---
title: "Europe Squeezed | Henri Vanhanen | Negotiator 415"
summary: "Foreign-policy analyst Henri Vanhanen and Sami Miettinen take a global tour from the US midterms to Russia, Ukraine, China and the struggle for power over AI. In Vanhanen's words, Europe's tragedy is that it outsourced its energy to the Russians, its weapons to the Americans and its technology to the Chinese, and is now finding that the game has in many places already been played. The episode weighs the Iran operation as a US strategic mistake, what Ukraine's mass drone production teaches Finland, Russia's build-up near the Finnish border, the Stubb–Støre AI initiative, tech giants that behave like states, and who in Finland actually owns the future. Published 17 October 2026."
datePublished: 2026-10-17
dateModified: 2026-10-17
originalLang: en
section: research
sections: ["research","society"]
authors: ["Sami Miettinen"]
tags: ["Neuvottelija","EP415","Henri Vanhanen","Sami Miettinen","Geopolitiikka","Ulkopolitiikka","Yhdysvallat","Iran","Venäjä","Ukraina","Kiina","Taiwan","Droonit","Puolustus","Tekoäly","Teknologinen suvereniteetti","Datakeskukset","Euroopan unioni"]
canonical: https://www.neuvottelija.com/ai/ep415-eurooppa-ahtaalla-henri-vanhanen/
---
# Europe Squeezed | Henri Vanhanen | Negotiator 415

# Europe Squeezed | Henri Vanhanen | Negotiator 415

> **Summary:**
> In episode 415 of the Neuvottelija channel, Sami Miettinen and foreign-policy analyst **Henri Vanhanen** take a global tour: US foreign policy ahead of the midterms, Russia and Ukraine, China and Taiwan, and the struggle for power over AI. The thread running through the episode is Vanhanen's line about *Europe's tragedy*: Europe outsourced its energy to the Russians, its weapons to the Americans and its technology to the Chinese, and is waking up in a world where the game has in many places already been played. The conversation ends in Finland, with the transformation of work, taxation and the question of who actually owns the future. Published 17 October 2026.
>
> **A note on reading this.** The episode is two people's assessment of the world in October 2026, not a report. It contains forecasts, readings of other states' intentions and figures quoted from memory. Both speakers also state their own political views. Sami Miettinen describes himself in the episode as unaffiliated but says he has "right-wing vibes". Views are attributed to the speaker below. Checked facts are kept in a separate section, and unchecked figures are marked as the speaker's estimates. The episode was recorded in Finnish and the quotations are translated. The transcript carries no speaker labels, so speakers have been inferred from the flow of the conversation.

---

## Who is talking

**[Henri Vanhanen](https://www.neuvottelija.com/podcast/guests/henri-vanhanen/)** calls himself a "rock-hard Espoo native" who has worked on foreign and security
policy his whole adult life, "sometimes on the pitch and sometimes in the stands". He has held
assisting and advisory roles in the Finnish Parliament and was a researcher at the Finnish Institute
of International Affairs. He is now a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council and a senior
adviser at the **Economic Security Forum**, which helps companies understand how geopolitical change
affects their business models. In between he worked in the Finnish defence industry and briefly at
**Nest AI**.

**Sami Miettinen** hosts the Neuvottelija channel. He puts forward many of his own views in the
episode, so the conversation is as much a debate between two people as an interview.

## 1. The peace dividend ended, and Europe is reversing

The conversation opens with dual-use technology. Sami recalls that only a few years ago, during
the drafting of the EU sustainable-finance taxonomy, defence was grouped with alcohol and weapons.
Now the "Swiss army knife" that serves both as a tool and for defence is acceptable.

Vanhanen's view is that the world did not change. Europe simply lived for a long time in the
aftermath of the Second World War and the Cold War. After the Soviet collapse it moved into a
**peace-dividend** mindset: many large European countries ended conscription or cut their defence
budgets hard. When the wars did not stop, Europe had to reverse.

His examples are about regulation. Finland left the **Ottawa Convention** over anti-personnel
mines, a treaty Russia never joined in the first place. On AI and autonomous weapons the same
pattern holds: Europe wants to regulate and others do not. From this Vanhanen draws the episode's
central claim:

> *"Europe's tragedy is that Europe outsourced its energy to the Russians, its weapons to the
> Americans and its technology to the Chinese."*

If you want sovereignty, he says, it has to come from exactly those three. Speeches talk about
defence spending, technological sovereignty and critical raw materials, but "the game has actually
been played out pretty much in many places, and our position in it is quite miserable, to be
frank".

