5 ms·

Just my curiosity. Is (insert country) sovereign X is an efficient marketing strategy these days?

by yanis_t 5mo ago

fmajid 5mo ago
https://www.forbes.com/sites/iainmartin/2026/04/16/how-frances-mistral-built-a-14-billion-ai-empire-by-not-being-american/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/iainmartin/2026/04/16/how-franc...
stevesimmons 5mo ago
It is if your country isn't in the US and (a) GDPR requires data residency in UK/EU; (b) you're concerned about capricious actions by the US govt cutting off access to US-controlled services (cloud, payments systems, etc).
dewey 5mo ago
I'm not sure if you are asking for hard numbers, but I would say it's definitely "a thing" for people to reduce their reliance on certain countries.
- bcjdjsndon 5mo ago
  I mean, it's pretty rich for coloniser like the British empire to be talking about soverign anything
ttoinou 5mo ago
Have you heard about companies training LLMs on your data ?
PaulRobinson 5mo ago
Yes. Some people might interpret this comment as political commentary, but it’s actually just the reality of what people are saying and doing. There’s a lot of data to suggest that America’s recent policy of reducing its soft power around the World & decoupling itself from alignment with interests of allies is causing increased interest and prioritisation of sovereign capability across tech, defence, public health and policy programs. This was a campaign strategy/promise for the US President. I’m not going to comment on whether it’s good for the US or for the allies, but I will note it could have been better anticipated by all: the only real surprise is the speed and depth. It raises some interesting questions - it’s one thing to say you don’t want Microsoft or Starlink in your infra tech stack, or don’t want to use AWS or GCP, but where does the line stop? Does the UK get out of Trident? Does the UN General Assembly get out of New York? No idea, but the fact these are conversations probably happening right now is remarkable.
- emmanuelsemugga 5mo ago
  [flagged]
- pbhjpbhj 5mo ago
  >This was a campaign strategy/promise for the US President. I don't remember seeing "if you elect me I'll destroy NATO, threaten allies, and make sure even USA's oldest allies hate us" as part of the campaign. Perhaps you could link that promise from the time before the election? As to your questions, I think people are hoping that rule of law returns and there is an outbreak of common sense. No-one really expected US president will align with Russia and a cult of pseudo-Christian white-supremacist nationalists will worship him as the second coming as an expectation. That the Senate, SC, and tech leaders have fallen in place behind that (the latter literally paying fealty to their god-king) is complete insanity.
  - drcongo 5mo ago
    > No-one really expected US president will align with Russia and a cult of pseudo-Christian white-supremacist nationalists will worship him as the second coming as an expectation. I'm sorry but everyone who was paying attention expected exactly that.
  - pjc50 5mo ago
    > No-one really expected US president will align with Russia and a cult of pseudo-Christian white-supremacist nationalists will worship him as the second coming as an expectation. That the Senate, SC, and tech leaders have fallen in place behind that (the latter literally paying fealty to their god-king) is complete insanity. I think it's completely expected that the Senate Republicans would do what they were told, and the multi-decade project to stack the Supreme Court with extremists to overthrow Roe v. Wade was something that was very obvious while it was happening.
  - Tangurena2 5mo ago
    > No-one really expected US president will align with Russia and a cult of pseudo-Christian white-supremacist nationalists will worship him as the second coming as an expectation. That the Senate, SC, and tech leaders have fallen in place behind that (the latter literally paying fealty to their god-king) is complete insanity. I would like to remind you of Project 2025. While Trump claimed to know nothing about it prior to being elected, so far he's appointed every editor/contributor to the document/project to his administration and achieved more than half of the stated goals of the document.
rcxdude 5mo ago
Yes, at least in certain sectors.
Havoc 5mo ago
Suspect it depends on the sentiment. Don't think you'd have much luck convincing say a German that they shouldn't use Mistral because it isn't German sovereign. But you might have luck with that line against china or america. Or put differently depends more on the fault lines in public perception than strict borders
- etiam 5mo ago
  Well put. Which goes to show maybe it's less about literal sovereignty than wanting to rely on parties less prone to exploit the reliance for stabbing you in the back. Considering it took decades of absolutely no meaningful action against the US tech sector's cavalcade of object lessons in 'They "trust me". Dumb fucks', and orgs were still eagerly ripping out homegrown system solutions to get all their communication and storage locked into Azure and AWS at the most four years ago, I'm not sure whether to feel relieved or exasperated that there are some signs of real reactions this time.
littlestymaar 5mo ago
US tech is currently being weaponized against the ICC and its member judges in Europe[1], and the US is threatening to annex Greenland, as a result all (former) US allies are scrambling to get rid of their strategic dependency. [1]: https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2025/11/19/nicolas-guillou-french-icc-judge-sanctioned-by-the-us-you-are-effectively-blacklisted-by-much-of-the-world-s-banking-system_6747628_4.html https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2025/11/19/n...
- graemep 5mo ago
  > as a result all (former) US allies are scrambling to get rid of their strategic dependency. In a very limited way. Some countries are moving some government systems off US suppliers, but its very limited. Somethings are going the other way. For example (there was a post about this on HN a few days ago) the new EU ID/age verification app depends on Google or Apple attested phones. There is no real effort to push the private sector off American systems. Your government might technically function but its going to be crippled if your private sector has ground to a standstill.
  - littlestymaar 5mo ago
    It's still limited, but the shift has been dramatic over the past few month alone. It's hard to tell what the situation will look like in a few years. Unless the midterms are a democrats landslide (which the GOP has tried to prevent as much as possible with gerrymandering) I don't see the trend stopping anytime soon.
rybosome 5mo ago
I’d say it’s more than a marketing strategy, it’s reflecting real demand. Countries have legal requirements (or increasingly strong preferences) for the kind of guarantee that data/inference sovereignty gives.
roryirvine 5mo ago
Yes. My first-hand experience is that there's huge demand for it in the UK at the moment, for data sovereignty in particular. LLM inference is currently a secondary concern - lots of conversations, some pilots and PoC implementations but not much beyond that (yet). I'd expect that market to grow substantially over the next couple of years, though. Note that "sovereignty" isn't seen as a binary thing in this context. Rather, organisations are using a risk planning approach: mapping out potential sovereignty concerns, then building strategies to mitigate them. Think of it as the start of a wave that will likely continue to build for the rest of the decade. Big-bang onshoring operations aren't really on anyone's radar at this stage, but it's great to know that there are more UK-based options are becoming available.

