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Airbus Takes Flight from AWS
- aratob 2mo agoIs it the first for similarly high—profile companies?
- mathgeek 2mo agoMore related to the EU's movement away from foreign-hosted infrastructure.
- radiator 2mo agoPublic administration in Europe has already started moving away from the american hyperscalers. This is of course happening at the usual speed which is characteristic of all public administration.
- firesteelrain 2mo ago[dead]
- ttoinou 2mo agoDo we have proven (or probable) case of USA industrial espionage ?
- amelius 2mo agoWe have a proven case of USA pulling the plug. Not sure which is worse.
- mrngld 2mo agoDo we? From a EU-hosted location? Becoming a sanctioned entity wouldn't count -- if Airbus somehow made the business decision to start selling drones directly to Uyghur slave labor camps in western China and got itself on a list of sanctioned companies even Scaleways couldn't help them. I think that's a thinly veiled excuse for a much more mundane reason this is happening; their government stakeholders asked them to find a way to retaliate as part of the arguments around trade going on, and Airbus figured this out as a lever they could pull without angering any airline customers.
- Kbelicius 2mo ago> I think that's a thinly veiled excuse for a much more mundane reason this is happening; their government stakeholders asked them to find a way to retaliate as part of the arguments around trade going on, and Airbus figured this out as a lever they could pull without angering any airline customers. Even more mundane reason would be the USA threatening war.
- LastTrain 2mo agoBefore you come and say something like Trump threatening to invade Greenland and annex Canada is just bluster/ these are democracies that answer to their people, and their people are mad about that, which is going to direct policy. The sentiment in those countries about the US is on par with those on Russia and China, if you think that is not to the US detriment I’m not sure what to say.
- skissane 2mo ago> Becoming a sanctioned entity wouldn't count -- if Airbus somehow made the business decision to start selling drones directly to Uyghur slave labor camps in western China and got itself on a list of sanctioned companies even Scaleways couldn't help them. If the US decided to sanction Airbus, decent odds that the EU would make it illegal for EU businesses to comply with those US sanctions. Similar to how the US has made it illegal for US firms to comply with Arab League sanctions against Israel
- jurgenburgen 2mo agoIf we continue using US hyperscalers then we deserve to have our industries turned off when Trump decides to grab Greenland. Being stupid should get punished.
- hylaride 2mo agoRecently the US gov't had Microsoft shut down an ICC judge's work email account. The threat is very real of more serious shenanigans (though I personally think the risk of backdoors introduced to any other software they use is just as real - Europe is just too much of a patchwork of jurisdictions to get this right).
- lysace 2mo agohttps://www.wsj.com/articles/SB95326824311657269 https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB95326824311657269 (https://archive.is/N46di https://archive.is/N46di) Why We Spy on Our Allies March 17, 2000 11:56 am ET By R. James Woolsey, a Washington lawyer and a former director of central intelligence. We'll begin with some candor from the American side. Yes, my continental European friends, we have spied on you. And it's true that we use computers to sort through data by using keywords. Have you stopped to ask yourselves what we're looking for? tl;dr: "You bribe, so we spy"
- TMWNN 2mo agoI haven't read the op-ed, but I wonder if it talks about the French Leclerc case? TIL that when Greece tested four tanks in 2000 before a big arms purchase, the US M1A1 Abrams and British Challenger 2E tanks had trouble with their satellite navigation systems. A French intelligence agency used GPS jammers to help the French Leclerc tank in the competition. <https://np.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/6bhr14/til_that_when_greece_tested_four_tanks_in_2000/ https://np.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/6bhr14/til_th...>
- lysace 2mo agoI think this was about two separate events in 1994: Among the allegations: that the NSA fed information to Boeing and McDonnell Douglas enabling the companies to beat out European Airbus Industrie for a $ 6 billion contract; and that Raytheon received information that helped it win a $ 1.3 billion contract to provide radar to Brazil, edging out the French company Thomson-CSF. These claims follow previous allegations that the NSA supplied U.S. automakers with information that helped improve their competitiveness with the Japanese (see "Company Spies," May/June 1994). https://irp.fas.org/program/process/991101-echelon-mj.htm https://irp.fas.org/program/process/991101-echelon-mj.htm
- mcv 2mo agoYes, but the US bribes too. In fact, I'd say that corruption is more common in the US than in much of Europe. The article's claim that the US worships Adam Smith is only nominally true; in practice, they love nothing more than monopolisation and market domination. > Have you stopped to ask yourselves what we're looking for? Any advantage that they can exploit. It's no great secret that the US government often acts on behalf of its major corporations and vice versa.
