Döpfner: "European tech sovereignty is a dream that will never come true"
Key points
Key takeaways from the etn. interview with Mathias Döpfner, CEO of Axel Springer, recorded moments before he interviewed Peter Thiel at the 2026 Axel Springer Award (September 2026):
Why the award. The Axel Springer Award, in its 10th year, is "a gesture of encouragement" to entrepreneurs and risk-takers; Döpfner calls Thiel "probably the most impactful German of our time" — a serial founder, leading VC and contrarian thinker — and says he is "very often" persuaded to change his mind through their debates.
"A wonderful dream, and some dreams never come true." Döpfner dismisses European AI sovereignty as unattainable: the gap with the US and China is too large, so Europe should decide "with whom to join forces" — and for an open society that "can only be the Americans". He calls the sovereignty debate a "sovereignty illusion" to be given up.
Sceptical of the AI slowdown calls. After Musk, Altman and Amodei all urged caution, Döpfner says technological progress "can never be slowed down" and warns that if the West slows while China accelerates, it hands China the upper hand — "it's quite dangerous to contradict these three guys, but in that case I have doubts".
Regulation must be iterative. He accepts a legal framework is needed, but regulators "will always lag behind" technology; what is needed is "iterative regulation" that starts with a thesis, watches what happens, then corrects and pivots — "as agile as the product itself".
Copyright must be redefined. "Copyright as we know it is gone" unless redefined; without that, creative industries and research lose their incentive — he likens unlicensed AI use to opening "a supermarket based on the idea that we steal all products that we want to sell and then sell them for half the price".
Let the labs self-regulate. A discussion among leading AI lab CEOs is "reasonable and makes a lot of sense": players defining their own standards can work, because a predictable legal system and preserved incentives for new intellectual property are in the big platforms' own long-run interest.
"Less talk, more action." Döpfner criticises endless panels and speeches on AI governance as "nobody does anything so far" — the same inaction he sees in the sovereignty debate.
Bullish on the next 50 years. He calls cultural pessimism "proven wrong" — lifespans, quality of life and peace have all improved — and likens AI to a knife that must be shaped, not banned; asked to bet, he "would definitely put all my chips on the bullish option".
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