The Power Question: Big Tech

Source: Corriere della Sera – “Trump’s Challenge to Europe” by Mario Monti, 8 December 2025

The new global competition and the real issue: the power of Big Tech

Mario Monti’s analysis of the United States’ strategic shift offers a crucial lens through which to understand another front—often less explicitly addressed but no less central: the digital dimension of power, now dominated by American Big Tech. If Washington is adopting a more selective approach to alliances, the same logic is reflected in the technological ecosystem, where major platforms operate as de facto geopolitical infrastructures, capable of shaping economies, states and citizens alike.

Europe’s digital dependence as a structural vulnerability

Monti highlights the ambiguity with which Europe is navigating the new international landscape—an ambiguity that becomes even more evident when applied to the digital sphere. The European Union regulates, sanctions and investigates, yet continues to entrust a large share of its public and private processes to U.S.-based platforms that control:

• information flows,

• the architecture of artificial intelligence,

• the visibility of media and businesses,

• access to tools essential to civic life.

This dependence creates a vulnerability that goes beyond economics: it is a sovereignty risk, exacerbated by the fact that these infrastructures respond to political and industrial logics external to the continent.

Big Tech as geopolitical actors, not mere service providers

One of the most incisive points in Monti’s article is the idea that the United States is redefining its global role based on criteria of convenience rather than ideology. Transposed to the digital domain, this means recognising that Big Tech companies are not neutral enterprises, but actors that:

• influence information security,

• shape democratic processes,

• manage European data as part of their strategic capital,

• can become instruments of geopolitical leverage.

The power they wield is not merely economic; it is cultural, informational and infrastructural.

Europe between regulation and technological impotence

Monti calls for an Europe that clearly defines its strategic identity. In the digital field, this means overcoming the contradiction that currently paralyses it: regulating without building alternatives. Instruments such as the DSA, DMA and AI Act are indispensable, but insufficient if the underlying infrastructure remains in non-European hands.

For Europe, the real challenge is not defending itself from Trump, but confronting the digital asymmetry that makes Big Tech the unavoidable intermediary for economic, informational and administrative activity.

What this means for Algopolio: returning power to users, not platforms

The issue raised by the article speaks directly to Algopolio’s mission: in a world where platforms exercise power comparable to that of states, citizens risk losing autonomy without even realising it.

Algopolio operates precisely within this gap in protection by:

• defending individuals and businesses from algorithmic abuses,

• challenging excessive profiling practices,

• promoting transparency and accountability,

• supporting a model of distributed digital sovereignty, in which the user is not a subject of the platform, but a rights-bearing actor.

If geopolitics is changing, digital rights must remain firm: citizens’ freedom cannot depend on the strategy of a platform or the doctrine of a superpower.