[HN Gopher] Another European agency shifts off US Tech as digita...
___________________________________________________________________
Another European agency shifts off US Tech as digital sovereignty
gains steam
Author : CrankyBear
Score : 216 points
Date : 2025-10-31 16:39 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.zdnet.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.zdnet.com)
| jmclnx wrote:
| I do not blame them for doing this. And if they move over to
| LibreOffice and a distro like SUSE replacing Microsoft products,
| they will eventually see support costs decreasing a lot.
|
| Cloud, I do not know if that will reduce costs, but at least they
| will know their data is more secure than with AWS, Microsoft and
| others.
| ArtTimeInvestor wrote:
| Are there any publicly traded European cloud companies that will
| benefit from Europe hosting more of their stuff on their own?
|
| I looked at IONOS, but it seems they just let their cloud product
| rot away? The cloud backend looks outdated and lacks basic
| features like uploading private keys that can be used when
| provisioning new VMs.
|
| I also looked at OVH, but their website and interface look like
| total chaos to me. I felt lost all the time while I was trying to
| set up a VM, and while trying to use their AI APIs.
|
| Considering that Europe has an economy as large as the USA, it is
| puzzling how small these companies are. The combined market cap
| of IONOS and OVH is less than $10B.
| arbuge wrote:
| Hetzner comes to mind.
| ArtTimeInvestor wrote:
| Hetzner is not a publicly traded company.
| mentalgear wrote:
| maybe for the better
| 9dev wrote:
| They have been a sustainable business from the start, and
| it shows.
| rzerowan wrote:
| They would probably need a anchor client that would allow for
| predictable growth at scale - AWS always had Amazon.com GCP had
| its gmail and other workspace apps. Ideally the varoius
| goverments in the EU would commit to only hosting their work on
| them , however from one article read recently even the rules
| they come up with to test sovereignity claims are gamed to
| benefit the US providers.
| wiether wrote:
| Like https://www.stackit.de/en/ which is the cloud offering
| of Schwarz Group, owner of Lidl?
| rzerowan wrote:
| Yep,hopefully their API offerings are industry compatible
| and requisition of resources for clients is smooth. Would
| also help if they can onboard similar sized operations that
| are currently doing their own hosting or using one of the
| non-EU clouds.
| jschoe wrote:
| Europe does not have the same market conditions as the US. The
| continent is divided into a gazillion amount of small
| countries, each with their own rules, laws, regulations,
| languages, customers, pension systems, healthcare systems, and
| taxes. Even the currency is not the same everywhere. Not to
| mention the cultural differences.
|
| Pretty hard economy to survive in.
| ArtTimeInvestor wrote:
| US companies seem to sell into Europe just fine?
|
| Amazon, Google, Microsoft - they all make tens of billions of
| revenue in Europe.
|
| Why wouldn't a company based in Europe be able to do the
| same?
| somanyphotons wrote:
| US companies get big first, only then try Europe once they
| have big revenue/headcount to handle the risk/complexity.
| kergonath wrote:
| One thing they have for them is a lot of money to invest
| from their American market, and enough momentum that they
| can afford barely sustainable European operations for a few
| years whilst they figure things out and streamline
| everything.
| consumer451 wrote:
| EU federalism would solve this issue, and likely cause
| others.
|
| The concept of European federalism is extremely interesting
| to me. The first I heard about it was at a house party in
| Prague, from a group of very excited young people. It feels
| both impossible and inevitable.
|
| Here is a subreddit on the topic:
| https://old.reddit.com/r/EuropeanFederalists/
| eikenberry wrote:
| The US started this way... Europe must be careful about how
| much power is given the EU or it will end up the same way.
| Havoc wrote:
| Even if you can't move all of it now the basic building blocks
| like VMs and databases aren't exactly cutting edge tech so should
| be doable.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| People overestimate the technology required to build the
| utility stack, from physical servers to the first bit from an
| http server. Is it easy? It's straightforward. Can there be
| downtime? Tell me what us-east-1, Azure Front Door, Github, etc
| have looked like lately. Everyone uses cloud as an excuse for
| more uptime, but they're still down frequently, so this
| argument doesn't hold water. Eat some downtime, you're going to
| regardless if you manage your own infra or outsource. Can't
| build it yourself? That's fine, people like Oxide can build it
| for you, and you own all of it.
|
| The profits you don't pay to hyperscalers is investment in your
| sovereignty. Easy case to prioritize stakeholders over Google,
| Microsoft, and AWS shareholders, and the US government's
| ability to rug pull your access and data at any time. The
| argument isn't bare metal vs virtualized; the argument is "Do
| you own it?" You are spending a certain amount no matter what
| to get the technology capabilities needed.
|
| _37signals Leaves the Cloud_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33260061 - October 2022
|
| https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-cloud-is-just-someone-else...
|
| https://oxide.computer/
|
| (have built cloud infra for startups, fortune 100s, financial
| services firms, and on prem infra for high energy physics, non
| profits, public goods, etc; thoughts and opinions always my
| own)
| graemep wrote:
| > Eat some downtime, you're going to regardless if you manage
| your own infra or outsource.
|
| If its outsourced the downtime is someone else's fault.
|
| People prefer opex to capex.
|
| You are right at a technical level, but short termism and
| personal incentives trump those.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| > You are right at a technical level, but short termism and
| personal incentives trump those.
|
| Agreed. Never let a crisis go to waste. This is that
| crisis. Like bankruptcy, change happens gradually, then
| suddenly.
| zoeysmithe wrote:
| Both those things are like the root account to one's data. If
| there is a hypervisor backdoor (or if your vendor is told by
| the government to stop giving you updates or sell you product,
| or even pull your keys) then its game over. DB's too because
| they're so mission critical and not trivial to move off.
|
| As far as cloud goes, how many shops are now looking at
| bringing stuff back in because eventually cloud maximizes its
| profit margins and captured clients can't say no to ever
| increasing prices. I imagine leaving the US-owned cloud also
| means an opportunity to reconfigure what is on the cloud and if
| it needs to be there.
