Donald Trump is back in the White House in 2026, and the first internal war within his tech staff is already here. The subject: Chinese artificial intelligence models. On one side, those who want to strike trade deals and leverage the lower costs of models from DeepSeek, Alibaba, and Baidu. On the other, hawks demanding harsh sanctions and a total ban, fearing espionage and strategic dependency.
Meanwhile, US companies still use Nvidia chips — which the US government restricts toward China — while Chinese models run on alternative hardware. The political fracture is real: every Trump adviser has a different agenda, and no unified guideline emerges. For European businesses, this is a cold shower. US decisions affect chip supply, cloud service pricing, and software rules that even our SMEs use daily.
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Our position: those who don't choose, get chosen for
We at Meteora Web have seen it for years: technology is not neutral. When the US fights over China, the bill lands on small entrepreneurs in Sicily or Lombardy — who end up with variable API pricing, SaaS that changes policy from month to month, and data that may end up in a still-fuzzy Data Act. Our position is clear: Europe must build an independent AI ecosystem — not out of ideology, but for economic survival. We cannot afford to sit between two fires.
We know the cost of tech dependency firsthand: we've seen clients locked into closed platforms, escalating fees, hostage data. That's why when we talk about AI, we don't just plug in off-the-shelf models. We push businesses to invest in open-source solutions, trained on their own data, hosted on European infrastructure. It's more work, but it's the only way not to be crushed between two giants.
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The ball is in the court of Brussels and Rome. If the AI Act remains only regulation without investment, the gap will grow. Europe needs compute clusters, funds for local startups, and an industrial policy that makes it profitable to develop here — not just buy from abroad.
What to do today
If you're a business owner, start mapping where every AI tool you use comes from. Ask your vendors: are data staying in Europe? Is the model open or closed? How much can the price change in six months? We do this with every client before implementation: we assess geopolitical risk. You don't need to be a foreign policy expert — just stop assuming technology will always be available and stable in cost.
