13 ms·
US orders diplomats to fight data sovereignty initiatives
- lm28469 8mo agoThe fall of the american empire: speedrun any %. The past 5 and next 5 years will be taught in history books longer than ww2 will
- penguin_booze 8mo agoTime for an nth amendment to introduce shame to the Konstityushon?
- ahartmetz 8mo agoStep 1: Piss away soft power built over the last century or so Step 2: Ask for favors Step 3: Profit?
- jmclnx 8mo agoGood luck with that. I hope the EU is not stupid enough to stop this initiative. This would not be happening if it was not for the US dummy in chief. The EU was looking to do this for a while, but where taking its time until recent events.
- blibble 8mo agothey won't stop it the US was really, really foolish to crystalise the risk by locking out those judges prior to that it was just a theoretical people were yelling about now it's real, and there's a continent of hungry businesses lobbying for resources to be diverted domestically, instead of being sent to the US and that's the EU's bread and butter
- joe_mamba 8mo ago>the US was really, really foolish to crystalise the risk by locking out those judges Do you think the Trump admin thinks about the consequences of their decisions for more than 5 minutes into the future? They're all about making a quick buck via scams, insider trading and rug pulls, future consequences be damned. Sometimes they make a good call when they listen to what their corporate lobbyists say.
- Beretta_Vexee 8mo agoHalf of the UN agencies are relocating all over the world. The financial and accounting departments are moving thousands of people to Madrid and Bonn. They will not be coming back soon.
- jmclnx 8mo agoI say this is 60/40 Trump. For years I have heard the UN Building in NYC is in real bad shape. I have not heard of any large repairs happening of this time.
- Beretta_Vexee 8mo agoIt's true, the cost of living in NYC also plays a role. It has become very expensive for many countries to send staff there as expatriates.
- croisillon 8mo agothis is hilarious, just last week i heard american tourists complaining that "they" were subisidzing Europe's lazy lifestyle
- maest 8mo agoReminds me of the "US high healthcare costs are subsidising EU cheap healthcare". The rough argument was: pharma companies need big payoffs when they discover a new drug and, due to structural characteristics of the US market, that's where they can get the highest prices. So pharmas make a large chunk of their profits in the US and then sell drugs more cheaply in e.g. Europe. Fairly weak and incomplete argument [1], but I've seen this pushed seriously by people in public debates in the US. [1] - a couple of obvious issues with this argument are: 1. why is it Europe's fault that the US has structural issues that prevent it from negotiating drug proces as a united front? 2. healthcare costs are largely inflated by admin costs in the US. Drugs can be expensive too, sure, but this argument ignores the big cost intrinsic to the insane insurance and billing system prevalent in the US.
- munk-a 8mo agoPharma companies want to make money - they'll charge what the market can bear up to what they're allowed to. Some countries cap this - others don't. In the US the government actually subsidizes medication costs in a graduated manner that allows the price point to be set much higher than a natural market would allow - there are also tools like manufacturer rebates or drug trial cards that can also subsidize the price if you've got more time than money and are willing to jump through the various hoops.
- braingravy 8mo agoSo, the premise is high drug costs in the US subsidize drug prices in the EU. Presumably this conclusion was arrived at because pharma companies sell drugs at a higher cost in the US than they do in EU, Canada, or anywhere else. Therefore elevating profits in the US relative to profit margins in other nations. (Note: they reportedly use the profit to develop new drugs, so this is where the subsidization comes into play, as higher profit markets will drive increased revenue and future drug development.) And your argument against the premise is: 1. The EU is not at fault, and 2. Drugs cost more in the US because of the poor healthcare system. Argument 1 does not attack the premise: Undoubtedly the EU is not at fault, the EU does not set drug prices in the US. Pharma companies do, within the context of the US economy, of course. The premise does not assign fault, it’s an assessment of where profit comes from. Argument 2 is more direct in addressing the premise, but still misses the point: you might be right, mostly right, or you could be wrong. I lean toward agreeing with the point you made (US healthcare system sucks), it doesn’t address the profit differential across different nations. So, what about the premise is weak and incomplete? Pharma shareholders want profit, and the US supplies that at a greater rate than the EU (likely due to the regulatory environment). They’ll take a lower profit margin vs. no profit at all, so they operate accordingly. None of that goes against the premise that the extra profit from the US market is subsidizing the research costs for drug products that enter the EU market.
- forinti 8mo agoHow can you be so confrontational and still want people to give you business and data? I really don't envy the diplomats' job at the moment.