|
| Here's hope desktop linux comes back into play.
|
| As for Munich moving back to windows, who knows how much of
| that was 'checkbook diplomacy' of the USA demanding they go
| back to US products or the US will pull unrelated support or
| whatever. Now that the USA has become isolationist, if not a
| threat to the EU, those favors/checks aren't being cashed
| anymore. So much of this is not a meritocracy but instead the
| crony capitalism that defines the modern world. Maybe there's
| potential for actual merit now that the USA is losing global
| prominence in so many ways.
|
| The EU liberated from US influence can lead to great things and
| this is a good start. For all the doom and gloom of politics
| today, the US's century of influence ending can only be a
| universally good thing, imho.
| Herring wrote:
| I'm the last person you can call a fan of US foreign policy -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_interventions_by_the_U.
| ..
|
| But for global stability it's best if there was some kind of
| entity with a legitimate monopoly on force. It's like I don't
| want to live in a town where everyone has guns, I'd like a
| police force with accountability.
| zoeysmithe wrote:
| The war on terror has killed millions of civilians, mostly
| women and children. Brown University lists excess deaths
| from the WoT at 4 or 5m. The USA has destabilized many
| countries and performed coups. It invades and goes to war
| for its own geopolitical gains and regularly lies why. What
| you're praising is a horror.
|
| Being defenseless hoping an angry 800lbs gorilla will be
| kind to you must be the worst system imaginable. A balance
| of power both economic and arms is going to be the best way
| forward because now that gorilla knows it can't just do
| what it wants anymore.
| Herring wrote:
| I'm not praising anything. Yes US foreign policy sucks.
| I'm pointing out historically a balance of power has been
| even worse. There are too many possible points of
| failure. Discuss with your favorite frontier LLM.
|
| Ideally idk I'd like a much stronger UN or something,
| with federal power over member states.
| lazide wrote:
| Who would run such a UN? And why wouldn't they be worse -
| and what would you be able to do about it, if they were?
|
| And don't forget, regardless of the title, for anything
| to get done there inevitably is one man who is making
| decisions/breaking ties _somewhere_.
|
| I can't think of anyone that the various factions could
| actually trust to do that without screwing over at least
| (or more!) half of them.
| Herring wrote:
| Who runs your local police force? What do you do if they
| suck? It's really not that hard to implement a good
| setup, but yeah the hard part is convincing multiple
| countries to give up a bit of sovereignty. Might take
| another world war.
| lazide wrote:
| If my local police force sucks, they impact me and the
| other local voters, so they tend to be somewhat easy to
| fix (as long as we can all agree they suck). Or at least
| I only have my fellow local idiots to blame.
|
| What happens when the person who chose them is in
| Beijing, and everyone in my entire _country_ doesn't want
| them there? But they still got a global majority?
|
| Typically that's the kind of thing a lot of people die
| over.
| Herring wrote:
| Yeah multiply this situation x1M and you understand why a
| balance of power is unstable. To make a civilized society
| work, people can't pull out guns when they disagree. You
| sue, or you figure out how to communicate/negotiate, or
| you just live with it. Any of those are better than war,
| and a good setup will have plenty of avenues like that.
| lazide wrote:
| I think we both have _wildly_ different life experiences.
|
| The only way a real UN would work is with _even more
| violence_. The 'under the boot forever' type.
|
| The world would need a Qin to have even half a chance
| [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qin_Shi_Huang].
|
| Because what happens - when like the US is now
| discovering - the courts are useless? And you don't even
| have your own guns to protect your rights?and what
| someone else has decided to do is your destruction?
| Herring wrote:
| Did you ever find it weird that it's the pro-gun pro-
| rights republicans that are attacking the courts?
|
| Americans have some very weird thinking over guns. I
| think if they were taken away, they'd have to work harder
| at getting along with other people (esp women,
| minorities, china), and therefore get better at it.
|
| It's really not a coincidence that it's the pro-gun
| Americans who killed Roe v Wade. Their ancestors owned
| slaves. They love to say it's about "rights", but it's
| clearly not.
| lazide wrote:
| The courts don't work in China or Russia either.
|
| It doesn't surprise me that those capable (and willing!)
| of defending themselves would rugpull everyone else if it
| gave them what they wanted.
|
| What surprises me is how everyone else sits back and lets
| them and refuses to actually take action to defend
| themselves, while going 'woe is me, why won't anyone _do
| something_ '.
|
| And acting surprised that the people they've been
| screaming are going to do bad things actually do bad
| things.
|
| It's embarrassing. Just like you are apparently
| advocating for a dictator to 'save us', from....
| ourselves? Or something?
|
| At least the Trumpers are transparently doing it for
| personal gain, near as I can tell you're just doing it
| for some kind of do gooder fantasy? They tend to be even
| worse, in practice.
| 15155 wrote:
| > It's like I don't want to live in a town where everyone
| has guns, I'd like a police force with accountability
|
| Accountability doesn't equal magic: when seconds count, the
| police are minutes (realistically: hours, in many places)
| away.
| kergonath wrote:
| Personally, I like a forum for sorting things out
| peacefully without relying on the goodwill of the bully _du
| jour_.
|
| Your argument is not new and is exactly why enlightened
| absolute monarchs were fashionable at some point. It sounds
| good, but the problem is that this works as long as the
| monarch is good. When they aren't, or aren't any more, or
| their heir aren't, then it's horrible.
|
| Democracy is an exercise in optimising for the middle
| ground: sure, it's not going to be as efficient as a
| competent autocracy, but it limits the worst case
| scenarios.
| tjpnz wrote:
| >Now that the USA has become isolationist, if not a threat to
| the EU, those favors/checks aren't being cashed anymore.
|
| Trump could threaten tariffs.
| zoeysmithe wrote:
| Trumpism is all about maximizing tariff gain/benefit.
