We are the fallen nobles. Now I don't want to recall Totò's films?
No, no, Miseria e nobiltà with spaghetti. But we didn't realize that the world was changing. That's the truth. We were basking in what Europe was, the center of culture, history, because that's the truth. We thought we were still leaders, we were almost like radical chic with norms and laws that had to protect everything and everyone, while the world around us changed. In 10 years the world we were used to changed and Europe continued to want to regulate everything. What did this regulation lead to? The difficulty of innovating, because if I have to innovate and I can't move a bit to the right or a bit to the left, and I have to watch ahead and watch behind, you are trying to set rules on how to innovate, but innovation cannot be regulated.
This is the first video podcast we are doing with a guest, and I am very eager to have Pietro Labriola, who is the COO. So, COO, I still say Telecom Italia, Pietro or Team? What should we say? Telecom Italia or Team? To start with...
Now we always use the brand Team, even if in the heart, in the history of our company, Telecom Italia will always remain.
Perfect. Of course, you know Raffaele Coriglione.
Hello everyone. And we will talk about digital sovereignty, something that is close to all our hearts, and we will try to explain it well, and it's something that is close to the heart and I am pleased about that with Pietro.
Now, before diving straight into the topic, with Pietro I have a truly deep relationship that was created because... and the biggest loss of my life happened around 1990, Pietro, do you know when? It was 1990? Because I was a shareholder of a stock called Telecom savings and I thought they would convert it into ordinary, a bit complicated. That said, I lost a mountain of money and I was very young. So, a bit of life's destiny, the last active operation as a manager and the last challenge because sometimes you do finance because you say 'I want to be right, because I want to be right', was on Telecom Italia because Telecom Italia is a very important company for all of us. In my opinion, for 40 years, let's say, it didn't shine in the way it was managed because it could have been a Italian technological giant. Then a man arrives from Brazil, his name is Pietro Labriola, who was in charge of Team Brasil, and at first I had a somewhat conflicted relationship with Pietro, always because the market wanted one thing and he gave it another, but this manager transformed the stock, he arrived there tough as a soldier, something that had never happened before at Telecom Italia. And this stock that he calls Team, today we should call it Team, in the end this year had one of the most important performances in the market. I don't want to make this long speech, Pietro, but I want to tell you because in my opinion the history of a company is also made by men. Since I can say three key points that truly changed the perception of the company, they were made by men. First, Pietro because he believed from the beginning in Team/Telecom Italia, he fought to sell the Telecom network to a backbone that weighed heavily on the stock because then it had a lot of debt, so at a certain point the company found itself at a crossroads, a bit like Italy at the beginning of the 90s, that is, it had a mountain of debt and the situation could have gone very badly. A man arrives, sells an important asset, secures the company, and also the government, which I believe is the current government, it must be recognized, helped you in the spin-off operation of the network because at that time many were against that spin-off, they were eating us alive when we said that maybe that was the only solution to save the situation. Then a third man arrived, which is the site of Poste that bought a stake of Team/Telecom Italia from the French, speaking of digital sovereignty, at a very good price, and this stock became, let's say, one of the darlings. Darling means most loved by the market, a sort of gem. In the span of 2 years, a company changed thanks to a man and then thanks to a government that proved very acute in this sense, and then a new stable Italian shareholder. So, this is my story of Pietro. Right, Pietro?
