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Called it, again. Data sovereignty is the true trend of the next decade. Not Quantum, not AI, but the new multi-pole world order divesting from Americentric te

Called it, again. Data sovereignty is the true trend of the next decade. Not Quantum, not AI, but the new multi-pole world order divesting from Americentric technologies and back into the sort of locally-grown economies that children of the Cold War would be familiar with. Local vendors serving local needs with a focus on regional, not global, scale and service. Us Cassandra types have been screaming for years that the US-centric technology catalog (from hardware to software to services to clouds) cannot be trusted long term, as just a single bad administration will expose how easily the US Government could disrupt “business as usual” or turn into a hostile state actor a la China or Russia. Welp, now we’re here. Man, I hate being right.

api 2y ago
While I don't like the politics giving rise to this, de-globalization combined with the great social media unbundling and other trends means we might finally see decentralization be a major trend (outside of the cryptocurrency ghetto). Overall I think this is a good thing. It could mean the end of the monolithic closed SaaS era, which is the absolute worst possible model for software if you care about privacy or any kind of personal or business sovereignty.
- yladiz 2y ago
  I would guess that for the most part we won’t have “true” decentralization, but given the EU has mandated interoperability between big providers like Apple and Facebook I can imagine that we will eventually have major services that are EU centric (either in certain markets or most/all of the EU), and there will be ways for people to use their own setup as well (basically multi polar distribution, plus the ability for someone to do it themselves).
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - berkes 2y ago
    > I can imagine that we will eventually have major services that are EU centric I work in a research project in a EU country that looks at how educational certificates (diploma's, degrees, credentials) will be done in the future. A big part of it, are requirements and frameworks imposed, dictated or assumed by governments, commissions, universities, etc. The most important¹ parts of these requirements are: - it must be self-sovereign. Not decentralized per-se, but technically often one step further than decentralized. My diploma, in my wallet (mobile?) is mine. I hold it, I am free to share it, delete it, copy it. - it must be separated from the issuers. A person getting a degree might outlive a university, high school, or their servers/services. - it must be privacy preserving - GDPR and better. These constraints tell me that the EU, and EC are serious about decentralization and self-sovereign-identities. Which is very different from what local or current governments like and want - At least one EU government is in conflict with its universities and wants to be the gatekeeper of diploma's - they truly want the ability to deny or retract diploma's from people who they don't like. Which, ironically, makes these constraints and requirements all the more important and critical in e.g. our projects. It went from a "decentralization is nice because in theory someone could..." to "decentralization is critical to ensure no-one, on any end of any political spectrum can take away diploma's as is currently being attempted". (And for the curious: I work with W3C, openId, IETF and many more standards and -bodies. Verifiable Credentials, OpenBadges v3, OIDC4VCI, VP, etc) ¹ Edit: well, maybe not "most", as there isn't a clear prioritization. And obvious requirements such as "you cannot just fake a diploma" are probably higher in priority.
- baq 2y ago
  I personally dread the world in which physical supply chains get decentralized. A multi-polar world is a tinderbox.
  - Ragnarork 2y ago
    > A multi-polar world is a tinderbox Meanwhile, a unipolar is totally fine....
    - andsoitis 2y ago
      These things exist on a spectrum, and interdependency, collaboration, partnership, make for a more prosperous and safe world.
- SecretDreams 2y ago
  There is tech decentralization and and manufacturing decentralization. Both are being treating equally right now; however, frankly, they probably shouldn't. Data is proving to be valuable and should only be managed by very trusted allies - countries with similar ideals that truly are buddies. Manufacturing, imo, makes a lot more sense to be spread based on strengths and weaknesses and the logistics benefits (localize supply chains closer to end product). The current US admin has certainly exposed some of the pitfalls of being technologically reliant on America. Honestly, the main outcome of this will be lower economic/job prospects for American tech employees. It will soon be that having a branch of Microsoft in Europe is not quite the same as utilizing actual European countries. I would really like to see this trend reversed, but I am afraid some of the damage is already done and will take a long time, if ever, to recover. It would not surprise me if some of this damage is intentional, since it will actually take power away from west coast tech - a population that tends to vote in one direction.
