On 12 June 2026, a simple administrative letter was enough to cut off access to the world’s two most advanced AI models for millions of users outside the United States. No tanks, no missiles, just a kill switch flipped in a few minutes. Behind the official pretext of a “jailbreak” lies a far more mundane reality, and a far more worrying one for European digital sovereignty. In this article, I dissect the anatomy of this global shutdown: the power struggles in Washington, the murky role of industrial interests, and what this “cognitive splinternet” reveals about our dependence on American artificial intelligence. An investigation that squarely questions our digital sovereignty and our ability to hold our own against the tech giants.
Find the full transcript of this episode, along with all the sources and plenty more, at: Thought under tutelage