- ulfw 8mo agoMost 'diplomats' of the new USA are just grifters like Witkoff or Kushner. Real estate people cosplaying diplomats. The US as the world has known it is gone https://apnews.com/article/france-us-ambassador-kushner-far-right-0e10e3ec131969b1dea25a61cf0b00bc https://apnews.com/article/france-us-ambassador-kushner-far-...
- pjc50 8mo agoBy no means exclusive to the US (e.g. Peter Mandelson).
- lostlogin 8mo agoWe do a mini version of that corruption here in New Zealand too. Owen Glen was a donor who got a diplomatic posting to Monaco. https://www.odt.co.nz/news/politics/key-concerned-murkiness-donation-scandal https://www.odt.co.nz/news/politics/key-concerned-murkiness-...
- ragall 8mo agoDefinitely exclusive to the US due to the degree to which US presidents have been doing it.
- Freak_NL 8mo agoBelgium too: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/feb/18/belgium-investigation-jewish-men-diplomatic-row-us-ambassador https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/feb/18/belgium-invest... And of course Joe Popolo in the Netherlands: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/nov/11/displays-black-soldiers-african-american-margraten-cemetery-netherlands https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/nov/11/displays-black... (He later doubled down on the decision to erase any mention of the racial segregation black US soldiers were submitted to while serving in the army during WWII.)
- esafak 8mo agoI wonder if he would go so far as to withhold access to US tech to this end.
- amarant 8mo agoHe wouldn't dare, the coward! ;)
- Tyrubias 8mo agoI imagine if the current administration does, Europe could retaliate by withholding ASML’s tech or even doing a mass sell off of US treasuries. Europe is admittedly not in a position of strength compared to the US, but there are still a lot of levers they can pull.
- LunaSea 8mo agoThe EU could also cut US access to clearing houses (Clearstream / EuroClear) or the SWIFT payment system.
- mamonster 8mo ago>The EU could also cut US access to clearing houses (Clearstream / EuroClear) or the SWIFT payment system. Right, so that the USA would cut us from DTCC? Eu finance sector is MUCH more dependent on access to US markets than the other way around.
- kazen44 8mo agois it though? for everything inside the EU, i highly doubt it is. For extraterritioral trade. The EU is large enough to trade with other countries in euros instead of dollars.
- dataking 8mo ago> In 1997, ASML began studying a shift to using extreme ultraviolet and in 1999 joined a consortium, including Intel and two other U.S. chipmakers, in order to exploit fundamental research conducted by the US Department of Energy. Because the Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) it operates under is funded by the US government, licensing must be approved by Congress. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASML_Holding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASML_Holding
- SilverElfin 8mo agoWhy are US tech stocks not falling yet due to the trend of countries decoupling?
- chalupa-supreme 8mo agoBecause the market does not reflect reality.
- deepsquirrelnet 8mo agoThe market reflects reality. The new reality is that the people who are invested apparently don't need liquidity, and bad news doesn't really matter.
- delfinom 8mo ago>that the people who are invested apparently don't need liquidity The rich and ultra rich don't need liquidity, they have our 401k plans for that.
- munk-a 8mo agoThe rich and ultra rich tend to borrow against their investments rather than spending their own money. As long as the number continues to go up it's basically a free money pipe for everyone over a certain level of wealth.
- righthand 8mo agoVoting with your wallet doesn’t work when the corpo is big enough to buy everyone off.
- hypeatei 8mo agoWhat are you talking about? There's been a ~18% drop in tech sector this past month (see: IGV) I don't know if it's due to "decoupling" but there has been some selling recently.
- Tyrubias 8mo agoI can’t imagine how any country would think the US is trustworthy enough to be the place where everyone stores their data. If companies cannot comply with data sovereignty laws then they shouldn’t exist at all. Personally, even as a US citizen, I’m hoping tech companies in Europe and Asia become independent enough to no longer be beholden to US interests. It’s clear that the era where any one country has global hegemony should end.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 8mo agoI'm a US citizen and I hope more of the world decouples because I think a lot of our issues are due to a lack of competition.
- yndoendo 8mo agoEven as a US citizen ... I have started to decouple from US business that hold my data.
- toomuchtodo 8mo agoSame. I don't trust the US as much as the rest of the world does not trust them. They want control with little to offer for it. My data and compute is safer offshore at this time.
- thegreatpeter 8mo ago
- krunck 8mo agoThat the US doesn't like it is the best justification for it.
- cs702 8mo agoSigh. Anecdotally, more Europeans no longer want their governments to rely on software and data controlled by US companies, because they no longer trust the US to act as a reliable ally, defending the same values. Whether you agree or disagree with these concerns, they are valid for many Europeans. In an ironic twist of fate, the US government's actions could end up causing long-term damage to US tech companies. This is all based on anecdotal evidence, so I could be wrong, but I have to call it like I see it. See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47149701 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47149701
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- munk-a 8mo agoAt the end of the day it isn't US tech companies that'd suffer (outside some minor short term pain) it's the US. If being in America is bad for business those companies (which already exist multi-nationally in most cases) will just pack up their US holdings.
