One of the key insights from the latest wave of technological innovation – particularly in AI – is that technologies are not simply “neutral.” Instead, they are intrinsically intertwined with ideological, political, moral, economic, and even religious contexts. It is therefore no surprise that, in recent years, the leaders of major tech corporation – the tech bros – have focused less on technology-specific questions and more on publishing manifestos, worldviews, and global visions of the future.
In order to assess the significance and scope of digital sovereignty, as well as the potential of open and free technologies, we analyze a representative selection of the tech bros’ worldviews which could hardly be more diverse: Mustafa Suleyman’s (Microsoft) serious attempt to address an unprecedented dilemma of technological progress in his bestseller The Coming Wave; Dario Amodei’s (Anthropic) mainstream-oriented, welfare-economic manifesto Machines of Loving Grace; Mark Zuckerberg’s (Meta) grandly failed Metaverse project, which was meant to define nothing less than a new era of global communication; and, finally, the IPO of Elon Musk’s SpaceX in June 2026, whose official prospectus presented a potpourri of science-fiction tropes, detached from both economic realities and current technical feasibility.
From an ethical perspective, it is crucial to recognize that the overburdening of technology with economic, ideological, or fictional narratives obscures what technology itself is and can be. Leaving technological development as well as reflections on technology itself solely to the Tech Bros, therefore, does not seem conducive to fostering genuine autonomy and sovereignty. Additionally, the obvious political interests, particularly those of the US and China, hamper the pursuit of technological sovereignity.
Against this backdrop, we argue that the approach of free and open software and technology concepts represents a far more favorable breeding ground for the self-determined development of a diverse and sustainable technological landscape. Hence, we raise the question of what concrete steps and measures are meaningful and which policies need to be adopted, in order to support this development and we give a brief assessment of existing European initiatives, like Gaia-X or EuroStack, or Tech Sovereignity Package proposed by the EU-Commission.