  - ben_w 2y ago
    > Data is proving to be valuable and should only be managed by very trusted allies - countries with similar ideals that truly are buddies. Outside Trump — not all Republicans, specifically Trump — the USA was as close to being Europe's buddy as I think it's possible for nations to be. I'm not convinced nations can actually be buddies, but even with my cynicism, Bush's administration was Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma, while Trump is behaving like each "deal" is a completely independent Prisoner's Dilemma. And yes, that's despite how much we mocked GWB (I even got quoted on the national news for doing so!), and despite how America mocked itself with Team America: World Police, that version of the country still saw itself as needing to go through the motions of friendship.
- bitexploder 2y ago
  https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/google-cloud-makes-huge-bet-on-trusted-partner-cloud-and-data-sovereignty-in-leaked-documents/ https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/google-cloud-make... Just gonna leave this here.
heavymetalpoizn 2y ago
[dead]
mykowebhn 2y ago
Would love to see a ditching of not just tech in favor of homegrown options. I admit that I was initially on the globalization bandwagon, but in hindsight it resulted in products being made in countries with the cheapest costs which led to a decrease in quality and the destruction of smaller, more local businesses. Go to a tourist area anywhere in the world and you'll be confronted by the same businesses--Starbucks, McDonald's, Apple Store, H&M, Zara. It's the homogenization and boringification of the world.
- wolframhempel 2y ago
  Making more stuff in the countries with the cheapest costs also means that people in those countries are being lifted out of poverty. China's GDP per capita went from ~350USD in 1990 to 12.500USD in 2023 and similar growth happened for India, Bangladesh and lots of other poorer countries. Globalization brought affordable goods to wealthy nations and better living standards to poorer nations. In addition, closer trade ties lower the likelihood of armed conflict. Smart wealthy countries understand these benefits and move their own economies to higher value creating activities like deep research, high tech development or financial services. Less smart wealthy countries try to erect trade barriers to force a return of uncompetitive manufacturing...
  - elcritch 2y ago
    I’m all for poorer countries getting a slice of the pie. Long term I’m not convinced it’s beneficial for the whole population of richer countries to continue, but rather only the elites of those countries. The amount income inequality has skyrocketed in recent decades sort of undermines the theoretical benefits economists love to tout. Nowadays manufacturing does not have to be uncompetitive. Advances in automation balance out wage disparities. They also provide more chances for a country to retain its skilled workers. Unions in developed nations can help the systematic power imbalance between capitalists and workers.
    - wolframhempel 2y ago
      It's especially beneficial for the poorest people in the developed nation. In the 1940 US, the poorest 20% spent almost their entire income on basic needs, such as food and basic clothing. Today, the poorest 20% can still afford smartphones and flat screen TVs, clothes and even vacations. Yes, globalization has massively increased market sizes, making the richest much richer. But it also made the poorest much richer.
nonrandomstring 2y ago
Maybe it's a blessing in disguise, yes. But I wrote up here [0] about how sad this makes me feel. We've squandered a huge opportunity this past 20 years by allowing BigTech to emerge and basically destroy the good political agenda of the original (D)ARPA project. Sure it was hegemonic. Sure we screwed up with things like "Arab Spring". But I cannot stop feeling the Internet was the greatest tool of democracy and liberty - and we messed it up by allowing weak minded greedy and insecure types to take over. It's no surprise that the latest brand of technofascist thugs targeted "data" as the new power-lever. "Flipping" carefully installed defective leaders is a new kind of threat and a new kind of attack we need to think about more in cybserscurity. I don't think it needs us to be Cassandras for everyone to understand (vigilance is the essence of democracy) that if we want good, nice things, we'll have to actively work for them and defend daily. I'm also quietly optimistic that taking it back won't be such a big deal as we fear. We'll just have a lot of repair work to do when this sad episode is over. I think a Euro-centric rebuild will be a useful step towards a healed global vision again. One day. [0] https://cybershow.uk/blog/posts/layer10/ https://cybershow.uk/blog/posts/layer10/
- stego-tech 2y ago
