(SeaPRwire) – By: Julian Holbrooke
“Europe must accept dependence.” This blunt admission from Louis Mosley, Palantir’s UK and Europe CEO, strips away the polite fiction that European digital sovereignty is still on the roadmap. The European Commission is currently frantically trying to reduce reliance on American tech, yet the bloc relies on foreign providers for over 80% of its digital products, services, and infrastructure, and intellectual property. The reality is stark. In a 2025 survey cited by the European Parliament, only 16% of regional IT leaders believe the bloc could achieve digital sovereignty within five years. Nearly 60% cite US dominance as the primary obstacle. Mosley’s comment cuts through the bureaucratic noise. He argues that sovereignty is secondary to the operational advantages of Palantir’s tools, particularly in the context of countering Russia. This is not a marketing ploy. It is a recognition of structural dependency that Washington and Brussels have both been trying to ignore.
The official narrative suggests that Palantir offers transparent, locally controlled software. Mosley assures customers that they have full operational control and that “there are no kill switches.” This claim aims to reassure NATO and European intelligence agencies. The subtext, however, is rooted in the US government’s track record of restricting foreign access to flagship AI models. France’s Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu recently highlighted this risk. He noted that Washington can and does “cut off access to models,” referencing the three-week blockage of Anthropic’s Mythos 5 tool. Palantir’s argument is that their specific software architecture insulates European users from such whims. But this is a narrow technical defense against a broad geopolitical reality. The dependency is not just about software licenses. It is about the underlying data pipelines, compute resources, and algorithmic training environments that remain firmly rooted in American infrastructure.
The geopolitical subtext reveals a deeper fracture in transatlantic tech policy. Europe is attempting to build “ChapsVision,” a domestic alternative developed by France, to replace Palantir. Berlin has reportedly chosen this same French competitor for its domestic intelligence agency, BfV. Similar moves to ostracize the American firm have been reported in Spain, Denmark, Switzerland, Norway, and the UK. France’s DGSI plans to drop Palantir’s analytical software in favor of ChapsVision over the coming years. This is a strategic decoupling attempt, driven by fear of losing operational autonomy. Yet, Palantir counters with the efficacy of its Maven system. Used in Ukraine, Maven processes vast intelligence data to accelerate the “kill chain.” NATO purchased its own version for European headquarters in March 2025. The industry subtext here is clear: European nations are trading long-term autonomy for immediate tactical superiority. They are accepting a “hostage” situation in exchange for better targeting capabilities against Russia. The choice is not between good software and bad. It is between capable, dependent tools and incompetent, sovereign ones.
The pendulum is swinging toward capitulation, not independence. The technical argument that “there are no kill switches” is legally weak against the precedent of US export controls. If Washington decides that certain AI models are too dangerous or strategic to share, it will restrict access, regardless of local software deployment. Europe’s push for ChapsVision is a stopgap. It cannot replicate the data scale or integration depth of Palantir’s ecosystem in a short timeframe. The result is a fragmented continent, where individual nations are slowly accepting their role as junior partners in American tech stacks. The end game is not digital sovereignty. It is managed dependency, where Europe retains the operational benefits of US tech while absorbing the geopolitical risks. Mosley’s warning is accurate. The dependency will persist because the alternative is militarily and technically inferior.
Author bio: Julian Holbrooke is an overseas international relations analyst who frequently contributes to major European daily newspapers, focusing on the intersection of technology policy and geopolitical security.