- _jplc 8mo ago[flagged]
- roger110 8mo agoSure if they can pull it off, but how can they do this without scaring away all future customers?
- sega_sai 8mo agoThat is useful information to pursue data sovereignty even more.
- yborg 8mo agoThis just accelerates the Balkanization of the Internet, which already is segregated by China and Russia. Maybe it was inevitable. Corporations benefit the most from open access and as they have demonstrated with unrestricted AI scraping they obey no morality, ethics, or law they are not compelled to by force.
- alephnerd 8mo agoThis has already been on the table for over 6 years now - Stratechery (a tech blog most decisionmakers read) posited the Four Internet theory all the way back in 2020 [0] [0] - https://stratechery.com/2020/india-jio-and-the-four-internets/ https://stratechery.com/2020/india-jio-and-the-four-internet...
- otikik 8mo ago> Experts say the move signals the Trump administration is reverting to a more confrontational approach Oh. So, like, going from school bully to abusive parent?
- surgical_fire 8mo ago> The cable said the Trump administration was pushing for "a more assertive international data policy" and that diplomats should "counter unnecessarily burdensome regulations, such as data localization mandates." For any government in Europe, it should be extremely pressing to untangle itself as quickly as possible from US-based companies as suppliers. But to be frank, even regulations should be unnecessary here. Private businesses in Europe (and elsewhere) should consider it an existential threat to depend on cloud services from the US. We are all one executive order away from having access cut.
- embedding-shape 8mo ago> Private businesses in Europe (and elsewhere) should consider it an existential threat to depend on cloud services from the US They do already, everyone except the ones truly deep into the US ecosystem already have plans or are making plans for how to get out from US infrastructure in 2026.
- surgical_fire 8mo agoI hope you are right. It doesn't matter if the decision is illegal. The time it would take to have it "fixed" could cause already immeasurable damage.
- deaux 8mo agoMisleading title by Reuters. The title should be "US orders diplomats to fight _EU_ data sovereignty initiatives". Why? Because the US is far too pussy to fight the other countries that have such initiatives - some of them reaching further than the EU's - knowing that unlike the EU those countries are definitely not going to take their shit. I can tell you that if the US says to Japan or Korea, just to name two such examples, "stop enacting privacy/sovereignty laws that interfere with US big tech or we tariff you" , there's absolutely zero chance they're going to be listened to and the only thing it will do is make people hate the US.
- swiftcoder 8mo agoI don't think it's going to be anymore successful in the EU, honestly. The last couple of years have EU politicians throughly over their shit, and it's unlikely many concessions to US BigTech can be bought without serious reciprocity on the table (for example, a major expansion of US military aid to Ukraine)
- SpicyLemonZest 8mo agoI don't think it's right to say "privacy/sovereignty". As gestured towards in the source article, Japan and Korea have joined the US's preferred data privacy forum https://www.globalcbpr.org/ https://www.globalcbpr.org/. Data sovereignty is not a common idea outside the EU, and AFAIK even the current American government doesn't object to US citizens' data being stored in foreign servers under foreign jurisdiction.
- deaux 8mo agoData sovereignty is almost the default in Korea and common in Japan. It has been a common idea there for decades, in fact there are laws about it. The big corps there were plenty familiar with the CLOUD Act and such many years ago when 99.9% of EU corps couldn't give less of a shit. Percentages are completely different. Joining of a forum is meaningless in itself, the actual actions of the governments and businesses in their usage vs abstinence of US clouds is ehat matters.
- 8mo ago
- orwin 8mo agoWe are pivoting out of a huge number of US services at my job. I think windows, Google, PaloAltoNetworks and Aws will be the last we leave, but infoblox is out next year (that's part of my job right now), and old Cisco hardware will stop being replaced by new Cisco hardware in 6 months.
- unethical_ban 8mo agoPalo is starting to require telemetry that sends realtime data on rulebase and hitcount from every firewall to increase support effectiveness.
- le-mark 8mo agoYou mean sent to palo with no opt out? That’s hard to believe.
- unethical_ban 8mo agoI may have heard something different than what I can find in the docs right now. It wouldn't surprise me though.
- ykurtov 8mo agoAre you replacing Cisco with Ericsson?
- recursivedoubts 8mo agoare we the baddies?
- midnighthollowc 8mo agoGiven the socio-political climate, it's really bonkers to go bashing every ally the US has had since WW2 and then in the other hand go "No No No, trust only us with your data" What could go wrong?
