We now have the bizarre situation that anyone with any sense can see that America is no longer a reliable partner, and that the entire US business world bows to Trump’s dictatorial will, but we STILL are doing everything we can to transfer entire governments and most of our own businesses to their clouds.
Not only is it scary to have all your data available to US spying, it is also a huge risk for your business/government continuity. From now on, all our business processes can be brought to a halt with the push of a button in the US. And not only will everything then stop, will we ever get our data back? Or are we being held hostage? This is not a theoretical scenario, something like this has already happened.
↫ Bert Hubert
The cold and harsh reality is that the alliance between the United States and Europe, the single-most powerful alliance in human history, is over. Voters in the United States prefer their country ally itself with the brutal and genocidal dictator of Russia, instead of being allied with the democratic and free nations of Europe. That’s their choice to make, their consequences to face, and inevitably, their cross to bear.
Governments in Europe have not yet fully accepted that they can no longer rely on the United States for, well, anything. Whether it be existential, like needing to shore up defense spending and possibly unifying European militaries, or something more mundane, like which computer systems European governments use, the United States should be treated in much the same way as Russia or China. Europe has to fend for itself, spend on itself, and build for itself, instead of assuming that the Americans will come through on any “promise” they make. An unreliable partner like the US is a massive liability.
Bert Hubert is exactly right. European data needs to be stored within European borders. Just as we wouldn’t store our data on servers owned or controlled by the Chinese government, we shouldn’t be storing our data on servers owned or controlled by the US government. The general European public is already changing its buying habits – it’s time our governments do so too.
“Some” voters in the US. I think it’s an important distinction. Don’t vilify ALL the people because of what these nitwits are doing to our country. I’m not entirely sure it was even a fair election. I sure as hell didn’t vote for him or any of this; not even the first time. I was personally pouring money into elections all over the country to try to do what I could. Much in the same way, I wouldn’t say all Russian’s want war in Ukraine anymore than I would say all Chinese people are spies.
You’re not at all wrong with your concerns though. I have them and I LIVE HERE.
““Some” voters in the US. I think it’s an important distinction.”
Those “some” voters have declared war on the non-fascist world through their every act they have proven this for literally decades now. The world has woken up to the lies the US have spread forever about freedom, democracy and human rights. It never has supported them it was all a ruse to brow beat countries into going their way then if not use armed aggression against them and support the right wing dictators they ALWAYS installed in their murdering of their people.
The American century is ending a little early and it looks good on the scum who have been doing this to the world for the entire time of it. Your “other” people who supposedly support not doing this have failed miserably at changing this perception around the world as be they Repugnant Party or spineless Democratic Party members. Have at every opportunity they had stood for the profits of your thieving parasite corporations over the helping any people in this world. With the murdering of any people in those other countries who had the guts to stand up for themselves and tell you “Yankee go home, stop stealing our resources”. You can tell your lies elsewhere no one believes them anymore you have put your try colors on display.
Gotta love seeing Americans turn into election deniers when their preferred candidate loses.
You sound like the kinda person who’d throw a baby down a well to make a quip. Kudos on your success.
You sound like the kinda person who spreads conspiracy theories about the elections and then throws a tantrum when called out. Kudos on your success.
Elections have consequences and Kamala lost in a landslide. The Democrats also lost the Senate and House. Regroup and stop denying reality.
Using terms like “denier” makes you sound like you are on the inside of a cult that is shaming outsiders for not believing in what you do.
And “some” other voters think JFK Jr. is an awesome guy. “Some” voters thought Kamala would win. “Some” voters thought she could make a difference. “Some” voters never ask themselves why the democratic party is all about blocking the path for the progressives. There are multiple types of naive, ignorant, or outright stupid.
Anyway, this comment is obviously not about operating systems. Thom, feel free to delete it, if you think it is improper for this site. I won’t mind.
Considering the immense support JFK Jr got even as an independent candidate, i am almost certain the democrats would easily have won if they had ran JFK Jr instead of Kamala.
NaGERST,
The circumstances for Kamala being the candidate for Democrats without a formal vote was quite unique. Who knows what might have happened in the primaries if Biden hadn’t run and dropped out later.