Absolutely right. You can see how Guido has become fond of our company, because he continues to use the term Telecom Italia which, as we said, remains more in people's hearts, like us, because we realize that Telecom Italia was the operator that followed all the development of digital and telecommunications. Then we changed name, but it's also true what Guido said. The first meeting between me and Guido, I remember, was in March 2022 when I had presented the new industrial plan of the company and had blocked the payment of the dividend on savings shares after 25 years. Without going into technical detail, the most important thing to remember is that after 25 years for the first time we stopped paying the dividend on these shares. And there was a debate, let's say, quite animated because Guido is a down-to-earth person, and me too. [Laughter] And so there was a discussion, but as Guido said, we made courageous choices, but I always explain that the greatest difficulties are today and not then. Why? Then the situation was so dramatic that you had no other choices, you weren't faced with a crossroads, go right or go left. It was the only way to go forward. Some didn't believe it, but if you are convinced of what you are doing, you must not be afraid, you must go ahead. That's what I did. Paradoxically, now that the company is doing well, I feel more responsibility and I can be a bit more afraid because I can apply a strategy to go right or a strategy to go left. But it was an extremely enjoyable period because we faced a series of challenges and a series of knots that no one had tried to untie in the past, so this was the most important aspect with a government that, in terms of industrial policy, believed in what we were doing, taking, as we said, courageous decisions. But the best thing is that I like my job, because this is a sector where every day you have to reinvent yourself and in a certain way it reflects real life, that which all of you encounter. Today you wake up, you have a certain context, and that context can change completely tomorrow. It's a fascinating thing where every day, I repeat, you have to reinvent yourself and understand what to do, what not to do.
But if we remember the days when you were doing everything right and this stock fell every day. Imagine that every day the stock falls and you have to ask yourself, and I remember we talked, I said, Pietro, everything is fine, you did everything right and boom, and I felt like an idiot because I was telling you 'Everything is fine'. You, I imagine, you got up every morning, this stock that had reached, today Telecom is worth about 0.50, it had reached 0.16, but this is not... 10 years ago, maybe a year and a half ago, so it was... Yes, but...
It was tough. Absolutely yes, because as Guido says, one of the most incredible things is that I told that was the only solution. After that, the stock didn't respond, you came back to the office, they looked at you and said 'We are making a mistake'. The shareholders were telling us we were making a mistake, and I had to stay calm and composed, instilling confidence in everyone. Saying, 'No, don't worry, we have to be resilient, go ahead, that's the path.' But objectively, then between me and me, there was always some fear because you carry on your shoulders the future of 40,000 people in a sector, it wasn't easy, but...
non missionate morde
And so now we are here to address a big topic that concerns all of us. So, I start from something we have already done. We talked about Benjamin Bratton who wrote a book called 'Destack', so let's start from a high level. What is Destack? It is the technological infrastructure today that surrounds the world, it has a very strong geopolitical value, and it is composed, he says, of six layers like a stack. The first is Earth. Earth means both the earth as an extractive material, rare earths, etc., and also the hardware, data centers, and everything physical and material. Then there is the cloud, the cloud where we have our data. Then there is everything that is the interface, that is, us interfacing with the cloud and data centers. There are addresses, meaning not where we live, but our digital addresses. There are users, and then there are what he calls sites, that is, all interconnected districts. So, the stack, he says, is more important than this mega device, this mega technological infrastructure. Bratton says that today it has more relevance than nation states, and speaking of this, we have been talking for a long time about Eurostack, that is, Europe/Italy should have its own stack, its own technological infrastructure, because on that, especially with artificial intelligence, our future is played out. It's as if, I'll put it simply, it's like having a nuclear bomb, a weapon that if you don't have, you obviously have a huge competitive disadvantage. Now, on this, Pietro has written a book, he has fought. Raffaele has been talking about digital sovereignty for 10 years, so I leave the ball to them now, intervening only when I need to bring the conversation down to earth.
So, first of all, let's clarify. Bratton talks about the planetary stack, which is a bit different. Here we want to get into the heart of the European digital stack. So, I have seen what Team M is doing, the fact that there is a sovereign cloud, but my question is this: there is a sovereign cloud, but powered by Google, artificial intelligence powered by Perplexity, so it's not exactly a pure stack, it's hybrid at this point. It's clear it's not anyone's fault because in Europe there are still no companies that can do it, but my question is this: will we move towards a European stack, completely European? That is, will we be able to free ourselves from this sort of American digital colonialism and become totally sovereign of our digital package?