- wongarsu 2mo agoFrom the NY Times, 1995: > Spying on allies for economic advantage is a crucial new assignment for the C.I.A. now that American foreign policy is focused on commercial interests abroad. President Clinton made economic intelligence a high priority of his Administration, specifically information to protect and defend American competitiveness, technology and financial security in a world where an economic crisis can spread across global markets in minutes At the time "only" to have the upper hand in trade negotiations, and presumably when "having the President press foreign countries to award business to American firms", as they call it. But that was 30 years ago, and trust that these these things aren't directly forwarded to US private industry is in short supply these days https://www.nytimes.com/1995/10/15/world/emerging-role-for-the-cia-economic-spy.html https://www.nytimes.com/1995/10/15/world/emerging-role-for-t... https://archive.is/LmEA1 https://archive.is/LmEA1 (same site without paywall)
- mrngld 2mo agoIf any company, especially one with a global presence, ever even strongly suspected that had happened and a competitor was using something they developed you'd of seen it play out in the courtroom. Hopefully we can all agree that if America is good at anything, it's letting its lawyers be litigious. The fact that, AFAIK, that's never happened nor been alleged says a lot.
- lancebeet 2mo agoWell, yes, since long before the current administration. It's mentioned multiple times (with examples) in the European Parliament's "The Echelon Affair" report.[0] But it seems to me that this is not really what you're asking, but rather you're implying that there's no justification for this move other than European protectionism. If this is the case, I would argue that a sitting administration actively threatening with the invasion of your territories is a compelling argument for politicians and business leaders to evaluate alternatives. [0] https://historicalarchives.europarl.europa.eu/files/live/sites/historicalarchive/files/03_PUBLICATIONS/03_European-Parliament/01_Documents/the-echelon-affair-en.pdf https://historicalarchives.europarl.europa.eu/files/live/sit...
- ruuda 2mo agoIt doesn’t have to be espionage, it can be just operational risk. There is the case of Trump ordering sanctions against the International Criminal Court, and Microsoft blocking their accounts to comply (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_14203 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_14203). Or more recently, Trump deciding who gets access to Anthropic’s latest models. You can’t build a business on a vendor who may be forced to block you at any moment.
- Havoc 2mo agoYou don’t need an espionage case to decide a provider is too much risk. The political unreliability alone is enough. Just takes one orange guy waking up in a foul mood one day and doing something erratic. That increases risk for using anything American across the board even if the individual companies have done nothing wrong
- rob74 2mo agoCase in point: the Claude Fable debacle. It's not a big stretch to imagine that one day, they might decide any AI platform developed by an American company is too dangerous to let those shady foreigners access it. Not to mention the potential implications of your internal code being sent to AI datacenters in the US...
- robertkoss 2mo agoDoes this include their Skywise Platform?
- tecleandor 2mo agoFollowing the article that generated this column [0] says: > Skywise, a platform that aggregates and analyzes aviation data, and Case Management Assistant for customers' technical queries will continue to be hosted by AWS. -- 0: https://www.theregister.com/paas-and-iaas/2026/07/16/airbus-migrating-70-critical-apps-from-aws-to-frances-scaleway-amid-digital-sovereignty-push/5272373
- robertkoss 2mo agoInteresting, thank you!
- Doches 2mo agoSkywise is basically a re-branded Palantir Foundry, and Palantir’s not exactly a big believer in avoiding US tech…
- robertkoss 2mo agoI know, but afaik you can deploy Foundry also on Prem using Apollo, so that should not be a show stopper. edit: who am I telling this ;)
- areoform 2mo agoA study in contrasts, I signed up my business with Hetzner. And the first thing I saw during onboarding was a demand to upload my ID to spend $5 to test their service (I was testing before we bought). I wrote to customer service and got, Dear Client, We received your email. Thanks for writing to us. You have probably realized that this is an automated message. We need some time to process each email that we receive, but we will write back to you personally as soon as we can. Kind regards Hetzner Online GmbH [...] www.hetzner.com Digital Ocean? They just let me do it. Guess where I'm going to recommend spending our money?
- KingOfCoders 2mo agoWhat works best for you I guess.
- chpatrick 2mo agoHetzner if you have sense.
- sam_lowry_ 2mo agoWelcome to Europe, the land of sustainable business. We do not need to grow just to pollute our planet and die a painful death, individually and as a species. If you still think your Hetzner registration process is convoluted, try getting a license for IDA Pro. You'll love the experience, I promise. !/s
- inigyou 2mo agoYeah I've noticed that while America takes the approach of trying to keep your personal information secret, Europe takes the approach of requiring it to be shared around, but also protecting it with harsh laws for misuse. Things that are anonymous sign-up in America are KYC in Europe.