  My personal perspective is that our (technology evangelists) mistake was constantly lowering the barrier to entry under the guise of removing "gatekeeping" abilities of entrenched players. This idea that technology would be this great equalizer, lifting everyone up together and spreading free access to information to everyone would somehow solve so many of our ills. The reality is that most people do not care enough about the systems of life to educate themselves, and bad actors exploited this constant lowering of the barrier to entry by flooding these forced-participants with advertising, "free" services, and a glut of cognitohazards. We created a world where authenticity comes not from expertise, but how pretty and usable your website is - and that had knock-on effects our elders tried to warn us about (just look at games like Deus Ex, System Shock 1/2, and similar cyberpunk games of the era and how they warned about mass surveillance, forced adoption of technologies, centralization of infrastructure, etc). > ...if we want good, nice things, we'll have to actively work for them and defend daily. This is what I've been trying to instill in others for nearly twenty years, since my days of playing SysAdmin in High School and bypassing proxy-based web filters to get to Newgrounds. To truly be participatory in any community, you must volunteer time in bettering it somehow. Maybe volunteer to be a moderator and improve site policies, or donate surplus resources towards self-hosting, or just helping folks move to better, less centralized or more community-supported platforms.
belter 2y ago
Dump Office and Teams. Easy to do and a great start to move outside of Windows OS. LibreOffice is perfect, and government officials wont govern better or worst, if their PowerPoint presentations don't have the latest MS fonts....
- mstipetic 2y ago
  I’m all for open source but suggesting libre office is perfect is a bit too much for me
  - belter 2y ago
    Perfect for 98% of the things government officials are using Word, Excel and PowerPoint for...
    - kristiandupont 2y ago
      If you have a spreadsheet with macros that are anything more than the most basic, you can't run it in Calc. It's not that trivial.
      - belter 2y ago
        The 2% ...And your company logic should not be in the Macros. "The Wall of Shame for the Worst Excel Errors" - https://www.solving-finance.com/post/the-wall-of-shame-for-the-worst-excel-errors https://www.solving-finance.com/post/the-wall-of-shame-for-t...
        kristiandupont 2y ago
        Right, so your argument is that this is easy, and if it turns out that it's not, we'll just be smug and tell them that they were holding it wrong all along? It sounds like you are picturing in your head that all spreadsheet work is greenfield. Do you have any idea how much Excel code is embedded everywhere? Very often made by people who are no longer around. You can lecture all you want, but this is the situation. I don't like it either.
copx 2y ago
>the US Government could disrupt “business as usual” or turn into a hostile state actor a la China You typed this on hardware made by a hostile state actor: China. As long as the hardware side of digital civilization is completely dependent on the Chinese communist regime, I certainly don't worry about American tech companies dominating the software side. There are alternatives on the software side if you want them, meanwhile try to build a computer system without hardware made in China..
- olalonde 2y ago
  > hostile state actor Source?
bloomingkales 2y ago
Obama just made a random decision to make a China pivot. We had a large force in the Middle East and instead of just bringing them home, we created this weird apparatus to shift the strategy over to China. This is similar to if your company decided to introduce Agile. That extension of your company will never go away, and will have ideas. The idea that “someone is stealing our technology” is just an idea, similar to “developers don’t give good estimates or timelines”. An idea that will feel like the right idea to all, and will be copied. Copy cat culture exists in war too (why are you fighting them? Because they are fighting me). This is a contrived problem, and demagogues like Trump seized on it. Was it all Obama’s fault? Not quite. Bush had already created a war apparatus in the 2000s, and there was no turning it off, just turning it around and pointing it somewhere else. —— We are the storytellers of this history, we lived it. We are the primary sources, don’t doubt your ability to document this history. AI was never imagined in the halls of Research to create a never ending forever digital war. I’ll paraphrase Jensen Huang regarding China: You can’t keep a country behind
piokoch 2y ago
Data sovereignty is a piece of cake, you can survive here easily, unless with some inconvenience like lack of access to Netflix fake documentaries. European Union decided to sing EU–Mercosur Association Agreement, which will make European agriculture unable to sustain in comming years. As a result in case of war, sea routes blockade or Mercosur teaming up with Russia (what is happening anyway) Europeans will die from starvation.
pabs3 2y ago
There is nothing wrong with global software, as long as it is self-hosted open source that you can control and you mitigate the risks by contributing back time and money to the projects you use. https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/1013614/e52394a236575047/ https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/1013614/e52394a236575047/