Absolutely yes, but let me try to summarize to explain to friends as well what the situation is. Imagine, as Guido and Raffaele said, there is a first level which is the dimension in which we all live. We walk on the street, we are in a nation that has borders. Within these borders, norms apply, whether they are norms related to privacy, taxation, law, corporate law. It's very clear, you go to another country and in that other country you must respect those norms. Then over time a fourth dimension was created, the digital dimension, which is something supranational in which it is not always clear which privacy applies, which tax regime applies, but also what are the norms and jurisdiction related to national security. And here comes the interconnection between these two worlds. The cloud, though virtual, is built and developed inside a building that is in a nation in the first dimension. Four walls, servers, computers, and these are in Italy. Too bad that the cloud, where you put your photos to keep them, music, is inside these servers, but being digital, it belongs to the fourth dimension. And belonging to the fourth dimension, in this dimension, which jurisdiction applies? The jurisdiction of the owner of the software. So paradoxically, we can have a data center in Italy, the four walls, the servers. Inside these servers and computers, the cloud runs, but that cloud is a digital embassy of another country, and therefore those norms apply. In the United States, rightly for the protection of national security, after what happened in 9/11, there is a norm that says that any American company, upon request of the American national security services, must provide information of what they are in possession of. So we arrive at the following paradox. You are in Italy, the data center is in Italy, the cloud is physically in Italy, the software is extraterritorial, and I put all the data of Guido's health record inside this cloud. The United States can ask to have access to the data of Guido's health record without informing either Guido or the Italian government.
which is a problem. That is, now we want to make this video podcast because it's a gigantic problem, and France and Germany, we'll get to that later, in September took a very strong position at the community level to resolve this issue, because remember one aspect, the future and the models of future competition will no longer be the movement of physical goods from one country to another, but the flow of these data because the re-elaboration of these data will in the near future define power, the economy of the various nations. One example above all. Medicine is a science, I use this term perhaps empirically, based on the analysis of data of what happened in diseases, treatments, and so on. Imagine if someone manages to put into the cloud the health records of all of us for the last 70 years, puts them in the hands of an artificial intelligence that studies all correlations, it can tell you if it's true that Tachipirina or any other drug had effects, because you have a huge historical series. But back to us. The market has evolved in such a way that the main or almost all cloud players are American. In Europe we have not been able to develop them. And here we can open another parenthesis. The so-called hyperscalers.
Hyperscalers. The hyperscalers are all American.
So, sorry, let me ask another question: is it a problem of lack of capital? So is there a problem of the capital market or a problem of not having addressed the problem? Because in my opinion it's the lack of capital, but then a much broader debate opens up. I don't have the expertise, so I always talk about it empirically. The United States has a capacity through private equity funds to invest in innovation that we don't have in Europe. That is, in Europe we have an approach, in quotes, that is still very much based on states pushing innovation. The United States has set up a model in which the existence, because if we list the main private equity funds in the world, they are all American and have a pushed model in which you invest 10 times and you know ex ante that three or four times you will fail, which is called the power law, right? Yes. The six times that instead go well, you remunerate everything, so there is a much greater propensity for risk. This has led to the fact that if we look at all the main most innovative companies, they come from the US market, when we look at the so-called unicorns.
Sure. They are all American, but it opens up, it's called Asset Management Capitalism, they decide and we Europeans don't understand why, frankly, since we are also a people of savers, etc., these...
But Guido, it's important to say one thing, and here Pietro, I quote Marianna Manzuccato, who says that in the end, a large part of American technological development was financed by the state, because we don't forget that the role of the military-industrial complex, especially in California, then had an impact on Silicon Valley, so there were huge state aids that were never really accounted for, because then everything is privatized. So we find ourselves in between two large poles that use the state widely for technology and especially for strategic aspects. While in Europe, excuse me, there is still this mentality that the state must stay on the sidelines, it must be apart, and we have remained, let's say, it's not entirely true, because in Europe if we see what happens, the state is very present in many sectors. Naturally, we have an approach in which the state's intervention is often more on the front of saving and safeguarding some industries to avoid problems related to employment stability levels rather than developing the economy.
some industries to avoid problems related to employment stability levels rather than developing the economy. I remind everyone that it's not a minor detail, I share it and I am happy to live in a nation like Italy where public healthcare or the stability of employment levels are preserved exactly like France, Germany, and Spain. So the four key weights of Europe, because then we can talk about Europe itself, but the four key weights are these four. The stability of employment levels becomes key. It's impossible to fire people effectively, and you compare yourself to a world that is the Anglo-Saxon American one in which labor law is not protected. Tomorrow morning you fire, I'm not saying one is better than the other. You're right.