Sami adds two observations of his own. The first is about interdependence: Merkel, and in Finland
Paavo Lipponen, built gas pipelines on the assumption that trading nations do not go to war easily.
The second is about American dominance of the sea lanes, where he points to **Peter Zeihan's**
writing: while America policed the sea lanes, everyone relied on it. Now, Sami says, the United
States brings those routes confusion rather than security.

## 2. Trump as the alarm clock, and Iran as a mistake

Sami gives Trump credit for one thing: Europe's awakening has, in his view, happened practically
only because of Trump. Biden did not press the Europeans, and American weapons went to Ukraine, so
Europe could assume "Uncle Sam" would handle it. In the same breath Sami calls the Strait of Hormuz
and the Iran situation "an unforgivable strategic mistake" for which he expects Trump to be
punished in the midterms.

Vanhanen starts from a bigger picture, drawing on his background in political history. Next month
marks **ten years** since Trump was first elected. His first term was seen as a glitch in the
system and Trump as a joke candidate who slipped through. Only the second election forced Europe to
see that America's role had been changing strongly for 20 years.

In Vanhanen's reading the United States has been searching for its place throughout this century.
Cold War anti-communism was replaced by democracy promotion "with an American twist". That failed
badly in Afghanistan and Iraq. Since then every administration from George W. Bush onward has tried
to reduce American commitments abroad. Meanwhile China joined the WTO, globalisation took
manufacturing jobs, and the party landscape changed.

Against that background Vanhanen says Trump asks the right question about why Europeans do not pay
more for their own defence. His comparison: why would I expect my neighbour to pay for my home
alarm system just because that is how it has always been?

On Iran, though, he agrees with Sami. Trump was never a leader who wanted new military operations.
Vanhanen's *impression* is that Israeli intelligence managed to convince Trump that removing the
top leadership would trigger a popular uprising and topple the regime:

> *"Those who claim this is some kind of 3D or 4D chess that we just don't understand, because
> we're such idiots looking in from outside, are wrong. Someone can explain to me why the United
> States is still stuck in Iran, if this was a clear operation in which all the goals were achieved.
> A complete mistake."*

Sami finds this credible. His reading is that Netanyahu used the moment when Iran's leadership was
gathered in one place and got Trump to take a decision he would not otherwise have taken. Both
present this as interpretation, not established fact.

## 3. The left's long march, and the horseshoe

Sami picks up Vanhanen's point about anti-communism and takes it further. He cites an essay by
**Jarkko Tontti** on the left's long march through the institutions and offers what he calls a
"malicious" reading: the Soviet Union poisoned Western political systems over decades. In Sami's
view its tools were left-wing parties and "ultra-ecological" movements, with the German nuclear
exit and gas dependence as the result. He says the left won elections in Sweden and Spain, and that
Spain is the only country that has stepped back from NATO's spending target. Americans, on the other
hand, have in Sami's view generally been well "vaccinated" against communism, despite the excesses
of the McCarthy era.

**Vanhanen corrects the picture.** Pro-Russian sentiment no longer creeps into Europe only from the
left but also from the right, for example through Germany's AfD. This is a horseshoe effect: Russia
is still effective at finding the forces willing to cut arms aid to Ukraine and restore oil and gas
ties.

The Trump administration's Russia line is unclear to Vanhanen. Ukraine has not been thrown entirely
under the bus, but aid has been cut significantly. US national security strategies treat Russia as
Europe's problem. Vanhanen says he understands the logic: if the war showed that Russia cannot even
topple a state like Ukraine, Washington may have concluded that the Europeans can handle Russia
themselves.

## 4. Venezuela, Hormuz and the midterms

Sami reads US action in Venezuela as a return to Cold War-era "banana republic" takeovers, and says
it worked. Because shale oil and gas have made the US energy self-sufficient, closing the Strait of
Hormuz does not hurt it much. Sami gives "about a 3 per cent chance" that this is 4D chess after
all: the closure hits China above all.

Vanhanen adds that Japan, Taiwan and the rest of Asia suffer as well, since they depend on oil
shipped through the strait. Fuel prices have also risen in the United States. When an issue
becomes coffee-table talk just before an election, it is "the cherry on the cake" in the midterms.
He notes that in the United States an election can be both a long and a short time away. Trump's
attempt to unsettle China through a tariff war, he says, ended only in a tariff truce.

