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> The actual risk is that US spooks can use these hardware features to infiltrate European clouds. If your threat model is clandestine government actors then I

> The actual risk is that US spooks can use these hardware features to infiltrate European clouds. If your threat model is clandestine government actors then I think it would be a rather odd decision to host on ANY cloud ! The main risk for most people is being subject to US CLOUD Act, US PATRIOT Act etc. etc. Which, despite what the sales-droids will tell you, still applies in the fake-EU clouds operated by the US providers. If you are serious about EU data sovereignty then you absolutely want an EU OpCo that has nothing whatsoever to do with any US company. If OpCo has ties to a US company or IS a US company such as AWS or Microsoft, then you've lost the EU jurisdiction.

DiogenesKynikos 5mo ago
The concern over "digital sovereignty" is motivated by the US wielding sanctions as a political tool against Europe. It's impossible to fully eliminate any exposure to US sanctions. If the EU wants to fully shield itself, it should aggressively counter-sanction American entities. If the US government knows that every time it sanctions some EU entity, an American entity will get sanctioned just as hard, it will think twice. For some reason, the EU has been unwilling to go down this obvious path.
- graemep 5mo ago
  The problem is that European (in the EU and outside) countries do not have the same ability to sanction the US as the US has to sanction them. If the US imposed sanctions that blocked access to cloud services a lot of the government and the private sector would just shut down. Take what happened to the French ICC judge and imagine that happening across a whole country and far more pervasively (because a lot of people he deals with will not follow US sanctions, but would have their own services cut off if his country was sanctioned): https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2026/02/18/us-sanctions-turn-international-criminal-court-judges-daily-life-into-a-nightmare https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2026/02/18/us-sanctions-t...
  - embedding-shape 5mo ago
    > If the US imposed sanctions that blocked access to cloud services a lot of the government and the private sector would just shut down. You don't think they'd rather maybe find alternatives rather than shutting down? Sure, it'd be sucky probably for a long-time, but it's not like we don't have IT professionals who can stand up physical servers, email servers and what not, plenty of local municipalities do so already, so somewhere there is expertise already. People generally don't just give up and throw their hands in the air in the face of difficulties, even less so when the governance of their country depends on it.
    - jandrewrogers 5mo ago
      I think you are underestimating the supply chain problem. You can't stand up extra servers you don't already have in extra data center capacity you don't already have. The whole point of the cloud is that you don't have these assets. While you can acquire these assets the lead times would be several months at a minimum, and probably years if everyone is trying to do it at the same time. It isn't an issue of knowhow, the required physical infrastructure doesn't exist.
      - embedding-shape 5mo ago
        Say Microsoft/Google/whatever my local municipality is using right now, gets blocked tonight, and tomorrow everything US-related is offline. It won't (and can't) take months for them to get one server up and running for them to continue with their administration. As mentioned, other municipalities in the country already are 100% independent, running everything themselves, either they're willing to help out the rest of us, or at least provide expertise enough so we can. Then the country is filled with FOSS nerds like myself, who wouldn't shy away from stepping in to help either. Probably the larger cities would take longer to solve, but I don't think "We cannot get server hardware from the US" will be the biggest problem, it'll be around national organization until the biggest fires been put out. Putting one server in each ajuntament would basically be enough to get 80% of the local municipalities up and running again.
- traceroute66 5mo ago
  > the EU has been unwilling to go down this obvious path Well, the EU in general tends to favour the "lets sit down in a room and talk like grown-ups" approach to finding solutions to problems. Wielding sanctions as a first/second choice option is a very US thing, even more so with the present administration. In theory the EU does have a lot of options available to it beyond sanctions, such as making life difficult getting Schengen visas for all those US citizens you constantly read about on the CNN website who are flocking to Europe .... but that sort of action would be very un-European[1][2] [1] https://edition.cnn.com/travel/us-family-relocated-miami-italy https://edition.cnn.com/travel/us-family-relocated-miami-ita... [2] https://edition.cnn.com/travel/central-eastern-europe-american-relocation https://edition.cnn.com/travel/central-eastern-europe-americ...
