The European Commission, that glorious, moribund assembly of un-elected paper-shufflers and professional sunset-watchers, has finally reached a conclusion that would have been obvious to a moderately intelligent hamster three years ago: nobody is listening to them. In a display of what they likely consider 'decisive action,' but what the rest of the functioning world recognizes as a desperate grasp for relevance, Brussels is moving to force member states to purge Huawei and ZTE from their mobile networks. It is a classic European comedy: a 'sweeping new cybersecurity act' designed to fix a problem they’ve spent thirty-six months politely ignoring while the digital backdoors were being bolted into place.

Since 2020, the Commission has been 'recommending'—a word that in Euro-speak means 'please do this if it doesn’t interrupt your lunch'—that capitals weed out Chinese equipment from their 5G infrastructure. The result? A staggering display of continental incompetence. Only 13 of the 27 member states have actually bothered to follow through. The other 14 are presumably too busy enjoying the subsidized costs of Chinese hardware or are simply waiting for the inevitable heat death of the universe to solve their security concerns for them. It turns out that when you offer a choice between 'national security' and 'cheap stuff that makes the YouTube load faster,' the average European government will choose the latter every single time, then act shocked when their internal memos end up on a server in Shenzhen.

Let’s be clear about the players in this pathetic theater. On one side, we have Huawei and ZTE, the twin titans of the East, who provide the scaffolding for our modern addiction to digital nothingness. They are accused of being the eyes and ears of the Chinese Communist Party, a charge they deny with the practiced sincerity of a fox explaining why it’s standing in a pile of chicken feathers. On the other side, we have the European Union, a collection of nations so fractured and intellectually bankrupt that they cannot agree on a common charger cable, let alone a unified defense against the most sophisticated surveillance state in human history.

Brussels is now attempting to turn its 'recommendation' into a mandate, opening the door to wider bans. This is the geopolitical equivalent of a parent finally threatening to take away the video games after the teenager has already spent three years selling the family furniture to strangers on the internet. It is performative, it is late, and it is drenched in the kind of hypocrisy that only a career politician can stomach. The EU cries 'cybersecurity' as if they actually value the privacy of their citizens, while simultaneously drafting legislation to scan private messages and erode encryption under the guise of 'safety.' They don't hate surveillance; they just hate that they aren't the ones holding the master key.

The irony is, of course, delicious. The West spends its days clutching its pearls over Chinese hardware while carrying American-made tracking devices in its pockets that harvest more data than a thousand 5G towers ever could. We are caught in a pincer movement between two empires of data, and the EU thinks it can save itself by swapping out one set of routers for another. It’s a cosmetic fix for a terminal disease. Even if every scrap of Chinese silicon were ripped from the soil of the continent tomorrow, the infrastructure of our lives is already irrevocably compromised. We have traded our sovereignty for the convenience of high-speed cat videos, and no amount of 'Cybersecurity Acts' will buy it back.

Furthermore, the economic reality of this forced divorce is going to be a disaster, which is why the 14 holdouts are dragging their feet with such pathetic desperation. Removing established hardware isn't like changing a lightbulb; it’s like trying to remove the nervous system from a living organism and replacing it with something twice as expensive and half as integrated. But Brussels doesn't care about the cost, nor do they care about the logistical nightmare they are imposing on the very companies they’ve spent decades over-regulating into a state of permanent stagnation. They only care about the appearance of strength. They want to look like they are standing up to Beijing, even as they continue to beg for Chinese investment to prop up their failing industrial bases.

This is the state of the world: a cynical exchange of one master for another, wrapped in the high-minded rhetoric of 'digital sovereignty.' It is a farce played out by men in expensive suits who wouldn't know a packet-switch from a pocket-watch. They will pass their laws, they will issue their bans, and the 14 laggard nations will find new and creative ways to ignore them until the next crisis arrives to distract us from our collective slide into obsolescence. In the end, the only thing 'secured' by this move will be the job security of the bureaucrats writing the reports. The rest of us are just waiting for the signal to drop.