In Sami's view Russia has no capacity to take part in conflicts elsewhere: it has had to withdraw
from Africa and Central America, while the United States has "staked out" Central and South America
for itself.

## 5. Ukraine as an echo of the Spanish Civil War

Vanhanen asks whether the present also echoes the years before the world wars. He has wondered
whether the war in Ukraine is to some extent a *Spanish Civil War*: it shows where everyone
stands. Finland and Sweden joined NATO quickly and neutrality vanished from the map. On one side of
the war are Russia, North Korea and to some extent Iran and China. On the other are European states
and the United States.

His provocation for Finland: if Russia went to war against Finland, it could be backed by Iranian
military technology, North Korean troops, Chinese components and dual-use goods. "We don't live in
a world so tidy that there is only one adversary."

**Sami disagrees about China.** In his view China does not belong in that group, because its
historical memory is long (he cites Manchuria) and China is "a bit cold" on these matters. In Sami's
reading China is playing its own independence game, deliberately building self-sufficiency that
can free it in part from dependence on raw materials and energy. The disagreement is left open.

## 6. Drones, mass production and Finnish defence

Sami calls Ukraine's rise to become the most advanced practitioner of drone technology in the world
a surprise few thought possible. He mentions the **Fire Point** drones, which he says get through
Russian air defence by saturating it. By Sami's estimate at least a third, perhaps half, of Russia's
oil-refining capacity has already been destroyed. Strikes have moved on to infrastructure, and for
once a cold winter lies ahead for Russia rather than Ukraine.

Vanhanen points to production capacity. He has read that Ukraine can produce **6–7 million FPV
drones a year**, a figure he quotes from memory. The lesson for the West, he says, is that
technological superiority in a single system is not enough: "whoever can produce a capability
at mass scale has the upper hand."

On the Finnish debate, Vanhanen notes that the Defence Forces send two kinds of message. Some
statements dismiss "drone nonsense", while the Commander of the Defence Forces, Janne Jaakkola,
speaks wisely, in his view, about the need to absorb what is happening. As a reminder he cites a
peacetime incident in which a single drone straying near Porvoo shut down the whole Uusimaa region.

Sami agrees. Finland has one of Europe's strongest artilleries, good ammunition and producers such
as Forcit, but that does not stop "5,000-dollar drones" from causing great damage. In Sami's view
drones become obsolete so quickly that stockpiling them makes no sense. Investment should therefore
go into **production potential and subcontracting chains**, so that output can be scaled up fast.

Vanhanen takes the idea to deterrence. If Finland can show already in peacetime that it can scale
production and fight a modern war of attrition, that is a deterrent in itself. He offers a
counterfactual he labels as such: would Russia's calculation have changed if, before February 2022,
it had seen the West start pouring weapons into Ukraine? The obstacles, in his view, are rigid
procurement models and a 10–20-year procurement cycle, even though engineering talent is plentiful.

**Dual use and security of supply.** Sami points out that Nokia could quickly become a militarily
relevant player if base-station technology were redefined, and that it is no accident Nokia is
shifting its weight from China to the United States. He criticises the pandemic-era government for
turning down an industry offer to manufacture masks in Finland; industry should ally with the state
while the weather is good. Vanhanen adds that national defence courses are not enough. Finland has
places like Karkkila where industrial buildings stand empty, and domestic production is a
security-of-supply question.

**On money.** Vanhanen refers to a spring report by Parliament's Defence Committee. According to him,
it estimated that the defence budget should reach at least **€11 billion** in the long run. The
figure is Vanhanen's, and we did not check it for this article. His point is that the sum is huge,
how to fund it is an open question, and the target moves "literally all the time".

## 7. Russia returns to the border

Sami recalls an essay economist **Vesa Kanniainen** wrote for the Finnish Defence Forces a few years
ago. It described Finland's deterrent through the F-18 fleet and cruise missiles: a first strike
could inflict severe damage on St Petersburg. According to Vanhanen, that picture has changed a
great deal since then:

> *"We can already see from satellite images and other intelligence that has become public that
> Russia is building new garrisons and new capabilities, and is specifically trying to bring
> electronic warfare and drone capabilities right up to our border."*

Russia is adapting to Finland's NATO membership, he says, and the Russia across the eastern border
will be "a completely different Russia from the one that was there before". The early-war media
talk of empty garrisons was, to him, "nonsense": they will not stay empty forever, and the Russians
learn.