| Economically and politically he may not have room to do
| more without crippling the USA. The EU is already dealing
| with tough tariffs from the USA.
|
| Most of the "500% tariffs" is bluster and he backs down to
| the min/max level the capital owning class he is part of
| and he ultimately serves don't want to go past.
| sipofwater wrote:
| "The world without hegemony" "As Pax Americana ends, a
| multipolar order is emerging. The history of Southeast Asia
| holds lessons for what's to come":
| https://aeon.co/essays/what-southeast-asian-history-tells-
| us... (aeon.co/essays/what-southeast-asian-history-tells-us-
| about-a-multipolar-order) via
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45771497 ;
| https://archive.ph/wBrLt
| sipofwater wrote:
| * "The Histomap. Four Thousand Years Of World History.
| Relative Power Of Contemporary States, Nations And Empires."
| by John B. Sparks: https://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/d
| etail/RUMSEY~8~1~2... (www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detai
| l/RUMSEY~8~1~200375~3001080:The-Histomap--Four-Thousand-
| Years-O), https://web.archive.org/web/20130813230833if_/alanb
| ernstein.... (4194 x 19108 pixels, web.archive.org/web/201308
| 13230833if_/alanbernstein.net/images/large/histomap.jpg) via
| https://web.archive.org/web/20130813230833/alanbernstein.net.
| .. (web.archive.org/web/20130813230833/alanbernstein.net/imag
| es/large/histomap.jpg); https://archive.ph/1wEk8/332f1c70b1ff
| d9854847dbfa7ad77b4915c... (4194 x 19108 pixels, archive.ph/1
| wEk8/332f1c70b1ffd9854847dbfa7ad77b4915cbd50a.jpg) via
| https://archive.ph/1wEk8
|
| * "(Covers to) The Histomap. Four Thousand Years Of World
| History. Relative Power Of Contemporary States, Nations And
| Empires.": https://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RU
| MSEY~8~1~2... (www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RUMSEY
| ~8~1~200374~3000299:-Covers-to--The-Histomap--Four-Thou)
| ArcHound wrote:
| These are great news. I was quite pessimistic about this
| transformation, but seems there are plenty institutions willing
| to make the leap.
|
| Are you aware of any tracking web that would display all these
| efforts? Wiki seems a bit outdated:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adoption_of_free_and_open-sour...
|
| EDIT: this seems to be a dupe of
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45732485
| mentalgear wrote:
| Why would ANY global business still rely on U.S. Tech? The U.S.
| government, through their executive orders and dissolving of the
| separations of powers, has demonstrated its ability to
| unilaterally disrupt or shut down private technology services at
| will. How can any business justify depending on U.S.-based tech
| infrastructure when its access could vanish overnight on a
| political whim by an unstable president?
|
| If there is no rule of law, capital, talent and trust are flowing
| out of that country - for good reason.
| danaris wrote:
| > Why would ANY global business still rely on U.S. Tech?
|
| First and foremost, because it takes _time_ to switch.
|
| Secondly, because there are a lot of things that just don't
| have realistic alternatives.
|
| For a large agency, especially one that has statutory or
| regulatory requirements on how they decide on and deploy
| hardware and software, even if they can _legally_ choose to
| switch to open-source options, if they made that decision the
| day after the election last year, it might have been too late
| to get major proposals in for the 2025 fiscal year, so they 'd
| have to wait until 2026 to do more than start planning. (This
| is, fairly obviously, a near-worst-case scenario; other
| agencies will have much more freedom to change as they please.)
|
| Even if they're less encumbered, the more users you have within
| an organization, the longer it takes to execute a migration
| like this, and it can be _really really hard_ to operate for
| any length of time with a partial migration completed,
| especially for the support team. I could easily believe that
| some such migrations are already in the planning stage, but
| will take months to actually happen.
|
| And finally, because This Is How We've Always Done It is a
| very, very powerful force. For some organizations,
| unfortunately, it will take some kind of catastrophic event to
| realize that they really shouldn't be relying on a foreign and
| possibly hostile power for all their major enterprise IT
| vendors.
| graemep wrote:
| I have also met the attitude that using hyperscalers is the
| right way to do it, and running anything of your own that you
| could outsource to them is weird and unprofessional.
| mentalgear wrote:
| Time well invested. If you are a publicly-traded company, the
| executive level is financially irresponsible to the
| stakeholders if they leave the company's data at perpetual
| risk of just vanishing.
| graemep wrote:
| They do though, and they are happy to.
|
| A very small number of government agencies in a few countries
| have moved away from reliance on the US, but very few
| businesses have. We still have governments and businesses
| encouraging the use of US tech by, for example, encouraging use
| of mobile apps. AWS, Azure and Google dominate cloud services
| in most of the world. Microsoft dominates the desktop.
| Businesses and individuals are increasingly reliant on cloud
| apps that are mostly American.
|
| Here in the UK my daughter's school (a large sixth for college)
| relies in MS cloud versions of Office and on Teams, you need
| (at least in my area) to use an mobile app, or a web app hosted
| on AWS to make an appointment with a GP (and if you are
| prescribed medication the pharmacy are informed via an API
| running in AWS). Most SMEs that do run anything of their own
| use AWS. One of the biggest banks (Lloyds) had issues during
| the recent AWS outage, and I know they are not the only one to
| use AWS.
|
| A lot of European governments are pushing ID and age
| verification mobile apps.
|
| In general a lot of governments are regulating in ways that
| favour the incumbents.
| lazide wrote:
| Not to mention 95% of all mobile app installs are through App
| stores controlled by 2 US companies.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| But to change these things within the past 7 or 8 months
| would have been impossible. I get what you guys are saying
| but there's so much of this stuff that is very entrenched
| and there's decades of inertia to push against, it can't
| just happen overnight. The story isn't that no one uses
| American services anymore, it's that fewer and fewer of us
| feel comfortable doing so and are open to or actively
| seeking alternatives in a way we never expected to be.
