Assuming you are right, the "build-up" of more physical datacenters isn't really the difficult part, training frontier models is. The open-weight Chinese models are several months behind frontier models at this stage and as long as you're not interested in burning cash to stay in the lead you can just wait it out. Many signs (upcoming ridiculous IPO figures and benchmarks) point to the current LLM paradigm reaching a plateau.

I think that currently the EU is focusing on strengthening itself from a military perspective due to US policy shifts, so the EU just doesn't have the funds to divert to AI without impacting day to day life of people, thus prioritizing safety and perhaps energy production, as electricity is considerably more expensive here than in the US or China. If you ask the people who vote, they'll put safety, grocery and gas prices way above EU's LLM capabilities.

I just learned yesterday that the default model on Mistral monthly plan is GLM 5.3 (an open weight Chinese model)

It's kind of sad that the only European LLM lab of significance is not even setting their model as a default one any longer.

Realizing something is not the same as acting on it and Europe is falling further and further behind.

I am not sure why people believe that data centers are the future. I did not down vote you, btw.