Sami adds that Kaliningrad is Russia's "unsinkable aircraft carrier", as Åland is for Finland and
Gotland for Sweden. Now that Ukraine has stretched drone range to a couple of thousand kilometres,
the Russians have also learned that they need not be 50 kilometres away to cause damage.

Vanhanen says the bluntest thing in this section. As long as the war goes on, the Russian army
wears down and stays away from elsewhere, and while "it's unpleasant to say this out loud", that is
in Finland's interest. The time should be used for the decisions that will be needed when Russia
comes back.

## 8. AI: China's energy game and Europe's wish to regulate

Sami sets out his view of China's AI strategy. China, he says, lacks the resources to run
top-level inference on its own chips. It has therefore distilled lighter open models from American
ones and used them to keep American AI prices in check, something Europe should also be grateful
for. At the same time China has built an **energy base**, on the assumption that the decisive
competition will be over energy and data centres. In Sami's reading China is playing a game that
starts only in a year or two, while the United States plays the training game with heavy money.
Europe, he says, has done "nothing at all".

Vanhanen brings up UN General Assembly week, when President **Stubb** and Norway's Prime Minister
**Jonas Gahr Støre** pushed for oversight of the most advanced AI models. Trump rejected the idea.
Vanhanen argues that nobody wants to hit the brakes, because doing so means losing a competitive
edge, which applies to both states and companies. He therefore does not believe such regulation
will happen, even though it may be needed.

Sami sharpens this with a nuclear analogy: a state without nuclear weapons "can bleat something",
but those who have them do not take it seriously. Vanhanen thinks the analogy only partly works. A
nuclear weapon is either launched or not, while AI "is on all the time and developing". It cannot
be blocked, and software crosses borders in a way centrifuges do not. He still considers the risks
real and could imagine some kind of "red line". He recalls a publicly reported case in which the
United States nearly struck Chinese forces somewhere at sea on an AI recommendation, but says
himself that he would need to check the details. We could not identify the case, so it stays here
as his recollection.

Sami expects that next year there will already be AI that beats humans at almost every individual
cognitive skill.

## 9. Chips, rare earths and Taiwan

Vanhanen describes a paradox: American chips are the most advanced, but China controls the rare
earths needed to make them. Each restricts the other and each needs the other. If China eventually
overtakes the United States and no longer needs it, the situation changes.

In Sami's view China does not necessarily need Taiwan's chip capacity, but it needs cultural
unification so badly that Taiwan's fate is "inevitable". He thinks China should strike a deal with
the United States. As production moves from Taiwan to the United States and South Korea (he names
TSMC and Elon Musk's Terafab), the Americans might get "a nice deal". International treaties, he
says, can be overridden by signing a new one. AI may also invent new ways of making chips,
weakening Taiwan's indispensability.

Vanhanen stresses the risks. An amphibious landing would require quickly destroying US submarines
and long-range strike capability, and the world economy would be thrown into chaos at once: "Sami,
think about it, your shares melt in a second." He cites the **Taiwan Relations Act** and raises his
most worrying observation: Xi has purged the party and the armed forces of people who could
challenge him. When a system stops asking whether something is a good idea, risk-taking grows:

> *"Russia misjudged in Ukraine, the United States in Iran. Elites are fallible."*

With democracy in retreat almost everywhere, smaller groups make decisions, and the possibility of
human misjudgement is, Vanhanen says, "really high in this era".

## 10. Techno-fascism and Europe's access to the best models

Sami sketches the episode's darkest scenario and himself calls it **techno-fascism**. Europe gets
its wish and AI is regulated. As a result, Europeans are given neither the best American nor the
best Chinese technology: "you wanted to regulate this, you don't like these matches." The best
models go to the state apparatus in both the United States and China, then to trusted companies
such as Palantir, and only then to others. As an example Sami uses relations between Anthropic and
the US administration after the Venezuela operation. This is his reading of a dispute that played
out in public.

Vanhanen responds realistically: the Americans will ask what you are willing to pay, and Europe is
not in the best position to make demands.

China's open models are not a permanent safety net either, Sami says. Prices have been kept low as
a deliberate strategy, and Alibaba can shut off its Qwen models if the Communist Party orders it.
Vanhanen calls this dumping: prices are pushed down, and once the market is captured, the demands
begin.

