Aallannguinnaq *

European Fragmentation, Digital Colonialism and why the EU has to Invest as one State - not like 27 Countries.

The digital age has ushered in an era of unprecedented interconnectedness, but it has also opened the door to sophisticated forms of manipulation and subversion. Nowadays, our European democracies are fighting an asymmetrical information warfare on two major digital fronts simultaneously.

The first is a propaganda one with dictatorial regimes such as Russia and China trying to ridicule the EU, portray European governments as puppets of evil Brussels Institutions, dismissing the Union’s security concerns, and even replacing history with tailor-made disinformation.

The second propaganda front is the one created by the Silicon Valley monopolies promoted by Washington. It is a commercial one and concerns U.S. tech dominance. Most major digital platforms such as Google, Meta, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, OpenAI, etc., are American.

The Fake News Industry

China and Russia are using a massive digital arsenal to interfere with and manipulate Western democracies, Brussels warned. "Information manipulation and interference are major threats to EU security," said EU foreign policy boss Kaja Kallas in a report published in March 2025 by the Diplomatic Service of the European Union (EEAS).

The EEAS report revealed that disinformation attacks against more than 80 countries and over 200 organisations were identified in 2024. While the invasion of Ukraine remains a primary target for Russia, other events such as the Paris Olympics, elections in Moldova, and farmer protests in Germany were also targeted.

"The aim is to destabilise our societies, damage our democracies, create rifts between our partners and us, and undermine the EU’s global standing," Kallas declared. Russia uses a complex network of “state and non-state actors,” ranging from social media influencers to state media and official spokespeople, to create and spread its messages.

China, on the other hand, seems to be increasing its use of private public relations firms and influencers to create, amplify, and legitimise content aligned with China’s global interests. According to the report there is a significant alignment of Sino-Russian narratives regarding the invasion of Ukraine, with hostile messages blaming NATO and the EU for escalating the conflict.

Fake social-media, AI-driven smear campaigns, disinformation and Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI) have become lucrative global business. Operations that used to be run by authoritarian governments and intelligence agencies are now outsourced to private firms that sell disinformation and deception as a service.

Dictatorial states are now outsourcing information operations to private intermediaries, while shielding themselves from diplomatic and legal consequences. Hiring external operators is attractive. It allows powerful actors to carry out risky and manipulative influence campaigns while being able to disavow involvement if exposed.

An Asymmetric Information Warfare

One of the most alarming revelations exposed is Team Jorge. An Israeli disinformation and public opinion manipulation contractor. The firm claimed to have interfered in 33 presidential elections, winning 27 of them.

Team Jorge’s modus operandi involves a multi-pronged approach to disinformation, exploiting various platforms to maximize their reach. They use a combination of political spam, social media manipulation, rumour-mongering, and targeted advertising through messaging apps like WhatsApp and Facebook.

Their content is designed to be short, sensationalized, and emotionally charged – perfectly tailored to capture attention in the fast-paced world of social media. This strategy effectively bypasses traditional media outlets and directly targets individuals, leveraging the trust inherent in peer-to-peer communication.

The rise of artificial intelligence has further amplified the threat posed by disinformation campaigns. Team Jorge and similar groups are increasingly using AI-powered software to automate the creation and dissemination of propaganda on a massive scale. This allows them to generate thousands of tweets, Facebook ads, and other social media posts, effectively flooding the digital landscape with disinformation and creating an echo chamber that reinforces pre-existing biases.

The 2024 Mexican presidential and parliamentary campaigns serve as a stark example, where the OpenAI programming interface was reportedly exploited to generate a deluge of manipulated content.

Team Jorge is not the only example. There are others such as AdNow in Russia and Shanghai Haixun Technology, Times Newswire, Durinbridge and Shenzhen Bowen Media in China. Adnow is a digital marketing company founded in Russia that has been linked to disinformation campaigns and targeted influence activity in Europe and beyond.

It was founded by a former Russian state media operative tied to Putin and the United Russia party. The Chinese operate a bulk-produced sites posing as independent news outlets around the world, often republishing Beijing-aligned content on geopolitically sensitive topics

Digital Colonialism made in USA

The last episode of the escalating war was Washington’s Christmas announcement that the former EU Commissioner Thierry Breton has been barred from obtaining a US visa. The Trump administration condemned the EU's online content moderation measures as 'censorship. Breton led tech sector regulation efforts during his mandate in Brussels.

