The article's Karim Khan example pretty deeply undercuts the thesis. Losing access to your bank account is the actual coercive power. Losing a Microsoft email is an inconvenience in comparison.
If your business has everything on GCP/AWS/Azure (which is very common) and the Americans choose to weaponinse US tech against your country or business, then unless you have non-US backups you are probably dead and all of your employees unemployed. If you are a state, all of your services and functions are probably dead and you have to rebuild from nothing. That is certainly true of my company and there are some mutterings starting where I am internally about worst case disaster recovery if suddenly one of these suppliers just disapeared.
In this new world you cannot trust that this will not happen. As a European relying on the Americans is honestly probably little better than relying on the Russians and probably on par with relying on the Chinese in terms of risk profile. Note we are actually for all intents and purposes at war with Russia.
The amount of leverage the Americans have over Europe is insane, and every captial should be trying to mitgate that risk asap.
> If your business has everything on GCP/AWS/Azure (which is very common) and the Americans choose to weaponinse US tech against your country or business,
these companies have datacenters in Europe too. It is not wild to think that if push comes to shove and US cut off Europe, then Europeans can just take control over those European data centers and restore access to GCP/AWS/Azure in Europe because these datacenters are on their soil and predominantly employing Europeans.
Microsoft executives under oath said that they will not be able to honor those contracts if there is pressure from the US administration.
We should know this, but we keep forgetting: laws, contracts, courts etc always bow before political and military might.
In peacetime, we delude ourselves into thinking it aint so.
The situation is now clear as day. What op stated is 100 percent correct.
The US will have successfully invaded an EU country by 2027.
They will, if it comes to this, immediately and successfully weaponize all three hyperscalers.
It is abundantly clear where thinks are going.
If any country, organization or company is not prepared for this by mid 2026, they are blind and deaf
You are correct. In Europe, governments and businesses should treat the US as a hostile foreign country, and relying on anything from there is a massive risk.
The only thing is that weaponizing the hyperscalers would also be disastrous for the hyperscalers. They would be liable to lose their assets in Europe, access to European markets, etc and so on. Which would as a consequence cause a tangible harm to the US economy itself.
Not that in Europe we should rely on it for anything. Any business is wise to move away from any sort of dependency that is subject to US pressure. Governments in particular should consider it a matter of life and death.
There are plenty banks owned and operated within the EU. One bank folded for US pressure but when push comes to shove the EU can force banks in the EU to uphold EU rules and regulations.
That's not the case for digital infrastructure like Google Workspace, Google cloud, Office 365, AWS, etc.
When the US sanctioned Hong Kong’s Chief Executive in 2020, because of a law allowing extradition to China, no single bank was letting her open an account, including Chinese ones. She was receiving her salary fully in cash.
The EU compelling banks to do business despite US sanctions seems pretty unlikely even if relations continue to degrade.
> when push comes to shove the EU can force banks in the EU to uphold EU rules and regulations.
This made me realize that many people who are extremely critical of the power the EU has, have no idea how much that power is often protecting them.
This is not a dismissal of the fact that it's absolutely critical to stay vigilant about how that power is used. But it's quite clear that without that power, the US would've abused theirs way more within Europe.
>Losing a Microsoft email is an inconvenience in comparison.
Losing access to data is potentially worse than losing access to your bank account. I doubt Microsoft will let you grab a copy of all your emails after they block/ban you.
Unfortunately yes, and its the US that has choosen to do it. Its up to everyone else to recongise that it has already happened, or suffer the consequences if they choose not to respond.
the same folks that presided over catastrophic global warming, animal cruelty at industrial scales and human inequality i presume. maybe we can wind those back now theyre gone?
Global warming is the only net new thing on the list and it pays for itself if we get to fusion or planet scale solar. If we don’t, we’re back to the stone age either way.
Probably yes at least to a certain level. At the moment to many countries are relying too heavily on a single point of failure, there should be independent alternatives so that is possible to have more and better competition and in case the administration of the current single point of failure goes nuts it's possible to switch over to something else.
I'll probably get downvoted for even suggesting this, but the EU should consider doing what Russia did (and one of the big reasons they are so resilient against sanctions): create own alternative banking protocol to SWIFT and VISA/Mastercard equiv. (MIR), own social networks (vkontact) and big tech (ozon, yandex, etc). EU seems to be actually okay on the datacenter front. Not sure how to handle the operating system and device side - too bad Nokia is dead. Certainly they have the talent, it's the consensus and will that's required. They really shouldn't have let American tech dominate there in the first place.