- flr03 8mo agoIf it's so cumbersome why don't US companies pull out the EU market? bet they make money anyway don't they
- Zoadian 8mo agotime to ban US tech companies
- Beretta_Vexee 8mo agoIt is incredibly stupid and counterproductive to make this kind of statement publicly. Most of the GAFAM companies are doing their utmost to try to reassure their European customers with a facade of sovereignty. All these efforts will come to nothing. Amazon sovereign cloud https://aws.eu/fr/ https://aws.eu/fr/ Azure sovereign https://www.microsoft.com/fr-fr/sovereignty https://www.microsoft.com/fr-fr/sovereignty Oracle soverign https://www.oracle.com/fr/cloud/eu-sovereign-cloud/ https://www.oracle.com/fr/cloud/eu-sovereign-cloud/ IBM https://www.ibm.com/think/topics/sovereign-cloud https://www.ibm.com/think/topics/sovereign-cloud ...
- porknbeans00 8mo agoit doesn't mean anything after Microsoft turned over eu government leaders emails to the US. the damage is done. trump fanning the flames and then using ham fisted threats that frankly carry no weight now... are just making it worse. the money's already been allocated. the results are inevitable.
- Beretta_Vexee 8mo agoSorry, I wasn't clear. I don't think these initiatives really protect Europeans. Anton Carniau, a Microsoft executive, testified before the French Parliament that ‘as a last resort, if we are forced to, we must transmit the data’, ‘You cannot guarantee that data entrusted to UGAP will never be transmitted to the US authorities without the explicit consent of the French authorities’. I just wanted to say that cloud companies were doing a better job of ensuring the collection of European data than Trump's diplomacy.
- speedgoose 8mo agoI bet it’s too late now. They will need very very persuasive arguments to kill all the initiatives, and while they may convince some governments and lobbying groups, I doubt they will manage to convince every IT responsible.
- porknbeans00 8mo agoI can't think of a worse way to approach this.
- tristor 8mo agoGreat, that means its working. I hope every single country in the world builds competent IT infrastructure. Having more competition will help us to develop more and better technology and have more alternatives, and overall increase the quality and resilience of technology globally. The current effective monopsy of US cloud providers has caused an unnecessary hard convergence that prevents innovation, is dangerous to privacy and security, and unnecessarily hinders national sovereignty.
- mark_l_watson 8mo ago>> signed by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the agency said such laws would "disrupt global data flows, increase costs and cybersecurity risks, limit Artificial Intelligence (AI) and cloud services, and expand government control in ways that can undermine civil liberties and enable censorship." Such fine bullshit, of the highest quality. Distributing infrastructure may slightly reduce efficiency but seems like a good idea for so many reasons: national pride, increased security, more resilience to outside influences, etc.
- guywithahat 8mo agoTo be fair data sovereignty is usually just a way for governments to crack down on free speech/internet usage. They require all the company servers be in the country, then when they want to get information it's easier to get a warrant and threaten to take away all their servers. This is what they did in China/Russia and why they're doing it in the EU. It's also probably just good business for the US, but locking down on citizen freedom is the only real reason I've seen countries do it.
- aitacobell 8mo agoCould be a huge opening for Mistral and other European LLM providers who are okay at adhering to data sovereignty requirements
- JackDanMeier 8mo agoJust started exporting my data from google, guess this is the start of my uncoupling journey. Looking forward to changing my bank card to a EU alternative when its available. I don't feel like I have major usage issues, but maybe once I have decoupled from the big players, it will be clearer what I had gotten used to, for which there was another way to approach. The biggest pain points will probably be YouTube, Claude, Gemini and Google docs. The main issues will probably stem from collaborating with others, rather than my own personal usage.
- meffmadd 8mo agoAs an EU citizen I really hope we can gain some meaningful distance to the US asap. I hope my leaders feel the same. And if everything works out I think this will be great for the EU. This is really some sort of diplomatic Streisand effect. If the US would not have been so aggressive and just string us along they could have continued to feed us their slop indefinitely without us noticing.
- webdoodle 8mo agoIf these countries don't want Mockingbird coordinated regime change, they should ban all U.S. social media altogether.
- nova22033 8mo agoWhy is it wrong for US diplomats to advocate for a policy that clearly benefits US companies?
- Dumblydorr 8mo agoThe argument that it’s wrong would be because it’s bad for US consumers and those abroad too. There’s monopolization arguments, and there’s clear evidence of wrong-doing by these companies already. Even for US tech folks like HN, I doubt it would help us. US companies hoard their profits and power, so most people here would see no benefit. It’s yet another move to protect rich corporations and the corporate cronies of the most corrupt administration in US history.
