The AI Warm War: Compute, Cooling and Europe's Strategic Vulnerability in the U.S.-China Rivalry

This working paper develops the concept of the “AI Warm War” to analyse the emerging technological rivalry between the United States and China and the strategic position of the European Union within it. Moving beyond the conventional Cold War analogy, it examines the AI stack as a system of interdependent capabilities spanning semiconductors, compute, cloud infrastructure, electricity, cooling, models and governance. The paper combines the concepts of sensitivity and vulnerability with weaponized interdependence and introduces “thermal interdependence” to describe the strategic relevance of the physical infrastructure required to convert advanced chips into usable AI capability. It argues that Europe’s central challenge is not interdependence itself, but dependence without credible alternatives. The paper therefore proposes “responsible capacity sovereignty”: sufficient technological, infrastructural and governance capacity to preserve European political choice while maintaining commitments to safety, rights and accountability.