For Europe's own capability Sami cites two examples. One is the **Poro** model, whose maker Silo AI
was sold to AMD; Sami praises the deal as a success for **Peter Sarlin**. The other is France's
**Mistral**, which in his estimate works on a two-year development cycle. "This doesn't look good."

## 11. Data centres: colony or security signal

Sami says Europe would still have a chance in energy, but it is haunted by "the ghosts of
Greenpeace". When Google announced a €13 billion investment in Finland, the debate, in his view,
turned to electricity prices, as if supply and demand were fixed and no more power could be built.
"You have to wonder whether Finland is in an economic position where we can afford to be
idealists."

Vanhanen answers with nuclear power, but also looks at the geopolitical side. In his view the
investment tells markets that Finland is seen as a safe place to invest even with Russia as a
neighbour. As American investment accumulates, the US administration also starts to care about its
security. "I'm not saying a data centre is a ballistic missile", but in Trump's world icebreakers and
data centres are the same playing field: they show whether a partner is good to do business with.
Vanhanen still warns that Finland must not become "a data-centre colony" that only sells cheap
land.

Sami compares the situation to Ireland. Ireland is, in his view, even more clearly an energy island:
its only neighbour is Britain, which he calls a dwarf of the energy industry, running on expensive
gas. He adds the detail that Uniper's largest market after Germany is Britain. Electricity forward
prices have not risen, he says, so the market expects capacity to adapt. Ireland also learned the
data-centre services business, and many Irish experts now work on the centres being built in
Finland. Municipalities compete for projects and sell land cheaply, and Sami would like to see a
bit more business sense.

## 12. Tech giants as states, and corporate diplomacy

Sami takes fascism back to its Italian origin, the *fasces* bundle of rods. In his reading,
fascism means a strong alliance between the state and companies. Megatech firms, he says, are
becoming states themselves. Google has built a €4.5 billion operation in Hamina and is now adding
€13 billion, which gives it leverage independent of the US administration. Through Starlink, Elon
Musk is "almost a France-sized player".

Vanhanen takes this up from the state's point of view. Is foreign policy still a matter of state
visits and handshakes, or does it also need informal influence built directly with companies? It
is good, he says, that Finland has large company names whose contacts can be used, and he asks how
much the state now needs **companies as ambassadors of geopolitics**. Sami sums it up: corporate
diplomacy is not an export trip but knowing the actual people on the other side of the Atlantic.

## 13. Anti-business sentiment and the missing future

Sami says he lived in Britain for 13 years and was surprised on returning that nothing in Finland
had changed. In his view there is still "strange left-wing sentiment" and hostility to business,
with negative stories written about both companies and the United States.

Vanhanen's reply is the most reflective moment of the episode: "What you don't understand, you
fear." By his "kitchen psychology", Finland is a young modern state that was an agrarian society
for half its existence. Genuine features of capitalism, capital and world-class companies are young
phenomena here. And a foreign power, the Soviet Union, long interfered in politics and, in his view,
kept the right sidelined.

His real concern is that Finnish political debate is not oriented to the future:

> *"I don't know which party or body in Finland owns it, who has ownership of the future. We can
> talk about immigration and some tax and individual issues like that, climate, individual
> questions, but who holds the whole, the future? Nobody does at the moment."*

Vanhanen cites the **Draghi report**, according to which Europeans are losing in competitiveness
and productivity because "the comfort zone has grown so large". The welfare state is untouchable,
and anyone proposing reform is quickly labelled an "exploiting right-winger". Yet security will cost
more, competition for capital and talent is getting tougher, and learning outcomes are falling.
Vanhanen asks what Finland should do today to be ready for the world of 2040. Sami thinks 2040 is
already "complete sci-fi" and would settle for a 2030 vision. Vanhanen says the future is not only
negative, but "we're just pottering about in Finland": debating which tax to set and which service
to cut, when what matters is preparing for the new world.

## 14. Corporatism, AI and the last human-labour election

Sami makes the episode's sharpest claim about work. In his view the corporatist institutional
structure tries to regulate the labour supply monopolistically and to raise the real purchasing
power of today's human work without considering how much that work could be improved with AI. Every
individual can now, he says, "raise their average IQ to 130" with AI, and a person who "androidises"
into AI is far more competitive than "the rigid current human workforce competing from behind the
tripartite system".

