The Long Council
Who was selected, and why
How can Europe develop AI capabilities while reducing its dependence on the US?
The central tension
Between **integration realism**—the view that Europe's technology gap is too large to close independently, and that AI sovereignty risks inefficiency, fragmentation, and strategic self-isolation from the alliance partner that provides Europe's security umbrella—and **strategic autonomy**—the view that dependence on US AI infrastructure creates unacceptable economic, political, and governance vulnerabilities that require deliberate industrial policy, even at real cost. This tension sits at the LIVE level: it is the actual axis of EU policy debate in 2025–26, not the stale debate between "regulate nothing" and "ban everything."
Selected members
1. Deng Xiaoping
Will argue: Europe should designate protected AI development zones, tolerate short-term inefficiency in domestic champions, use public procurement and regulatory asymmetry to shelter infant capabilities, and sequence openness—engaging US hyperscalers where domestically built alternatives do not yet exist, while systematically building the underlying infrastructure that makes eventual independence possible. --- **2. Raúl Prebisch**
The world's most documented practitioner of technology-led catch-up development through state-directed industrial policy, selective foreign engagement, and Special Economic Zones as capability-building laboratories—directly applicable to Europe's situation as a technologically advanced economy seeking to close a specific frontier gap. · SEZs and Open Door Policy (T1.3), technology modernisation as one of the Four Modernisations (T1.1), "crossing the river by feeling the stones" as experimental reform doctrine (T3), "hide your strength, bide your time" as strategic patience doctrine (T3). for AI specifically—no documented positions; his development sequencing framework is applied to a domain beyond his direct experience, and must be flagged as such.
Considered but not selected
*Lee Kuan Yew** — Highly relevant on small-state technology strategy and meritocratic industrial policy, but his framework is specific to a city-state with a single government making integrated decisions. The EU's 27-member collective action problem is structurally different from Singapore's unitary governance, and Deng's catch-up industrialisation framework covers the "strategic industrial policy" pole more completely at continental scale.
*Nehru** — His Five-Year Plan and Planning Commission experience is directly relevant to state-led technology development, and his non-alignment doctrine applies to Europe's attempt to maintain strategic autonomy from both US and Chinese AI ecosystems. However, the council already has strong coverage of the industrial policy pole (Deng, Prebisch, Schmidt), and Nehru's documented failures—the licence raj, the 1962 China miscalculation from strategic idealism—would primarily reinforce the Hayek critique rather than adding a new analytical dimension.
*Thatcher** — Relevant as a counterpoint to industrial policy (she would ally with Hayek on the knowledge problem and add documented opposition to EU-level economic coordination), but her framework would largely echo Hayek's without bringing a distinct register. The Hayek-Hirschman pairing on the integration-realism pole is analytically richer than substituting either for Thatcher, who adds rhetorical force but less analytical depth on this specific question.
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