I recently read a blog post by Heather Burns, who works in tech policy in Glasgow, Scotland. In it, Burns recommends that computer users "move everything [...] out of the American stack."

What is a stack? In the tech world, the word stack has multiple meanings. Here, it means that computer systems are built on top of other computer systems. It would be nearly impossible to build a full stack from scratch. As a result, many things are built once and and then relied upon to make higher-level systems.

When you use a computer today, you are interacting with many different stacks, each of which have their own histories of development. Burns is referring to apps and web services, which are both currently dominated by American companies in the European market. Europe has traditionally been willing to rely on American companies to provide these services. The current geopolitical tensions between the EU and the US, as well as European concerns over privacy and the handling of data, have prompted governments, companies, and individuals to consider moving away from reliance on American companies to service their technology needs.

While it could potentially be feasible to replace web services and apps with European alternatives (leaving aside the question of whether individuals themselves would freely choose non-American apps), I think the question of moving away from the American stack poses a larger problem than just using a different note-taking app or web host. The American parts of the stack are much deeper than this, and some components will be nearly impossible to replace. The thing about the stack is that if you remove something lower in the stack, everything above that part falls apart. The bedrock of the technology stack is computer chips, which perform all of the computation that our apps and websites need to function.

Almost all of the most advanced computer chips are made by one company, TSMC, which is based in Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory, and in recent years has steadily built up its ability to invade the island. If that happened today, it would disrupt the supply of computer chips that go into iPhones and the Nvidia GPUs that are used to train AI models. TSMC's incredibly complex and precise chip-making machines, called extreme ultraviolet lithography machines, are made by one Dutch company, ASML. ASML, in turn, relies heavily on American intellectual property to make their chips. If the United States embargoed the suppliers to ASML, they would not be able to make their machines, and the supply of computer chips on which the global tech stack relies would be curtailed.

Globalization of the chip-making industry has made the world interdependent. The United States has recognized this and has begun more heavily supporting its main chip manufacturer, Intel. Unfortunately for the United States, Intel has fallen far behind TSMC. Despite billions of dollars in investment, it remains doubtful that Intel will be able to compete in producing the most advanced chips. Analogous efforts by China to create its own extreme ultraviolet lithography machines have similarly fallen short.

All this means that at the deepest level, there is no path in the short term for Europe to control its own stack. The United States will remain dependent on European and Taiwanese companies for making its chips. And everyone is dependent on China refraining from invading Taiwan.