How France became a big-tech colony

The term itself is almost quaint nowadays. But when Emmanuel Macron leaves office next year, he won’t have much to show for his 2017 pledges to turn France into the “start-up nation”. That’s not for lack of trying. Few would deny that the lame-duck President has been an obliging friend to investors and corporations, often at the price of the social and political turbulence that has defined his two terms in office. It just turns out that digital capitalism is a cruel game of gatekeepers and first-past-the-post market power. France, like the European Union as a whole, remains as embedded as ever in a digital economy lorded over by Silicon Valley. Today, it’s a reality best represented in the €264 billion deficit in digital services whisked out of the EU common market by US corporations. The