| lazide wrote:
| Okay? How does that change anything?
| kergonath wrote:
| It does not change the situation instantly, but it
| changes the direction of History, and these changes add
| up over time.
| lazide wrote:
| My point is what you're saying is so obvious, I'm not
| sure why you're saying it.
| nxor wrote:
| Trump, of course, is an unstable person, but why does
| everyone see the other side as any different? To many of
| us, they are sides of the same coin - and this, by the
| way, is more or less reflected in the similar lifestyles
| they lead. Elite politicians attend elite schools,
| democrat republican or otherwise. So it puzzles me that
| only now it's common to be skeptical of the US. Better
| now than never I guess, but I don't think it's true that
| Trump is somehow worse than his predecessor. The
| predecessors are just outwardly nicer. Nice vs kind, etc.
| isodev wrote:
| I think it's important to focus on the momentum. It's not
| easy to redesign and re-engineer systems that have taken
| years and decades to develop and span many layers of
| integrations. There is also the issue of retraining as
| everyone is happily used to whatever system they currently
| have. It's unfortunate the US decided to go back in time
| rather than look to the future but eventually, very few (if
| any) services would rely on US corps.
| drstewart wrote:
| EU is the entity with fascist Hungary and Slovakia having veto
| powers, isn't it? The one where "free" countries like Denmark
| push for encryption backdoors?
|
| I think I'll avoid them - for good reason
| mentalgear wrote:
| While there are fascist leaders in those countries
| (especially Trump modelled is remodelling of the country
| after Orban's autocratic and corrupt Hungary), those are just
| 2 of 27 - so far far from the majority.
|
| And many decisions in the EU do not allow for their veto
| votes anyhow - Orban's Hungary has been withhold now for
| years Billions of EU investments because of how the countries
| institutions were hollowed out by him.
| drstewart wrote:
| What do you call a table of 27 with 2 Nazis at it? 27
| Nazis.
| cassepipe wrote:
| I call it a table of 27 with two Nazis
|
| How do you call a Parliament with two communist
| representatives, a communist regime ?
| darccio wrote:
| That's an unfair characterisation of EU. Hungary and
| Slovakia didn't join under their current fascist
| governments. They weren't fascist when they joined in
| 2004.
|
| Kicking them out isn't easy unless there is unanimity.
| Unfortunately EU requires this kind of quorum for the big
| decisions, which is kind of a safeguard to precisely
| avoid going full fascist for the whole EU due to a
| minority of countries.
| lm28469 wrote:
| > They weren't fascist when they joined in 2004.
|
| And they still aren't by any definition of the word
| fascism
|
| It's 2025 we should invent new terms for new things, not
| everything bad is "nazi" or "fascist"
| anon291 wrote:
| 27 out of 27 agree that end to end encryption and free
| speech are dangerous... So spare us all the pearl clutching
| cassepipe wrote:
| Except they don't. Last time I checked it didn't pass.
| MrDresden wrote:
| You are badly informed. Even Denmark, the main proponent
| of the bill has withdrawn it's support.
|
| What you have just witnessed was a working civil society.
| I'll take that over the alternative any day.
| patrickmcnamara wrote:
| How can Hungary or Slovakia do the same? Literally, how could
| they? What mechanism exists?
| kergonath wrote:
| > The one where "free" countries like Denmark push for
| encryption backdoors?
|
| In a free political system, anybody is able to push any
| agenda. What matters is what gets adopted. I agree that the
| EU is not perfect, but you cannot just take a government's
| pet project and claim that it is a failure of the political
| system.
| lm28469 wrote:
| Lmao, westoids having hard takes on Slovakia after reading
| headlines on reddit is the funniest thing ever, if only you
| knew how wrong you are
|
| Quick example, people who stop at headlines keep talking
| about Fico yapping about stopping aids to Ukraine, yet they
| give more as a percentage of their gdp than Germany, France,
| the UK, &c. Fico's a piece of shit but don't stop at what he
| says, half of his bs doesn't make it further than headlines
| in western medias
| baxtr wrote:
| Believe it or not, it's partly because of regulation.
|
| If you're on Azure for example as a bank you know that most of
| the (eg DORA) requirements are met, because regulators have
| directly talked to Microsoft.
|
| There are high compliance and migration cost for switching with
| no immediate gain for the business.
| anon291 wrote:
| Literally no other country or market with the perhaps exception
| of China has anything close to its own tech stack. Europe
| literally had Linus Torvalds and couldn't keep him. He now
| lives in Portland, 3 hours from where windows is made and 10
| hours away from OS X. Literally the entire tech industry is the
| west coast of the United States.
|
| The disparity in capability is orders of magnitude. Europe is
| basically hopeless at this point
| exasperaited wrote:
| > The disparity in capability is orders of magnitude.
|
| But then again it's increasingly being made by Indian
| migrants, right?
|
| How far away the critical state is, who knows. Could it be in
| this presidential term? Would it happen within ten years of
| the coming imperial takeover of the presidency? Perhaps.
|
| But when the valley loses its dominance it will likely happen
| pretty quickly: huge numbers of the people who make it happen
| will go home, go back to their home states, or just go to
| live somewhere cheaper. The US is not educating people fast
| enough or deeply enough to replace them, and there's no sign
| that AI really can replace the ones that matter.
|
| Just because nobody can see exactly when this will happen
| doesn't mean you don't start planning for it to happen.
| Because it will happen, and when it happens it will happen
| fast.
|
| The US tech industry is still built on the idea that the USA
| is a comfortable, friendly, open liberal democracy. And that
| is over. I mean, on a basic level any _individual_ H1B
| placement in the future exists at the whim of the executive.
| Who do you have to donate to, to keep it? And any skilled
| migrant who might come over, work the hell out of a job that
| is beneath their level of education in the quick-e-mart and
| then start something of their own is not going to come.
