Honestly, France isn’t wrong to worry. If you’re a government, “sovereignty” means more than just the vendor having a European office — it means control over the stack, the data, and the ability to audit what the software is doing. Palantir can call that paranoia if it wants, but for public-sector use, especially intelligence, black-box dependence on a single US firm is a real strategic risk.

The real issue is that sovereignty isn’t just about choosing a different supplier or asserting political independence; it also depends on whether the replacement can actually match the reliability, scale, and continuity of what it is replacing. If the migration is rushed, the result could be service disruptions, operational headaches, and even a weaker overall security posture. That would undermine the very goal the policy is supposed to serve.

Karp comes across as arrogant, as usual, but his broader point is not entirely wrong: political urgency can move faster than technical readiness. Governments often want symbolic wins and strategic autonomy on short timelines, while complex software transitions require testing, integration, contingency planning, and careful rollout. When those timelines don’t line up, the risk is that the politics look decisive while the implementation becomes fragile.

So the debate isn’t really about whether digital sovereignty matters — it does. The harder question is whether France is making a move that strengthens long-term independence, or simply trading one dependency for another before the new system is fully proven.