Technopolitics and the Baltic Reality: Why America’s New Strategy Should Worry Europe
- it-supportdbjw
- Jan 19
- 2 min read
The new U.S. National Security Strategy, as Vincent Tadday compellingly argues, is not about war and peace - it is about systems. About who builds, governs, and ultimately controls the infrastructures that define global power: data, energy, finance, and technology. It reframes technology as infrastructure - not a tool, but a terrain.
This technopolitical lens hits particularly close to home for the Baltic region. For Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, whose economic and security architectures are deeply intertwined with both European and transatlantic systems, the shift in Washington’s approach is more than a distant policy debate. It redefines dependency. If the U.S. increasingly treats technological ecosystems as strategic choke points - embedding standards, capital flows, and industrial policy into its security logic - then Europe’s periphery is no longer just an ally, but a node within a controlled network.
For the Baltics, which have long positioned themselves as frontrunners in digital governance, cybersecurity, and innovation, this moment presents both opportunity and risk. Integration into U.S.-centric infrastructures offers protection, but at the cost of autonomy. The question is not whether to align, but how to ensure co-ownership of the systems shaping tomorrow’s power distribution.
The deeper message of Tadday’s analysis is that the coming decade will not be defined by traditional alliances, but by infrastructural integration. Whoever builds the rails, physical or digital, will shape the rules. For Europe and especially its northeastern frontier, that means developing its own technopolitical literacy: to read power not only in treaties or troop movements, but in semiconductors, standards, and supply chains.
The new NSS is a reminder: infrastructure is strategy. The Baltics, more than most, cannot afford to forget that.