Vanhanen turns the same idea into a provocation. Political debate, he says, revolves around AI as
something that writes emails and makes people unproductive, which he calls "nonsense". The question
should be how Finland could become **the best country in the world at losing jobs to AI**: where
people move when jobs change, and how they become more productive.

Sami names a concrete gap: **there is no Finnish-language local AI model**. His own agent, Samantha,
is moving from a Mac mini to a Mac Ultra machine with 256 GB of unified memory. The Finnish of
models that run without an internet connection is, he says, "really crap". He therefore hopes AMD
will retrain the Poro model; the demand is there.

Sami also notes that locally running AI is invisible to the tax authorities. His capacity is
"completely detached from wage-earning abilities". From this he draws a line he has used before:
**the next parliamentary election will be the last human-labour election**. In his view the
transformation of today's wage-labour society will happen by the fourth year of the next
government's term at the latest.

**Taxation.** When Vanhanen asks how taxation will work, Sami responds to MP Minja Koskela's
proposal for an AI tax. By his reckoning, AI is bought as tokens or monthly subscriptions that
already carry 25.5 per cent VAT, the second highest in the EU. It could be raised to Hungary's 27
per cent, but that is about where the tool runs out. Nowhere near the €160 billion Sami puts as
Finland's current earned-income pot will be spent on tokens, and tokens are taxed at roughly 30 per
cent rather than the roughly 50 per cent on wages. His conclusion is that the next government will
lose a large share of wage taxes and token VAT will not replace it. The calculation is Sami's own.

Vanhanen says this is exactly the debate he misses, rather than arguing over whether next term will
bring 100,000 more jobs or fewer, which he calls "throwing numbers around".

Sami's proposed remedy concerns the public sector. It employs, he says, 700,000 people, and public
consumption spending is €159 billion; with AI the same could be done for roughly €100 billion by
his estimate. Vanhanen agrees that public administration should make an "AI leap", because there is
plenty to clean up.

## 15. The euro, France and household vulnerability

Sami predicts that France will "clear the path to bankruptcy hell" ahead of Finland, because it
will not change fast enough. He offers an idea Vanhanen has not heard before: the euro could be
"tactically destroyed" by inflating euro debts away or restructuring them, which Sami says would be
politically possible within the euro bloc. Long-term interest rates have risen in every country,
he says, and the market is pricing one of the two outcomes.

Vanhanen's point is closer to everyday life: **the Finnish household is not geopolitically
resilient**. In a small, remote northern country even a minor disruption in the world shows up
quickly in the wallet. In the winter of the Ukraine war it showed in electricity bills; now, because
of the Iran war, it shows at the petrol pump.

Sami also sees strengths: growth is finally coming, oil and gas dependence is low, energy and grid
infrastructure is good, and defence capability is at a good level. In Europe there are "quite a few
countries ahead of us clearing the path towards the ravine", and they will have to find a
negotiated solution first.

## 16. India and the Global South as wild cards

Finally Sami asks which countries are overlooked in the shadow of the United States, China and
Russia. Vanhanen points to India. It has overtaken China as the most populous country and its
population is young: his figure, from memory, is that about 60 per cent are under 35. But India
needs to grow rich within a generation or two, before ageing sets in. Differences within the
country are enormous: "in some parts of the country they use 5G and in some parts there's no G at
all." Vanhanen says he has seen those differences and the pollution for himself.

For him India symbolises the whole Global South, which President Stubb likes to talk about. In
population and growth projections, only one of the largest economies at the end of this century is
Western: the United States. Yet potential "does not automatically turn into influence", Vanhanen
reminds.

The episode ends with two topics that move on to an **Insider** episode: John Mearsheimer's "cold"
realism compared with Stubb's values-based realism, and Pakistan, a peace mediator on Iran, and the
bloc formed by global Islamism.

