Across Europe, a quiet but consequential shift is underway as companies increasingly turn to open-weight Chinese AI models, drawn by performance and cost advantages that homegrown alternatives cannot yet match. The tension this creates with Brussels' ambitions for technological self-reliance is real, but not straightforward — for when a foreign model runs on local infrastructure under local governance, the meaning of sovereignty itself comes into question. What Europe is navigating, in the summer of 2026, is less a choice between East and West than a deeper reckoning with what independence act