- jzb 8mo agoThe article didn’t say it was wrong by my reading: it reported that it’s happening. That said: “benefits US companies” != good public policy for the US as a whole. It’s explicitly trying to interfere in how other countries govern themselves for the benefit of shareholders, not because it’s necessarily good policy. It’s also something we wouldn’t necessarily appreciate if done to us by our allies. If we have any actual allies left given all of Trump’s tariffs and threats against other countries.
- unethical_ban 8mo agoIn a normal, mature government, advocacy for your nation's products would be reasonable, and even then, would be controversial in this instance. "Do not protect your citizens' privacy, our citizens might get ideas". I think it's the assumptions that are baked in with the Trump regime. No subtlety, no mutual benefit, do as we say or else.
- lloda 8mo agoThe data sovereignty initiatives have been massively promoted by US policy. All this advocacy will achieve is make the US look even less trustworthy.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- babypuncher 8mo agoWe've been acting like a bully on the playground and now we are wondering why nobody else on the playground wants to play with us
- CrzyLngPwd 8mo agoIt increasingly feels like the US sees everyone as an enemy. Is it just the government that feels this way, or do the general population of the US feel like everyone else on the planet is an enemy?
- ThrowawayTestr 8mo agoThe general population doesn't even think about the rest of the world.
- pjc50 8mo agoThere's a substantial population of most countries who feel that everyone else on the planet is somehow inferior. Basic nationalism. One of the big achievements of the 20th century was reducing that so it might be below 50% in many places. However, that's not the same as "enemy". That's a more confrontational level. It's that particular branch of the far right which has recently risen to prominence. Ironically, in a lot of different countries.
- JamesLeonis 8mo agoIgnorance is a Weapon. Much of the US media is captured, so virtually nothing is fed back to us Americans. This also builds on top of US gunboat diplomacy going all the way back to the Monroe Doctrine. Keeping Americans ignorant allows our government and corporations a free hand in foreign affairs. The limited information allowed through is heavily sanitized and depicts US actions as the Good Guys attacked by the Evil X, which is why so many of our wars start with a ship "under attack" (USS Maine, RMS Lusitania, Gulf of Tonkin incident), or supposed WMDs (Iran, Iraq) A great example is the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. Ask any American and they can call up all kinds of minute details about the attack. However if you ask them about the US trade embargoes and blockades against Japan in the months leading up to the attack, the vast majority of Americans will draw a blank. That is on purpose. When stuff does break through to us, raw and unfiltered, most will react with horror. The self image of Americans as the Good Guys cracks. This happened in the Viet-Nam conflict when journalists had a free hand to show what was happening. Massive protests and a near mutiny by the US Army caused the Pentagon to get far more involved in how wars are presented in future conflicts. More recently Americans were so horrified when they witnessed the Israeli genocide after October 7th that it completely inverted both public sentiment and support for Israel, causing the forced sale of TikTok to Oracle and under US control to clamp down on the coverage.
- WarmWash 8mo agoEurope, if you want good tech businesses you need to create a tech business friendly environment. Banning US tech companies without creating (really) fertile grounds for business is just going to be shooting yourself in the foot. A replacement Google won't grow on a farm only fed worker/consumer fertilizer. It's almost diabolical that the only way Europe can get rid of the US, is to be more like the US.
- Gud 8mo agoThere is plenty of technology companies in Europe. It might not seem like it for the HN crowd, who mostly make a living stringing web libraries together.
- WarmWash 8mo agoApple is the same size as Europe's tech sector...just Apple. Of the top 50 tech companies on Earth, 3 are European and 30 are American.[1] Europe has a seriously lacking tech scene. The situation is borderline catastrophic.Even just this past week the OpenClaw guy ditched the EU for the US, calling out the EU's infertile business scene[2]. These are exactly the kind of people the EU should be clearing a path for and rolling out a rug. Wake up. [1]https://companiesmarketcap.com/tech/largest-tech-companies-by-market-cap/ https://companiesmarketcap.com/tech/largest-tech-companies-b... [2]https://www.businessinsider.com/openclaw-creator-slams-europe-regulations-move-us-openai-2026-2 https://www.businessinsider.com/openclaw-creator-slams-europ...
- gib444 8mo ago> calling out the EU's infertile business scene lol, it's always because of money. European tech startups often sell out to US investors because they offer more money. I've worked for companies that plodded along nicely privately owned, 20-50 employees, but they got "offers they couldn't refuse" from US companies and sold. Usually just buying us to stamp out potential competition/buying a customer base
- 8mo ago
- corygarms 8mo ago> (passing data sovereignty laws will) expand government control in ways that can undermine civil liberties and enable censorship This Roger Stone playbook shit is wild. This admin will piss on your leg and tell you it's raining.
