So, it seems that it is not far-fetched to say Europe never really bought into the whole Silicon Valley-style “disruption” the way the U.S. did. They saw through a lot of the hype—especially when it came to things that were just incremental improvements masquerading as revolutions. Most of what passed for “innovation” in the last 15 years was just optimizing ad targeting, repackaging old ideas with better UX, or shifting computing to the cloud and calling it a paradigm shift.

And when the actual technological base—like smartphones—stopped fundamentally changing, the whole ecosystem started looking like a closed loop of rearranging the same pieces. Europe, for the most part, didn’t throw itself into the mania of software eating the world, and now they seem a little better positioned for whatever comes next, whether that’s AI regulation or just a recalibration of how we think about tech in daily life.

You’re not missing much by skipping the bullshit business side of it. It was always a gold rush designed to enrich a handful of people while convincing everyone else they needed whatever was being peddled.

AI, as it stands, is mostly a glorified autocomplete with a good memory. It’s great for making things seem more efficient—summarizing documents, writing code snippets, generating marketing copy—but it hasn’t yet revolutionized much beyond knowledge work. The real transformation people keep promising would come from AI merging with robotics, self-driving, or something that physically interacts with the world in a meaningful way.

But that connection isn’t there yet. Self-driving still struggles with edge cases, robotics still lacks dexterity and general adaptability, and AI in most industries is just a fancier tool for existing processes rather than something fundamentally changing the game. Right now, it’s basically an expensive way to automate busywork and generate synthetic content—useful, sure, but hardly the sci-fi revolution everyone keeps hyping.

Until AI can reliably do something in the physical world—whether that’s driving trucks, assembling complex machinery, or automating logistics beyond just scheduling—it’s mostly just making digital spaces more efficient. Which is fine, but not the “end of work” or “new industrial revolution” people keep trying to sell.

Europe probably dodged a bullet by not producing its own Facebook, Google, or Twitter. They never had a native tech giant in that mold, which means they didn’t have to deal with the same level of cultural and political chaos those platforms created. Instead, they regulated Silicon Valley imports aggressively, treating them more like utilities or threats rather than national champions.

The U.S. got hooked on the idea that these platforms were some great democratizing force, only to find out they were just ad companies with god complexes. Europe, by contrast, never fully bought into the hype. They kept their distance, taxed and regulated them, and in doing so, probably avoided a lot of the societal mess that came with them—like algorithm-driven radicalization, data mining scandals, and the gig economy dystopia.

Now with AI, they’re doing the same thing: skepticism first, regulation early, no rush to embrace the latest overhyped tech just because it’s “the future.” And honestly, that restraint might pay off again. While the U.S. keeps swinging from one digital gold rush to the next, Europe is making sure it doesn’t get buried under the fallout.

Europe, in its bureaucratic wisdom, clucks its tongue at American excess, passing GDPR regulations like a prudish parent confiscating a teenager’s smartphone. But here’s the rub: Europe’s “skepticism” is itself a form of ideological theater. By fetishizing privacy laws, it avoids confronting the deeper horror—that even with regulations, we remain subjects of the digital panopticon, our data siphoned into the cloud, that ethereal site of capitalist jouissance.

Both Europe and the U.S. essentially let real innovation atrophy by allowing a handful of companies to centralize everything. The flood of free money since 2008 just accelerated that process. Instead of funding genuinely new technology, most of the capital went into propping up monopolies, building walled gardens, and creating financialized ecosystems that extract value rather than generate it.

Look at the major players today—Google, Apple, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft. They’ve spent the last decade consolidating control over digital infrastructure, not pushing the boundaries of what’s possible. Even AI, the supposed frontier, is mostly being used to reinforce existing monopolies rather than create anything radically new.

Meanwhile, China kept pushing hard into hardware, advanced manufacturing, and industrial applications of AI. So in a way, the West didn’t just lose the race—it stopped running and decided to rent out the track to a handful of corporate landlords. The result? Stagnation disguised as progress, where every “new” product is just an iteration of something that came before, and actual breakthroughs are rare.

The tech giants function as the sinthome of late capitalism, the pathological knot that sustains the system by offering a false promise of “disruption.” Uber disrupts taxis but reinstates feudalism; Airbnb disrupts hotels but inflates rents. The cycle is viciously Hegelian—a negation that negates nothing, a revolution that leaves the throne intact. The U.S., drunk on libertarian delusions, worships at the altar of “move fast and break things,” mistaking the breaking for progress. Europe, meanwhile, plays the role of the hysteric, endlessly questioning authority while secretly enjoying its subordinate position. Both are trapped in a dialectical pas de deux, each sustaining the other’s fantasy.