Il presidente di Microsoft: "Vogliamo che l'Europa sappia che può contare su di noi"
"Vogliamo che l'Europa sappia che può contare su di noi", ha detto il presidente di Microsoft Brad Smith ad Angela Barnes nell'ultima puntata di The Big Question.
ALTRE INFORMAZIONI : http://it.euronews.com/2025/05/12/il-presidente-di-microsoft-vogliamo-che-leuropa-sappia-che-puo-contare-su-di-noi
Abbonati, euronews è disponibile in 12 lingue.
"Vogliamo che l'Europa sappia che può contare su di noi", ha detto il presidente di Microsoft Brad Smith ad Angela Barnes nell'ultima puntata di The Big Question.
ALTRE INFORMAZIONI : http://it.euronews.com/2025/05/12/il-presidente-di-microsoft-vogliamo-che-leuropa-sappia-che-puo-contare-su-di-noi
Abbonati, euronews è disponibile in 12 lingue.
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00:00We want to be a bridge across the Atlantic. They're not built on wheels. They're not going anywhere.
00:05And we want our European customers to know that they can count on Microsoft.
00:15Welcome to The Big Question, a series from Euronews where we speak to some of the most influential people in the world of business.
00:24And today we're joined by Brad Smith, the vice chair and president of Microsoft.
00:30Brad, it's an absolute pleasure to have you with us on the show. Thank you very much for joining us.
00:35Thank you for having me.
00:36You've recently announced Microsoft's five digital commitments to Europe.
00:42So first of all, can you just tell us about those?
00:44Our main point is we want Europe to know and we want our European customers to know that they can count on us.
00:51They can count on Microsoft. We want and we even think we need to be a force for, say, digital stability in a time of geopolitical volatility.
01:02So for us, it means protecting cybersecurity, protecting privacy, ensuring Europe's digital resilience,
01:09continuing to build out our infrastructure, our data centers across Europe and ensuring that they help boost European competitiveness across every part of the economy.
01:18Why is Europe so important to Microsoft's business plan?
01:24I don't think Microsoft would be the global success it is today without our longstanding presence in Europe.
01:30My first job at the company was in 1993, based in Paris.
01:35And the truth is, it's more than a quarter of our global business.
01:39The European countries are so important. There's so much innovation that happens here.
01:43I just want to pick up on the AI and cloud ecosystem point that's in the digital commitments to Europe.
01:56How can the cloud and AI infrastructure help Europe's economic competitiveness?
02:01Well, when you think about Europe's strength as an economy, one of the things that we've always appreciated is what we think of as great domain expertise.
02:11Pharmaceuticals or machine tools or chemicals or automobiles or many other things, European companies are leaders.
02:18But if you look to the future, it will take more digital technology, it will take more cloud services, it will take more AI to keep all of these industries at the forefront of global competitiveness.
02:31And that's where our investments across Europe, we believe, are quite important.
02:36Do you think giant companies like Microsoft, of course, have a duty to do something to help Europe struggling competitiveness?
02:42I think that's why we're in business. It is to provide technology that will make others, individuals and organizations, more successful.
02:52And in the world of business, that means boosting productivity growth, but it also means driving innovation.
02:58And that's where AI in particular, I think, is, as we like to say, the next great general purpose technology like electricity.
03:05It will reshape every part of the economy.
03:08And that is our responsibility, I think, to serve as a resource for every part of Europe.
03:15And that's why we are expanding our infrastructure across Europe.
03:20Yes, indeed. And you're planning to expand European data center capacity by 40 percent over the next two years in 16 countries.
03:27How many jobs can we expect that to create as we build these data centers?
03:32And we will have more than 200 in these 16 countries by 2027.
03:38That creates a huge number of jobs in skilled labor, in construction, the whole supply chain, everything that goes into all of this infrastructure.
03:47But what really matters is, I think, more than that, it's the multiplier effect.
03:52It's what our customers are able to do with this technology.
03:57This is really designed to help fuel their growth.
04:00It is, I think, an engine of growth for what we like to describe as an AI economy, the economies of the world in an AI era.
04:08And Brad, as you expand in these other areas, you're also saying you will uphold Europe's digital resilience even when there's geopolitical volatility.
04:17Should Europe be relying more on European homegrown companies, do you think, to build its resilience?
04:23Well, I think that Europe will want a variety of resources on which to rely.
04:29And European governments use more taxpayer money to invest in creating or subsidizing homegrown alternatives.
04:36That's their decision to make.
04:37We think we have a role to play as well.
04:40And we'll collaborate with governments regardless of where they invest.
04:45The Draghi report itself really called out the importance and the opportunity of also using this American technology.
04:52And by building it here, I always like to say these are huge facilities.
04:57They're not built on wheels.
04:59They're not going anywhere.
05:01They will be regulated by local laws, local regulations.
05:04We have to constantly earn the license to grow, if you will.
05:09And we're committed to doing that.
05:12Brad, some fear that the Trump administration could compel companies like Microsoft to provide access to sensitive European data.
05:20And I know you have pledged to take legal action if governments try to seize EU data.
05:26Is that going to be a tough one to balance, though?
05:30I actually don't think it will be.
05:32I know that there is a concern when I have gone to the White House, as I have, and I've shared with them the fact that this is a concern in Europe.
05:41Every single person I've talked to has said, we've never even heard of that idea.
05:46But we understand that we need to address it, and we have.
05:51And that's why we've said we are going to put into our contracts with European national governments and with the European Commission a contractual obligation so that if we ever received an order anywhere in the world that would cause us or try to force us to suspend operations, say, in Europe, we would go to court to contest it.
06:10I have every confidence that we would prevail in court.
06:15But we've also said that if we did not, we'll have a backup group of suppliers, partners here in Europe.
06:23We'll have our code, our software code and our source code stored in a secure repository in Switzerland.
06:29Basically, we want to allay people's concerns.
06:33I think we have a solution that does that.
06:34The EU says that targeting American tech companies is one of the cards that it could play in retaliation to Donald Trump's tariffs.
06:43How would you respond to that?
06:45Well, we want to be a bridge across the Atlantic.
06:49I think business can and should be a bridge across the Atlantic.
06:55But at the end of the day, governments need to make their own decisions, and that will be true in Europe as well as the United States.
07:01We will take whatever comes and we'll help our customers adapt, and will adapt.
07:06But mostly, I want us to be a voice of reason, a voice that encourages the ties across the Atlantic that have been indispensable for eight decades now, since the end of the Second World War, to prevail.
07:23To use this as an opportunity for all of us, in a way, to step back and then recommit.
07:29Let's address the issues that bother people on either side of the Atlantic.
07:34But let's not forget how important these ties are, including for business.
07:39Indeed.
07:40Well, Brad Smith, thank you ever so much for sharing your insights with us.
07:43It's been an absolute pleasure to have you on The Big Question.
07:46Well, thank you.
07:47It is a big question.
07:47It really is.
07:49Thank you very much.
07:53Thank you.