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AWS had announced a sovereign European cloud, probably to avoid a loss of business in the long term due to these initiatives. But it's questionable whether this

by t0mas88 11mo ago

AWS had announced a sovereign European cloud, probably to avoid a loss of business in the long term due to these initiatives. But it's questionable whether this would survive strong political pressure from the US government.

saubeidl 11mo ago
As long as there's any American ownership in the chain, this is not to be trusted. I'm assuming AWS wouldn't fully divest from this European business unit and split it off as a completely separate entity?
- hedora 11mo ago
  The US CLOUD Act says that if Amazon has the technical ability to access those machines, they must do so if the US government asks them to. So, unless it’s a separate legal entity, and also shares no authentication, software deployment, or related infrastructure with the US part of Amazon, it’s either not providing sovereignty or is being offered in violation of US law. It’s unclear to me if they’d have to comply with requests to (for example) backdoor their IAM service backend and push the binaries to Europe, or not. (I’m not a lawyer.)
kenjackson 11mo ago
And it certainly would not survive strong political pressure from the EU and US governments. Local governments still can be adversely impacted.
ttkari 11mo ago
I'm not sure I understand how an American company would be able to provide any service that could be "sovereign European".
- arlcode 11mo ago
  In theory Amazon could license the stack to a European Operator while having no operative access themselves. I think this is already done in some cases altough the political reliability has not yet been tested.
  - WJW 11mo ago
    I guess the question then becomes: what happens if some future US government pressures Amazon to revoke the license. Unless and until there's a good answer to that, it'd still be better to develop something locally.
  - nemomarx 11mo ago
    They must have something like this for China, right?
    - cmckn 11mo ago
      Sort of. AWS operates the China regions more or less like any other region, with oversight by the Chinese holding companies. The EUSC will be more restricted, similar to GovCloud. Only EU citizens can access/operate it. Specific example: an alarm fires for your service. If it’s in China, anyone on the team can go look at the logs. If it’s in GovCloud, only teammates who are American can look at the logs. In the EUSC, only Europeans can.
  - Muromec 11mo ago
    If I run your software, you can have no operational control, but you can sneak a root kit or some kind of stuff I dont want to have there
- Balinares 11mo ago
  By providing the software to be installed in clusters owned and operated by European companies. The sovereign cloud spec designed by the folks at France's ANSSI agency is tight.
  - deaux 11mo ago
    Whoops, the European company just got bought out by a US entity. Tough luck! [1] Is this part of the spec? If not, it's as loose as a tent. And by "part of the spec" I mean "all your assets will be forcefully nationalized the second you or a parent company of yours becomes less than X% European owned", where X is well above 50. [1] https://www.dutchnews.nl/2025/11/dutch-looking-into-consequences-of-digid-takeover-by-us-firm/ https://www.dutchnews.nl/2025/11/dutch-looking-into-conseque...
    - Balinares 11mo ago
      As a rule of thumb, I wouldn't assume that any scenario you came up with on the spot was overlooked by an agency whose job it is to not overlook complex scenarios, let alone trivially simple ones. To start with... states can and will absolutely block the sale of strategic national companies to foreign actors. But I'm sure you knew that.
      - deaux 10mo ago
        The link shows that this isn't something I've come up with on the spot, it's literally happening today, and it's not being blocked. They can, yet will not, because scared of the US.
- vander_elst 11mo ago
  How I can imagine it works: Amazon only provides the packaged software, the infra and the ops are officially driven by a 100% European company. AWS probably provides support, but they don't have the encryption keys not any access to the installation.
- Havoc 11mo ago
  The Microsoft effort was not terrible - run by EU nationals etc but yeah calling it sovereign is optimistic.
p2detar 11mo ago
Is this new? Microsoft already offer that and I think already for quite a while.

by t0mas88 11mo ago

saubeidl 11mo ago

As long as there's any American ownership in the chain, this is not to be trusted. I'm assuming AWS wouldn't fully divest from this European business unit and split it off as a completely separate entity?

hedora 11mo ago
The US CLOUD Act says that if Amazon has the technical ability to access those machines, they must do so if the US government asks them to. So, unless it’s a separate legal entity, and also shares no authentication, software deployment, or related infrastructure with the US part of Amazon, it’s either not providing sovereignty or is being offered in violation of US law. It’s unclear to me if they’d have to comply with requests to (for example) backdoor their IAM service backend and push the binaries to Europe, or not. (I’m not a lawyer.)

kenjackson 11mo ago

And it certainly would not survive strong political pressure from the EU and US governments. Local governments still can be adversely impacted.

ttkari 11mo ago

I'm not sure I understand how an American company would be able to provide any service that could be "sovereign European".

arlcode 11mo ago
In theory Amazon could license the stack to a European Operator while having no operative access themselves. I think this is already done in some cases altough the political reliability has not yet been tested.
- WJW 11mo ago
  I guess the question then becomes: what happens if some future US government pressures Amazon to revoke the license. Unless and until there's a good answer to that, it'd still be better to develop something locally.
- nemomarx 11mo ago
  They must have something like this for China, right?
  - cmckn 11mo ago
    Sort of. AWS operates the China regions more or less like any other region, with oversight by the Chinese holding companies. The EUSC will be more restricted, similar to GovCloud. Only EU citizens can access/operate it. Specific example: an alarm fires for your service. If it’s in China, anyone on the team can go look at the logs. If it’s in GovCloud, only teammates who are American can look at the logs. In the EUSC, only Europeans can.
- Muromec 11mo ago
  If I run your software, you can have no operational control, but you can sneak a root kit or some kind of stuff I dont want to have there
Balinares 11mo ago
By providing the software to be installed in clusters owned and operated by European companies. The sovereign cloud spec designed by the folks at France's ANSSI agency is tight.
- deaux 11mo ago
  Whoops, the European company just got bought out by a US entity. Tough luck! [1] Is this part of the spec? If not, it's as loose as a tent. And by "part of the spec" I mean "all your assets will be forcefully nationalized the second you or a parent company of yours becomes less than X% European owned", where X is well above 50. [1] https://www.dutchnews.nl/2025/11/dutch-looking-into-consequences-of-digid-takeover-by-us-firm/ https://www.dutchnews.nl/2025/11/dutch-looking-into-conseque...
  - Balinares 11mo ago
    As a rule of thumb, I wouldn't assume that any scenario you came up with on the spot was overlooked by an agency whose job it is to not overlook complex scenarios, let alone trivially simple ones. To start with... states can and will absolutely block the sale of strategic national companies to foreign actors. But I'm sure you knew that.
    - deaux 10mo ago
      The link shows that this isn't something I've come up with on the spot, it's literally happening today, and it's not being blocked. They can, yet will not, because scared of the US.
vander_elst 11mo ago
How I can imagine it works: Amazon only provides the packaged software, the infra and the ops are officially driven by a 100% European company. AWS probably provides support, but they don't have the encryption keys not any access to the installation.
Havoc 11mo ago
The Microsoft effort was not terrible - run by EU nationals etc but yeah calling it sovereign is optimistic.

p2detar 11mo ago

Is this new? Microsoft already offer that and I think already for quite a while.