api 2y ago

While I don't like the politics giving rise to this, de-globalization combined with the great social media unbundling and other trends means we might finally see decentralization be a major trend (outside of the cryptocurrency ghetto). Overall I think this is a good thing. It could mean the end of the monolithic closed SaaS era, which is the absolute worst possible model for software if you care about privacy or any kind of personal or business sovereignty.

yladiz 2y ago
I would guess that for the most part we won’t have “true” decentralization, but given the EU has mandated interoperability between big providers like Apple and Facebook I can imagine that we will eventually have major services that are EU centric (either in certain markets or most/all of the EU), and there will be ways for people to use their own setup as well (basically multi polar distribution, plus the ability for someone to do it themselves).
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- berkes 2y ago
  > I can imagine that we will eventually have major services that are EU centric I work in a research project in a EU country that looks at how educational certificates (diploma's, degrees, credentials) will be done in the future. A big part of it, are requirements and frameworks imposed, dictated or assumed by governments, commissions, universities, etc. The most important¹ parts of these requirements are: - it must be self-sovereign. Not decentralized per-se, but technically often one step further than decentralized. My diploma, in my wallet (mobile?) is mine. I hold it, I am free to share it, delete it, copy it. - it must be separated from the issuers. A person getting a degree might outlive a university, high school, or their servers/services. - it must be privacy preserving - GDPR and better. These constraints tell me that the EU, and EC are serious about decentralization and self-sovereign-identities. Which is very different from what local or current governments like and want - At least one EU government is in conflict with its universities and wants to be the gatekeeper of diploma's - they truly want the ability to deny or retract diploma's from people who they don't like. Which, ironically, makes these constraints and requirements all the more important and critical in e.g. our projects. It went from a "decentralization is nice because in theory someone could..." to "decentralization is critical to ensure no-one, on any end of any political spectrum can take away diploma's as is currently being attempted". (And for the curious: I work with W3C, openId, IETF and many more standards and -bodies. Verifiable Credentials, OpenBadges v3, OIDC4VCI, VP, etc) ¹ Edit: well, maybe not "most", as there isn't a clear prioritization. And obvious requirements such as "you cannot just fake a diploma" are probably higher in priority.
baq 2y ago
I personally dread the world in which physical supply chains get decentralized. A multi-polar world is a tinderbox.
- Ragnarork 2y ago
  > A multi-polar world is a tinderbox Meanwhile, a unipolar is totally fine....
  - andsoitis 2y ago
    These things exist on a spectrum, and interdependency, collaboration, partnership, make for a more prosperous and safe world.
SecretDreams 2y ago
There is tech decentralization and and manufacturing decentralization. Both are being treating equally right now; however, frankly, they probably shouldn't. Data is proving to be valuable and should only be managed by very trusted allies - countries with similar ideals that truly are buddies. Manufacturing, imo, makes a lot more sense to be spread based on strengths and weaknesses and the logistics benefits (localize supply chains closer to end product). The current US admin has certainly exposed some of the pitfalls of being technologically reliant on America. Honestly, the main outcome of this will be lower economic/job prospects for American tech employees. It will soon be that having a branch of Microsoft in Europe is not quite the same as utilizing actual European countries. I would really like to see this trend reversed, but I am afraid some of the damage is already done and will take a long time, if ever, to recover. It would not surprise me if some of this damage is intentional, since it will actually take power away from west coast tech - a population that tends to vote in one direction.
- ben_w 2y ago
  > Data is proving to be valuable and should only be managed by very trusted allies - countries with similar ideals that truly are buddies. Outside Trump — not all Republicans, specifically Trump — the USA was as close to being Europe's buddy as I think it's possible for nations to be. I'm not convinced nations can actually be buddies, but even with my cynicism, Bush's administration was Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma, while Trump is behaving like each "deal" is a completely independent Prisoner's Dilemma. And yes, that's despite how much we mocked GWB (I even got quoted on the national news for doing so!), and despite how America mocked itself with Team America: World Police, that version of the country still saw itself as needing to go through the motions of friendship.
bitexploder 2y ago
https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/google-cloud-makes-huge-bet-on-trusted-partner-cloud-and-data-sovereignty-in-leaked-documents/ https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/google-cloud-make... Just gonna leave this here.