|
| Europe has its own problems with pasty-faced, bad-haired
| weaselly proto-fascists, but it's still fighting.
| linguae wrote:
| I won't go that far...yes, the West Coast of the US is
| dominant, but it's not "literally the entire tech industry"
| or even figuratively. We'd have a hard time buying new
| hardware without Chinese and Taiwanese companies. South Korea
| is a powerhouse in consumer tech; think Samsung and LG. Japan
| doesn't have the dominance in tech it once did, but Japan is
| still a major player with many large tech companies like
| Fujitsu, Hitachi, Sony, NEC, and many more. Plus, if "tech"
| isn't limited to software, then there are plenty of players
| worldwide in biotechnology and automobiles.
|
| And let's not count out Europe. I'm actually typing this in a
| BMW dealership's waiting room in the Bay Area as I get my
| brake pads updated. BMW definitely qualifies as technology,
| even if it's not a software company.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >Europe literally had Linus Torvalds and couldn't keep him
|
| The great thing about Linux is we don't need to care where
| Linus lives. We obviously have -- in principle -- the tech,
| the workforce and the money to build an alternative tech
| stack. Most of it is open source at this point.
|
| It's just political will. If we had the commitment and sense
| of urgency to unwind from America we could. Just like in
| military affairs we don't do it because we have a mental
| blockade to break with the existing global order.
| deaux wrote:
| No Korean government services rely on US hyperscalers (which
| is the subject of this post). I'm 99% sure the same goes for
| financial institutions. Those are the key infra and they're
| sovereign. A lot of big companies do have some things on US
| hyperscalers, but even that is a relatively small percentage.
| Overwhelmingly things are on prem.
|
| And now someone will link "but there was just a fire that
| resulted in many online gov services being down for
| weeks!!!". Yes. And having that happen once in a decade,
| after which measures will be taken so that from now on it
| happens once in 3 decades, is _absolutely 100x preferable_ to
| depending on US hyperscalers like EU governments do. As we
| just saw, it 's not like AWS and Azure don't go down.
|
| Sure, they don't have their own OS. But even much of China
| still runs on Windows. China might manage to get entirely rid
| of it at some point but not yet.
|
| Doesn't Intel depend on ASML when their chip machines break?
| I don't think there exists a single country in the world that
| can currently produce a significant amount of full-stack,
| modern compute. If there is one, it's definitely China rather
| than the US.
| Permit wrote:
| > capital, talent and trust are flowing out of that country
|
| Is there non-anecdotal evidence of this that you can share with
| us?
|
| My understanding is that people make this claim but I haven't
| seen evidence of it beyond one-off articles about individual
| professors leaving the country.
| lispisok wrote:
| There is none. Despite the less stable environment if you are
| Talent by far the best place to be is the US. If you are an
| ambitious entrepreneur by far the best place to be is the US.
| withinboredom wrote:
| After I moved out of the US, I got emails all the time
| about moving to the EU; until I deleted my blog post about
| it.
|
| The expat facebook groups have exploded if you're looking
| for 'evidence'.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| It's Europe. They couldn't even drop Russian oil imports
| despite them being an existential threat. They're doing this
| because anti-US moves are trendy right now and that's it.
| cassepipe wrote:
| Some of us in Europe are ready to drop Russian oil imports
| whatever the cost. It's just russian backed populists are
| ready to rile the crowds for any price increase whatsoever
| and governments have to tread lightly all the time in order
| not to let power go to all those far right parties who would
| just buy the cheapest oil coming from anywhere as long as it
| allows them to remain in power.
| jack_tripper wrote:
| _> Some of us in Europe are ready to drop Russian oil
| imports whatever the cost._
|
| Translation: "Some of us in Europe are ready to drop drop
| bread in favor of eating cake, whatever the cost."
|
| Easy for you to write cheques that others have to cash. Be
| careful with such suicidal empathy, as that has second
| order effects that back-fire in spectacular fashion. That's
| why you're supposed to put your own oxygen mask on before
| helping others.
|
| _> It's just russian backed populists are ready to rile
| the crowds for any price increase whatsoever.._
|
| TIL that if you aren't gonna sacrifice yourself for Ukraine
| and prioritize your family's survival, wanting to have a
| job, a roof over your head and food on the table, somehow
| makes you a "Russian populist" now. Interesting logic.
|
| You'd think much differently if you or your family would
| face unemployment, homelessness or malnourishment due to
| the economic damages caused by a surge in energy costs
| across the board. Half my immediate friend circle have lost
| their jobs in the last ~2 years due to the economic
| situation, my grandma can't afford her bills from her
| pension without financial support from us, while access
| public services like healthcare and childcare has only
| gotten worse, despite us paying more for everything. Not
| exactly the environment people feel like gutting themselves
| even further for a foreign country, whichever that may be.
| rwyinuse wrote:
| Building an energy system dependent on Russian gas is,
| and always was an idiotic thing to do. I live in Finland,
| and our energy costs are pretty back to more or less what
| they used ot be, even though we live next to Russia.
|
| I don't know where you're from, but at least Germany's
| problems run way deeper than their idiotic energy
| policies. Lack of investment in infrastructure, lack of
| innovation and all that. Even with cheap energy there's
| no way German car makers would compete, when Chinese make
| better EV's for less money. Laziness and lack of
| innovation is the problem, just like in European IT
| sector, which just buys everything from America.
|
| Also, let's not forget the huge impact Covid spending had
| on inflation, and in turn interest rates & people's
| purchasing power. Ukraine war and sanctions against
| Russia are completely insignificant compared to that
| blunder. We're living the recession that was supposed to
| happen in 2020.
| bad_haircut72 wrote:
| when the momentum really gets going expect similar
| agitators rallying against reductions of US influence
| nutjob2 wrote:
| Surprisingly, when you depend on Russia oil and gas for your
| refineries and industry for decades, you can't always turn it
| off instantly, it sometimes takes many years due to
| infrastructure and for come countries, pro-Putin politics.
