this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2025
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Trump is back — and with him, the risk that the U.S. could unplug Europe from the digital world.

Donald Trump’s return to the White House is forcing Europe to reckon with a major digital vulnerability: The U.S. holds a kill switch over its internet.

As the U.S. administration raises the stakes in a geopolitical poker game that began when Trump started his trade war, Europeans are waking up to the fact that years of over-reliance on a handful of U.S. tech giants have given Washington a winning hand.

The fatal vulnerability is Europe’s near-total dependency on U.S. cloud providers.

Cloud computing is the lifeblood of the internet, powering everything from the emails we send and videos we stream to industrial data processing and government communications. Just three American behemoths — Amazon, Microsoft, and Google — hold more than two-thirds of the regional market, putting Europe’s online existence in the hands of firms cozying up to the U.S. president to fend off looming regulations and fines.

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[–] vane@lemmy.world 5 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

I hope he will do it so EU politicians stop feeding foreign corporations with tax money.

[–] peteyestee@feddit.org 1 points 1 hour ago

Honestly you're probably right.

[–] wampus@lemmy.ca 16 points 6 hours ago (2 children)

The US officially giving tech execs military ranks is.... interesting. One of the stronger reasons to avoid companies like Huawei, was that the CCP had direct military ties / agents working within Huawei. The argument in favour of US tech companies in comparison, was that while they may have agreements with the US military, they were at arms length. Now they aren't, and the rationale seems to be attempting to shift to "just trust us", while they openly start major wars/conflicts and support genocidal actions in the middle east.

idk. If I were involved in the decision making for any critical area, I'd avoid the hell out of foreign controlled anything in my regular stacks at this point. Even if it means you have some efficiency hits until there may be an in-country provider available. It wouldn't matter who the other country is at this point, as the US going awol is something most wouldn't have 'bet' on like a decade ago, but here we are.

[–] peteyestee@feddit.org 5 points 1 hour ago

It's literally organized crime.

[–] Jesus_666@lemmy.world 6 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

I work for a publicly traded company.

We couldn't switch away from Microsoft if we wanted to because integrating everything with Azure and O365 is the cheapest solution in the short term, ergo has the best quarterly ROI.

I don't think the shareholders give a rat's ass about data sovereignty if it means a lower profit forecast. It'd take legislative action for us to move away from an all-Azure stack.

And yes, that sucks big time. If Microsoft stops playing nice with the EU we're going to have to pivot most of our tech stack on a moment's notice.

[–] CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 47 minutes ago

Yep one of the big drivers is flexibility in capex vs opex. They’ll shape the contract whichever way you want but on prem is straight to capex. I think. I’m not an accountant.

[–] JcbAzPx@lemmy.world 14 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

I'm pretty sure all three of those companies host server farms in Europe. I doubt they would give them up just to fluff Trump.

[–] CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 44 minutes ago

MS pulled access to the azure environment of a (Russian owned) bank in NL and despite NL court orders asking for the data to be made accessible, it took diplomacy and a US court order to get access. This was not during trump admin.

We’ve been saying “this would never happen” and trump admin has slowly been shifting the Overton window.

[–] drmoose@lemmy.world 37 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago) (1 children)

Just some stupid doom bait.

If it would get to cable cutting between US and Europe then we have much bigger problems than slow web apps. If Europe would ever get to that it definitely has enough cloud providers for essential services. Around 90% of all bandwidth is entertainment.

[–] WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 12 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

who said slow web apps. EU hosting providers could step in probably, but where is exactly all the data stored currently? even assuming that most orgs do proper, working backups, restoring them and setting up their systems for the new providers would still tame a lot of time

[–] kungen@feddit.nu 6 points 8 hours ago

where is exactly all the data stored currently?

Hopefully in the EU, as the EU-US DPF is garbage and should be repealed just like the previous "Privacy Shield" attempts.

[–] Buffalox@lemmy.world 80 points 11 hours ago (2 children)

Misleading title. It's really about cloud services. And Europe is already working on making itself independent of American cloud services.

[–] Mothra@mander.xyz 11 points 10 hours ago

Thanks for sparing me the clickbait

[–] capuccino@lemmy.world 1 points 6 hours ago

latam is doomed

[–] disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world 139 points 12 hours ago (2 children)

This sounds a lot like, “build your own servers and topple another US industry.”

[–] DrBob@lemmy.ca 64 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Another short-term decision by America could lead to more long-term loss of wealth and influence.

[–] Rhaedas@fedia.io 7 points 9 hours ago

"Stop shooting ourselves in the feet!"

So many decisions being made are very isolationist, and that never works well for the one shutting everyone else out. But who looks at history, right?

[–] Truscape@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 points 10 hours ago

Honestly, as an American living in Silicon Valley, I would be overjoyed if Europe became the primary kickstarter for open source alternatives to the existing US corporate infrastructure, that bends to the knees of the Federal government. Even here at home, myself and some of my co-workers aren't too keen on the existing status quo tools because there are too many caveats - from rent seeking subscriptions to the inability to verify if something is tampered with.

In the same way Valve saw how having all their eggs in the Windows basket led them to dive head first into linux development, I hope the EU's realization of the risks in the US tech sector lead it to developing unified, well funded OSS alternatives. I would certainly install them.

[–] Bwaz@lemmy.world 15 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Time for EU to start a new web, WWWUS. World-Wide-Without-....

[–] victorz@lemmy.world 9 points 7 hours ago

WWWEU.. Pronounced as "Wii U". 💅

[–] cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca 54 points 12 hours ago (2 children)

Ya ok but this isn't a doomsday thing, we used to build our own servers before and lots of people know how to do it still.

All AWS and the like do is remove the hardware for the consumer and add some APIs.

