EU Regulatory Superstate: Independent Pole, Captured Regulator, or Managed Component?
In plain terms
The EU holds the global regulatory high ground (GDPR covers 82% of humanity, AI Act, DMA/DSA) but lacks sovereign compute, frontier AI, and independent intelligence.
The EU holds the global regulatory high ground (GDPR covers 82% of humanity, AI Act, DMA/DSA) but lacks sovereign compute, frontier AI, and independent intelligence. Gaia-X sovereign cloud collapsed. Mistral gutted the AI Act then took Microsoft money. Crypto AG was CIA/BND-owned. BlackRock drafted EU ESG banking rules. The Brussels Effect exports compliance parameters globally while actual control points remain outside European sovereignty. Falsification: if the EU achieves genuine compute sovereignty (8ra consortium success) and enforces AI Act against US hyperscalers by 2028, the captured-regulator thesis weakens. Currently: every indicator shows sanitization, not resistance.