if it needs a continental communications Manhattan Project so be it.*

Reliance on critical infrastructure, finance, militaria, fuel, food and manufactured goods provided by increasingly militant geopolitical rivals is unviable - it always was but recent events have made this undeniable. Perhaps even to our rulers.

*This is exactly the kind of thing the EU should be for - it is also, for reasons that can only be guessed at, exactly the opposite of what the EU (and Britain) elects to make a virtue of.