  - JumpCrisscross 5mo ago
    > such as making life difficult getting Schengen visas for all those US citizens you constantly read about on the CNN website who are flocking to Europe Trashing your own tourism sector is a very European defense mechanism. The truth is there is one and only one way Europe can try reclaiming sovereignty, and it’s the one that’s most painful—rebuilding its own military.
    - traceroute66 5mo ago
      > Trashing your own tourism sector is a very European defense mechanism. Please re-read my post .... in particular the first two words "IN THEORY". As far as I am aware, the option I mentioned has never, ever been mooted as a possibility. It was something I invented as a random example of a non-sanction possibility. > rebuilding its own military Aah yes, because a strong military has been so awesome for the US in the US–Iran war where IIRC the Iranians managed to destroy lots of very expensive US military radars[1] and other expensive assets[2][3] in the region despite your president having claimed to have "destroyed 100% of Iran's military capability". But let's not get in to politics.... [1] https://edition.cnn.com/2026/03/05/middleeast/radar-bases-us-missile-defense-iran-war-intl-invs https://edition.cnn.com/2026/03/05/middleeast/radar-bases-us... [2] https://edition.cnn.com/2026/03/30/middleeast/us-air-force-awacs-jet-destroyed-saudi-arabia-intl-hnk-ml https://edition.cnn.com/2026/03/30/middleeast/us-air-force-a... [3] https://apnews.com/article/amazon-aws-data-center-uae-iran-bahrain-71066b0a822c4cfd88b61e3fe79af917 https://apnews.com/article/amazon-aws-data-center-uae-iran-b...
- JumpCrisscross 5mo ago
  > If the EU wants to fully shield itself, it should aggressively counter-sanction American entities This isn’t a realistic option without an independent security posture. Washington could bankrupt Europe overnight right now with targeted tourism, technical and financial sanctions. (And increasingly, energy.) All of that before considering kneecapping Europe’s NATO-integrated kit.
  - embedding-shape 5mo ago
    > Washington could bankrupt Europe overnight right now with targeted tourism, technical and financial sanctions. Yet again the American exceptionalism bleeds through and shows why the hegemony is currently dying. Maybe with a slight bit of humbleness it could have survived but no, the exceptionalism is so well encoded that it seems short of impossible to stop the decline at this point. Seemingly this was the idea with Iran too, which based on the current goings, isn't going so well. How do you expect that to be true for the second/third largest economy in the world, when the US can't even do so with Iran, one of the already most sanctioned countries in the world?
    - JumpCrisscross 5mo ago
      > American exceptionalism bleeds through None of this requires America be better at anything. It just requires the current finance and trade flows to be what they are. > Seemingly this was the idea with Iran too The analogy doesn’t work. American sanctions and adversarialism with Iran have famously granted us few grabholds on their system. Tehran is sovereign. To the extent there is an analogy here, it’s in European reliance on America being its Hormuz. The obvious vulnerability that gives America asymmetric capability over Europe is the financial, security, energy and trade reliance. Unlike the Hormuz, those aren’t geographic features. But if Brussels is content with mincing around with their own special pile of AMD chips (or tourism bans or whatnot), it might as well be carved into rock.
    - mike_hearn 5mo ago
      The Iranian economy is in a state of total collapse! That's not something to aspire to. It's not good to be in denial about this. Even small amounts of US pressure would create chaos in Europe at this point. Multiple European countries are heading towards a major financial crisis entirely on their own, even without any US involvement at all. See e.g. the UK, whose debt is now much too large for even an IMF bailout to work. Only massive austerity of the type that makes 2008 look like splashing around in warm water will be enough to turn that around. Europe is not independent. Even ignoring basics like oil and gas, the choices of the EU ruling elites in Brussels have, over a period of many years, broken any ability to create a competitive domestic tech industry (something very difficult even with China-style global cutoffs). Even if it was all fixed tomorrow it's far too late. Building a competitive domestic office suite is far beyond what the EU can achieve, let alone everything else required.

