"As a business man I say: be careful about tying yourself to companies that are too dependent on individuals and relying on potential monopolists. You have to be very careful not to create a strategic dependency." The warning was launched in an interview with Republic, Vittorio Colao, who was Minister for Digital Innovation in Draghi government, regarding the acceleration of the Contacts between the Italian government and Elon Musk's SpaceX for the use of the satellite communications system Starlink.
Musk's satellites are “a big alarm clock ringing for Europe, a reminder to do what we committed to do three years ago on space technology – he continues -. If we don't move quickly, we will soon have no alternatives and we will be forced to raise the white flag. It would be a great shame indeed”.
According to the former minister, "direct assignments from the EU to European companies capable of operating in this sector are needed to accelerate the creation of constellations that are able to give Member States an autonomous capacity. The European initiative Iris 2 is late and proceeds slowly – he adds -. And then it would be wise to follow the indications contained in the Mario Draghi's report on competitiveness: Earth observation and secure communications must become pillars of the European joint industrial policy”.
It would therefore be a mistake according to Colao "to rely on the monopolist on duty. I find it curious that people are concerned about the excessive power of companies, which are also deserving, such as Microsoft e Google, but don’t see the same risk in this case. Europeans complain about not having cloud services and now we are going to put ourselves in the hands of a potential new monopolist?”.