EU aims to ensure foreign governments or firms cannot disrupt tech services with ‘kill switch’

Key points

• The EU executive wants to ensure no foreign government or company has access to a “kill switch” to turn off or disrupt vital tech services across the continent, as part of an effort to cut dependencies on the US and China.
• Publishing “technological sovereignty” proposals that risk further tensions with Donald Trump, the European Commission said on Wednesday the bloc needed to reduce dependency on foreign suppliers in cloud computing, artificial intelligence and semiconductor production.
• The EU’s vulnerabilities were exposed last year when China stopped semiconductor exports, almost bringing the European car industry to a halt.
• Meanwhile, there is concern that Trump or a future US president could use a “kill switch” to terminate US cloud computing services overnight, or require providers to hand over sensitive data.
• Henna Virkkunen, the European Commission vice-president for tech sovereignty, said the 2018 US Cloud Act – enabling federal authorities to access data stored...