Rising tensions with the United States are pushing the European Union to make moves towards autonomy – including in the digital field.
This week, the European Union launched an investigation into the appearance in recent weeks of fake images of naked women on the social network X (formerly Twitter), some of them minors, generated by the platform's artificial intelligence tool Grok.
In December, the social network was fined for non-compliance with European rules on digital services.
The owner of X, Elon Musk, responded by comparing the EU to Nazi Germany and calling for its abolition. Former French European Commissioner Thierry Breton, who initiated the regulation, has been banned from entering the United States.
On Monday, the European Commission said it had formally designated WhatsApp – owned by Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta – as a "very large online platform" (VLOP) under the EU's Digital Services Act (DSA), thus binding it to carry out stricter moderation of illegal and harmful content.
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Digital sovereignty as policy
The same day, France announced that all government agencies will adopt a new, domestically developed tool for video-conferencing, replacing US-developed tools such as Teams, Zoom and Google Meet.
The new tool, developed by the Interministerial Digital Directorate and named Visio, will be mandated from 2027, after which the government will no longer renew licences for US tools.
David Amiel, minister for the civil service and state reform, said: "This strategy highlights France's commitment to digital sovereignty amid rising geopolitical tensions and fears of foreign surveillance or service disruptions."
In a similar move in 2023, French officials were told to stop using foreign-made messaging services including WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram in favour of French apps such as Olvid and Tchap.
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Security risks
However, on Monday evening, France's Academy of Sciences discreetly welcomed one of the barons of the American techno-industrial complex, Peter Thiel, to Paris.
An early supporter of Donald Trump and financier of Vice-President JD Vance's election campaigns, Thiel makes no secret of his contempt for democracy and his desire to see state structures run in entrepreneurial mode.
He is the co-founder of Palantir, a data-processing tool for governments which uses artificial intelligence to facilitate surveillance. It is currently used in the US by the ICE immigration police, which has come under fire after shooting dead two people in Minneapolis.
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But European intelligence services also use it, including the General Directorate for Internal Security (DGSI) in France.
NGOs have flagged a risk to freedoms and the security of sensitive data controlled by a company close to the US government.
Initially presented as a temporary solution by the DGSI after the 2015 Paris terror attacks, the contract has been continuously renewed since then – most recently in December, for an additional three years.
This article was partially adapted from an article in French by RFI's Guillaume Naudin, with newswires.
