Europe’s AI Push Is Repeating Brazil’s 50-Year-Old Protectionist Mistake

(SeaPRwire) –   Everyone’s talking about “digital sovereignty” like it’s some new silver bullet for Europe’s tech gap. Strip away the polished PR spin, it’s just old-school protectionism wrapped in shiny AI-era language. This isn’t some bold, untested experiment for global tech policy. We already saw exactly how this plays out half a century ago in Brazil. The people who lived through that protectionist mess are already warning us what comes next.

Back in 1970s Brazil, the military government launched a “market reserve policy” for computing. It banned most imports of minicomputers and microcomputers to push a Brazil-first domestic industry. Ana Paula Assis, now IBM’s chair for Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific, lived through this period. When the policy was scrapped in the early 1990s, Brazil was far behind global tech progress. Domestic machines were overpriced clones, and a black market for imported gear flourished.

Today, the European Commission is pushing the latest phase of its “Made in Europe” push for cloud, AI and semiconductors. The strategy prioritizes domestic firms over big global players like Google, Microsoft and AWS. The European Parliament just switched its default search engine to French provider Qwant, dropping Google. The Dutch central bank recently moved its cloud services to a Lidl-owned domestic provider. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen says Europe can’t risk relying on outsiders for critical infrastructure.

The core tension here isn’t just between the US and EU over market access. Donald Trump overstates his case that all the new rules are explicitly meant to hurt American tech. But the critics still have an entirely legitimate point. Europe is already struggling with persistent anemic economic growth. Shutting itself off from global cutting-edge innovation won’t fix that long-standing gap. It will only make it harder for European firms to compete in the fast-moving global AI race.

Assis says sovereignty doesn’t have to mean cutting off the rest of the world. She frames it as building bridges, not walls, adding proper controls without isolation. Fears of a US kill switch on American tech services don’t require full protectionism. Air-gapped solutions that insulate data from outside intervention already exist. IBM just extended its cloud deal with French bank BNP Paribas using this model. Europe already struggles to grow big native tech firms from fragmented rules and over-regulation. Adding more walls won’t fix that long-standing problem.

This protectionist turn will leave Europe decades behind in global AI competitiveness.