The dynamics between primaries and general elections are significant. If you put up a candidate that’s more favorable to the other party, then it will definitely improve your changes in the general election. For better or worse though, US elections are extremely flawed, not because of voter fraud, but because of several levels hamstrung implementation. Not everyone’s votes count equally and this is antithetical to democracy. Our political duopoly can leave a majority of voters disenfranchised even before they cast a vote. Independents, even though a sizable part of the population, have practically zero representation in every election. Everyone’s locked into voting between candidates they don’t want. This isn’t the fault of democracy, it’s the fault of a flawed system that virtually guarantees consolidation around the incumbents even as they become historically unpopular.
We have to remember that without rank voting or runoff voting, quite often one’s vote has to be used against the other party rather than for a candidate that represents them. This is unfortunately how the system works and without electoral reforms is how it will stay.
Personally I don’t feel represented by either Republican or Democratic parties and I think there’s a desperate need for more competition. I just don’t have much faith it can happen. A party that stands for high ethical standards will be significantly disadvantaged when another party that doesn’t give a crap about ethics and willing to cheat. For example Mitch McConnell used blatantly hypocritical logic to effectively steal a supreme court judge position for the GOP. This was wrong, undemocratic, and unfair, but nevertheless it worked and shows that cheating pays off. Another example is that many republican controlled districts are gerrymandered, far more than Democratic ones. This is objectively unfair to voters, but it also objectively works for whatever party is willing to do it because it mathematically cancels out opposition voters. The electoral college is another example.
The US has so many resources we should all be thriving. Yet rampant corruption and an incessant focus on corporate welfare over people keeps the middle class financially depressed. The wealthy elites are doing better than ever and are insanely wealthy, yet it’s come at the expense of everyone else. Rank and file voters of both parties are feeling this, yet they are collectively tricked into blaming “the other party” for their problems rather than facing the truth that elites have been pulling the strings in both parties and constituents have been played like sheep using dog whistles to divert their attention away from the core corruption.
Yes, I realize one party has become a lot more dangerous as we embark towards fascism, which may well lead to the end of democracy itself. But…many people seem to be too distracted by the dog whistles to notice. My concern is that by the time they realize they were had, it will be too late. Because of our failure to protect democratic norms, our children may have to live under authoritarian regimes.
Are you sure that’s what’s even happening in terms of Data Center moves? In Australia a lot of stuff is going cloud… but it’s all happening within Australia. We have Amazon and Microsoft Clouds in Australia hosted in Australian DataCenters. Sony even hosts PSN in Adelaide. Very little data is being sent offshore due to regulatory requirements. The US Companies are playing ball and following the rules here. Which is kind of surprising considering how captured our government is when it comes to contracts and licensing.
If USA force them to stop supporting Australia, they are going to accept, so the best solution is a local cloud provider no?
@Darkimage
I did some work for Mitsubishi and Fujitsu, both have quietly setup massive data centres in Australia to service the Australian Government and Finance sectors. They could easily expand capabilities at pretty short notice, I think excluding the release of some new and exclusive ground breaking storage and processing technology, the US is basically shooting itself in the foot. It’s creating global opportunities that countries like Japan and China or European providers will step into unhindered.
The resource is already there, they just need the opportunity.
Read the second paragraph about the US CLOUD Act on Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act
If your rely on a cloud provided by a US corporation like Microsoft or Amazon, you have no data sovereignty. Your data does not leave Australia until the US government asks for it. Then it does.
If push comes to shave, which government do you think Microsoft is going to listen to? Local regulations are irrelevant.
And do not expect corporate resistance. Map providers, including Google and Apple have already updated it to the Gulf of America. Google is going around changing the names of National Parks in Canada to State Parks (you know, because Canada is the 51st state).
Here is a little taste of what Big Tech in the US thinks of the CLOUD Act:
https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-bullish-on-congress-inclusion-of-cloud-act-in-funding-bill/
Thom gets a little over excited sometimes but he is 100% right on this one.
Since the Snowden documents we know, if you store your data with a company from the US, doesn’t matter where, the US government has access to it, legally. Sometimes with a process, sometimes with a rubber stamping process, but they have the access.
“Voters in the United States prefer their country ally itself with the brutal and genocidal dictator of Russia, instead of being allied with the democratic and free nations of Europe. That’s their choice to make, their consequences to face, and inevitably, their cross to bear.”
