Walk through Stockholm, Paris or Florence. Take a deep breath. Feel the fresh air pump through your lungs. Europe. It is beautiful, civilized, well-fed, and intellectually serious (at times). Beautiful women. Well-dressed men (on average). Universal healthcare. Paid parental leave. Tap water you can drink. And fairly good urban planning. The buildings are old and the trains are on time. Okay, the latter is only true in Switzerland. Europe is, in many ways, the most pleasant place on Earth to live. And that is our problem.
The twentieth century was built in Detroit Rock City, in Silicon Valley, in New Jersey (google Bell Labs), and in in Hollywood. The twenty-first is being built in San Francisco, Texas and Shenzhen.
When I write this on May 11, 2026, nine of the ten most valuable companies in the world are American. The tenth is based in Taiwan: TSMC. Of the global frontier AI labs, none are European. Okay, Deepmind was British, but we fumbled, and let Google acquire it.
Of the leading semiconductor designers, none are European. Of the dominant cloud platforms, social networks, payment rails (the infrastructure dreams are made of), electric vehicle makers, and consumer hardware brands, the lack of European examples is staggering. Sure, we do have ASML and Spotify. That is not a counter-argument. Let’s say it as it is: they are the exceptions that prove the rule. Even our cherished 100 year old industrial champions within the automotive, pharmaceutical, and machinery sector (if there is such a word), increasingly look like late-stage incumbents just waiting to get disrupted, like the girl in the darkest corner of a school dance.
As economic power decouples from a region, cultural and political power will follow. A continent that consumes other people’s technology will eventually consume other people’s values. Maybe that will save us, maybe not.
The phones in our pockets, the operating systems on our laptops, the chips in our cars, the platforms the kids spend six hours a day on (let’s be honest - all of them hack the parental control from when they are six years old) are all foreign-owned, all governed by rules and culture written elsewhere.
Our weapon, as Thierry Breton would have it, is regulation. We can regulate, and we do. But it is in all respects a failure. Regulating someone else’s product is not the same as having a seat at the table where the product is designed. A continent that only writes rules for other people’s inventions is pretty much like a museum. And not the kind we are booking tickets for, weeks in advance of our visits, in Florence.
Sweden ought to be exhibit A for what Europe can still do.
We are some ten-eleven million people. A small nation. We still produced Spotify, Klarna, Mojang, Skype, King, iZettle, Loveable, Northvolh (okay, maybe one error there), and a large chunk of the world’s best open-source software. We have mostly free university education. We have quite cheap and quite clean electricity. We have fluency in English. We have social trust, it is easy to do business. And we have a population that actually likes new technology. We are successful, but let’s be honest - we need to be at least 3x faster and more productive and we need to excel in the industries of the future. I will not tire the reader by mentioning them.
European potential founders, and Swedish ones in particular, need to internalize an uncomfortable fact: nobody is coming to save the continent.
Brussels will not save it. Subsidy programs will not save it. Another strategy paper from the Commission will not save it. A national AI-strategy will not save it (sorry!).
The only thing that will save us from technological irrelevance is if we decide to build the future ourselves.
The Americans did it after the war (referring to the second world war here, it is difficult to know these days). The Chinese did it after Deng Xiaoping. The Israelis did it, and no one really understands how. There is no law of physics or nature preventing Europeans from doing it. Only habit, comfort, and a quiet collective belief that someone else will handle it. But let me tell you: someone else is dead. No one is coming. You are on the Nostromo, and it is time to learn how to operate a machine gun.
The choice in front of us is not between dynamism and the European way of life. It is between building the next century ourselves or being a charming destination for American and Chinese travelers.
Notre Dame is beautiful after its refurbishment. But you cannot eat it.
Choose a difficult life. Build something.
Mikael Pawlo