This retaliatory measure represents a new escalation in the dispute between Washington and European countries over the regulation of American digital platforms, which have openly rebelled against the EU's Digital Services Act (DSA). This piece of legislation was developed by the EU member states, and it was Breton's initiative when he served as the European commissioner for the internal market, from 2019 to 2024. The DSA seeks to combat hate speech and online disinformation.

Washington, however, sees it primarily as an obstacle to “free speech” in their search to dominate and divide the Union. Or is Digital Colonisation the right term to describe the modus operandi of big (US) tech?  I believe that we can not speak of “colonisation” in the classic sense. Calling it colonisation implies intentional domination and extraction, which doesn’t really match how this developed.

The difference is more to be find in the one between corsairs and pirates in the past centuries.  Corsairs were privateers authorized by governments to attack enemy ships, while pirates operated independently and illegally, targeting any vessels for personal gain.

U.S. tech dominance grew mostly from market dynamics, venture capital, scale, and early internet leadership—not a coordinated state plan to weaken Europe. European governments chose open markets and often underinvested in scaling their own digital champions. I like to believe that the U.S. and EU are allies with deeply intertwined economies, not adversaries trying to collapse each other. At least this is the EU side of reality.

Digital dependency, not colonisation might be a better term to use. European data often flows through U.S.-based infrastructure and companies. Europe relies heavily on non-European cloud services, AI models, and operating systems. To gain digital independence the Union has to make structural changes across technology, capital, governance, and culture.

Europe must own or fully control starting by developing it own cloud infrastructure for government, health, defence and energy. Construct more undersea cables, IXPs and satellite networks. Make massive investments in semiconductor supply, especially advanced and power chips. Without chips, there is no digital sovereignty.

While Europe has talent, it lacks scale. With other words, the Union has to invest like a Continent and not like 27 countries. The U.S. has venture capital at scale. China has state direction at scale. Europe has fragmentation.

Nevertheless, it is doubtful, if the American sanctions against Breton will achieve their goal. They mainly serve as extra fuel for outrage and will rather have a counterproductive effect. The DSA was established after long and tough political debates and gained a majority in the European Parliament and the Council with the approval of the member states. Europe stands behind these rules and they will not simply be swept off the table.

The European Brotherhood & the United States of Europe (USE)

As I write in my book Rebranding Europe 2024, the lack of a shared vision seems to be more harmful to the European project than is commonly acknowledged. The EU does not rely, as a real state does, on a common language, a pure common history, or real ethnic bonds to ensure its legitimacy and continuity. It is a self-willed community, a cultural union, a project of shared values and objectives.

However, although there is not a real European public sphere - that there is a kind of trans-European public space that already exists in Europe and has been created by the EU policies. It consists not only out of EU-related news coverage, but also out of trans-European networks of political parties, civil society organisations, think tanks and policy research institutes which are themselves not always open to other discourses. Those channels of communication are even important as media does.

The key question will be how the union can develop the necessary solidarity and cohesion to survive. In March 2027, the EU will celebrate its 70th anniversary, when the Treaty of Rome was signed. Is it utopian to believe that the member states will succeed in accomplishing the European project in a few years and reaffirm the commitment to a stronger and sustainable Union? A Union with the involvement of all the EU countries that share the need to continue on the path to integration based on shared values and ideas of its founders?

It took an entire year for the EU to finally accept that the transatlantic relationship doesn’t exist anymore. The question for 2026 is whether Brussels has the will and strength to turn this acceptance into real action. The Union needs more integration because Europeans need a common space to live, work, produce, prosper and lead the world.

On social media, the upcoming generation is expressing more European solidarity than the continent has seen in decades. During the last decade, Europe’s dominant political narrative has been that the far right is ascendant and the only question is how much further it will rise and how much more it will corrode the 70 year-old project that grew out of the ashes of WW II to become the EU. Forget the far right. The kids want a United States of Europe.

Stop fragmentation and stand up to unite this magnificent Continent ! Europeans need a more efficient and sovereign Union. A global power providing security and political strength. A total integration in key areas such as defense, energy and foreign policy is paramount. The EU needs to become one State to regain control of its destiny. A real state : the United States of Europe (USE).

*  Aallannguinnaq is a word from Greenlandic (Kalaallisut), a language spoken mainly in Greenland. In Kalaallisut, aallannguinnaq generally means “just beginning,” “only just started,” or “at the very start.” Recently, it has also appeared in humorous or opinionated internet posts, especially in response to Trump’s remarks about Greenland, where it is interpreted as “leave us alone.”

Picture Filip Gielda - Visit Greenland