Dear Readers,

AI doesn’t feel like “software” anymore, it feels like the new terrain of power: data centers instead of oil fields, chip supply chains instead of shipping lanes, and electricity as the quiet weapon nobody can fake. Today’s featured story drops you into the three-way contest between the U.S., China, and the EU and asks the uncomfortable question Europe keeps dodging: can you regulate your way to AI sovereignty, or do you have to build it with compute, capital, energy, and speed? We break down what “winning AI” really means when the bottlenecks are physical (power grids, fabs, critical minerals), why Germany’s industrial model hits 21st-century constraints, and how the EU AI Act timeline collides with frontier reality, plus a blunt take on whether Europe is drifting toward becoming the world’s most regulated AI consumer market. Keep reading and have fun!

All the best,

Kim Isenberg

There’s a reason AI suddenly feels less like “software” and more like the new geopolitical terrain itself. In the past, global power could be read through oil fields, shipping lanes, and aircraft carriers. Today, it’s increasingly legible in data centers, chip supply chains, export controls, and most quietly but most decisively: electricity. The “AI revolution” is not just a story about better chatbots or smarter automation. It is a story about who can afford to build the infrastructure of intelligence at scale, who can feed it with energy reliably, and who can deny others the critical components when competition turns existential.

That’s why the global contest is drifting toward a three-way struggle: the United States, China, and the European Union. Each has strengths; each has deep vulnerabilities. And unlike earlier tech cycles, the winners won’t be determined only by who has the best researchers or the most elegant algorithms. The decisive variables look blunt and material: massive investment capacity, stable energy generation, industrial depth, and the ability to enforce rules, through regulation, through alliances, or through embargo.

Europe once thrived by setting standards the world had to follow (“if you want to sell here, you’ll play by our rules”). But in AI, rules alone don’t produce frontier models, hyperscale compute, or strategic autonomy. Meanwhile the U.S. is building an AI-industrial machine powered by venture capital, subsidies, and a tightening ring of export controls. China, shut out of top-end chips, is racing to substitute hardware, scale domestic production, and weaponize its dominance in critical minerals.

So the question is no longer whether AI will reshape the global order. It’s whether Europe can remain a rule-maker, or whether it will slide into becoming a rule-taker in an era where intelligence is manufactured like steel: expensively, energetically, and at enormous scale.