In late December 2024, the US State Department banned Thierry Breton—former EU Commissioner who architected much of Europe's tech regulation—from entering the United States. Secretary of State Marco Rubio framed it as retaliation against "extraterritorial censorship," accusing European regulators of forcing American platforms to suppress American speech.

A few days later, Washington threatened European judges who might rule against far-right parties aligned with US interests. This follows a national security memo explicitly aimed at destabilizing European politics.

Read that again. Yes, really.

For years, Europe's tech dependency on the US has been discussed as a strategic vulnerability. In 2026, it's becoming an active political weapon.

This has been building for a while

I've been writing about this topic throughout 2025:

• Why I left Twitter and why you should consider it too (January 2025)
• The myth of neutrality: Why tech is political (March 2025)
• Europe vs USA: Tech at a crossroads (March 2025)
• Calculate your US tech dependency score (April 2025)
• Building an app independent from US tech in 2025 (December 2025)

And the conversation has accelerated.

The calls for action are getting louder

The Chaos Computer Club—Europe's largest and oldest hacker collective, founded in 1981—recently called for a monthly "Digital Independence Day" to migrate away from US platforms. Their statement emphasizes the extraterritorial legal risks that come with using American tech infrastructure.

Bert Hubert, founder of PowerDNS and a respected voice in European tech circles, published a pointed piece arguing that governments can no longer build their digital infrastructure on US clouds. His argument: the legal, political, and operational risks have become unacceptable.

In France, a petition to the National Assembly is demanding that the government stop using X for official communications.

People are actually migrating

The subreddit r/BuyFromEU now draws 401k weekly visitors looking for European alternatives to US products and services.

Practical migration guides are multiplying:

• Migrating to Proton, European VPNs, and privacy-first tools
• Moving from Google Workspace to Infomaniak
• Switching from GitHub to Codeberg

And here's a telling data point: according to Médiamétrie (France's official audience measurement body), X has dropped out of the top 50 most-visited websites in France—now ranking behind the postal service and a discount grocery chain.

What's next

This isn't about anti-Americanism. It's about reducing single points of failure—technical, legal, and political. The question is no longer whether Europe should reduce its tech dependency, but how fast it can actually move.

As for me, given what I write here, I probably won't pass the new US visa screening that now includes social media background checks. Not that I was planning to go anyway.