- bradley13 8mo agoIt's not even just data stored on US servers. According to the CLOUD Act, any data stored by a US company, regardless of location, can be demanded by any authority in the US. No sovereign nation should use US companies for data storage or processing. Period. The attempts to shift to open source or non-US services are inevitably hobbled by US companies lobbying (read: bribing) politicians.
- tick_tock_tick 8mo ago> No sovereign nation should use US companies for data storage or processing. Period. So what is Europe supposed to do just stop pretending to be sovereign?
- roysting 8mo agoI am not sure if you meant to say what you said. By many measures Europe is in fact pretending to be sovereign. I think it is what they are attempting to do at the moment, "stop pretending to be sovereign" and actually BE sovereign. At least that seems to be the claimed attempt. If anyone is not sure why I would say that Europe is not sovereign, I will answer that question if you ask, but considering the current state of things and even just this discussion about data sovereignty and other related topics about using and deploying European technologies; I suspect most, if not all have a sense that Europe is in fact not sovereign... and that's without even pointing out huge elephants in the room like the 275 US military installations across Europe, and not even to touch on the fact that NATO is really just ** pulls curtain back ** SURPRISE! ... America, Europe Division.
- bulbar 8mo ago275 US military installations across Europe that are not prepared or equipped to fight a conflict against the nation's military that host them.
- dmoy 8mo agoI don't think GP was implying anything about US military fighting against Europe? Just that having another country's military all up inside your country is weird from a sovereignty perspective.
- jacquesm 8mo agoInterestingly, fighting it like this will only make the resolve stronger.
- bad_haircut72 8mo agoThe shame of all this is that now every country will have a worse, more expensive - but yes, soveriegn - solution, and the US makes less money through trade. Everyone loses, except people who want to hurt western economies.
- danny_codes 8mo agoOr maybe a better product that’s cheaper. Let’s not let hubris get the best of us. There’s nothing special about the US. I mean imagine being an Oracle customer and switching to a local supplier. Must be like emerging from a nightmare
- xyzal 8mo agoLack of regulation is US' advantage. Which has of course also its downsides, like an extractive healthcare system.
- danny_codes 8mo agoDo we? China seems a lot more down to setup heavy polluting industries than we are.
- rurp 8mo agoI think it's more likely we end up with a better software ecosystem. There will be plenty of companies for the foreseeable future willing to buy from either continent if one offering is substantially better. More competition will be better, as long as the US govt doesn't succeed in stifling it. Microsoft for example has had a de facto monopoly in many areas for quite some time and I doubt many would argue that their software quality has flourished in recent years.
- bad_haircut72 8mo agoThis is fair I guess. Assuming US tech got there by merit alone is probably a wrong assumption. Part of the "soft power" of getting to set the rules and whatnot. If nothing else this gives me a positive outlook so thankyou :D
- josefritzishere 8mo agoAmerica has lost trust internationally because this administration is amoral, chaotic and transactional. Trust is a very expensive commodity because it takes generations to build and can be destroyed in a moment. This is a fight that America is going to lose and we're all the worse off for it.
- gip 8mo agoSimilarly, in the 2000s, the US pushed back against the development of Galileo and preferred that Europe continue relying on GPS. That created tensions between the US and the EU. Fighting data sovereignty is a losing battle for the US: data are too strategic to outsource, even to allies. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_(satellite_navigation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_(satellite_navigation)
- kazen44 8mo agoalso, just like galileo, this seem to be the correct path for europe to take.
- erentz 8mo agoAt this stage tech companies should be pushing for very strong legislation that makes the US a bastion of data privacy to restore trust. But they are still pushing in the other direction.
- fatal94 8mo agoNo amount of legislation can stop subpoenas, wiretapping and other extrajudicial means the US has used for data surveillance since the inception of the Patriot Act. With data privacy increasingly becoming a critical matter of national security, strengthening data sovereignty laws and holding corporations accountable was always the way forward.
- CGamesPlay 8mo agoThis is untrue. Subpoenas, wiretapping, and other extrajudicial means can be stopped by legislation that bans them. You can't say in one breath that legislation that enables it (Patriot Act) cannot be undone by more legislation. There are many hurdles required to produce the required legislation, which may not even be broadly supported by the public, but it isn't correct to say "no amount of legislation can stop existing legislation".
- 8mo ago
- _slih 8mo agostandard kyc doesn't run on dedicated infrastructure isolated from the vendor's main cloudflare stack. you don't build a separate gcp cluster for routine age checks. the architecture tells you what the data is worth before anyone admits it.