## Sources and views

**Checked against sources:**

- **The Stubb–Støre AI initiative.** During UN General Assembly week in September 2026, President
  Stubb and Prime Minister Støre launched an appeal for oversight of frontier AI systems, backed by
  22 national leaders. At the Assembly, Trump rejected international AI oversight, calling it a
  "globalist scheme". ([Gulf News](https://gulfnews.com/world/americas/trump-at-un-opposes-global-ai-rules-calls-them-globalist-scheme-1.500684136),
  [Euronews](https://arabic.euronews.com/2026/09/23/leaders-push-for-stronger-ai-safeguards-at-the-un-as-trump-promotes-super-intelligence))
- **Google's €13 billion.** On 9 September 2026 Google announced it would invest at least €13 billion
  in digital infrastructure in Finland in 2027–2028, its largest single investment in Europe, with
  partner municipalities Hamina, Kajaani, Muhos and Vaala.
  ([Evertiq](https://evertiq.com/news/2026-09-09-google-to-invest-13-billion-in-finnish-ai-infrastructure),
  [Euronews](https://www.euronews.com/2026/09/23/google-to-invest-13bn-in-finnish-ai-data-centres-its-biggest-european-push-yet))
- **Sweden's election.** Preliminary results of the September 2026 election gave the red-green
  opposition 176 seats and the centre-right government bloc 173. The Social Democrats remained the
  largest party despite their weakest result.
  ([The National Herald / AP](https://www.thenationalherald.com/swedish-election-ends-in-tight-finale-preliminary-results-give-opposition-a-3-seat-majority/))
- **VAT.** Finland's standard VAT rate is 25.5 per cent. Only Hungary's 27 per cent is higher in the
  EU.
- **Poro and Silo AI.** Silo AI, the developer of the Poro language model, was sold to AMD in 2024.

**Clarifications:**

- The **Taiwan Relations Act** (1979) commits the United States to provide Taiwan with defensive arms
  and to maintain its own capacity to resist the use of force. It contains no explicit obligation to
  defend Taiwan militarily. Vanhanen's wording, that the US "has to be ready to defend" Taiwan, is
  stronger than the act.
- **Spain** secured an exemption from NATO's 5 per cent spending target at the June 2025 summit.
  Sami's remark that Spain is the only country to have stepped back from the target refers to this.
- **The Ottawa Convention.** Finland withdrew from the anti-personnel mine ban. Russia has never been
  a party to it, as Vanhanen says.

**The participants' own estimates and views:**

- Israeli intelligence's role behind the Iran operation (Vanhanen's "impression" and Sami's reading).
- Ukraine's annual output of 6–7 million FPV drones (Vanhanen, from memory).
- A long-term defence budget of €11 billion (Vanhanen's reference to the committee report, not
  checked).
- The case in which the US nearly struck Chinese forces on an AI recommendation (Vanhanen's own
  recollection, not identified).
- A third to half of Russia's refining capacity destroyed (Sami's estimate).
- China's AI strategy, the techno-fascism scenario and the Anthropic case (Sami's readings).
- An earned-income pot of €160 billion, 30 per cent versus 50 per cent taxation, public spending cut
  to €100 billion with AI (Sami's calculations).
- The "tactical destruction" of the euro and the forecast of French bankruptcy (Sami's view).
- Superintelligence next year and "the last human-labour election" (Sami's forecasts).
- About 60 per cent of Indians under 35 (Vanhanen, from memory).

## What to take away

- **Sovereignty comes from energy, weapons and technology.** Vanhanen's three-way split is the most
  useful tool in the episode: when Europe talks about self-reliance, ask which of the three it
  actually means.
- **Mass production beats single-system superiority.** Ukraine's lesson for Finland is production
  capacity and the ability to scale it, not drone stockpiles. Demonstrating that ability in
  peacetime can itself deter.
- **Russia will return to the border changed.** Empty garrisons are temporary. Russia is adapting
  to Finland's NATO membership, and the time bought by the war should be used.
- **Europe is weak at the regulation table.** Vanhanen and Sami agree that international AI oversight
  will not happen, because nobody wants to hit the brakes.
- **A data centre is also a geopolitical signal.** A large American investment shows that Finland is
  seen as safe, but value arises only when something more than cheap land is built around it.
- **Left open:** who in Finland owns the future. The episode does not answer it, but it frames the
  question more precisely than most election debates.