|
| Being anti US isn't 'trendy', it is a response to the US
| being anti-EU at the moment, and justifiably being seen as
| unreliable, mercurial and even dangerous.
| mrtksn wrote:
| > Why would ANY global business still rely on U.S. Tech?
|
| Because it's pretty refined since it was funded with resources
| so great that it was intended to serve global level audience?
|
| I don't believe that EU will have comparable quality "tech"
| without restricting US market access in EU. Unfortunately,
| refined high quality software requires considerable resources
| and no one will invest those considerable resources when the US
| companies can just offer better software at lower price thanks
| to their lead and deep pockets until the EU companies go out of
| business. Sure, EU doesn't need to discover everything again
| but they will need to pay top talent world class money for
| years until their products become refined.
| jfengel wrote:
| Governments can nudge. If they swear off American tech, they
| will be using something else, and have influence on how that
| goes. They can put money into getting what they want, and
| open sourcing it.
|
| The more they invest, the more corporations will be able to
| switch.
| kosinus wrote:
| What is cutting off the ICC if not restricting. I think that
| was a pretty blatant move, and is a large part of the chain
| reaction we're seeing now.
| kakacik wrote:
| Who cares about fine details of quality if you are at
| permanent risk of on/off, and a very real one.
|
| Not every company needs, wants or has room to become google
| scale. Stability long term is something we hold dearly in
| Europe, not everybody runs in 10 seconds attention span.
| mrtksn wrote:
| > Who cares about fine details of quality
|
| People who actually work with that to achieve things that
| may be just as important care a lot.
| kakacik wrote:
| OK sure, _some_ people care if you really need to play
| with the words. But only absolute fool would ignore those
| massive risks.
|
| We have fools in many places, but not _that_ much and
| _that_ bad. Look at defense - every single country in
| Europe is ramping defense budget big time, most of those
| money goes to European companies. Doesn 't matter much
| how good US tech currently is, if it has electronics that
| can be tweaked or switched off remotely its a massive
| risk. F16 case was really enough for whole world to wake
| up and reevaluate.
|
| Why should any other industry including what we discuss
| react differently? Private companies can risk as much as
| they want, its up to governments to sweeten the deal for
| local stuff or let it be, sure there market forces can
| play as hard as wanted.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Acknowledging a risk doesn't always mean eliminating it.
| We've seen a lot of this dynamic in the rare earths space
| recently - for most countries, the known and widely
| discussed risks of depending on China for critical
| military inputs haven't been worth the cost of
| establishing domestic production.
| hdgvhicv wrote:
| Can't achieve things when the Us government decides to
| cut you off on a whim.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > I don't believe that EU will have comparable quality "tech"
| without restricting US market access in EU.
|
| > Sure, EU doesn't need to discover everything again but they
| will need to pay top talent world class money for years until
| their products become refined.
|
| Just like the US didn't need to rediscover the inventions of
| cars, submarines, the web, the printed press and more to be
| able to build better iterations on those, wouldn't the exact
| same apply the other way?
|
| It feels like whatever you're saying today could be said the
| other way in the past, so why does it really matter?
|
| The fact on the ground is that people don't trust the US
| overall as much, even less the leadership of the US, so
| whatever dependency has been built up over the years, has to
| be fixed, no matter if the "local" technology is shittier at
| the moment.
|
| I'm sure Americans felt the same about printing presses back
| in the day, where some things you just have to be able to do
| without needing the permission of others far away.
| mrtksn wrote:
| When you do something in a mature industry, you skip quite
| a lot of losing bets that those involved in maturing it
| couldn't.
|
| That's why Google, Samsung and others were able to create
| smartphones comparable to iPhone without having a Steve
| Jobs and a Johny Ive right after Apple made one.
|
| Once you know the way forward, the rest is an engineering
| task and it's matter of working towards it. Very low risk
| compared to the initial work done by the pioneers.
| IndySun wrote:
| Apple did exactly what you're accusing others of, re
| 'smart phones', skipping lost bets and combining existing
| technologies, that did exist in smartphone form pre
| iphone.
|
| Lots of real time material evidence exists.
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/z62gjfr
| mrtksn wrote:
| Sure, that's called progress. Apple skipped Motorola,
| Nokia, Ericsson and Samsung Skipped Motorola, Nokia,
| Ericsson and Apple. The next entrants skip Motorola,
| Nokia, Ericsson, Apple, Samsung.
|
| You get the point. When you are getting into an
| established industry see what works, skip investing
| billions in directions that go nowhere.
| defrost wrote:
| This sounds like good advice for EU tech companies
| stepping up to deliver to customers that want to avoid
| dependance upon existing US companies (and their
| associated demonstrably capricious government).
| jaredklewis wrote:
| > Just like the US didn't need to rediscover the inventions
| of cars, submarines, the web, the printed press and more to
| be able to build better iterations on those, wouldn't the
| exact same apply the other way?
|
| Running a software business in Europe is not against the
| laws of physics or anything, but it is also worth
| considering why Europe doesn't already have a thriving
| software sector. The US shooting itself in the foot might
| help a little, but there are still lots of internal
| barriers, like those outlined in the Draghi report.
| nxor wrote:
| bbb b b but Spotify is European :)
| mrtksn wrote:
| A lot of AAA+ games are European, Linux is European and a
| lot of other software and services are European, a lot of
| industrial software is European. The platforms are not
| European, that's what's lacking.
|
| It's not matter of talent, its matter of investing a few
| tens billions into it and its not going to happen if US
| companies can just undercut and wait it out.
| nxor wrote:
| I did realize that, and agree.
|
| But isn't it a matter of talent? While Americans obsess
| over tech and high paying jobs, Europeans seem to
| emphasize other subjects, not to mention have a lot more
| vacation days. What is to be made of that?
| mrtksn wrote:
| Nope, it's not. Some of the big names in the current AI
| boom are also European but they go do it in USA because
| the money is in USA and they can just access the EU
| markets from there.