DiogenesKynikos 5mo ago

The concern over "digital sovereignty" is motivated by the US wielding sanctions as a political tool against Europe. It's impossible to fully eliminate any exposure to US sanctions. If the EU wants to fully shield itself, it should aggressively counter-sanction American entities. If the US government knows that every time it sanctions some EU entity, an American entity will get sanctioned just as hard, it will think twice. For some reason, the EU has been unwilling to go down this obvious path.

graemep 5mo ago
The problem is that European (in the EU and outside) countries do not have the same ability to sanction the US as the US has to sanction them. If the US imposed sanctions that blocked access to cloud services a lot of the government and the private sector would just shut down. Take what happened to the French ICC judge and imagine that happening across a whole country and far more pervasively (because a lot of people he deals with will not follow US sanctions, but would have their own services cut off if his country was sanctioned): https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2026/02/18/us-sanctions-turn-international-criminal-court-judges-daily-life-into-a-nightmare https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2026/02/18/us-sanctions-t...
- embedding-shape 5mo ago
  > If the US imposed sanctions that blocked access to cloud services a lot of the government and the private sector would just shut down. You don't think they'd rather maybe find alternatives rather than shutting down? Sure, it'd be sucky probably for a long-time, but it's not like we don't have IT professionals who can stand up physical servers, email servers and what not, plenty of local municipalities do so already, so somewhere there is expertise already. People generally don't just give up and throw their hands in the air in the face of difficulties, even less so when the governance of their country depends on it.
  - jandrewrogers 5mo ago
    I think you are underestimating the supply chain problem. You can't stand up extra servers you don't already have in extra data center capacity you don't already have. The whole point of the cloud is that you don't have these assets. While you can acquire these assets the lead times would be several months at a minimum, and probably years if everyone is trying to do it at the same time. It isn't an issue of knowhow, the required physical infrastructure doesn't exist.
    - embedding-shape 5mo ago
      Say Microsoft/Google/whatever my local municipality is using right now, gets blocked tonight, and tomorrow everything US-related is offline. It won't (and can't) take months for them to get one server up and running for them to continue with their administration. As mentioned, other municipalities in the country already are 100% independent, running everything themselves, either they're willing to help out the rest of us, or at least provide expertise enough so we can. Then the country is filled with FOSS nerds like myself, who wouldn't shy away from stepping in to help either. Probably the larger cities would take longer to solve, but I don't think "We cannot get server hardware from the US" will be the biggest problem, it'll be around national organization until the biggest fires been put out. Putting one server in each ajuntament would basically be enough to get 80% of the local municipalities up and running again.
traceroute66 5mo ago
> the EU has been unwilling to go down this obvious path Well, the EU in general tends to favour the "lets sit down in a room and talk like grown-ups" approach to finding solutions to problems. Wielding sanctions as a first/second choice option is a very US thing, even more so with the present administration. In theory the EU does have a lot of options available to it beyond sanctions, such as making life difficult getting Schengen visas for all those US citizens you constantly read about on the CNN website who are flocking to Europe .... but that sort of action would be very un-European[1][2] [1] https://edition.cnn.com/travel/us-family-relocated-miami-italy https://edition.cnn.com/travel/us-family-relocated-miami-ita... [2] https://edition.cnn.com/travel/central-eastern-europe-american-relocation https://edition.cnn.com/travel/central-eastern-europe-americ...
- JumpCrisscross 5mo ago
  > such as making life difficult getting Schengen visas for all those US citizens you constantly read about on the CNN website who are flocking to Europe Trashing your own tourism sector is a very European defense mechanism. The truth is there is one and only one way Europe can try reclaiming sovereignty, and it’s the one that’s most painful—rebuilding its own military.
  - traceroute66 5mo ago
    > Trashing your own tourism sector is a very European defense mechanism. Please re-read my post .... in particular the first two words "IN THEORY". As far as I am aware, the option I mentioned has never, ever been mooted as a possibility. It was something I invented as a random example of a non-sanction possibility. > rebuilding its own military Aah yes, because a strong military has been so awesome for the US in the US–Iran war where IIRC the Iranians managed to destroy lots of very expensive US military radars[1] and other expensive assets[2][3] in the region despite your president having claimed to have "destroyed 100% of Iran's military capability". But let's not get in to politics.... [1] https://edition.cnn.com/2026/03/05/middleeast/radar-bases-us-missile-defense-iran-war-intl-invs https://edition.cnn.com/2026/03/05/middleeast/radar-bases-us... [2] https://edition.cnn.com/2026/03/30/middleeast/us-air-force-awacs-jet-destroyed-saudi-arabia-intl-hnk-ml https://edition.cnn.com/2026/03/30/middleeast/us-air-force-a... [3] https://apnews.com/article/amazon-aws-data-center-uae-iran-bahrain-71066b0a822c4cfd88b61e3fe79af917 https://apnews.com/article/amazon-aws-data-center-uae-iran-b...
JumpCrisscross 5mo ago
> If the EU wants to fully shield itself, it should aggressively counter-sanction American entities This isn’t a realistic option without an independent security posture. Washington could bankrupt Europe overnight right now with targeted tourism, technical and financial sanctions. (And increasingly, energy.) All of that before considering kneecapping Europe’s NATO-integrated kit.
- embedding-shape 5mo ago
  > Washington could bankrupt Europe overnight right now with targeted tourism, technical and financial sanctions. Yet again the American exceptionalism bleeds through and shows why the hegemony is currently dying. Maybe with a slight bit of humbleness it could have survived but no, the exceptionalism is so well encoded that it seems short of impossible to stop the decline at this point. Seemingly this was the idea with Iran too, which based on the current goings, isn't going so well. How do you expect that to be true for the second/third largest economy in the world, when the US can't even do so with Iran, one of the already most sanctioned countries in the world?
  - JumpCrisscross 5mo ago
    > American exceptionalism bleeds through None of this requires America be better at anything. It just requires the current finance and trade flows to be what they are. > Seemingly this was the idea with Iran too The analogy doesn’t work. American sanctions and adversarialism with Iran have famously granted us few grabholds on their system. Tehran is sovereign. To the extent there is an analogy here, it’s in European reliance on America being its Hormuz. The obvious vulnerability that gives America asymmetric capability over Europe is the financial, security, energy and trade reliance. Unlike the Hormuz, those aren’t geographic features. But if Brussels is content with mincing around with their own special pile of AMD chips (or tourism bans or whatnot), it might as well be carved into rock.
  - mike_hearn 5mo ago
    The Iranian economy is in a state of total collapse! That's not something to aspire to. It's not good to be in denial about this. Even small amounts of US pressure would create chaos in Europe at this point. Multiple European countries are heading towards a major financial crisis entirely on their own, even without any US involvement at all. See e.g. the UK, whose debt is now much too large for even an IMF bailout to work. Only massive austerity of the type that makes 2008 look like splashing around in warm water will be enough to turn that around. Europe is not independent. Even ignoring basics like oil and gas, the choices of the EU ruling elites in Brussels have, over a period of many years, broken any ability to create a competitive domestic tech industry (something very difficult even with China-style global cutoffs). Even if it was all fixed tomorrow it's far too late. Building a competitive domestic office suite is far beyond what the EU can achieve, let alone everything else required.