In the wake of Donald Trump's aggressive push to acquire Greenland, several countries in Europe have placed greater focus on domestic - or European - tech solutions.
For example, Politico reported this week that France has taken steps to phase out Google Meet, Zoom, and Teams in favor of the domestic Visio for video meetings within the government.
There are also initiatives at the EU level to reduce European dependence on American tech and IT infrastructure.
"An overwhelming majority of the services that companies and authorities use come from the US," says Pontus Johnson, and he continues:
Missed the IT boom
"Europe missed the IT boom when the big American giants emerged. We see this clearly now that the AI boom is coming, because we in Europe don't have big tech companies that can pump money into start-ups."
Johnson points out that the global IT infrastructure - for example cloud services, common work tools, and email clients and servers - is a complicated and intricately composed network.
"But a lot of these threads lead to Silicon Valley."
Johnson says it is unlikely that the US would completely "pull the plug" on Europe, but the consequences in such a case would be devastating.
"It would be a complete disaster for us. Paralyzing for all of Sweden. No business would be able to function."
"I don't even know if we would have electricity anymore. Most operational support systems for controlling electric power depend on American technology. It would be a kind of apocalypse."
Europe not poor
A complete turnaround on Europe's part with only domestic infrastructure and European software would also take time.
"Under ideal conditions, if you ignore the organizational challenges, maybe two to three years."
"But if you think more realistically than in an optimal world, we're probably talking about maybe ten years," says Pontus Johnson.
AI is the most central tech issue going forward, according to Johnson. There is basically total American dominance there.
"Europe is not poor; we also have money, but we have not organized our money like the US. We have not put it into big tech companies that are keen on investing in the latest technology."
"We have invested it in industrial companies and pension funds."
The largest tech companies in the world are Alphabet (Google, YouTube), Amazon, Apple, Meta (Facebook, Instagram), Microsoft and Nvidia. Tesla is now often added to the group as a seventh giant.
The seven have such a large impact on the world economy that some experts fear a bubble or a collapse among them could trigger a global economic crisis, similar to the dot-com bubble at the turn of the millennium or the 1929 stock market crash.
Nvidia, followed by Apple and Alphabet, is considered the world's most valuable company.
Dutch ASML, which manufactures the machines that make semiconductors, is usually considered the most valuable European company in the world.
