My previous post discussed the importance of EU’s digital sovereignty, especially considering historical and recent geopolitical developments, namely our overdependence on (US) Big Tech. This post will focus on the Dutch elections coming up next month.
So far I’ve seen some but overall little interest from most major parties to invest heavily in digital sovereignty, apart from of course the Pirate Party. I do understand, we sadly have more matters to attend to. The housing crisis for one, which is much more tangible to most voters, because it directly affects a large part of our population, and their children. We should’ve built much more housing over the last decade, but at the very least it is one of the more popular election topics this time around. And rightfully so, I do believe housing is indeed a crisis, affecting our demographic personally.
And that’s just it. While digital sovereignty remains a matter of national and European security, and ought to be treated as such, it’s less tangible to most, as with most IT matters. It’s not sexy, too abstract, too vague. It’s really for the same reasons why nerds like me have such a hard time getting even our closest family and friends messaging us on more secure alternatives like Signal, and actually exercising our human rights (EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, articles 7 and 8, and Dutch Constitution articles 10 and 13).
Furthermore, most politicians either don’t understand IT, or simply don’t want to. Bert Hubert put it nicely (20:30), comparing IT to plumbing. Plumbing simply has to work, without too much fuss. And when it doesn’t, you call a plumber and have it be done with. In other words, most people, including politicians, would rather avoid worrying about plumbing (IT), let alone dealing with it. Best not to be bothered with and left to the care of others. Until it breaks, that is.
This is worrying, but I do love Randal Peelen putting together NerdWijzer to help fellow nerds like me gain more insight into the various parties' stances on matters like digital sovereignty, privacy, security, AI, climate change, etc. And then there’s also Bert’s NerdVote, which will hopefully present interesting candidates in the coming weeks, pushing for digital sovereignty.
With Trump’s increasingly erratic behaviour, and the US government being less and less predictable, I hope The Netherlands and the EU as a whole will act in a similar fashion as when it ranked up its military spending commitments, and finally start investing in its own digital sovereignty as well. This means investing in its own cloud services, AI, and not just for the public sector, but for all sectors. On its own soil, and under its own jurisdiction. As this will be a long-term effort, such investments are prone to face political headwinds with changing governments and coalitions during that time. Needless to say, the best time to start planting that tree was over a decade ago; the second best time is now.