- neilv 8mo agoWhat kind of success are countries having finding technical talent with the right savvy fighter mindset to sever the dependence on an aggressive and culturally-entrenched threat? (Even the ordinary open source world has a lot of intrigue to be careful of. And most developers still think nothing of pulling in a fleet of dependencies from PyPI/NPM/Cargo/etc. as well as third-party network services. Everyone is being taught in school to play to FAANG interview rituals, and many go on to a career style of performative sprints. HCI is almost lost as a field to UX euphemism. Almost no one can deploy a system that won't be compromised, and most don't even try, except for some mandated ineffective theatre. AI homework-cheating mindset isn't helping. Etc. Not to complain, but to be clear the kind of inertia a country is facing.) Do the countries wanting to fight this have enough of they right homegrown talent already, and know how to find and nurture it? If they're importing additional talent, do they know how to find and incentive the right people, while turning away the ones with the wrong mindsets for this mission? (ProTips: Look for the hardcore privacy&security non-careerist nerds. The left-leaning, societal-minded ones. Give them what they've been looking for, or support to help make what they've been looking for. Don't offer to pay too well. Anyone who asks "Why would I want to live in your country, when I can make more money elsewhere?" gets a permaban.)
- 52-6F-62 8mo agoA great deal of what may be included in "homegrown talent" in the US according to this comment, indeed has come from other countries...
- neilv 8mo agoAnd the US is much richer for them (monetarily, and culturally). But what if home countries had said, "We can give you the resources you need for your work and home life, and it will be for purposes you can believe in and feel good about; not for crypto rug pulls, nor for surveillance capitalism, nor for stunting and manipulative social media"?
- Root_Denied 8mo agoSign me up. I'm optimistic at the response from the EU on tech investment, but I haven't seen them put their money where their mouth is yet. If they want to poach talent from the US they'll also have to figure out an work visa path that makes it easier to move there (bureaucratically, like the classic "you need a phone number to sign up for a bank account, you need a bank account to rent an apartment, you need an address to sign up for a phone number") and direct investments away from the US and into local tech providers in support of infrastructure and development (that isn't AI related datacenters).
- gib444 8mo agolol position #2, to #22, in just over an hour... :) (11 -> 22 in 5 minutes)
- cedws 8mo agoLike an abusive spouse. 'No, you can't leave me, you need me.' Actually, we don't. We used to have a good relationship and you lit it on fire. Bye, US.
- JohnTHaller 8mo agoGiven that the US has basically no data or privacy protections for its own citizens let alone non-US citizens, it's not surprising that countries are moving away from keeping their data in US-owned places. US companies mine data for everything and the kitchen sink and train AI using it without any sort of notice.
- tracker1 8mo agoEven as a US citizen... fuck that... it'd be like saying the US should open its' data up for China without any restrictions at all, even if they are slurping up everything they can as a state actor. While, if you choose to use a US service, it shouldn't be required to host data in your country, if you know it's a US service with data in the US... government data is another thing entirely.. and $cloud provider should be required to accommodate if they want that business, or for companies in a given country for that matter.
- siruncledrew 8mo agoThis is like putting your money in a bank ran by a cartel and expecting them not to steal it as soon as it benefits them.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- everdrive 8mo agoIt's difficult to imagine the US diplomats themselves have any real levers to pull here. The bridges have already been quite burned, and any attempt at a carrot or a stick may just speed up countries' data sovereignty initiates.
- aenis 8mo agoAnd in related news, major European democracies are spending real money architecting sovereign cloud tech - planning on replacing not just the infra, but also the key parts of commonly used SaaS stacks. (How do I know? I got a job offer from one of those governments to help them architect that; exciting times).
- Root_Denied 8mo agoAs an American working for a cloud provider in a tech role (security), I'm angling for an invite to the party. Increased investment in tech in the EU means more opportunity for me to GTFO.
- BLKNSLVR 8mo agoImagine if the EU builds it's own alternative services to those provided in the US, and these EU services do not rely on advertising revenue and don't shove AI in our faces at every opportunity. Europe, please Make the Internet Great Again!
- petre 8mo agoYeah, good luck with that. That ship has long sailed since Snowden and the Merkel phone affair. Threats to annex Greenland didn't help either.
- Havoc 8mo agoThank you trump administration for doing more for European data sovereignty in one year than the last 20 years combined lol
- etchalon 8mo agoAmerica shocked to discover everyone tolerated them because it was generally easier than not. Turns out if you make it super hard, unpredictable and vindictive, people will go the extra mile to not have to tolerate you.
