4 ms·
AWS European Sovereign Cloud
- ironbound 9mo agoEU does not seem happy about outsource tech platforms https://cybernews.com/news/europe-internet-control-sovereignty-united-states/ https://cybernews.com/news/europe-internet-control-sovereign...
- electronsoup 9mo agoHow effective would this setup be if the parent company in the US is ordered to order the EU subsidiary to do something not in the interests of the EU?
- crazygringo 9mo agoIf it breaks the law in the EU, then the European employees staffing the data center refuse, because they don't want to go to jail or pay fines. That's the entire point of setting it up like this. Think of it like fast-food franchises. They have to sell the same food and use the same branding and charge the same prices. But if McDonald's tells you to start selling cocaine on the side, you tell them nope, that's not in the contract and I don't feel like going to prison.
- nikeee 9mo agoWhat if the software is developed and potentially backdoored in the US and deployed by the EU team in the sovereign region? Or did they rewrite the entire AWS stack?
- crazygringo 9mo agoI don't think there are any protections against that. On the other hand, you'd have to ask yourself how realistic it is that the US is forcing Amazon to secretly backdoor its own software for US spying abroad? I can't give an answer on that one, you'll have to form your own opinion. I imagine that if a back door were ever discovered, AWS's reputation would tank so hard that a lot of companies would probably never do business with it again.
- blibble 9mo ago> how realistic it is that the US is forcing Amazon to secretly backdoor its own software for US spying abroad? probably 100%?
- recursivecaveat 9mo agoOver 100%, in that I'm sure multiple independent groups are working on it all the time. The spooks regularly place actual agents in foreign governments (the Germans found a big nest of them and nothing much happened in the end). There's no way it would be challenging for them to find an employee willing to cash a giant cheque in exchange for quietly granting their own government access.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- bflesch 9mo agoMaybe you missed when Microsoft blocked the email account of the chief prosecutor of the international court of justice: https://www.heise.de/en/news/Criminal-Court-Microsoft-s-email-block-a-wake-up-call-for-digital-sovereignty-10387383.html https://www.heise.de/en/news/Criminal-Court-Microsoft-s-emai... Of course these services are backdoored.
- senderista 9mo agoHow is that a “backdoor”? It was just an (outrageous) administrative decision.
- trebligdivad 9mo agoIf the EU employees can look around the code, it would then get quite interesting if they were to point out a backdoor. which they would of course raise with an EU based CERT. In a way that protects US customers as well having a set that can't be stopped from doing that.
- jojobas 9mo agoAssuming EU employees get to see the sources, let alone own their building process.
- trebligdivad 9mo agoTrue, and there's probably a lot of it; still I think they already have some EU devs, but I guess only on some things.
- ironbound 9mo agoThere was a Microsoft email server legal case for Ireland that didn't go well https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Corp._v._United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Corp._v._United_Stat...
- trebligdivad 9mo agoYeh I was curious how it was different - I thought MS did a similar thing of getting T-mobile to operate it's EU cloud.
- Havoc 9mo agoIt's better than nothing but I'd say it's naive to believe this will hold if US gov genuinely leans on AWS US HQ.
- senderista 9mo agoThe regime can blackmail Amazon just by threatening their government contracts (as well as other Bezos businesses like Blue Origin).
- blibble 9mo ago> The AWS European Sovereign Cloud is the only fully-featured, independently operated sovereign cloud, backed by strong technical controls, sovereign assurances and legal protections. independently OPERATED, not independently owned therefore: still under the jurisdiction of the US regime
- embedding-shape 9mo agoAlso "legal protections" provided by the US regime, for what that exactly entails anymore I'm not sure, probably depends on the situation.
- colechristensen 9mo agoCongress as it is are cowards incapable of protecting the law, it is merely a regime based law until Congress can prove and rebuild trust that it has a backbone.