I don’t disagree with anything you wrote. But please keep in mind that only 49.9% of Americans voters cast ballots for Trump. Those voters will deserve the horribe future he is making. The remaining 48.4% of American voters cast ballots for the other guy. And we (and even some Trump voters) are horrified by team Trump’s betrayl of our liberal ideals, and our allies in Europe, Ukraine, Canada and others. We’re doing what we can to politically counter Trump, but our next opportunity to vote (Congress and Senate) isn’t until the Fall of 2026. Until then, I’d avoid our clouds too…
Add to that statistically relevant voter suppression, and 50 years of neoliberal bullshit (which is only new in Europe – not unique to the United States), and it should be clear that voters didn’t vote for Trump – they voted against the status quo. This is what happens when a government (or set of governments) run a wealth pump for 50 years. Eventually, the counter elites show up and blow everything up. It’s not complicated, and blaming the wrong people (whether it’s “immigrants” or “US voters” is just going to help you understand what’s happening even a little.
No rational person is blaming “immigrants”, they are blaming illegal immigrants, or in other words, the people who come to a country illegally with no ID document, apply for asylum under a random name so they’ll be fed and housed on the taxpayer dime while their asylum application is being processed, and even if their asylum application is rejected, they stay in the country anyway as illegal immigrants working under the table and undercutting the locals on labor prices.
The reason mainstream politicians are losing ground all over the place (from the US to Germany) is precisely because they won’t take measures to curb abuse of the asylum system (for example passing laws to automatically reject asylum applications made by applicants coming from safe countries) and won’t deport applicants whose asylum application has been rejected (if not to their home country, at least to some other country like Rwanda under some kind of partnership).
But even stating the obvious is “hateful” nowadays.
“According to recent data, unauthorized immigrants represent approximately 4.8% of the US workforce, which translates to a similar percentage of the US economy as they actively participate in the labor market; this figure is based on estimates that around 8.3 million undocumented workers are employed in the US.” – in what world would a rational person blame “illegal immigrants” (or the jackwads hiring them) for more than 4.8% of the problems the US now faces? That’s fucking stupid. Grow up.
That 4.8% is overrepresented in certain industries, such as farming. So, in those industries specifically, they are undercutting locals and legal immigrants when it comes to labor prices. Stop denying reality, it’s fucking stupid. Grow up.
Thank you for your comment CaptainN-, some sane words in all this madness.
I am still not convinced clouds are a good idea in the first place, let alone letting them be managed by external companies.
Foreign companies? Utter madness,
There’s no cloud. There’s just someone else’s computer.
Exactly. Go back to on-prem and stop being silly. Then you can just deal with your local politics if you think they are superior. At least then you’ll save some money in addition to patting yourself on the back for being a nationalist.
Yeah, there are definitely enough methods to run good automation on your own hardware.
Or hardware you lease at a nearby datacenter, possibly a separate cage.
Control the full software stack is extremely important.
Isn’t vote in USA non-mandatory, so even less people supports trump and the rest is too laxy to care?
vinnde,
It isn’t mandatory…but I think the bigger problem is that we don’t have a rank vote, which effectively locks out 3rd parties and forces voters to cast votes for unpopular candidates. In these past several elections 2/3s of voters (who do bother to vote) did not like either candidate.
Obviously you are right that lots of people didn’t vote at all, but even among those who cast a vote for Trump, a significant portion didn’t actually want Trump but they were voting against Kamala and Hilary before.
For example, here in the US large swaths of Arab American voters pledged not to vote for Biden/Harris over Biden’s handling of Gaza. Even though Trump’s policies are probably going to be much worse for Palestinians, their votes helped give Trump a victory in Michigan.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/michigan-some-arab-american-voters-revisit-trump-support-after-gaza-take-over-comments/
For better or worse this is how many US elections play out. A representative candidate is probably not on the ballet, but there is extreme pressure to choose between the duopoly candidates or else they’ll be wasting their votes. This doesn’t imply most voters are fans of extreme candidates, but nevertheless extremism will prevail when moderate candidates aren’t on the ballets.
“Simpsons – Two Party System Will Doom Us All – I Voted for Kodos”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7l9QmtiXHU
Moderates not being an option is the fault of our election process. A rank vote would help solve this. If you can vote for who you actually want without risk of “throwing away your vote”, then 3rd parties that represent people better would instantly become a lot more viable.
Apple, Google, Microsoft and other companies were following the EU Data Act so far. But with how things are going… what would happen when US would change the law? And said law would forbid them to even say that they are no longer compliant with said Act?
We have no idea what would happen, but in a world where different countries have stopped caring about compatibility of law… nothing can be predicted.