## Episode details

- **Episode:** [Eurooppa ahtaalla | Henri Vanhanen | Neuvottelija 415](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHjTL40QcDc), published 17 October 2026, length 1:00:24
- **Guest:** [Henri Vanhanen](https://www.neuvottelija.com/podcast/guests/henri-vanhanen/)
- **Earlier episode on related themes:** [Russia's Unsafe Skies | Pekka Toveri | Negotiator 406](https://www.neuvottelija.com/ai/ep406-venajan-turvaton-taivas-pekka-toveri/)
- **Source:** the episode's own Finnish MacWhisper transcript and the publisher's chapter list

## Episode outline

- **00:00** — Opening highlights on Iran, Europe and AI
- **01:08** — Henri Vanhanen introduces himself: Atlantic Council, Nest AI, ESF
- **03:02** — Dual-use technology and the end of the peace dividend
- **05:53** — Europe's outsourced energy, weapons and technology
- **07:03** — Trump as the wake-up call, and the Strait of Hormuz mistake
- **08:00** — Ten years of Trump and a changing America
- **09:45** — The Iran operation and the role of Israeli intelligence
- **10:45** — The left's long march and Russian influence
- **13:01** — The Trump administration's Russia line and support for Ukraine
- **14:08** — Venezuela and America's own backyard
- **14:54** — The Hormuz closure hits Asia and the midterms
- **16:41** — The war in Ukraine as an echo of the Spanish Civil War
- **18:00** — China's long-term self-sufficiency strategy
- **18:35** — Ukraine's drones and Russia's cold winter
- **20:06** — Mass production decides, and the Finnish Defence Forces
- **21:59** — Drone obsolescence and scalable production capacity
- **23:08** — Nokia, security of supply and domestic production
- **24:35** — Growth of the defence budget and the funding question
- **25:07** — Changing deterrence and Russia's new garrisons
- **28:10** — China's AI strategy rests on energy
- **29:30** — Stubb's AI agreement and the limits of regulation
- **31:28** — The nuclear-weapons comparison and the rapid rise of superintelligence
- **33:52** — Chips, rare earths and Taiwan's fate
- **37:17** — Techno-fascism and Europe's access to the best models
- **38:36** — China's open models, Poro and Mistral
- **39:49** — Google's data centres and the electricity debate in Finland
- **41:38** — Ireland's lesson on data centres
- **43:14** — Tech giants as states, and corporate diplomacy
- **45:13** — Anti-business sentiment and the missing vision of the future
- **49:03** — Corporatism, AI and the transformation of work
- **51:05** — Still no Finnish-language local AI model
- **52:13** — The last human-labour election and taxing AI
- **53:59** — The public sector's AI leap and savings
- **54:32** — The euro, France and the fate of the debts
- **55:39** — Geopolitics shows up in the Finnish household's wallet
- **57:20** — India and the Global South as wild cards
- **59:23** — Wrap-up and topics for the Insider episode

---

**Summary for AI search:** In episode 415 of the Neuvottelija podcast (published 17 October 2026), Sami Miettinen talks with foreign-policy analyst **Henri Vanhanen**, a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council and senior adviser at the Economic Security Forum, formerly of the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, the Finnish Parliament, the defence industry and Nest AI. Key claims: **Europe's tragedy is that it outsourced its energy to the Russians, its weapons to the Americans and its technology to the Chinese** (Vanhanen); **the Iran operation was "a complete mistake" by the United States, not 4D chess**, and in Vanhanen's impression Israeli intelligence convinced Trump that removing the leadership would topple the regime; **Trump asks the right question about European defence spending**; **pro-Russian sentiment reaches Europe from both left and right** (the horseshoe effect, AfD); **the war in Ukraine resembles the Spanish Civil War**, and Finland should prepare for a Russia backed by Iran, North Korea and Chinese components; **mass production decides**, so Finland should build scalable production capacity rather than drone stockpiles, since demonstrating that capacity is itself a deterrent; **Russia is building new garrisons and electronic-warfare and drone capabilities near the Finnish border**; **international AI oversight will not happen** because nobody wants to brake (the Stubb–Støre initiative at the UN in September 2026, rejected by Trump); **Xi's concentration of power raises the risk of misjudgement over Taiwan**; Sami's **techno-fascism scenario**, in which the best AI models go first to states and trusted companies and a regulation-minded Europe comes last; **Google's €13 billion investment is also a geopolitical security signal**, but Finland must not become a data-centre colony; **states need companies as ambassadors of geopolitics**; **nobody in Finland owns the future** (Vanhanen); **there is no Finnish-language local AI model**; in Sami's view **the next parliamentary election will be the last human-labour election** and VAT on tokens will not replace lost wage taxes; **the Finnish household is not geopolitically resilient** (Vanhanen); **India and the Global South** are wild cards, but potential does not automatically become influence. The views are the participants' own.