There is evidence, so there is a different risk propensity.
It's a compromise, sorry. No, because I usually say it this way, in the sense that the state should create a wave, and then the private sector should catch that wave, in quotes, surf it. The American case, right? The American case. Instead, in Europe and especially in Italy, it's different, but on the other hand it's always a balance because in America there is almost a civil war because people have lost their jobs, can't afford healthcare, can't buy a house, there is a middle class that is devastated. We don't have those privileges, we don't have that approach. Of course, we risk being colonized in this phase, but Europe suffers a lot because with artificial intelligence, as you say. So the problem is what Draghi talked about, an uneven, inefficient capital market. That is, because always speaking of venture capital funds, private equity, etc., which in Europe are much smaller. I always cite an example, it's crazy to me. DeepMind was born in England. They went around asking for funding and people came with 20,000, 30,000 pounds. They go to America and Peter Thiel gives them 5 million dollars, right? And DeepMind eventually becomes bought by Google and becomes an American company. But that's what I meant, the innovative minds are in Europe, but if they are not funded, how can they flourish?
But indeed, not by chance, there is no problem of Darwinian superiority of elements outside Europe. The problem is that Europe did not... we are the fallen nobles. Now I don't want to recall Totò's films. Of course, yes, yes. No, Miseria e nobiltà with spaghetti. But we didn't realize that the world was changing. That's the truth. In Europe we didn't realize this. We were basking in what Europe was, the center of culture, history, because that's the truth. We thought we were still leaders, we were almost like radical chic with norms and laws that had to protect everything and everyone, while the world around us changed. It's easy to say now, but this happened in a relatively short time frame. We are not talking about geological ages. In 10 years the world we were used to changed and Europe continued to want to regulate everything. What did this regulation lead to? The difficulty of innovating, because if I have to innovate and I can't move a bit to the right or a bit to the left, and I have to watch ahead and watch behind, you are trying to set rules on how to innovate, but innovation cannot be regulated.
So do you agree with Benjamin Bratton who says 'Regulate first, build later'? Or are you regulating something you don't have yet, like artificial intelligence? But this is the concrete example of the main problems we have today. Let's go back to the problems. So, we come to your observation and I want to hear Pietro, who explained very well why digital sovereignty is the line we must not abdicate. What are you doing on this topic and how are you positioned? And I connect to the question of Raffaele who said: 'Yes, but today you go up to a certain point, because from a certain point on...
Absolutely, what was the idea, not ours, and so credit must be given to the government, to the CN which is the National Cybersecurity Agency, that at a certain point faced with this scenario said: the hyperscaler technology is the available technology and we cannot fight against windmills. What do we do? So, let's split it in two. That is, the encryption key, let's say, the key to enter that cloud, we ask that it be held by an Italian entity, while the cloud remains with the hyperscaler technology. For the entire public administration, which was considered an important asset, the migration of data to the cloud happened in a cloud where the cloud is from the hyperscalers. The encryption key is in the hands of a company, so if someone wanted to ask the American scalers, let me see what's in the cloud, they cannot because the encryption key is in our hands.
It's a compromise. This gives us a way to guarantee anyway. Then we must realize, and Draghi also says in his latest report, that we have the last call. We are at the last call. Now we must get back to innovating and working to develop a whole series...
di nuove soluzioni o differentemente saremo colonizzati.
Pietro, posso farti un'altra citazione di Francesca Bria? Dice: 'Chi ha le chiavi, cioè chi costruisce l'infrastruttura digitale decodifica la democrazia.' È un'affermazione forte, ma secondo me è vera. Perché tu dici 'proteggo i miei dati', ma poi alla fine chi codifica quello che andremo a leggere e a fare? Non siamo noi. È questa la cosa. E qui, tornando a parlare dello stack... sì, cioè abbiamo bisogno anche del software.
