Mistral and Dust founders warn Europe risks US 'digital colonialism' in AI
French AI startup founders Gabriel Hubert of Dust and Arthur Mensch of Mistral AI warn the conditions for long-term European AI sovereignty are not in place. Mensch told a National Assembly commission on structural digital dependencies on May 12 that Europeans "do not have the time" before they risk a form of US "digital colonialism" and an EU reduced to a "vassal state". Hubert invokes de Gaulle's industrial policy and France's TGV and nuclear-plant programmes as the comparable scale of effort, warning that without low-cost, low-carbon, secure sovereign AI Europe will simply buy it from the Americans.
Gabriel Hubert, cofounder of the French AI startup Dust, said the conditions for long-term European sovereignty in artificial intelligence "are not in place at this stage". If the European Union does not deliver low-cost, low-carbon and secure sovereign AI solutions, "we will just buy them from the Americans", Hubert warned. He invoked the scale of de Gaulle-era French industrial policy -- the TGV high-speed rail programme and the state nuclear-plant build-out -- as the kind of effort Europe now needs to match.
The tone matched a May 12 hearing of the National Assembly's commission of inquiry on structural dependencies and systemic vulnerabilities in the digital sector, where Mistral AI cofounder Arthur Mensch gave evidence. "We do not have the time", Mensch told the commission; Europeans risk "a form of digital colonialism by the Americans". He added that he was "not worried about them; I'm rather worried about us", raising the prospect of the EU becoming a "vassal state".