Sovereignty needs to be viewed as a full stack pursuit, where at each point in the supply chain - from cobalt in the ground to email with document attached - a question must be posed whether the EU is at correct degree of ability to operate without each current trading partner. That includes considerations of stockpiling, relationship stability & adversity, shipping lanes, and many other things. The complexity isn’t noticed because for 99.9% of things we’ve settled into comfy patterns.
Slicing at the cloud (Azure) without considering “above” or “below” isn’t detailed enough. There are technologies and supply chains EU has neglected that need to be restarted. The industrial policy needed to do this will stimulate amazing innovations Europe can one day be proud of.
But man is it hard to add an eclipsed capability to an advanced economy. It’ll be in the difficulty ballpark of bringing high speed rail to the US.
Interesting how this trick plays out. After drastic changes on the part of Trump, it became obvious Europe needs, among others, strong EU-based datacenters for public use ("European cloud"). Now, a big American cloud claims they will build an European cloud.
Who's going to buy it, though? AWS, Google and Microsoft do have European datacenters and many users here use these regions but the whole point is to be politically, financially, and "privacy-ally" completely independent from the USA. Not to mention Azure might not be the most secure of public clouds.
> Who's going to buy it, though? AWS, Google and Microsoft do have European datacenters and many users here use these regions but the whole point is to be politically, financially, and "privacy-ally" completely independent from the USA.
This is the real issue, IMHO. I work for a European SaaS and we've had a small number of customers ask about our plans to host our services in datacenters not owned by US companies.
UK press and politicians were recently stoking fears of a software kill switch in US weapons, e.g. the F-35, that may or may not actually exist.
Who is going to believe Microsoft won't kill 365 for countries or organisations that earn the ire of the US regime or people who hold sway over its aging leader? Amazon just bent the knee (again). Facebook has done so very publicly. The disdain for Europe shown in the US Vice President's public speeches and private messages should scare every EU and UK leader away from US tech.
What does this actually mean? A superficial read suggests it's datacentres where some European country owns the hardware, but if Microsoft controls the Azure software running there, then they retain all the control? In what way are they "sovereign"?
Given that MSFT is obligated by the US government to spy on anyone (especially foreign) when asked, the only assurance that works is one that prevents that. Very difficult.
Sovereignty needs to be viewed as a full stack pursuit, where at each point in the supply chain - from cobalt in the ground to email with document attached - a question must be posed whether the EU is at correct degree of ability to operate without each current trading partner. That includes considerations of stockpiling, relationship stability & adversity, shipping lanes, and many other things. The complexity isn’t noticed because for 99.9% of things we’ve settled into comfy patterns.
Slicing at the cloud (Azure) without considering “above” or “below” isn’t detailed enough. There are technologies and supply chains EU has neglected that need to be restarted. The industrial policy needed to do this will stimulate amazing innovations Europe can one day be proud of.
But man is it hard to add an eclipsed capability to an advanced economy. It’ll be in the difficulty ballpark of bringing high speed rail to the US.
Related:
Microsoft vows to protect European operations
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43846985
30-apr-2025
Interesting how this trick plays out. After drastic changes on the part of Trump, it became obvious Europe needs, among others, strong EU-based datacenters for public use ("European cloud"). Now, a big American cloud claims they will build an European cloud.
Who's going to buy it, though? AWS, Google and Microsoft do have European datacenters and many users here use these regions but the whole point is to be politically, financially, and "privacy-ally" completely independent from the USA. Not to mention Azure might not be the most secure of public clouds.
> Who's going to buy it, though? AWS, Google and Microsoft do have European datacenters and many users here use these regions but the whole point is to be politically, financially, and "privacy-ally" completely independent from the USA.
This is the real issue, IMHO. I work for a European SaaS and we've had a small number of customers ask about our plans to host our services in datacenters not owned by US companies.
UK press and politicians were recently stoking fears of a software kill switch in US weapons, e.g. the F-35, that may or may not actually exist.
Who is going to believe Microsoft won't kill 365 for countries or organisations that earn the ire of the US regime or people who hold sway over its aging leader? Amazon just bent the knee (again). Facebook has done so very publicly. The disdain for Europe shown in the US Vice President's public speeches and private messages should scare every EU and UK leader away from US tech.
>Sovereign cloud datacenters
What does this actually mean? A superficial read suggests it's datacentres where some European country owns the hardware, but if Microsoft controls the Azure software running there, then they retain all the control? In what way are they "sovereign"?
Given that MSFT is obligated by the US government to spy on anyone (especially foreign) when asked, the only assurance that works is one that prevents that. Very difficult.