If the AI bubble bursts, Europe falls softer. That is a warning, not an advantage

If the AI bubble bursts, Europe falls softer than the US.

Less invested, less lost. Many call that an advantage.

I call it a reminder of the year 2000.Europe fell softer back then too. The Americans sank half a trillion dollars into fiber and network buildout, mostly on debt. Capital destroyed, companies bankrupt, Nasdaq down 78 percent.

And then?

The fiber stayed in the ground. Cheap. And the companies that built on that cheap infrastructure were called Google and Netflix. Not a single European company used the cleanup phase.Losing less is not winning.

Europe got two decades of dependence out of that decision. Every layer of the stack, owned elsewhere. We are about to make the same choice again, this time with intelligence instead of bandwidth.

When the correction comes, compute gets cheap, talent gets available, valuations drop. That is the moment to build capability that belongs to you. In your processes, on your data, under your control.

The last cleanup phase produced Europe's dependence.

The next one could end it.