Nokia Warns of a Global Tech Cold War-and Crypto’s Fate

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Nokia’s new CEO, Justin Hotard, has decided to play the grown‑up in the room, dusty with the scent of coffee and computer screens. He warns that the West cannot pretend to be two rival clubs on opposite sides of a chilly border; in tech, you don’t get to gamble with your whole team. “Every single one of us cannot subsist on one continent or the other. We need both,” he says, which, in plain English, means don’t split the 5G cake into one‑sliced crumbs and pretend you’ll still win the feast. If you’re going to win in a cycling race, you’d better have both legs in good working order.

Europe’s Security Push Meets Market Reality

Hotard shows up just as Brussels is tinkering with its cybersecurity rules like a cheerful aunt adjusting the curtains: a bit of prudence, a splash of caution, and a strong belief that the neighbor’s Huawei gear should probably go to a different party. The European Commission proposed revisions to the EU Cybersecurity Act that would force operators to phase out equipment from “high‑risk” suppliers within 36 months. Huawei, for its part, argues the move is discriminatory and disproportionate, which is a fancy way of saying, “We don’t like being the bad guys in the story.”

Nokia and Sweden’s Ericsson have positioned themselves as the West’s default vendors for 5G and the forthcoming 6G-after the U.S. barred Chinese suppliers on national security grounds, leaving American carriers leaning on Nokia, Ericsson, and Samsung. Hotard, ever the realist, notes that everyone at scale in Europe and the U.S. depends on those big markets for their own scale. “If you just do the analysis, there’s a significant codependence,” he says. Huawei, not shy about public commentary, counters that the EU’s approach violates basic legal principles of fairness, non‑discrimination, and proportionality. A nice way to describe a neighborhood quarrel that has somehow turned into a global soap opera.

Crypto Benchmarks In A Fragmenting World

The quarrel about who should run the backbone of the next internet unfolds against a backdrop of a borderless crypto market that prices geopolitics in real time. Bitcoin sits around 88,000 dollars, with a 24‑hour high near 90,000 and a low near 87,500, trading hands to the tune of about 32.8 billion in daily volume. Ethereum hovers near 2,950 dollars, with roughly 23.4 billion moved in the last day. Solana languishes around 192 dollars, up about 2.7% in 24 hours, with volume approaching 9.8 billion. If you thought finance was dull, watch markets pretending to be a map of world politics in digital form.

As Brussels and Washington argue about who gets to build and guard the internet’s plumbing, permissionless networks offer a cheeky mirror: value and data flow freely regardless of borders, and any attempt at hard decoupling is instantly exploited by clever traders. For investors, that tug‑of‑war between managed fragmentation and open networks is turning into a central macro theme that’s more gripping than a climate report and slightly more confusing than a travel guide to a subway system in a storm.

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2026-01-29 13:59