- eCa 9mo ago> still under the jurisdiction of the US regime Exactly, this seem pointless for people serious about staying away from US owned data stores. I know first hand of EU based businesses that left AWS (and all other US owned services) before 2020 due to customer (B2B) demand which in turn was due to the Cloud Act[1], and for whom it today would be completely untenable to return. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act
- bee_rider 9mo agoWait, how does this work? If it is owned by a US company but operated by people inside the EU, I would expect the actual laws in effect to be the EU ones. I mean, that’s who can actually send police to stomp around and physically take the hard drives if they really want to. The US can of course command the US owners to instruct their EU based employees to do something illegal in the EU, but if your boss tells you do do something illegal, you are still breaking the law if you do it…
- voidfunc 9mo agoSovereign-by-design but still runs a software stack that is largely written and maintained by a US staff... All of these isolation sovereignty iniatives are window dressing to the bigger problem that the EU and other countries are massively dependent on proprietaey US-centric software stacks.
- cperciva 9mo agoSovereign-by-design but still runs a software stack that is largely written and maintained by a US staff... Not as much as you might think. The most important component -- Nitro -- basically runs out of Germany.
- petcat 9mo agoThe AWS EC2 virtualization team invented and maintains the Nitro system. And that team is overwhelmingly based in Seattle, WA USA.
- cperciva 9mo agoYou sure about that? Maybe it's just a coincidence but the low-level people I've talked to are almost never based in Seattle.
- mike_d 9mo agoYou mean the same Germany that uses its domestic access to the bargain basement cloud providers like Hetzner and Contabo to de-anonymize Tor users for international law enforcement? Or the Germany that bought Crypto AG along with the CIA to backdoor encryption hardware?
- snihalani 9mo agoWhy is this valuable?
- ironbound 9mo agoGovernment contracts
- x86cherry 9mo agoCritical infrastructure. The US has a history of forcing their way into many parts of it [1] and we know they use it for leverage whenever it's suitable. Furthermore, if you control the information flow of a system, then decision making based on that information becomes dependent on those who control it. [1] https://www.radiofrance.fr/franceculture/guerre-economique-comment-les-etats-unis-font-la-loi-5345074 https://www.radiofrance.fr/franceculture/guerre-economique-c...
- bflesch 9mo agoIf push comes to shove, these services can and will be weaponized against EU interests. They are bugged and backdoored to the brim. If we see a risk in chinese-made electrical buses which can potentially be remotely shut down by an integrated sim card, then using AWS should be a no go in the current political climate - no matter how much lipstick they put on that pig. Last week, after receiving a fine in Italy, the Cloudflare CEO demonstrated that US tech leadership are extremely emotionally volatile and can lash out in all directions, threatening unrelated parties with shutdown of service. This is in line with Peter "anti christ" Thiel and Elon "nazi salute" Musk going off the rails. Maybe it is a drug-induced psychosis from their annual gathering in the desert where US tech workers consume illegal substances, I don't know. What if someone scratches Bezos' yacht by accident and then he threatens to shut down the DC? Or he might get upset about a CO2 surcharge when refueling his private jet? Can we really take these risks?
- janfoeh 9mo agoWe cannot, no. A break break, as clean and hard as can be under the circumstances is required. There will be gnashing of the teeth, doomsaying galore, a few actual minor catastrophes... but we will be okay. Not just okay, but we will be better off for it. The Internet will be better off for it, because the inescapable side effect will be at least a bit of re-decentralization. Any European equivalent replacing what is lost will be better. Not because we have better coders or are even better people, mind you - far from it. It will be better because we will have the gift of hindsight; any replacement for web-based productivity services, search engines or social media springing up will be the product of a society and legislative system which has caught up at least in some sense to technological progress and which has been there, done that. The actual web two point oh. So let's pull out as many plugs as we can. It'll hurt for a bit, but not only is it without alternative - it'll be fresh, it'll be fun and it'll be good in the end. Let's get to work.
- zmgsabst 9mo agoItaly’s demand was completely unreasonable and CloudFlare threatened to end business in Italy, including informing impacted partners. People talking about EU sovereignty and US hegemony then crying Italy isn’t allowed to dictate terms globally are showing they’re not people with principles — they’re just losers who would be every bit as hegemonic as the US, they just lack the power to be and are publicly crying about it.
- margorczynski 9mo agoIf I'm not mistaken the US (e.g. intelligence agencies) can still require them to provide client data and respect US sanctions? AWS should be ditched altogether and something Europe based chosen even if it requires investment.
- bflesch 9mo agoYes, 100%. They are fully compromised and an extension of US dominance. They can and will be weaponized against us. Same with Apple iCloud - one day Europeans will wake up and see that all their pictures have been deleted.
