When policy makers on both sides of the Atlantic discuss transatlantic interdependence, they usually point to military and diplomatic arrangements, liquefied natural gas (LNG) shipments, and semiconductor supply chains. The degree to which Europe runs its entire digital economy on American infrastructure receives far less attention. It deserves more. Europe’s digital foundation is almost entirely American. This includes cloud compute, enterprise networking, cybersecurity, collaboration platforms, and data and storage. Seventy percent of the Europe cloud market is controlled by three US companies: Google, Microsoft, and Amazon. This division of labor has benefitted all the participants, providing efficiencies, reducing costs, and allowing interoperability. The Europeans, however, are now taking steps to end it.

2430 Group’s Director, Glenn Chafetz describes a 21st Cold War with China in a May 20, 2025 article in Publications—Irregular Warfare Center. Chafetz contends that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) centrally directs the entirety of its party-state-economic machinery, including its putatively private companies, against the decentralized, civilian assets of the United States’ commercial sector, critical infrastructure, and civil society. The US fails to adequately respond or deter China because the attacks are incremental and hard to detect; the private sector lacks the ability and incentives to defend itself; and neither the USG nor the private sector adequately capture the risks of inaction.