Let’s set the stage. From the right wing, here comes the US, once the predominant world power; from the left, the rising power, China.

As for digital, the force is still with the US. From Antartica up through Chile to Brazil, it’s Windows winning on desktop and laptop computers: 90%. It’s NVIDIA, AMD, Intel dominating their data centres.

We reach Africa going up from that southernmost point of our planet, and again, data centres are using US vendors. Desktops and laptops use Windows.

Now we take another route up from the south, Australia, New Zealand (where I am right now, writing this) and further up to the Asian Pacific.

That includes India, and of course China. In the region, Windows still dominates with 78%, just as US chip vendors dominate data centres.

But it’s when we move our focus to China that we see some new names. All Chinese civil servants use the open source OS Linux. That's a lot of computers, but still small at 10%.

Data centres: same old names dominate, but we see Chinese brands like Huawei Asend, Cambricon, Biren, on a stellar rise. They may not be the sub-2nm chips AI craves, but getting more capable with every iteration.

China wants digital sovereignty. But it’s got to produce sub-2nm chips if it wants to compete in the world of AI. And that’s where the problem lies.

The Netherlands-based company ASML produces the machines that enables the Taiwanese firm TSMC to produce the fastest chips on the planet. When we say that vendors like NVIDIA and AMD are market leaders, we need to say that they are the designers and marketers, not the manufacturer. That's TSMC. Has 100% market share. It’s there because it and its partners have spent 8 decades developing the technology needed for ultra-tiny, super-fast chips, the ones AI relies on.

China is trying to press decades of innovation and development into one. Its partly succeeding, but the most advanced local fabs can still only produce 7nm chips.

In 2020, the European Union launched the Digital Decade, aiming to become digitally sovereign in 2030. Let’s bring this player to centre stage.

Windows domination in the EU: 73%. Lower than other regions because of Apple at 15%, which is, you know, also US.

Data centre chips: same culprits. But here, just like China, there is some movement. The EU’s Chip Act supports homegrown chips, although less independent as one might wish. Germany’s Magdeburg fab is to make Intel chips, but still subject to American oversight. Even ASML, despite being on EU soil, is dependent on parts produced in California, and nowhere else. So unless we convince that state to become part of the European Union, we have an issue.

There are chip fabs in other parts of the EU: SIPearl in France, STMicroelectronics in Italy and in France, in Germany, Infineon, NXP in the Netherlands. However none are capable of producing the sub-2nm chips AI relies on.

The US has a long history of being forerunner, even before digital. Transitional technology originated there: Edisons electricity, Fords assembly line. Even Tesla (the real one, not the despised line of EVs) developed the systems that brought electricity to mainstream in America.

Now the erstwhile powerhouse is on its way down. But its legacy remains, as we all experience every time we open the lid of our laptops.

Just like China, the EU cannot press 80 years of digital dominance into one Digital Decade.

The stage is set. Hope it doesn’t take another 80 years for the finale.