If I recall correctly, Russia required that Visa/Mastercard had offices and payment services located in Russia and they simply nationalised those branches and everyone's cards continued to work within Russia with minimal disruption to internal trade.
That's not what happened. They already had been working on MIR for a while. Then Visa/Mastercard pulled out due to sanctions over the war. The retailers actually prefer MIR now as it's newer/better tech plus lower fees and government likes it because they can track every little detail (when they were a bit in the dark before). Consumers seem to prefer the payment systems - faster transfers, QR code payments and scan face to pay terminals.
Anyone on HN can write a Swift alternative protocol in a few days. XML documents signed with public keys is a good start. The trick is to get the banks to use them and to integrate them in their systems, but the EU is capable of writing banking regulations.
Operating systems are even easier - pick your flavour of Linux - devices are all made in China anyway.
Its the cloud and software part that sucks. VPSes aside, almost any managed service is US based.
Expect mistral to keep getting large cash infusions until they get competitive.
Managed services weren’t needed because big tech was bending to EU regulations and buying out alternatives. The services aren’t rocket science; plenty of euro devs participated and still participate in building them, they’re just on US big tech payrolls. Expertise is there, money isn’t, yet.
Good point. The data center hardware is there and there's plenty of open source for things like PaaS and AWS compatible systems. Bewildering that this does not exist and everyone just used AWS.
The article's Karim Khan example pretty deeply undercuts the thesis. Losing access to your bank account is the actual coercive power. Losing a Microsoft email is an inconvenience in comparison.
The real 'military bases' are banks.
If your business has everything on GCP/AWS/Azure (which is very common) and the Americans choose to weaponinse US tech against your country or business, then unless you have non-US backups you are probably dead and all of your employees unemployed. If you are a state, all of your services and functions are probably dead and you have to rebuild from nothing. That is certainly true of my company and there are some mutterings starting where I am internally about worst case disaster recovery if suddenly one of these suppliers just disapeared.
In this new world you cannot trust that this will not happen. As a European relying on the Americans is honestly probably little better than relying on the Russians and probably on par with relying on the Chinese in terms of risk profile. Note we are actually for all intents and purposes at war with Russia.
The amount of leverage the Americans have over Europe is insane, and every captial should be trying to mitgate that risk asap.
> If your business has everything on GCP/AWS/Azure (which is very common) and the Americans choose to weaponinse US tech against your country or business,
these companies have datacenters in Europe too. It is not wild to think that if push comes to shove and US cut off Europe, then Europeans can just take control over those European data centers and restore access to GCP/AWS/Azure in Europe because these datacenters are on their soil and predominantly employing Europeans.
European companies largely do not recognize this as a risk because they consider B2B contracts with Microsoft or AWS essentially iron-clad.
This is because Europeans can not listen.
Microsoft executives under oath said that they will not be able to honor those contracts if there is pressure from the US administration. We should know this, but we keep forgetting: laws, contracts, courts etc always bow before political and military might. In peacetime, we delude ourselves into thinking it aint so.
The situation is now clear as day. What op stated is 100 percent correct.
The US will have successfully invaded an EU country by 2027.
They will, if it comes to this, immediately and successfully weaponize all three hyperscalers.
It is abundantly clear where thinks are going.
If any country, organization or company is not prepared for this by mid 2026, they are blind and deaf
You are correct. In Europe, governments and businesses should treat the US as a hostile foreign country, and relying on anything from there is a massive risk.
The only thing is that weaponizing the hyperscalers would also be disastrous for the hyperscalers. They would be liable to lose their assets in Europe, access to European markets, etc and so on. Which would as a consequence cause a tangible harm to the US economy itself.
Not that in Europe we should rely on it for anything. Any business is wise to move away from any sort of dependency that is subject to US pressure. Governments in particular should consider it a matter of life and death.
This used to be true but it's rapidly changing.
My clients are slowly but surely migrating to European cloud vendors, Scaleway especially.
There are plenty banks owned and operated within the EU. One bank folded for US pressure but when push comes to shove the EU can force banks in the EU to uphold EU rules and regulations.
That's not the case for digital infrastructure like Google Workspace, Google cloud, Office 365, AWS, etc.
When the US sanctioned Hong Kong’s Chief Executive in 2020, because of a law allowing extradition to China, no single bank was letting her open an account, including Chinese ones. She was receiving her salary fully in cash.
The EU compelling banks to do business despite US sanctions seems pretty unlikely even if relations continue to degrade.
AWS, etc has datacenters in the EU.
Microsoft relies on the EUs courts to recognise their property rights.
> when push comes to shove the EU can force banks in the EU to uphold EU rules and regulations.