Just my curiosity. Is (insert country) sovereign X is an efficient marketing strategy these days?

by yanis_t 5mo ago

Just my curiosity. Is (insert country) sovereign X is an efficient marketing strategy these days?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/iainmartin/2026/04/16/how-frances-mistral-built-a-14-billion-ai-empire-by-not-being-american/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/iainmartin/2026/04/16/how-franc...

stevesimmons 5mo ago

It is if your country isn't in the US and (a) GDPR requires data residency in UK/EU; (b) you're concerned about capricious actions by the US govt cutting off access to US-controlled services (cloud, payments systems, etc).

dewey 5mo ago

I'm not sure if you are asking for hard numbers, but I would say it's definitely "a thing" for people to reduce their reliance on certain countries.

bcjdjsndon 5mo ago
I mean, it's pretty rich for coloniser like the British empire to be talking about soverign anything

ttoinou 5mo ago

Have you heard about companies training LLMs on your data ?

PaulRobinson 5mo ago

Yes. Some people might interpret this comment as political commentary, but it’s actually just the reality of what people are saying and doing. There’s a lot of data to suggest that America’s recent policy of reducing its soft power around the World & decoupling itself from alignment with interests of allies is causing increased interest and prioritisation of sovereign capability across tech, defence, public health and policy programs. This was a campaign strategy/promise for the US President. I’m not going to comment on whether it’s good for the US or for the allies, but I will note it could have been better anticipated by all: the only real surprise is the speed and depth. It raises some interesting questions - it’s one thing to say you don’t want Microsoft or Starlink in your infra tech stack, or don’t want to use AWS or GCP, but where does the line stop? Does the UK get out of Trident? Does the UN General Assembly get out of New York? No idea, but the fact these are conversations probably happening right now is remarkable.

