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Ask HN: Could Europe Play the U.S. and China Against Each Other for Free LLMs?

2 grillitob 1 7/24/2025, 11:08:17 AM
The U.S. could offer free high-performance LLMs to Europe under the condition of avoiding Chinese models—but China might retaliate with its own subsidies or tools. This creates an opportunity for Europe to exploit the competition by:

    Demanding concessions: Require open weights, local hosting, or compliance with EU regulations (GDPR, AI Act).

    Avoiding dependency: Mandate interoperability with European models (e.g., Mixtral) or hybrid systems.

    Legislating neutrality: Force government projects to use locally fine-tuned versions of either, maintaining sovereignty.
Historically, the EU balanced pragmatism with tech sovereignty (e.g., Gaia-X vs. AWS/Azure). In AI, could it go further? Or would alienating both superpowers backfire?

Questions:

Is this dynamic realistic, or would Europe lack leverage?

What would make the EU choose one side—performance, subsidies, or ethics?

Could small countries individually cut deals, fracturing EU unity?

Comments (1)

incomingpain · 2d ago
>What would make the EU choose one side—performance, subsidies, or ethics?

Why should the EU, a supernational bureaucracy, control what models people or countries can use? Shouldn't decisions about AI be made by individuals and enterprises based on what works best for them?

Instead of regulating others or forcing "neutrality," why not compete directly? Put up $10B for the first open-weight, locally-hosted European model that beats today’s best performers.

In reality, the EU has several acts that attack China and multiple models outright deny the EU access to their models; and the EU already bans the use of deepseek. The EU is legislating themselves out of being an AI player.