- ignoramous 9mo ago> one day Europeans will wake up and see that all their pictures have been deleted Possible this happens due to bugs in iCloud's GDPR implementation.
- bflesch 9mo agoI think it's more likely to happen if Tim Apple is refused entry into Berghain.
- boramalper 9mo agoMicrosoft admitted that it 'cannot guarantee' data sovereignty [0] "on June 18 before a [French] Senate inquiry into public procurement and the role it plays in European digital sovereignty" as the CLOUD Act "gives the US government authority to obtain digital data held by US-based tech corporations irrespective of whether that data is stored on servers at home or on foreign soil." It'd be great if they could clarify in their FAQ [1] if and how the CLOUD Act affects them. [0] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/25/microsoft_admits_it_cannot_guarantee/ https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/25/microsoft_admits_it_c... [1] https://aws.eu/faq/ https://aws.eu/faq/
- colechristensen 9mo agoIt would seem like the problem is one of the business layout and technical layout. Organize your business and your tech correctly and you can have an owned foreign subsidiary that can comply with local laws. But things would have to be quite separate.
- KK7NIL 9mo ago> Organize your business and your tech correctly and you can have an owned foreign subsidiary that can comply with local laws. I doubt it, a majority owned subsidiary is usually passed through for many legal purposes.
- to11mtm 9mo agoYep, to the extent that short (at best, cause they are potentially fallible) of a warrant canary getting snuffled it is very possible that a company could set up a subsidiary for appearances. Or, just buy bits of control interest outright (CryptoAG?)
- colechristensen 9mo agoIf there's one thing I believe in, it's the ability of the rich to fabricate creative corporate structures to evade the laws of a particular jurisdiction, especially with the aid of a second jurisdiction with interest in that evasion. Just make it complex enough to confuse juries beyond a prosecutors famously low appetite for losing and you'll be absolutely fine.
- 6r17 9mo agoYeah.... no thx. Hard voice against it and anything that comes from the US. There is tons of stuff that is genuinely cool, we got tons of stuff it would be barbaric to spit in the soup. However I'm pretty sure at this point that even the GAFAM are tired of this situation and that they don't care if giants their size show up in Europe. I'm genuinely thinking that what is also happening with AI (eg : free knowledge drop) is some kind of mechanism to allow those new giants to emerge in other places than US. Being the bright star that takes all the broken stuff on the head is not always the smartest move - at some point if you are blocking everything from showing up just because you exist, you are just slowly creating conflict against you - which i'm pretty sure the GAFAM are not interested in. I'm pretty sure there is a lot of power dynamic shift happening just now, AI bubble is just a tool that permit it -- the amount of startups that are allowed to launch on the simplest product are crazy -- tldr : creating incumbents then beating them is a display of power ; not caring is a display of power, having too much money is a display of power, being blocked due to political and social movement is weakening the velocity of these entities - i'm pretty sure atp that creating new giants in Europe would help them more than to continue in what appears like a colonialist endeavor - which they probably don't like either (they just want to market and win) Idk I might be extrapolating like a mad man
- DevelopingElk 9mo agoI worked on a team deploying a service to European Sovereign Cloud (ESC). Disclaimer - I am a low level SDE and all opinions are my own. AWS has set up proper boundaries between ESC and global AWS. Since I'm based out of the US I can't see anything going on in ECS even in the service we develop. To fix an issue there we have to play telephone with an engineer in ESC where they give us a summary of the issue or debug it on their own. All data is really 100% staying within ESC. My guess is that ESC will be less reliable than other regions, at least for about a year. The isolation really slows down debugging issues. Problems that would be fixed in a day or two can take a month. The engineers in ESC don't have the same level of knowledge about systems as the teams owning them. The teething issues will eventually resolve, but new features will be delayed within the region.
- jojobas 9mo agoSure, but what really prevents >To fix an issue there we have to play telephone with an engineer in ESC where they give us a all the data we need or get fired. ?
- JacoboJacobi 9mo agoStill it sounds like it would be the optimal choice for a redundancy zone in some senses since its probably not going to have any accidental dependency on us-east-1.
- donavanm 9mo agoIf youre a current AMZN employee you may want to delete or heavily edit this post. Go check your employers “social media policy.” Historically commenting on operational or internal aspects without PR approval was prohibited.