heavymetalpoizn 2y ago

[dead]

mykowebhn 2y ago

Would love to see a ditching of not just tech in favor of homegrown options. I admit that I was initially on the globalization bandwagon, but in hindsight it resulted in products being made in countries with the cheapest costs which led to a decrease in quality and the destruction of smaller, more local businesses. Go to a tourist area anywhere in the world and you'll be confronted by the same businesses--Starbucks, McDonald's, Apple Store, H&M, Zara. It's the homogenization and boringification of the world.

wolframhempel 2y ago
Making more stuff in the countries with the cheapest costs also means that people in those countries are being lifted out of poverty. China's GDP per capita went from ~350USD in 1990 to 12.500USD in 2023 and similar growth happened for India, Bangladesh and lots of other poorer countries. Globalization brought affordable goods to wealthy nations and better living standards to poorer nations. In addition, closer trade ties lower the likelihood of armed conflict. Smart wealthy countries understand these benefits and move their own economies to higher value creating activities like deep research, high tech development or financial services. Less smart wealthy countries try to erect trade barriers to force a return of uncompetitive manufacturing...
- elcritch 2y ago
  I’m all for poorer countries getting a slice of the pie. Long term I’m not convinced it’s beneficial for the whole population of richer countries to continue, but rather only the elites of those countries. The amount income inequality has skyrocketed in recent decades sort of undermines the theoretical benefits economists love to tout. Nowadays manufacturing does not have to be uncompetitive. Advances in automation balance out wage disparities. They also provide more chances for a country to retain its skilled workers. Unions in developed nations can help the systematic power imbalance between capitalists and workers.
  - wolframhempel 2y ago
    It's especially beneficial for the poorest people in the developed nation. In the 1940 US, the poorest 20% spent almost their entire income on basic needs, such as food and basic clothing. Today, the poorest 20% can still afford smartphones and flat screen TVs, clothes and even vacations. Yes, globalization has massively increased market sizes, making the richest much richer. But it also made the poorest much richer.

nonrandomstring 2y ago

Maybe it's a blessing in disguise, yes. But I wrote up here [0] about how sad this makes me feel. We've squandered a huge opportunity this past 20 years by allowing BigTech to emerge and basically destroy the good political agenda of the original (D)ARPA project. Sure it was hegemonic. Sure we screwed up with things like "Arab Spring". But I cannot stop feeling the Internet was the greatest tool of democracy and liberty - and we messed it up by allowing weak minded greedy and insecure types to take over. It's no surprise that the latest brand of technofascist thugs targeted "data" as the new power-lever. "Flipping" carefully installed defective leaders is a new kind of threat and a new kind of attack we need to think about more in cybserscurity. I don't think it needs us to be Cassandras for everyone to understand (vigilance is the essence of democracy) that if we want good, nice things, we'll have to actively work for them and defend daily. I'm also quietly optimistic that taking it back won't be such a big deal as we fear. We'll just have a lot of repair work to do when this sad episode is over. I think a Euro-centric rebuild will be a useful step towards a healed global vision again. One day. [0] https://cybershow.uk/blog/posts/layer10/ https://cybershow.uk/blog/posts/layer10/

