Google has behind it an incoming US government that puts US economic interests first, and relishes bullying its allies. The EU is weak, divided, and geostrategically boxed in. It will bend the knee.

Lots of commentators seem to be under the impression that the EU is going to stand up against the US and Big Tech. My impression is the exact opposite; they are going to roll over. The EU is pretty good at throwing its weight around in areas where the US is not paying attention and doesn’t feel its interests are at stake. But in areas where the US wants to elbow the EU out of the way, it does so pretty effortlessly, and Brussels just looks embarrassed and tries to forget anything happened.

Deepseek trained their v3 model for $6M. That’s the AI equivalent of building it in a cave with a pile of scraps. There’s no longer any reasonable way to stop China from developing frontier models.