- meeshmuesh 9mo agoWhile it’s good to remain anonymous to avoid reprisals , once that’s done no one should care about upsetting their employer in an open forum. Despite what a corporation says they don’t own you, your thoughts or your voice.
- sega_sai 9mo agoI was actually surprised to see this: "As we make this change, we will continue to work as a blended team of EU residents and EU citizens, with all personnel working from EU locations, before gradually completing our transition to EU citizen operations for the AWS European Sovereign Cloud." This looks like a more serious attempt to make it independent of US meddling. It will not protect it fully, but still.
- Kwpolska 9mo agoEC2 pricing: https://aws.eu/ec2/pricing/on-demand/ https://aws.eu/ec2/pricing/on-demand/ The prices for the only region in Germany are very similar to the prices in eu-west-1 (Frankfurt), except in € instead of $, so that’s basically a 16% markup by today's exchange rate. Also, AMD CPUs appear to be completely missing.
- OhioMan2943 9mo agoThis is about as grifty and mckinseyian as the AI Data Centres in space hype.
- mike_d 9mo agoI would love to see a US specific version of this as well. Something similar to GovCloud with the same security controls and employee vetting but accessible to commercial customers.
- auxiliarymoose 9mo agoAWS GovCloud is accessible to commercial customers.
- wewewedxfgdf 9mo ago"AWS" and "European Sovereign" - that's a contradiction in terms. Just stop using clouds run your own computers.
- Marciplan 9mo agoStackIT, by Lidl, is “our” only chance at a European Sovereign Cloud: https://stackit.com/en https://stackit.com/en (but I hope Mistral gives it a shot)
- rich_sasha 9mo agoIn other news, wolves have set up a vegan restaurant for sheep. The chefs have been specially instructed not to eat their guests, the grass is 100% organic. Mint sauce is kept well out of sight. The heavy duty locks on the doors will definitely not be used and the red stains are from beetroot. Definitely beetroot. Seriously though, what is stopping Europeans to "just build their own"? EU could provide some form of financing - cheap loans, tax breaks, favourable regulation etc. I know AWS is a million things, not just VMs, but is building a small cloud provider and scaling from there really that hard? Maybe I'm being super naive - ELI5 please?
- kassner 9mo agoThere are some EU cloud providers that try (OVH, Scaleway, Hetzner, Upcloud, Evroc), but AWS is a product 20+ years in the making and only in the last 5 that people are really opening their eyes to the sovereignty problem. And even if those providers did have the money and regulation breaks AWS had, today is a much different market than the one AWS grew up with, in which there wasn’t an incumbent and they were leading the market. Nowadays everyone has to be at least similar to AWS for people to consider it, and I feel sovereignty alone is not enough. In other words: making a cloud provider isn’t that difficult, making a cloud provider that people will use INSTEAD OF AWS is an exponentially harder problem.
- brunkerhart 9mo agoThis discussion presumes the laws would be obeyed, but we see the laws being openly bended by nations wanting to. For a small/medium business in EU ESC is an overkill. Their data has no strategic value. Just use whatever infrastructure you want. For any large company working at global level, owning cutting edge technology ESC is not a protection. US just stolen a president of foreign country, do you really believe they would hesitate to do this with anybody else if they want?
- senderista 9mo agoThe rule of law no longer exists in the US. The regime is bragging that an officer who killed a woman on camera won’t even be investigated. And even if there were an investigation or even a criminal conviction, it would just be voided using the executive pardon power. Everyone committing federal crimes on behalf of the regime has de facto absolute immunity for this reason.
- pu_pe 9mo agoThis move had a chance to work a couple of years ago, when European companies were seeking CYA compliance in regards to GDPR. The tone has now clearly shifted to a decoupling from American tech. My prediction is that American cloud providers will lag behind truly European alternatives this year.
- yegle 9mo agoFrom what I understand, these services are not open to public and mostly for government and critical infrastructure services. Google Cloud also has the same product but with less "Google Cloud" branding: S3NS |Thales x Google Cloud targeting a trusted cloud https://www.s3ns.io/en https://www.s3ns.io/en
- senderista 9mo agoIf Airbus could beat Boeing, it should be possible for an EU consortium to beat AWS, if they can execute well (big if).