- bilekas 8mo ago> the U.S. strongly supports cross-border data flows that promote growth and innovation while protecting privacy, safety, and free expression Yeah that will be a hard no from me. They're not exactly known for their positive attitude towards privacy. And free speech seems to depend on who's aligned with the administration.
- MerrimanInd 8mo agoI hope that the EU becomes a real innovation center of decentralized tech initiatives. There are all these tech movements like local-first apps, atproto/activitypub, and self-hosting that could be absolutely supercharged by both the user and developer base of Europe flat out rejecting big tech cloud platforming.
- mghackerlady 8mo agoI'm convinced in the next century the EU is going to be an innovator in decentralization in general, it's already a de facto confederation in general
- bokohut 8mo agoI ask the question: Is it human comprehendible data that has the value? So would this issue still exist if the data was not human comprehendible yet a system still functioned 100% as needed? The outlier technologists among us may read between my written lines with piquéd interest while the majority will likely just balk making claims based on lack of knowledge and awareness. For those looking to balk save your time in responding because analogously we no longer drive Ford Model Ts either and in time so too will system designs significantly change to answer the issues created by todays limited technology architectures. Whether it be in the water you drink, the air you breath, or the technology platforms you rely on; What you cannot see matters most!
- erentz 8mo agoThe people in this regime and their supporters really seem surprised to discover that actually other countries do have agency and national pride. Serious empathy gap in these people. The US owned the world’s tech stack and countries let it because it was convenient and despite its problems people mostly trusted the US was on their side. In one year we’ve utterly destroyed that and made ourselves enemies of the democratic world. That Silicon Valley did not see this would threaten its global business says something.
- originalvichy 8mo agoThis is something even defense analysts have been hammering about tirelessly. The American pivot to counter China should not come at the cost of the Atlantic relationship. Using Cold war scare tactics against China will not work, because China is not in the sphere of European countries that were under the shadow of Russia. China’s language and culture are so far removed from the rest of the world that the risk of direct conflict would not be a matter outside of Taiwan, and cultural hegemony will not take place in the same way Russia tried and at times succeeded. It feels doubly stupid that not only did American Business sell out their nations’ economic base to Chinese competitors decades back, they fumbled again and sold out to the guy who (yet again) damaged relations of countries funding the service, finance and defense sectors of the US. So now you lost the manufacturing base and you lost the other money-makers. No wonder they are going all-in on fossil fuels to Europe. No other company is as clear an example of this double whammy as Tesla. Move manufacturing to China to lose the technological edge, and alienate end-users, to lose the customer base.
- jmyeet 8mo agoMy two thoughts: 1. China has been completely vindicated for blocking US tech domination of their local economy and creating Chinese versions of basically everything. Tech independence has become an issue of national security; and 2. There's no putting this genie back in the bottle. At some point the EU is going to make it a priority to replace all US tech companies with local alternatives. The EU is kinda dysfunctional so they won't see the success China has but I now consider this outcome inevitable. This is the insanity of the current administration: it's done so much to destroy US soft power.
- nozzlegear 8mo ago> Experts say the move signals the Trump administration is reverting to a more confrontational approach [...] Sheesh, what was the approach before this if not confrontational?
- beloch 8mo agoCooperate or be replaced. Tech companies should be opposing Trump's policy and, instead, beg the Trump administration to grant meaningful concessions to countries that have rightfully lost trust in American companies. Bullying tactics will only intensify the loss of trust and fuel the push to adopt alternatives.
- drgo 8mo agoI see everyone now in the Administration is implementing the "Art of the Deal" tactics. The same tactics that bankrupted every project Trump did.
- ta9000 8mo agoThe groupthink on hacker news is exhausting. If you think aligning with China will be any better, please do so faster.
- tsoukase 8mo agoEurope replacing US cloud, MasterCard/Visa and Google Play Services? Let's not talk about US based social media, Github/reddit and Nvidia/hardware stuff. Not in a hundred years with the current speed of things and fragmentation. I think the year of "European Digital Freedom" will not come soon, although I live in an EU country.
- Shyaamal11 8mo agoWorth separating two things the thread keeps conflating: data residency and data sovereignty are not the same, and the CLOUD Act is the clearest proof. Residency = where data physically sits. Sovereignty = who legally controls it. You can store data on AWS Frankfurt and still have zero sovereignty, the controlling entity is US-domiciled and fully subject to the CLOUD Act. Geographic residency without legal sovereignty is essentially compliance theater. Real sovereignty requires the controlling entity, jurisdiction, and infrastructure layer to sit outside US reach which typically means infrastructure you actually operate, not just "hosted in your region" SaaS. (Disclosure: I work at IOMETE where we think about this a lot. I am happy to go deeper if useful.)