“Imagine waking up to the news that Microsoft, Google, and Amazon have been ordered by the U.S. government to cease providing their IT services to Europe. No more Azure, no more Google Cloud, no more AWS. The fallout would be immediate and catastrophic for countless European businesses, exposing a deep dependency that few truly acknowledge.”
https://adele.pages.casa/md/blog/what-if-us-cut-off-big-tech-from-europe.md
Yes, yes, YES I have been saying this for years!
The Europe's brain-dead reliance on resources in the USA is criminally stupid and utterly irresponsible!
In the event of the current conflict spreading from Ukraine to elsewhere in Europe, one of the first things Russia will do is to cut the transatlantic data cables linking Europe with the USA.
@Paulos_the_fog @urlyman That would not destroy US hyperscalar hosting in Europe.
It was known during Brexit negotiations, when Jacob Rees-Mogg was telling the Irish to "know their place", that almost half of UK govt cloud-hosted services were... in Ireland.
I'm not even sure whether you are arguing for using US servers or against it - what I am saying is that in addition to the risk of a raving, demented POTUS like trump being tempted to cut Europe off from resources in the USA or obliging US companies to shut off access to their data centres in Europe, the risk is that Russia will sabotage the transatlantic data cables.
I see no valid answer to that in your comment!
@Paulos_the_fog @urlyman the point was simply that severance of transatlantic cables won't have much impact on US cloud-hosted services physically located in Europe. There's a lot of dark fibre already available, as well as alternative routes for data. A complete disconnect between Europe and N. America, as opposed to inconvenient disruption, is likely impossible. Trump demanding data, imposing export restrictions on digital services etc could be more disruptive.
It's not one or the other that's the danger, it's both!
There is also the risk that trump orders US companies operating in Europe to hand over sensitive commercial data disadvantaging EU companies compared to their US competitors.
Europe needs to treat the US as a sworn enemy!