Doesn't sound as scary to me as the article paints. The only hard part would be the migration 😅

[–] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 24 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah. That's literally the whole point of "the cloud" it can be anywhere.

The EU has lots of places with available renewable energy.

Hook up a couple servers to some dams. With "free" electricity it'll be almost impossible to not end up being cheaper than Amazon in the long run.

Like, I'm struggling to see how this would be a bad thing long term. Relying on American corporations just isn't a rational choice anymore

[–] floofloof@lemmy.ca 9 points 11 hours ago (3 children)

Hook up a couple servers to some dams.

As someone who works in IT, I love the optimism of making it sound this simple. Things that I expect to take 10 minutes can end up taking weeks, because there's always a surprising answer to "How complicated could it be?"

[–] Bravo@eviltoast.org 1 points 2 minutes ago

True, but sometimes the only way something worthwhile ever gets done in the first place is because somebody started on it without realizing how hard it would be. Columbus only discovered the New World because he'd underestimated how far away from Asia he was. Sometimes you NEED an optimistic idiot to actually get something done. And yes it's a pain in the ass for everyone else who has to clean up the mess, but often the achievement lasts a lot longer and outweighs the trouble by orders of magnitude.

[–] AGuyAcrossTheInternet@fedia.io 3 points 11 hours ago

"Oh, it wouldn't work the way we've thought because" is a phrase I've had to say too often for that level of optimism.

[–] myrmidex@belgae.social 3 points 11 hours ago

Wouldn't want to be that PM!

[–] squaresinger@lemmy.world 3 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

If the USA switches off cloud services for the EU, that's a short-term problem. Really bad short term, but after a month or so everything is back up and running.

[–] ohulancutash@feddit.uk 1 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

For big entities sure. But SMEs without dedicated IT and relying on the likes of squarespace would have a really bad time.

[–] squaresinger@lemmy.world 1 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

They'd just migrate to some EU alternative: https://alternativeto.net/software/squarespace/?origin=eu

Might not be super easy and they might not get the same results, bit if there's no squarespace it will do.

[–] ohulancutash@feddit.uk 1 points 8 hours ago

Sure, as long as someone’s taught them about backups, and they have them, and they’re up to date.

[–] pennomi@lemmy.world 29 points 12 hours ago (2 children)

All that would do is get Jeff Bezos to hire a hitman to take out Trump.

[–] Reverendender@sh.itjust.works 43 points 12 hours ago

I’m not hearing a problem here

[–] dinren@discuss.online 6 points 11 hours ago

I know an Italian guy who might be down

[–] nialv7@lemmy.world 18 points 12 hours ago

I hope this means people finally start to see the danger of centralization.

[–] ArchmageAzor@lemmy.world 10 points 11 hours ago

Our own internet without Americans? Where do I sign up?

[–] T00l_shed@lemmy.world 10 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

I mean, there are servers in European countries, couldn't they just nationalize the servers and continue as usual?

[–] lIlIlIlIlIlIl@lemmy.world 8 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

The servers would stop working the moment the US “pulls the plug.” Nationalization would not secure service, that would only secure non-functional hardware

[–] Branny@sh.itjust.works 11 points 12 hours ago (3 children)

The hardware is here. The entire hecking infrastructure is here. Making it work might not be as easy as flipping a switch, but it is definitely not impossible lol

[–] lIlIlIlIlIlIl@lemmy.world 1 points 4 hours ago

The hardware isn’t the hard part, but I get your point

[–] jlh@lemmy.jlh.name 3 points 11 hours ago

would probably take a month or two

[–] Monument@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 9 hours ago

Given the permissive and, well, stupid business practices that the U.S. allows, I’m sure a shell corporation there, an ownership transfer there, and you’ve got a de facto foreign owned company that’s every bit as answerable to the corporation, although not necessarily the U.S. government. I’m sure the shareholders won’t care so long as the stock price still goes up.

Those sorts of changes could presumably be executed much faster than working through the court challenges of nationalizing companies, or of building new facilities/swapping to new providers.

Not that I’m advocating sticking with what would still ostensibly be U.S.-backed tech.
I live in the U.S., and I ply my trade in tech and tech-adjacent sectors. I wouldn’t prefer it if the country I live in becomes a technological backwater and is passed on by the world, but I also am sort of reaching a point where I think perhaps FAFO.

[–] Rentlar@lemmy.ca 6 points 11 hours ago

For one, servers running Amazon's ECS/EKS can switch to self-managed Kubernetes.

Even if Trump is bluffing as usual, European governments and local councils should get the hint that the tech hegemony Google Amazon Apple and Microsoft is going to be used as an arm of the US government.

Time to switch! Wololo

Richard stallman, Saint IGNUtias of the Church of Emacs

[–] Randomgal@lemmy.ca 5 points 12 hours ago

If we get tot get point Trump is cutting off the world's internet, I'd be more concerned about the nukes about to fly.

[–] ideonek@piefed.social 4 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

Just three American behemoths — Amazon, Microsoft, and Google...

Do it! What are you waiting for? Do it!

[–] axh@lemmy.world 3 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Oh, yes please!

It would be disastrous at first, but Europe would recover much stronger than before.

We would have to do a lot to catch up but the seeds are there and they cannot grow because they are in the shadow of the US industry.

The US giants have money and userbase to outperform anything Europe has at the moment and when they cannot outperform some company, they buy it. If Trump ever tries to cut US Tech off, European companies would grow rapidly to fill the void.

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[–] Kazel@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 8 hours ago
[–] cronenthal@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 11 hours ago

Oh but Europe can do something about it, it would only take a long time and be very costly.

[–] Switorik@lemmy.zip 3 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Can we pull the plug on Trump already? I swear this timeline is a cruel joke.

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