Però c'è ancora modo. Noi non dobbiamo copiare né l'approccio cinese né l'approccio americano. Dobbiamo trovare The European Way, The Italian Way, basato sulle nostre caratteristiche. Rispetto al passato, secondo me abbiamo un'opportunità perché ci troviamo di fronte a una situazione oggettivamente estremamente drammatica. O cambiamo, o – ho provocato l'altra volta in un evento – l'Europa diventerà una Disneyland.
Cioè ci concentriamo sull'utilizzo del patrimonio culturale, del patrimonio gastronomico e della bellezza delle nostre terre, perché tutto il resto sarà fuori di noi.
Però c'è oggi maggiore attenzione e tutti si stanno rendendo conto che siamo all'ultima chiamata. Faccio un esempio banale: la Germania era la locomotiva dell'economia europea e basava tutto sulla grande manifattura. Ma la grande manifattura ormai è fuori dall'Europa. Noi in Italia siamo messi meglio, per assurdo, perché abbiamo una piccola manifattura verticalizzata. Essendo piccola e a volumi ridotti, non interessa i grandi player cinesi e indiani, quindi sopravviveremo meglio della Germania, per quanto possa sembrare assurdo. Ma il fatto che la Germania e la Francia si stiano rendendo conto che oggi siamo veramente all'ultima chiamata porta l'Europa a cambiare approccio.
Noi abbiamo spesso usato questo termine 'momento machiavelliano' per indicare i momenti in cui l'Europa dà il meglio di sé, perché è alle strette, in vero pericolo. Probabilmente è sempre dormiente per decenni e poi si sveglia quando ci sono reali pericoli. Questo è uno di quelli. Ma la cosa più importante è rendersi conto che non abbiamo più il tempo che avevamo in passato per far cambiare le cose. Il mondo cambia a una velocità completamente diversa. Oggi una TikTok nasce e supera Facebook o Instagram in tre anni. Sono queste le cose di cui bisogna rendersi conto. L'economia: dopo decenni in cui l'inflazione era fuori dall'Europa, ci siamo trovati con un'inflazione al 15% e non capivamo come gestirla. Abbiamo un approccio in cui siamo abituati a definire il futuro guardando al passato, ma il passato non ci può più insegnare nulla perché il futuro è completamente diverso. Cosa pensi di questa nuova modalità tutta americana della finanza circolare, cioè un'azienda che investe in un'altra, poi si aiutano, creano un network che è la vera forza delle aziende americane? Qui in Europa può succedere qualcosa di simile? L'abbiamo visto con Mistral e...
...e Mistral, però sono ancora pochi gli esempi. Stanno facendo le cose veramente in grande. Si parla di 100 miliardi da una parte, 100 miliardi dall'altra.
Leggevo anche l'altro giorno quello che è successo con OpenAI.
Per chi ha visto il film sulla storia di BlackBerry.
Nel suo piccolo, BlackBerry è cresciuta dando stock option per attrarre i cervelli in Canada, perché quelli di Google erano in California, portarli a Toronto, che non è esattamente il clima californiano, ma ci sono. Quando parlavo di Italian Way, questo è un approccio. Senza voler fare pubblicità a TIM, noi a un certo punto cosa abbiamo cominciato a fare? La realtà è che le aziende italiane, o anche europee, hanno difficoltà a investire nell'innovazione. Tanto è vero che negli Stati Uniti l'innovazione... Google è vero che investe tanto, ma poi c'è la Silicon Valley dove ci sono startup, le compri e ti porti dentro l'innovazione.
Noi abbiamo provato a dire 'facciamo la stessa cosa', ma non abbiamo quella capacità finanziaria. Fino a un anno fa dovevamo barcamenarci per salvarci. Cosa ci siamo inventati con i miei colleghi? Abbiamo chiamato 30 startup, ci siamo fatti dire cosa stavano facendo, ne abbiamo scelte alcune e stiamo partecipando alla loro crescita comprando i loro servizi. Quindi sono io che accelero, esattamente col tuo modello.
