Your AI Answers to a Foreign Government: Jurisdiction, control and the European alternative
Abstract
Most European organisations now depend on AI services whose model, hosting, silicon and contract terms sit under the jurisdiction of a foreign state. This reference paper asks what the two governments concerned, the United States and the People's Republic of China, have already done with the power that dependency gives them, and what Europe has built to answer it.The record is documented rather than speculative: three US AI access withdrawals in two years, a Chinese intelligence law that obliges assistance without process, court-ordered production of twenty million conversation logs, and government-defined truth written into procurement. One asymmetry shapes the conclusion: China publishes its strongest model weights under open licences while the United States rents access to closed ones, so a self-hosted open-weight model on European infrastructure is the only configuration that removes the foreign hand altogether. The paper sets out the European regulatory position, a three-question test that cuts through sovereignty washing (who owns the parent, which jurisdiction can compel it, who holds the keys), an inventory of the European supply base from exascale compute to sovereign workplace software, and recommendations separated by audience. 69 dated primary and secondary sources. AltLibre Papers, No. 1. Version 1.5.