|
| I don't know if you are familiar with coding or
| engineering but it's nor really a kind of a profession
| where you work all the time and the more hours you put in
| it the output increases linearly.
|
| It's not like Europeans couldn't code Facebook because
| they were taking too many vacations, unlike Russians and
| Chinese that did. It's that Chinese and Russian markets
| had restriction and local clones or alternatives were
| able to flourish but EU had completely open market for US
| "tech".
|
| Cut off Meta, double the vacations in EU and in a year
| there will be European social media. As it was
| demonstrated by Elon Musk, you don't need that many
| people to work in those "tech" companies anyway.
| poisonborz wrote:
| I wish, but for a corporation morale grounds are not enough,
| and the facts speak for the contrary. Even with all the
| insanity, the US would not touch something as insanely
| profitable as this, and the government is very protective of
| the top tech firms. Also on the technical level, EU companies
| are simply not in the same ballpark.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| [dupe] _Austrian ministry kicks out Microsoft in favor of
| Nextcloud_
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45732485
| sipofwater wrote:
| "Replacing Office365, how to keep OS secure":
| https://help.nextcloud.com/t/replacing-office365-how-to-keep...
| (help.nextcloud.com/t/replacing-office365-how-to-keep-os-
| secure/223289)
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| rage-bait retitling? title says Big Tech, not US Tech.
| 9dev wrote:
| What other big tech is there really, apart from Chinese tech
| (which is already avoided across Europe)?
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| open source is pretty global, i'd say. it's also a theme in
| the linked article.
| tartoran wrote:
| US big tech is not just no longer reliable but toxic, predatory,
| prying, patronizing, etc..
|
| I have to rely on office 365 at work for some minimal functions.
| I generally try to avoid it and only use it when necessary. The
| other day when I logged in to look for some document everything
| was hidden and Copilot AI was front and center. Copilot is the
| dumbest LLM possible, terrible integration, terrible responses,
| everything has become a headache for a simple task I had to do.
| How long would have until Microsoft corpo customers grind to a
| halt?
| anon291 wrote:
| I wish Europe would shift from leaching off of the defense tax
| money of the American people. Conveniently for them, we know that
| won't happen.
| cassepipe wrote:
| Maintaining an empire has a cost and History has taught that
| isolationism is not kind to empires. You want to deal with
| problems _before_ they arise not when you can 't ignore them
| anymore. That was the lesson WWII taught the US and that it has
| now forgotten. Basically great power, great responsibility.
|
| You will regret that n% tax rebate when you children have to go
| fight overseas.
|
| It seems unfair that the US had both a great political
| foundation and the best geography and sometimes I feel like the
| US is too big too fail but you people sure are trying to test
| how robust the whole thing is.
|
| (I know the US is not exactly an empire but an alliance system
| where it has the dominant role but please don't interrupt
| during the class)
| xbmcuser wrote:
| I have been saying this for years most governments instead of
| spending 100s of billions on software subscription would have
| been better of supporting open source software. But that is too
| communist an ideal for these capitalist controlled governments at
| least they are now moving against foreign capitalist at least.
| A_D_E_P_T wrote:
| Am I way off base, or is there a HUGE potential market for a new
| spreadsheet program compatible with xls/xlsx?
|
| It can't be _that_ hard to make one, can it? (Famous last words,
| I know...)
| ironman1478 wrote:
| LibreOffice Calc can do this already.
|
| The main issue is the collaboration aspect of LibreOffice. I
| imagine though with funding LibreOffice can be upgraded to do
| this. If countries are already trying to migrate away from US
| tech, they could invest in this.
| rubenvanwyk wrote:
| I know actually that LibreOffice specifically has lamented
| xlsx, apparently it's a hard file format to design for.
| cassepipe wrote:
| I personally think the future is a database like postgres or
| sqlite that is know to be very robust with a nice calc
| frontend. I believe Mathesar is on it. Watching them closely.
|
| Why ? Because falling back to SQL for big data would ne just
| great. Excel and Google Sheets seems to struggle.
| notepad0x90 wrote:
| the spreadsheet part is done already. the real power of excel
| these days is M365 cloud integration.
|
| Gsuite and Zoho try to compete but they don't come close.
| submeta wrote:
| Too little, too late. After the Snowden revelations there were no
| reasons to use US tech, for any org outside of the USA. It was
| obvious that US state actors do not respect any non-US actor. We
| Europeans need to treat US IT companies just like Russian or
| Chinese IT companies. And build our own infrastructure. The US
| does not care about alliences. It will treat any ally just like
| any other country.
|
| Edit: Office365 is a pile of horse poo. These tools do not allow
| you to do brain surgery. There are other alternatives to write
| text, do calculations, and send emails. Nothing that justifies
| being compromised by US state actors.
| jmyeet wrote:
| This administration in particular has done more to erode and
| destroy American soft power than any other and it's not even
| close.
|
| A lot of people fundamnetally misunderstand the source of the
| US's power. Some think it's because oil and other commodities are
| traded in US dollars. It's not. Oil is traded in US dollars
| because of American soft and hard power, not the other way
| around. Sell oil in euros and people will just trade their euros
| for USD for the exact same reasons.
|
| The ultimate source of American global power is the US military,
| period. Where the British Empire once was so powerful because it
| was the world's drug dealer (first tobacco, later opium), the US
| is the world's arms dealer. The US got incredibly wealthy from
| WW1 and WW2 and there are many conflicts to this day where each
| side is firing US sourced weapons at each other.
|
| It requires finesse to maintain this position. It's a bit like
| being a bank. A bank needs a certain facade of predictability,
| even neutrality, to continue to profit off whatever happens.
| People can revolt against the bank and the banking system. It's
| happened before (eg penny auctions in the Great Depression).
