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Every data centre is a U.S. military base
- almosthere 9mo ago[flagged]
- rcbdev 9mo agoAre you, by any chance, a US-American?
- hackable_sand 9mo agoIt is in fact, a bot-citizen
- bflesch 9mo ago[flagged]
- istanbulbebesi 9mo agoCutting ties with US tech companies is one of the most important things the rest of us need to do these days.
- causalmodels 9mo agoThe 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.
- jsiepkes 9mo agoThere 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.
- wickedsight 9mo ago> 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.
- phi0 9mo agoWhen 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.
- tomjen3 9mo agoAWS, etc has datacenters in the EU. Microsoft relies on the EUs courts to recognise their property rights.
- a_humean 9mo agoIf 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.
- elric 9mo agoSo 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?
- baq 9mo agoThe folks who won those 80 years and remember what it took and what was before are all but gone now. Not a coincidence.
- formerly_proven 9mo ago"weak men create hard times" is actually somewhat correct, just not in the way maga thinks.
- globalnode 9mo agothe 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?
- baq 9mo agoGlobal 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.
- ajjahs 9mo ago[dead]
- cicko 9mo agoYes!
- RobotToaster 9mo ago>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.
- cpursley 9mo agoI'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.
- Etheryte 9mo agoIsn't this literally what the Digital Euro project is? These things take time and effort, they've been working on it since 2021 iirc.
- tomjen3 9mo agoAnyone 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.
- baq 9mo agoExpect 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.
- cpursley 9mo agoGood 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.
- hairofadog 9mo agoI've been amazed that US CEOs haven't pushed back harder on the administration due to the threat of the rest of the world leaving US services like these. I know the goverment has a lot of power over even the largest companies, but these companies also have power, and moving into a world in which AWS, Apple, Microsoft, and Google can only operate in the US, and maybe with the Saudis, isn't going to be good for shareholders. They bent a knee to this administration so fast. I'm curious to see if there will be an equally fast pivot in the other direction when Trump starts showing holes in his armor. There will come a time when corporate greed no longer points in the direction of Trumpism.
- justinclift 9mo agoWonder if the Greenland debate and Trump's threats to impose Tariffs on the countries not in favour of the US getting it, will be the straw that breaks the camels' back for any EU countries? ie time to move their gov infrastructure way the hell out of US tech company hands
- Revolution1120 9mo ago[dead]