stego-tech 2y ago
My personal perspective is that our (technology evangelists) mistake was constantly lowering the barrier to entry under the guise of removing "gatekeeping" abilities of entrenched players. This idea that technology would be this great equalizer, lifting everyone up together and spreading free access to information to everyone would somehow solve so many of our ills. The reality is that most people do not care enough about the systems of life to educate themselves, and bad actors exploited this constant lowering of the barrier to entry by flooding these forced-participants with advertising, "free" services, and a glut of cognitohazards. We created a world where authenticity comes not from expertise, but how pretty and usable your website is - and that had knock-on effects our elders tried to warn us about (just look at games like Deus Ex, System Shock 1/2, and similar cyberpunk games of the era and how they warned about mass surveillance, forced adoption of technologies, centralization of infrastructure, etc). > ...if we want good, nice things, we'll have to actively work for them and defend daily. This is what I've been trying to instill in others for nearly twenty years, since my days of playing SysAdmin in High School and bypassing proxy-based web filters to get to Newgrounds. To truly be participatory in any community, you must volunteer time in bettering it somehow. Maybe volunteer to be a moderator and improve site policies, or donate surplus resources towards self-hosting, or just helping folks move to better, less centralized or more community-supported platforms.

belter 2y ago

Dump Office and Teams. Easy to do and a great start to move outside of Windows OS. LibreOffice is perfect, and government officials wont govern better or worst, if their PowerPoint presentations don't have the latest MS fonts....

mstipetic 2y ago
I’m all for open source but suggesting libre office is perfect is a bit too much for me
- belter 2y ago
  Perfect for 98% of the things government officials are using Word, Excel and PowerPoint for...
  - kristiandupont 2y ago
    If you have a spreadsheet with macros that are anything more than the most basic, you can't run it in Calc. It's not that trivial.
    - belter 2y ago
      The 2% ...And your company logic should not be in the Macros. "The Wall of Shame for the Worst Excel Errors" - https://www.solving-finance.com/post/the-wall-of-shame-for-the-worst-excel-errors https://www.solving-finance.com/post/the-wall-of-shame-for-t...
      - kristiandupont 2y ago
        Right, so your argument is that this is easy, and if it turns out that it's not, we'll just be smug and tell them that they were holding it wrong all along? It sounds like you are picturing in your head that all spreadsheet work is greenfield. Do you have any idea how much Excel code is embedded everywhere? Very often made by people who are no longer around. You can lecture all you want, but this is the situation. I don't like it either.

copx 2y ago

>the US Government could disrupt “business as usual” or turn into a hostile state actor a la China You typed this on hardware made by a hostile state actor: China. As long as the hardware side of digital civilization is completely dependent on the Chinese communist regime, I certainly don't worry about American tech companies dominating the software side. There are alternatives on the software side if you want them, meanwhile try to build a computer system without hardware made in China..

olalonde 2y ago
> hostile state actor Source?

bloomingkales 2y ago

Obama just made a random decision to make a China pivot. We had a large force in the Middle East and instead of just bringing them home, we created this weird apparatus to shift the strategy over to China. This is similar to if your company decided to introduce Agile. That extension of your company will never go away, and will have ideas. The idea that “someone is stealing our technology” is just an idea, similar to “developers don’t give good estimates or timelines”. An idea that will feel like the right idea to all, and will be copied. Copy cat culture exists in war too (why are you fighting them? Because they are fighting me). This is a contrived problem, and demagogues like Trump seized on it. Was it all Obama’s fault? Not quite. Bush had already created a war apparatus in the 2000s, and there was no turning it off, just turning it around and pointing it somewhere else. —— We are the storytellers of this history, we lived it. We are the primary sources, don’t doubt your ability to document this history. AI was never imagined in the halls of Research to create a never ending forever digital war. I’ll paraphrase Jensen Huang regarding China: You can’t keep a country behind

piokoch 2y ago

Data sovereignty is a piece of cake, you can survive here easily, unless with some inconvenience like lack of access to Netflix fake documentaries. European Union decided to sing EU–Mercosur Association Agreement, which will make European agriculture unable to sustain in comming years. As a result in case of war, sea routes blockade or Mercosur teaming up with Russia (what is happening anyway) Europeans will die from starvation.

pabs3 2y ago

There is nothing wrong with global software, as long as it is self-hosted open source that you can control and you mitigate the risks by contributing back time and money to the projects you use. https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/1013614/e52394a236575047/ https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/1013614/e52394a236575047/