|
| What this administration is teaching the world is that the US is
| becoming unreliable. It's now a threat to sovereignty and
| national security to be reliant on the US, for anything. This
| goes well beyond cloud services and US tech giants. The US was
| always capable of turning on its protectorates and puppet states
| but it generally behaved in a far more restrained way to maintain
| the illusion of independance or at least to prioritize stability
| and predictability.
|
| I fully expect in the coming years that the EU is going to create
| their own competitors to things like AWS and they're going to do
| it by mandating its use by all government systems. It's going to
| be the new Airbus counter to Boeing.
|
| China is way ahead in this game. A lot of people (myself
| included) like to point to how much infrastructure, particularly
| rail, China has built in the last few decades. But fewer look at
| how they've done it. China originally bought European high speed
| intercity trains but that was temporary. They bootstrapped their
| own industries and produce their own trains now. And they use the
| same rolling stock on all metros and intercity lines to avoid the
| inefficiencies of localized procurement processes.
|
| I believe that a command economy like China will be the clear
| winner of the 21st century.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _I believe that a command economy like China will be the
| clear winner of the 21st century._
|
| I agree that the "command" aspect has been an asset for China,
| but the real drivers of their economic success has been cheap
| labor (fueled by weak labor protections), and indifference
| toward burning fossil fuels (until recently) and in general
| ignoring the externalities of their rapid industrialization.
|
| If US companies could pay people dirt, work them to death, and
| care even less than they do now about environmental
| externalities, a lot more manufacturing would have stayed on US
| soil.
|
| > _This administration in particular has done more to erode and
| destroy American soft power than any other and it 's not even
| close._
|
| Yup. It is still entirely bizarre to me that they don't see
| this. Or that they do see this, but think it's fine. Or that
| there is some other "plan" that actively seeks to destroy the
| US's dominance from within, and for some reason they think
| that's a good thing.
| jmyeet wrote:
| The idea of poverty wages in China is very outdated. Labor
| isn't even necessarily "cheap" anymore in China. But why
| people continue to manufacture there is because of the
| infrastructure there.
|
| China has a long-term vision for sustainable devlopment [1].
| China is excellent at long-term planning that looks 50 years
| or more into the future.
|
| As for renewable power, China is adding capacity at an
| astounding rate. China will likely ween itself. They'll
| likely end the use of fossil fuels in our lifetime.
|
| As much as housing and food affordability are now very real
| problems in the US, utility prices are going to get so much
| worse in the next few years with the administration killing
| renewables, increasing LNG exports (we're now heavily reliant
| on natural gas) and we're allowing privatized utilities to
| price gouge.
|
| [1]: https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-06-05/President-Xi-s-
| key-quo...
| notepad0x90 wrote:
| Competition is good, but they should start from the OS level.
|
| Outside of Windows and MacOS, there is no OS ecosystem that works
| as well and at scale for an enterprise level deployment.
|
| I don't get the whole "US" aspect, why bring politics into this?
| We need alternatives and competition regardless of all that. I
| don't care if Europe, China or India make it, a viable
| alternative would be a game changer.
|
| For Europe, they're solving the wrong problem. Solve the problem
| of low pay for developers, and a stifling regulatory atmosphere
| that inhibits disruptive startups.
|
| If there is a good and viable alternative, why is it just for
| Europe? It could boost Europe's economy by selling to America and
| the rest of the world. The tech needs to be good, if the US can
| do it, why can't Europe?
|
| Replacing office or one app at at time only addresses surface
| level issues.
| Esophagus4 wrote:
| > I don't get the whole "US" aspect, why bring politics into
| this?
|
| There is some level of technology dependency after which it can
| become a national security risk (and therefore, political).
| This has happened a bunch in history (e.g. countries reducing
| reliance on adversaries oil supplies or foreign
| semiconductors).
|
| The few examples in the article are small and irrelevant in the
| grand scheme of things, but I think the article is trying to
| make the point that this is part of a larger divestiture from
| American tech companies.
|
| Whether that larger divestiture is happening, however, is
| probably a pretty dubious claim.
|
| This kind of reminds me of during COVID when everybody was
| writing articles like, "SF and NYC are dead and everyone is
| moving out!" Turns out... not so much.
|
| Journalists love taking a few small data points and
| extrapolating to what _feels_ like should be happening and
| leading the reader to extreme conclusions.
|
| It's much more fun to write that a hurricane is coming than it
| is to write, "we're seeing some light rain today, and it's
| probably within normal variance for this time of year."
| dmje wrote:
| Does zdnet _really_ auto autoplay audio when you open the
| page...?
| uvaursi wrote:
| Software isn't Tech, for heavens sake. It sounds glib to call it
| that in the same vein as software developers calling themselves
| engineers. Nonsense posturing.
|
| I get it though: EU would rather have China own them (see NXP)
| rather than US. Because EU-based companies are worthless, broke,
| and offshored already. It's a cost cutting measure at that point.
| Enjoy Libre Office. (Fucking lol)
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| > EU would rather have China own them (see NXP) rather than US.
| Because EU-based companies are worthless, broke, and offshored
| already.
|
| As an individual, I prefer Euro sw/ tech way over Chinese sw/
| tech and both 10 orders of magnitudesover american data-
| stealing, enshittifying klunk - as do many of my colleagues and
| friends...of late, and it's getting to more and more 'regular'
| people. Too.
|
| Could you elaborate on which EU companies are a) worthless -
| got names; b) broke - name one; and c) which ones are off-
| shored (meaning not Eu-pean)?
|
| Do you include EU
| preisschild wrote:
| I agree with you regarding "Euro tech", but not on "Chinese
| sw/ tech", they are at least as data-stealing as the US and
| they have even less democratic controls over there.
| agile-gift0262 wrote:
| it's been years since the last time I go to zdnet. My experience
| when opening the link: I've been greeted by a dialog asking me to
| enable notifications, then the classic cookie dialog, and 5
| seconds into reading the article, an auto-playing video with
| sound shows up pinned to the bottom of my screen. No thank you.
| Tab closed.
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