RiskOps can make individual dependencies safer, but it cannot change Europe’s structural position in the global technology stack. As long as critical layers are controlled elsewhere, Europe remains exposed to decisions it cannot control.

Independence Is Neither Possible nor Desirable

Europe could theoretically reduce these dependencies by rebuilding large parts of the global technology stack itself. Economically, however, this is hardly realistic. The stack is too specialized, capital intensive, and interconnected. Recreating and migrating to it would require enormous investment while giving European organizations access to fewer or weaker technological capabilities.

If eliminating dependency is too expensive, the alternative is to change the balance of dependency. This is how strategic conflicts between interdependent actors are often contained in practice: one side has leverage, but exercising it triggers a relevant and credible response from the other. The stronger the potential countermeasure, the less attractive it becomes to exercise the original leverage.

For Europe, the question therefore changes from “How do we eliminate our dependencies?” to “How do we make those dependencies reciprocal?”

Chokepoints Create Leverage

But countermeasures are only credible if they can actually hurt the other side. Europe threatening to withdraw European cloud providers from the US market would create little leverage because the US does not critically depend on them. Strategic leverage requires control over a chokepoint: a part of the global technology stack that others cannot replace sufficiently quickly or effectively.

There are two basic forms of chokepoints:

• Instant Leverage comes from the cost of sudden absence. Hyperscale cloud infrastructure can theoretically be replaced, but not overnight. The difference between how quickly access can be withdrawn and how long replacement takes creates leverage.
• Unmatched Depth comes from capabilities that cannot realistically be reproduced even with substantial time and capital. ASML is the clearest example: decades of accumulated expertise make its position in advanced lithography extraordinarily difficult to substitute.

If strategic power within the global technology stack works through leverage and counter leverage, Europe does not need to eliminate its dependencies. It needs to create meaningful dependencies in the opposite direction.   

Platform Shifts Create New Chokepoints

Europe already controls some chokepoints, most notably ASML, while companies such as SAP provide significant but less decisive leverage. The question is how Europe can create more of them. The history of the technology stack points to a recurring opportunity: platform shifts.

Many of today’s dominant positions were established when companies recognized a new technology layer early and scaled with it. Amazon us the emerging internet to provide data center services globally and AWS became a central infrastructure provider. Meta used the same internet disrupting the advertising market globally. Apple and Google recognized that mobile operating systems would become the control layer of the smartphone era and disrupted the monopoly from the desktop ecosystem. Each platform shift created new layers of the stack and, with them, new chokepoints.

A common feature is the pursuit of scale before profitability. Rather than stopping once a sustainable business existed, these companies invested aggressively in global reach, infrastructure, ecosystems, and market share. The same dynamic is visible in the current AI platform shift, where companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic continue raising and deploying extraordinary amounts of capital to establish positions before the emerging market structure settles. Hence, budget matters a lot.

But also timing matters because once a platform matures, dependencies become sediment. Organizations integrate the technology into products, processes, skills, and architectures, while their attention moves to the next business problem. Switching then becomes increasingly expensive and unlikely. The best moment to build a chokepoint is therefore not after dependency has formed, but during the platform shift that creates it.

How to Build Counter Dependence

The basic playbook is relatively simple:

• Spot the shift early. Identify emerging technology layers before dominant players consolidate. ASML bet early on EUV, NVIDIA on general purpose GPU computing, Amazon on cloud infrastructure, and TSMC on the pure play foundry model.
• Test many bets. Use risk-carrying venture capital to explore many possible product market fits around the new technology. The internet produced Amazon, Google, and Salesforce alongside thousands of failures; AI is now going through the same discovery process.
• Apply strategies of dominance. Turn successful products into positions that become difficult to bypass through vertical integration, ecosystem lock in, data accumulation, standards, and self reinforcing cycles. Apple built an integrated mobile ecosystem, while Google expanded search into browsers, mobile, advertising, and adjacent services.
• Scale winners aggressively. Once product market fit emerges, prioritize global scale over early profitability. Amazon reinvested for decades to expand its positions, while Uber used billions in venture capital to expand globally before markets consolidated.

Three things for Europe to do now

Building chokepoints takes time. Platform shifts emerge, markets develop, and global leaders rarely appear overnight. But Europe has an opportunity because AI is still reshaping the technology stack, while further shifts are emerging in quantum, robotics, space, and energy.

1. Catalogue Existing Strongholds

Europe should systematically identify where it is already difficult to replace. ASML and SAP are obvious examples, but strategic positions often sit deeper in the supply chain. Japan, for example, holds strong positions in semiconductor materials, South Korea in memory chips, and Taiwan in advanced chip manufacturing. Europe likely has similar positions across specialized machinery, chemicals, optics, industrial software, and advanced materials that remain largely invisible.

2. Align Policy Levers

Building global chokepoints can conflict with policies designed to promote competition and prevent market concentration. Yet if global dominance creates strategic leverage, Europe needs a way to recognize exceptional opportunities and align competition policy, state aid, procurement, standard setting, and industrial policy behind them. The goal is not generally to promote monopolies, but to make deliberate exceptions where global strategic value justifies them.

3. Maximize Specific Incentives

Europe's strongest opportunities sit inside successful niche companies in areas such as industrial machinery, chemicals, photonics, semiconductor equipment, energy technology, and advanced manufacturing. Their owners have little incentive to risk profitable businesses pursuing uncertain global dominance. Europe should make these bets attractive, for example by combining existing technology and expertise with substantial venture capital through dedicated carve outs, allowing new ventures to pursue global scale without putting the incumbent business at risk.

The Calculus at Scale

Counter Dependence applies the Sovereignty Calculus at the macro level. Europe accepts that eliminating all external dependencies would impose enormous costs and reduce technological capability. Instead, it invests selectively in positions that create reciprocal dependencies and thereby reduce strategic risk.

The Calculus therefore remains the same: balance risk, cost, and capability according to strategic requirements and technical maturity. The difference is the objective. At the micro level, RiskOps mitigates dependencies. At the macro level, Counter Dependence creates leverage within them.