This made me realize that many people who are extremely critical of the power the EU has, have no idea how much that power is often protecting them.
This is not a dismissal of the fact that it's absolutely critical to stay vigilant about how that power is used. But it's quite clear that without that power, the US would've abused theirs way more within Europe.
>Losing a Microsoft email is an inconvenience in comparison.
Losing access to data is potentially worse than losing access to your bank account. I doubt Microsoft will let you grab a copy of all your emails after they block/ban you.
You may have tied your services, e.g. your digital bank account to your email.
This is a very major inconvenience.
Cutting ties with US tech companies is one of the most important things the rest of us need to do these days.
You're not wrong. But let's wait a month, last time cashing in on US stocks.
There's potentially coming a whole lot of European € back to the European market
[dead]
So what's the solution?
Monitoring of "hostile" workloads at datacentre scale is not going to work.
Should we throw away 80 years of trade, cooperation, and the resulting prosperity and go back into ridiculous tribalism?
Unfortunately yes, and its the US that has choosen to do it. Its up to everyone else to recongise that it has already happened, or suffer the consequences if they choose not to respond.
Just to be clear: the US has already done this.
All we can do is face the facts and pick up the pieces.
The folks who won those 80 years and remember what it took and what was before are all but gone now. Not a coincidence.
"weak men create hard times" is actually somewhat correct, just not in the way maga thinks.
the same folks that presided over catastrophic global warming, animal cruelty at industrial scales and human inequality i presume. maybe we can wind those back now theyre gone?
Global warming is the only net new thing on the list and it pays for itself if we get to fusion or planet scale solar. If we don’t, we’re back to the stone age either way.
>Should we throw away 80 years of trade, cooperation, and the resulting prosperity and go back into ridiculous tribalism?
The US is already doing that, pretending otherwise is just hopeless naivete.
Probably yes at least to a certain level. At the moment to many countries are relying too heavily on a single point of failure, there should be independent alternatives so that is possible to have more and better competition and in case the administration of the current single point of failure goes nuts it's possible to switch over to something else.
Yes!
[dead]
I'll probably get downvoted for even suggesting this, but the EU should consider doing what Russia did (and one of the big reasons they are so resilient against sanctions): create own alternative banking protocol to SWIFT and VISA/Mastercard equiv. (MIR), own social networks (vkontact) and big tech (ozon, yandex, etc). EU seems to be actually okay on the datacenter front. Not sure how to handle the operating system and device side - too bad Nokia is dead. Certainly they have the talent, it's the consensus and will that's required. They really shouldn't have let American tech dominate there in the first place.
Isn't this literally what the Digital Euro project is? These things take time and effort, they've been working on it since 2021 iirc.
If I recall correctly, Russia required that Visa/Mastercard had offices and payment services located in Russia and they simply nationalised those branches and everyone's cards continued to work within Russia with minimal disruption to internal trade.
That's not what happened. They already had been working on MIR for a while. Then Visa/Mastercard pulled out due to sanctions over the war. The retailers actually prefer MIR now as it's newer/better tech plus lower fees and government likes it because they can track every little detail (when they were a bit in the dark before). Consumers seem to prefer the payment systems - faster transfers, QR code payments and scan face to pay terminals.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mir_(payment_system)
Which is what Europe is doing by implementing Digital Euro to replace Visa/Mastercard/Apple Pay/Google Pay
https://www.ecb.europa.eu/euro/digital_euro/html/index.en.ht...
SWIFT is actually a Belgian organization. I agree with the rest of the post though.
Anyone on HN can write a Swift alternative protocol in a few days. XML documents signed with public keys is a good start. The trick is to get the banks to use them and to integrate them in their systems, but the EU is capable of writing banking regulations.
Operating systems are even easier - pick your flavour of Linux - devices are all made in China anyway.
Its the cloud and software part that sucks. VPSes aside, almost any managed service is US based.
AI has made this even worse.
Expect mistral to keep getting large cash infusions until they get competitive.
Managed services weren’t needed because big tech was bending to EU regulations and buying out alternatives. The services aren’t rocket science; plenty of euro devs participated and still participate in building them, they’re just on US big tech payrolls. Expertise is there, money isn’t, yet.
Good point. The data center hardware is there and there's plenty of open source for things like PaaS and AWS compatible systems. Bewildering that this does not exist and everyone just used AWS.
[flagged]
Are you, by any chance, a US-American?
It is in fact, a bot-citizen
[flagged]
What nasty comments? There are three visible at the time i see your own comment, none nasty.
This guy "almosthere" wrote a nasty thing, most likely from his US perspective. It has been flagged and removed now (I did not flag it).