructure<\/strong> or national administrative systems. This gives us time to build up our own capabilities before our dependence on the decisions of the US regulator becomes irreversible and begins to paralyse the functioning of European states in crisis situations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The most surprising conclusion drawn from the article is that Europe could gain an advantage by becoming a hub for computing power and green energy. It is infrastructure that is currently the bottleneck in AI development. Proof of this is the desperation of Anthropic itself, which, faced with session limits (introduced in March 2026), has decided to pay its competitor \u2013 xAI \u2013 as much as $1.25 billion a month<\/strong> for the rental of computing power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If Europe speeds up the construction of data centres and secures a supply of cheap energy, the continent\u2019s negotiating position will change dramatically. It will be much harder for the American giants to \u2018bypass\u2019 a market where they physically host their models and from which they draw talent. Having data centres on the ground makes it more difficult to unilaterally shut down the models for logistical and economic reasons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n An AI laboratory that relies on European data centres, European specialists and European revenue has good reason to treat Europe as a partner, rather than merely as a market that can be ignored with a single decree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Individual European countries\u2019 solitary struggle for dominance in AI is doomed to failure. The scale of the challenge is best illustrated by the figures: Meta\u2019s planned investments in AI amount to $125 billion a year<\/strong> \u2013 this figure exceeds Germany\u2019s entire defence budget. Developing sovereign AI is no longer merely a technological project, but a strategic challenge on a par with the programme Eurofighter Typhoon<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The solution lies in close coordination between \u2018middle powers\u2019. Europe (France, Germany, the Netherlands) must strengthen its cooperation with partners such as the UK (a leader in AI safety testing), the Netherlands and Taiwan (key players in lithography and chip manufacturing), as well as Japan and South Korea. Common public procurement standards and investment in ecosystems \u2013 as signalled by the merger Aleph Alpha i Cohere<\/strong> \u2013 they can prevent any government from unilaterally dictating terms. Only by acting as a united bloc can these countries demonstrate that they are just as essential to the development of AI as the companies that build these models.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Anthropic case should not be a cause for panic, but rather a catalyst for constructive action. It demonstrates that Europe must simultaneously develop partnerships with US companies and build its own independent technological base. Investment in computing power, the standardisation of model evaluation systems and the coordination of public procurement are the foundations that will enable us to avoid becoming a passive customer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We are faced with a fundamental choice that will define our position in the coming decades: Does Europe prefer to pay for access to other countries\u2019 technologies, at the risk of having them suddenly cut off, or will it invest in its own security and sovereignty before the digital \u2018kill switch\u2019 is used again?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Nag\u0142a decyzja administracji Trumpa z 12 czerwca, zobowi\u0105zuj\u0105ca firm\u0119 Anthropic do zawieszenia dost\u0119pu do jej najbardziej zaawansowanych modeli \u2013 Fable 5 i Mythos 5 \u2013 dla os\u00f3b spoza Stan\u00f3w Zjednoczonych, uderzy\u0142a w globalny rynek technologiczny niczym cyfrowy odpowiednik blokady strategicznej cie\u015bniny. Zaledwie kilka dni po hucznej premierze technologia, kt\u00f3ra mia\u0142a definiowa\u0107 now\u0105 faz\u0119 rozwoju AI, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[143],"tags":[110,306,261,94],"class_list":["post-3636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ai","tag-ai","tag-antropic","tag-geopolityka","tag-gospodarka"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyfryzacja.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3636","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyfryzacja.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyfryzacja.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyfryzacja.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyfryzacja.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3636"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cyfryzacja.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3636\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3637,"href":"https:\/\/cyfryzacja.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3636\/revisions\/3637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyfryzacja.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyfryzacja.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyfryzacja.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Lesson 2: The paradoxical absence of pain, or why Europe is safe in the short term<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Lesson 3: AI is the new nuclear umbrella (with all that entails)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Lesson 4: Infrastructure as a bargaining chip<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Lesson 5: \u2018Eurofighter for AI\u2019 \u2013 the strength of middle powers<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Summary and a question for the future<\/h2>\n\n\n\n