For the last 80 or so years, the United states has been running an international system that was ostensibly “based on rules” – and there was a deal in place, to justify it. After WWII the rules were simple – trade on gold backed US dollars, and we’ll keep money values stable, so you can buy American goods (and pay the bill to let us rebuild your countries). In the 1970s, things changed, because that first deal only worked when the US had a trade surplus. Once we had a trade deficit we had to modify the deal – you use our dollar (and our ruleset) and we’ll open (many) of our high value markets up to your investment. So as the floating dollar does well, so will your portfolio. Some in China called this “the dark deal.” In the US, the workers are the ones who paid for it – exclusively.
This dark deal was the beginning of the American wealth pump – so you can excuse American workers for being a bit pissed off about being extracted and abused for 50 years.
Anyway, we kind of lost our way in 2008 with the crash of the markets, when we tried to stop a second great depression by pumping money in to corporate coffers, then doubled down by antagonizing China in a vein attempt to “contain” them, then threw the table over when we seized Russia’s assets in 2022 (those ones they bought as part of the “dark deal”). The rest of the world, China especially, noticed. The dark deal was already cracking, and then US foreign policy just grabbed a sledge hammer. But it was coming anyway – after 50 years of a running a wealth pump – this is all we can expect.
The same nonsense is coming for the EU, starting in Germany. The EU is nothing but a neoliberal power grab, and it’s not going to work any better there than it did here. Pucker up, Europe. This crazy BS is coming for you too.
It really is over. Trump’s first term sealed that deal. The second one is just making it all clear. The United States will no longer be the world hegemon. There is unlikely to be only one hegemon in this century, and we are all of us in the west, unlikely to see the various national wealth pumps disabled, at last for the next 50 years. (You’ll probably see increasing national wealth pumps in European countries over the next period of time – in the name of “competition” – cause that’s going to get fiercer and fiercer.)
China though – China’s going to be fine. (They aren’t yet running a wealth pump.) The US will not like it, but I wonder whether Europe will simply join BRICS – the new international rules based economy that China is mostly setting up.
Interesting times.
Why enter brics?, EU already exist
The EU is more like a light codification of the American ruleset with some additions. But it’s not quite strong enough to bind the group together without American support (specifically, without the basis on the dollar, within the framework of the dark deal.) That’s not to say it couldn’t be adjusted to do so, but watching what’s happening in Germany, and the rise of the right wing isolationism all over Europe (as mostly a rejection of neoliberalism, which is what the EU represents more than even the US at this point), I just don’t see it happening. It might make just as much sense for the EU (or individual states) to join BRICS – and we’ll see which way they go.
One of my favorite international political commentators, Thomas Barnett, agrees with you though (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8A6lHkX-0E). He thinks the world is going to largely separate itself in to 3 vertical poles – The United States dominating the Americas, China dominating the East and Oceania, and Europe dominating, well, Europe, and much of Africa (though, Africa is well positioned to take up the reverse position IMHO – Barnett is an old American boomer, that’s probably hard for him to imagine.)
To me though, a world in which the United States gets increasingly isolated by its own idiotic, self destructive actions, and China steps in to fill the void – including in Europe – is in the cards, even if the Americas remain out of reach for some time to come.
(To me, it’s just as likely the United States collapses, as we hold on to anything like hemispheric hegimony – we are really doing everything we can to hasten the end to American dominance in the world – and countries even in the US sphere of influence in South America, are likely well positioned to finally break away, Brazil especially, who seems quite done with neoliberalism – and may have been trying to do so for a long while now.)
The US already changed the law. I have no idea how people missed this.
https://www.politico.eu/article/german-privacy-watchdog-says-amazon-cloud-vulnerable-to-us-snooping/
It never was:
EU-US Safe harbor provision was declared as invalid in 2015 by the ECJ.
EU-US Privacy shield was declared as invalid in 2020 by the ECJ
We always knew, now it will also affect EU Nation States, not just citizens.
Bye bye globalization. I wonder if the former Occupy Wall Street kids rejoice today.
Not using USA cloud isn’t the stop of globalization , or even isolation USA is the stop of it
If I were to channel Yanis Varoufakis – globalization ended when we stopped exporting American rules based capitalism to the rest of the world, in favor of technofeudalism. It would make SO MUCH sense for the EU to eschew American cloud capital, in favor of something home grown. I personally think it more likely they go with BRICS, and China’s cloud capital, but it’s a time of chaos – anything can happen.
