“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.
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 @samueljohnson
fwiw, there are no magic wands for the chaotic unravelling of what we’ve built up. Things will fall apart when they don’t stand up anymore. And then we will do some things differently
@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!
It is all very well saying that but I worked for a US bank in Europe - we 100% absolutely depended on a daily download of the company's mainframe data via a dedicated transatlantic pipe. If that feed slowed down or stopped so would the company's subsidiary!
@Paulos_the_fog @urlyman Who cares if a US bank's EU subsidiary goes out of business? The point was that interrupting data flows entirely is probably impossible. 2nd if anyone can afford to pay for traffic prioritisation on alternative routes banks can. Can we live without banks? That experiment has already been conducted, at least in Ireland in 1970 for most of a year.
There are some published papers on this. Can we live without the $? Probably.
Can we live without the US$ - yes of course we can although it will cause a very undesirable leap in the value of the Euro.
Who would cry if a US bank went out of business - in the case of the bank where I worked a large number of other banks as their main business was custody.
I am told that some of the hosting in Europe requires access to US servers just to operate!
@Paulos_the_fog @urlyman Very likely for things like authentication and issuance of decryption keys, but the traffic involved is minimal. On the other hand some businesses are all in on using only US hosted services and have no local infrastructure at all (just PCs on desks). Microsoft Ireland eg. (!)
@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.