Why the global push to break free from Big Tech keeps falling short
Rest of World Cecilia Rikap
A mid-2024 cybersecurity partner mistake triggered a Microsoft Windows outage that affected 8.5 million devices and disrupted airports, airlines, media broadcasts, emergency services, banking, and other essential services. The episode highlights the limits of governments’ efforts to improve digital (AI/cloud) sovereignty because public-sector cloud contracts and “AI factory” plans still rely on Big Tech cloud access. As a result, even EU, India, Brazil, and China-style strategies mostly fail to decouple from cloud hegemons or intellectual monopolies, leading to continued dependency even as model choices like DeepSeek shift usage toward cheaper AI hosted on those platforms.
Why it matters
In this excerpt from the book “The Rulers: Corporate Power in the Age of AI and the Cloud,” writer Cecilia Rikap examines how Europe, India, Brazil, and China are taking on big tech companies.