- ThePhysicist 2mo agoDigitalOcean simply does this at a later stage and will then just cut you off, Hetzner is doing it from the start. Their obligations aren't so different, they just approach this differently. It's the same thing with Stripe, it's cool that they just let you sign up and process transactions but at some point they will look at your business and if they don't like it they will just cut you off. Also Hetzner really doesn't care much about individuals as far as I know, they mostly do business with other businesses and that's where the money is, their business is not designed to handle millions of individual users, DigitalOcean might also simply have a different strategy there.
- eevoo 2mo ago[flagged]
- sparkling 2mo ago>Airbus isn't ditching Microsoft any time soon because there's nowhere to go. Likewise Google productivity apps because the only place to go is Microsoft. [x] doubt There a perfectly suitable office and productivity suites, but if your requirement is that every obscure feature from a .doc file created in 2003 needs to work... well then yes, you only have one provider to choose from.
- mr_toad 2mo agoIt’s the queue of users who want to be hand held because they can’t do X, or open Y, that IT doesn’t want to deal with. Also, there’s no budget for training any more.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- throw1234567891 2mo agoDo you even comprehend the timescales at which these companies operate.
- Zsfe510asG 2mo agoIs Airbus still using Google workspaces for mail? Nice vector for industrial espionage. Why did Airbus go to "the cloud" in the first place? It seems complete overkill for a company like that.
- moebrowne 2mo ago> Is Airbus still using Google workspaces for mail? Nice vector for industrial espionage. Whatever email provider they use, people will always be the ultimate vector, clicking links they shouldn't.
- vachina 2mo agoWhy phish when your victim store their entire company on your drives.
- inigyou 2mo agoEveryone went to "the cloud" because they want to make their IT problems someone else's problem. It's no different from the previous era of MSPs, except that there are now only, like, five MSPs in the world. Note: I mean the Google Docs and Microsoft 365 type of cloud not the AWS and Azure type of cloud
- ownagefool 2mo agoMy take is it's actually because of poor performance of internal teams. With a cloud provider, you can get an account by filling out a sign-up page and handing over a credit card. Internal teams will often hide behind Bureaucracy and a ticket system, with processes that make hosting a simple web app take multiple quarters. Now there are layered reasons for that, some of them with legitimate basis, but at the end of the day they're usually low skilled teams click-ops-ing some VMWware, delivering a terrible service.
- Foobar8568 2mo agoReality of AWS or Azure in Europe : - Can't provision new ressources without calling them - If you get defects, you might be with Azure Europe Head after weeks of escalation and the only thing he wants to hear is if Microsoft can do a success story with you - Gaslighting you on issues I agree with you, we went from terrible service, to terrible service with no leverage.
- inigyou 2mo agoI don't fully understand why companies use AWS. Is it a management driven or engineering driven decision? I assume management - in big companies some exec from Amazon comes to play golf, and in small companies the managers copy what the big companies are doing?
- vachina 2mo agoMostly because they’re the defacto SaaS providing that niche product for your niche usecase. The breadth of AWS in incredible.
- bowsamic 2mo agoIt’s easier in most companies to get a cloud bill approved than to ask for a big chunk of cash for hardware and also to pay someone to set it up
- LastTrain 2mo agoAlso, not having to deal with the kind of assholes that are capable of both setting up and maintaining your physical infrastructure and are willing to travel on a moments notice to put out fires. Worth the price of AWS just to not have that dysfunctional lot to deal with.
- PaulRobinson 2mo agoAllows you to move stuff from capex to opex while remaining in compliance and governance lines. They’re not idiots. A lot of thought went into it, and the idea it’s all just incompetent BS dreamt up on a golf course is madness.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- hahahaa 2mo agoAlso incredible horizontal scale. and vertical scale and fuck fuck fuck load of features.
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- nttylock 2mo ago[flagged]
- Nurstar 2mo ago[flagged]
- PaulRobinson 2mo agoUS tech does not understand or comprehend the amount of damage they’ve self inflicted in the last couple of years. There will be a steady drip of this in years to come, I suspect.
- khurs 2mo agoUS Tech does understand, US Administration does not.
- troupo 2mo agoI doubt US tech understands. For one, they are deeply in bed with the current administration (for any definition of current, past, and future). For another, they fight tooth and nail any and all sovereignity of data even within their own walled gardens. See decade of battles by Google, Apple, Facebook etc. in the EU.
- khurs 2mo agoNvidia's Jensen as an example called out the risk that a GPU ban to China would accelerate Chinese r&D
- DaiPlusPlus 2mo agoWith a GPU ban, then the PRC will accelerate domestic "AI chip" R&D and production, while still getting-away with grey-market imports for their AI/LLM R&D. Without a GPU ban, then the PRC will accelerate domestic AI/LLM R&D and deployment, while still funding indigenous AI chip development efforts. ------ From afar it makes America look so insecure and almost pathetic: China's R&D ecosystem is a huge mass with a lot of inertia - trade policy and embargos will be about as effective against it as the paper they're printed on.
