EU cyber chief warns US-led AI cloud dominance means Europe has ‘lost the internet’

De Bruycker’s warning puts hard numbers behind a reality AI folks already feel: Europe consumes frontier AI services largely built and hosted elsewhere. When the head of Belgium’s cybersecurity center says Europe has “lost the internet,” he’s really saying that control over cloud and foundational AI infrastructure—and thus over security posture—is sitting with a handful of US hyperscalers. That’s awkward when the same companies are regulated under the AI Act and DSA, and when transatlantic politics are getting choppier. ([ft.com](https://www.ft.com/content/854fcad0-0d39-438b-975b-adf9d8b89827?utm_source=openai))

For the AGI race, this matters less because Europe will suddenly leap ahead in model building, and more because it shapes where safe, large‑scale experimentation can legally and politically happen. If the EU’s regulatory stack is perceived as “blocking” innovation, as De Bruycker suggests, serious frontier work will continue to consolidate in the US, UK, and parts of Asia, even as European citizens and institutions become heavy downstream users. That imbalance could leave Europe with strong rules but weak leverage over the labs actually pushing toward AGI.

The Airbus analogy is telling: European policymakers are being nudged to think in terms of large, state‑backed industrial projects in cloud and AI. If that thinking turns into real capital commitments and looser rules for domestic champions, it could create a distinct European AI bloc. If it doesn’t, expect the continent to remain primarily a regulator and customer in a race largely run elsewhere.