Over the weekend, several current and former advisors to President Donald Trump on AI publicly traded insults with leading US AI companies. David Sacks, the president’s AI and crypto “czar”, accused OpenAI and Google of slowing down development out of fear of Chinese competition. Others retorted that China is already overtaking the US. The result? A fractured internal front while Beijing keeps releasing increasingly powerful open-source models.
As reported by MIT Technology Review, this infighting is a concrete sign that the tech war between the US and China is not just external — it’s now inside the Trump administration. Hawks want tighter controls; doves push for deregulation and scaling. Meanwhile, US companies move in disarray, and Europe watches from the sidelines.
Why should an Italian SME in Sciacca or Modena care? Because the AI you use — ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude — is American. If the US gets stuck in internal feuds, licenses, pricing and access become uncertain. An entrepreneur who just integrated an AI assistant into their CRM might wake up to new terms or a service cut for “geopolitical compliance”. It happened with chips; it will happen with models.
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There is an opportunity, though. While Trump and his advisers argue, Europe could finally move on its own. The problem is, it isn’t. Public AI funding in Italy is meager, and SMEs keep buying subscription-based solutions from US big tech. No digital sovereignty, no data control.
Our position is clear
The US-China AI war is a dangerous distraction. It makes us believe the only path is giant models and billion-dollar investments. But for 99% of Italian businesses, useful AI is not about writing poems: it’s about automating accounting, optimizing inventory, answering customers without wasting time. We at Meteora Web built proprietary platforms with Laravel and Vue because we knew renting everything from third parties means losing control over data and costs. The same applies to AI. We prefer integrating open-source models (like DeepSeek from China) on our own servers rather than depending on US licenses that can change overnight. The real choice isn’t between US and China — it’s between dependency and ownership.
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Italian SMEs deserve grade-A technology: secure, measurable, owned. Not subscription-based gadgets.
What to do now. If you run a business, ask yourself: how many of your AI tools sit on US clouds without a backup plan? Can you replace them with open-source or European solutions? Start with an audit of your processes: what data are you giving away for a bit of automation? Then talk to someone who understands stacks (us, for instance) and build something of your own. The US chaos is your chance to break free from dependency.