- michaelt 2mo agoThe true extent of the damage has yet to be seen. The Trump administration is a shot across the bows for Europeans, undoubtedly. But do they have to up their defence spending a bit, engage in some tough talk, reduce their dependence on imported energy, and gift Trump some gold-plated furniture? Or do they have to do that and eliminate their dependence on Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Intel, AMD, nvidia, Apple, Mastercard, Visa, Google, Microsoft, AWS, Oracle, Facebook, Youtube, Netflix, Reddit, Twitter, Instagram, Juniper, Cisco, Qualcomm, Broadcom, Adobe and Uber? Because the latter won't happen spontaneously, it'll need deliberate, decisive leadership. And Trump will be out of office long before it's done.
- Krishnaswaroop 2mo agoVendor lock-in has always been a concern, but AI workloads make the conversation even more important. Designing portable architectures from day one is becoming a competitive advantage.
- khurs 2mo agoThink getting away from vendor lock-in was one of the primary reason Kubernetes took off
- spwa4 2mo agoSo after the 2008 spying scandal (cia got caught using German intelligence bases to steal airbus designs), Airbus ran it's critical applications ... on AWS? Wow.
- joe_mamba 2mo ago[dead]
- cleverfoo 2mo agoWhat doesn't get talked about in these articles is the increasing impact to small business in the US. I run a small business (scanii.com) and I've noticed over the past year an increasing number of customers leaving us to European competitors, customers that have been happy with us for years, using our European region, but now have concerns over US foreign policy and are giving preferred treatment to EU suppliers. When I asked they said, I'm paraphrasing here, "happy with the product but management wants EU supplier". What this means in practical terms is that, if the tide doesn't change, US entrepreneurs will have a potential buyer population that is roughly cut in half if they can only sell to US buyers. This will have a cascading negative effect in the number of startups that succeed - impossible to quantify at this point. Large corps can skirt around this issue by establishing an EU entity and trying to buy goodwill that way but that's not an option easily available to small businesses. I fear rough waters ahead.
- traceroute66 2mo ago> using our European region To be fair, it was always obvious to anyone with half a brain that "European region" from a US provider was fake-EU. The problem is that PARIOT act, CLOUD act and everything else has gone from being a paper tiger to real and present danger. No longer a theoretical risk. So even people willing to previously turn a blind eye to the crystal clear risks can no longer do so. It is also no longer possible to trust those tasked with implementing it not to bow to political pressures. A long time ago now, Microsoft (Azure) put up a fight when the US came calling for some data hosted in their "EU (Ireland) region". I think there is zero chance of them putting up a fight today if Donny boy picked up the phone to Satya . And that's before we get to the example of a Texas court ordering Verisign to cut off the .com domain from a Dutch company.[1] Sadly I have limited sympathy for a country that having witnessed Donny's first term thought "you know what, we'll have more of that" and voted accordingly. [1] https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/news/releases/attorney-general-ken-paxton-secures-landmark-legal-victory-lock-pornographic-website-domain-and https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/news/releases/attorney-...
- ghaff 2mo agoSovereignty has gone from being a theoretical concern that a lot of cloud (esp. AWS) advocates poo-poohed to something that is a very real concern in the minds of many. It's not just US foreign policy either. It's even within Europe--to say nothing of things related to China.
- khurs 2mo agoJane Street recently posted a video of their datacenter warehouse in USA on YouTube Most of this large building was empty... they said that as compute had become dense along with advancements in liquid cooling, the same amount of power x years ago now only required few racks. No need for many companies to go on cloud, at a minimum should be hybrid on prem.
- leopoldj 2mo agoThis link is an opinion piece. For a better technical and legal background this link from the same The Register is much better: https://www.theregister.com/paas-and-iaas/2026/07/16/airbus-migrating-70-critical-apps-from-aws-to-frances-scaleway-amid-digital-sovereignty-push/5272373 https://www.theregister.com/paas-and-iaas/2026/07/16/airbus-...
- atonse 2mo agoThank you. That’s already better than the original article that comes off as an unhinged rant with name calling.
- andrewla 2mo agoI think a lot of commenters here are missing the ball with the idea that this is a foreign policy or anti-US sentiment emerging. The core reality is that cloud infrastructure is becoming commoditized, and substrate-independence is becoming not only possible but the default. So companies looking for things like lower cost or better customer support are looking around and seeing that smaller rising competitors are going to be a better option. Compliance with local regulatory regimes are going to be a factor as the EU continues its efforts to push European companies towards using EU infrastructure.