emmanuelsemugga 5mo ago
[flagged]
pbhjpbhj 5mo ago
>This was a campaign strategy/promise for the US President. I don't remember seeing "if you elect me I'll destroy NATO, threaten allies, and make sure even USA's oldest allies hate us" as part of the campaign. Perhaps you could link that promise from the time before the election? As to your questions, I think people are hoping that rule of law returns and there is an outbreak of common sense. No-one really expected US president will align with Russia and a cult of pseudo-Christian white-supremacist nationalists will worship him as the second coming as an expectation. That the Senate, SC, and tech leaders have fallen in place behind that (the latter literally paying fealty to their god-king) is complete insanity.
- drcongo 5mo ago
  > No-one really expected US president will align with Russia and a cult of pseudo-Christian white-supremacist nationalists will worship him as the second coming as an expectation. I'm sorry but everyone who was paying attention expected exactly that.
- pjc50 5mo ago
  > No-one really expected US president will align with Russia and a cult of pseudo-Christian white-supremacist nationalists will worship him as the second coming as an expectation. That the Senate, SC, and tech leaders have fallen in place behind that (the latter literally paying fealty to their god-king) is complete insanity. I think it's completely expected that the Senate Republicans would do what they were told, and the multi-decade project to stack the Supreme Court with extremists to overthrow Roe v. Wade was something that was very obvious while it was happening.
- Tangurena2 5mo ago
  > No-one really expected US president will align with Russia and a cult of pseudo-Christian white-supremacist nationalists will worship him as the second coming as an expectation. That the Senate, SC, and tech leaders have fallen in place behind that (the latter literally paying fealty to their god-king) is complete insanity. I would like to remind you of Project 2025. While Trump claimed to know nothing about it prior to being elected, so far he's appointed every editor/contributor to the document/project to his administration and achieved more than half of the stated goals of the document.

rcxdude 5mo ago

Yes, at least in certain sectors.

Havoc 5mo ago

Suspect it depends on the sentiment. Don't think you'd have much luck convincing say a German that they shouldn't use Mistral because it isn't German sovereign. But you might have luck with that line against china or america. Or put differently depends more on the fault lines in public perception than strict borders

etiam 5mo ago
Well put. Which goes to show maybe it's less about literal sovereignty than wanting to rely on parties less prone to exploit the reliance for stabbing you in the back. Considering it took decades of absolutely no meaningful action against the US tech sector's cavalcade of object lessons in 'They "trust me". Dumb fucks', and orgs were still eagerly ripping out homegrown system solutions to get all their communication and storage locked into Azure and AWS at the most four years ago, I'm not sure whether to feel relieved or exasperated that there are some signs of real reactions this time.

littlestymaar 5mo ago

US tech is currently being weaponized against the ICC and its member judges in Europe[1], and the US is threatening to annex Greenland, as a result all (former) US allies are scrambling to get rid of their strategic dependency. [1]: https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2025/11/19/nicolas-guillou-french-icc-judge-sanctioned-by-the-us-you-are-effectively-blacklisted-by-much-of-the-world-s-banking-system_6747628_4.html https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2025/11/19/n...

graemep 5mo ago
> as a result all (former) US allies are scrambling to get rid of their strategic dependency. In a very limited way. Some countries are moving some government systems off US suppliers, but its very limited. Somethings are going the other way. For example (there was a post about this on HN a few days ago) the new EU ID/age verification app depends on Google or Apple attested phones. There is no real effort to push the private sector off American systems. Your government might technically function but its going to be crippled if your private sector has ground to a standstill.
- littlestymaar 5mo ago
  It's still limited, but the shift has been dramatic over the past few month alone. It's hard to tell what the situation will look like in a few years. Unless the midterms are a democrats landslide (which the GOP has tried to prevent as much as possible with gerrymandering) I don't see the trend stopping anytime soon.

rybosome 5mo ago

I’d say it’s more than a marketing strategy, it’s reflecting real demand. Countries have legal requirements (or increasingly strong preferences) for the kind of guarantee that data/inference sovereignty gives.

roryirvine 5mo ago

Yes. My first-hand experience is that there's huge demand for it in the UK at the moment, for data sovereignty in particular. LLM inference is currently a secondary concern - lots of conversations, some pilots and PoC implementations but not much beyond that (yet). I'd expect that market to grow substantially over the next couple of years, though. Note that "sovereignty" isn't seen as a binary thing in this context. Rather, organisations are using a risk planning approach: mapping out potential sovereignty concerns, then building strategies to mitigate them. Think of it as the start of a wave that will likely continue to build for the rest of the decade. Big-bang onshoring operations aren't really on anyone's radar at this stage, but it's great to know that there are more UK-based options are becoming available.