Europe’s AI buildout is orders of magnitude too small, and if it does not step up it will be left as an economic backwater, a group of AI policy thinkers warned.

Europe hosts just 5% of global AI compute, compared to the US’ 80%, the group said. The EU’s flagship €200 billion ($230 billion) investment plan, much of it repackaged and spread over years, is dwarfed by the more than $400 billion US tech firms spent largely on expanding AI infrastructure in 2025 alone.

In a fictionalized near-future scenario — Europe 2031 — part-written by Flagship’s Tom Chivers, they warn that the EU’s overregulation and underambition, and its understandable skepticism toward Big Tech, will leave it powerless as AI dominates defense, cybersecurity, and geopolitics.