How Brussels can avoid becoming a digital vassal to US Big Tech

An export-control order in June exposed the real problem—and why Europe's regulatory toolkit can't fix it. [1] The most important AI-governance development of 2026 so far wasn’t a model release. It was an export-control order. On June 12, the US Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security directed Anthropic to cut off its two newest frontier models for all foreign nationals. Unable to segment US citizens from everyone else, the company blocked public access worldwide. Days later, reports emerged of a similar squeeze on OpenAI’s GPT-5.6. The ban didn’t last: on June 30, after Anthropic negotiated new cybersecurity safeguards and testing protocols with federal agencies , Commerce rescinded it. While that might be good for the world, it signaled an important change. For the first time, Washington had aimed its export-control authority at model access rather than at chips or hardware, and this led to global impacts. It was a wakeup call for Europe that the frontier AI market is concentrated enough that the United States alone decides who gets to use these tools—and who doesn’t. Europe’s response was telling. At the G7 in Evian-les-Bains, days after the order, EU leaders declined to confront Washington and reframed the episode as a chance to “ recreate a circle of trust .” At the same summit, the world’s seven most powerful governments solicited advice on sovereignty and AI risk from the CEOs of twelve of the largest tech companies on the planet. The UK’s AI minister la…