Let me put it this way, some of the people or knowledge/experience of those who were at Occupy Wall Street were also at the 100 Days of Portland in 2020, which included the partial reason: presence of federal agents sent by President Donald Trump.
European cloud was even mentioned as one of the fugazi EC projects. Perhaps it will finally materialize.
It wasn’t safe in the first place, as Snowden pointed out over a decade ago.
I wish the old upvote button was still here. It doesn’t matter where your data is, if you don’t encrypt yourself and have the keys somewhere really really safe, it really doesn’t matter.
In fact, one could argue that some Western governments like the UK are more sneaky than for instance the Chinese government as they asked for a backdoor into Apple’s cloud supposedly in secret (why the hell is this possible?? crazy).
Anyway, forget about trying to build a European cloud system, it has been tried and already failed.
It’s called Gaia-x and could have been hallucinated by an AI. See: https://gaia-x.eu/
EU countries that are not in the edges of the European Union will not shore up defense spending, they feel safe enough (since an invader would have to cross another EU country to get to them), so they feel no need to cut from their welfare systems to shore up defense.
Also, unifying European militaries is a non-starter because EU countries don’t want to lose that sovereignty, especially in the face of the Lisbon Treaty which means a country can have Directives imposed on it by a “qualified majority” even if said Directives go against its interests, and without veto rights or any other recourse. At least now a country can ignore Directives at only some financial cost, with a hypothetical Federal European Army in place, the EU could send that Federal European Army to enforce the Directives.
So Thom, when are you joining up and going to fight the Russian hordes?
The only thing that surprises me about this is that Trump is the cause of recent angst.
The US legislation around requirements to disclose is pre Trump and extends to US owned companies not domiciled servers. Consequently there is justification for saying that using servers in European countries (any non US country really) owned by US companies will still fall under the US requirements to allow unfettered access.
I’m Australian and our company was forced move away from some US IT companies because their EULA’s explicitly state that they retain the right to disclose without notification any data stored on their servers. We could not find any clause limiting this disclosure based on geography. Not that I’m a lawyer. Just an IT nerd.
That said the Europeans gov’s are just as bad. Though the UK is not officially part of the EU. Their recent attempt to force Apple to allow backdoors into their offerings just extends the policies the EU enacted prior to brexit. I don’t pay attention to all the EU legislation in this space. Maybe things are better. But I not convinced. Suffice to say we have to stay clear of specific EU countries and IT service providers.
At some point discussions about who has the right to access your data will just be a case of how much is big brother always watching.
Trump is a symptom of deeper problems – he’s the expression of chaos, not the cause. The United States has been killing the golden goose for 50 years (both parties working together, not one more than the other) – what we are experiencing now is death throes, nothing more.
The CLOUD Act was signed into law in 2018. It was Trump.
I would also say the US can’t be trusted for much much longer, but this is the reason these people changed their mind:
The US without trump involved was much more predictable, at least abides by the agreements it has made most of the time like most western/democratic countries.
That trump got elected the first time could have been a fluke, that it happened twice means they are a not to be trusted.
If you Europeans are feeling discomforted imagine how us poor Canadians are feeling.
Yes, it’s bad, but we in Europe are your friends. I suspect trump will say even more stupid things in the future, also towards Europe.
Focusing on just the technology, no other provider is even close to the services provided by the big 3 clouds. The variety and maturity of the services are many levels above anything else available.
The scale of the cloud footprint is also a global with multiple independent data centers that can provide highly available solutions. Most other providers have a few data centers that may provide HA in the same data center which can all fail together.
Also the big 3 clouds also have extensive partner ecosystem complementing and supporting the clouds. That ecosystem is just not available anywhere else.
If Europe wants to not depend on US companies it should smartly start moving workloads to local clouds providing R&D funds. If it just abruptly moves out of the leading clouds it will do more harm to its citizens by providing inferior services.
There are many providers with multiple datacenters, that’s no problem.
I think we need to further develop easier to deploy services based on something like Kubernetes, so everyone can own their own stack without depending on the provider’s APIs for things other than the basics like creating networks and VMs.
The world is ruled by a global mafia and geopolitics is theater, in a laughable obvious way.
You’re not living the Trump’s show, you’re living in Truman’s Show. Truman eventually figured things out. Most people won’t.
Its worse for a country that has been blindsided with the hate of long-time friends and allies who are now obviously wishing to follow in Russias footsteps…
https://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/defence-watch/u-s-system-canadas-war-ships
Fuck Comrade Krasnov and the Muskovian Scourge…