this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2025
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212
Trump can pull the plug on the internet, and Europe can’t do anything about it (www.politico.eu)
submitted 5 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
79 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Trump is back — and with him, the risk that the U.S. could unplug Europe from the digital world.

Donald Trump’s return to the White House is forcing Europe to reckon with a major digital vulnerability: The U.S. holds a kill switch over its internet.

As the U.S. administration raises the stakes in a geopolitical poker game that began when Trump started his trade war, Europeans are waking up to the fact that years of over-reliance on a handful of U.S. tech giants have given Washington a winning hand.

The fatal vulnerability is Europe’s near-total dependency on U.S. cloud providers.

Cloud computing is the lifeblood of the internet, powering everything from the emails we send and videos we stream to industrial data processing and government communications. Just three American behemoths — Amazon, Microsoft, and Google — hold more than two-thirds of the regional market, putting Europe’s online existence in the hands of firms cozying up to the U.S. president to fend off looming regulations and fines.

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[–] [email protected] 55 points 4 days ago (4 children)

Talk about clickbait ...... Article title: trump can pull the plug on the internet and europe can't do anything about it (my emphasis) First line: the U.S. could unplug Europe from the digital world (not "pull the plug on the internet") And then further down: "The fatal vulnerability is Europe’s near-total dependency on U.S. cloud providers."

So first, it's "the internet", then it's "unplug europe from the digital world", then it's "europe's dependency on US cloud providers"

So it's NOT "the internet", and it's NOT "unplug europe", it's disconnect european customers from US cloud providers.

Methinks Monseiur Pollet doesn't understand very much about the internet.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 days ago

Methinks Monseiur Pollet doesn't understand very much about the internet.

It's like tubes. With trucks in them. It's simple!

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

It's even less of a thing. Things like AWS have datacenters in Europe, where most of Europe-side of traffic is hosted. Even if Trump made executive decisions to stop any internets companies doing business in Europe, it would have ZERO impact on the subsidy. Any cloud issues would really only impact "vertical scaling cloud-native" bullshit software, there are plenty and most reasonable companies are based on more sane (and less expensive) hosting solutions, which are in-house European.

Takes a massive fool to think European companies are basing their data in US continent, where the ping would be >150ms, and speeds would be far slower and less manageable.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago

Takes a massive fool to think European companies are basing their data in US continent, where the ping would be >150ms, and speeds would be far slower and less manageable.

It's actually simpler than that: It's not in regulatory compliance. Cloud providers need to host their data centers in different regions because of geopolitical instability, including the distinct possibility of this scenario, among other localized regulatory factors. These companies may be headquartered in America but they still are at the whim of many different governments.

Source: I have an AWS certification

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago (1 children)

But honestly, disconnection from the US cloud providers is a lot bigger than you seem to think. A ton of governmental services are hosted on US cloud providers. Pulling that plug would mean blackout for a crapload of governmental services, which we have grown to depend on.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 days ago (2 children)

It would also mean a huge hit on their own tech sector, if not near wipeout.

It’s one of those situations that, sure, they could, just like a monkey could purposely snap the branch where he and his friend are sitting on and both fall.

As for Europe, yes, it would be a painful transition, but eventually it could build its own infrastructure anyway

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago

eh, in the Netherlands we would just cut off all their datacenters, maybe even the internet hub we have to the US.
so go ahead

[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Cloud computing can be replaced (albeit it’s a hard process, sorta like detox). Good luck starting an independent ICANN and DNS zones.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 days ago (2 children)

It'd take some time to organise a replacement organisation but it's not like those systems collapse when the central service goes down. We do have our own root servers and the internet can survive a month or two of not being able to register new tlds or assign subnets.

On the flipside, I wonder how US multinationals would fare without SAP.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago

I believe many EU nations are already divesting from US companies and products, both at governmental levels and citizen boycotts. I recently read one of the countries was switching their government's computers to linux/foss

[–] [email protected] 17 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I hope he will do it so EU politicians stop feeding foreign corporations with tax money.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago

Honestly you're probably right.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 4 days ago (3 children)

The US officially giving tech execs military ranks is.... interesting. One of the stronger reasons to avoid companies like Huawei, was that the CCP had direct military ties / agents working within Huawei. The argument in favour of US tech companies in comparison, was that while they may have agreements with the US military, they were at arms length. Now they aren't, and the rationale seems to be attempting to shift to "just trust us", while they openly start major wars/conflicts and support genocidal actions in the middle east.

idk. If I were involved in the decision making for any critical area, I'd avoid the hell out of foreign controlled anything in my regular stacks at this point. Even if it means you have some efficiency hits until there may be an in-country provider available. It wouldn't matter who the other country is at this point, as the US going awol is something most wouldn't have 'bet' on like a decade ago, but here we are.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 days ago

I'm more shocked that Europeans trusted the US that much knowing how goddamned stupid people are here. We were already an oligarchy 10 years ago.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 days ago

It's literally organized crime.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I work for a publicly traded company.

We couldn't switch away from Microsoft if we wanted to because integrating everything with Azure and O365 is the cheapest solution in the short term, ergo has the best quarterly ROI.

I don't think the shareholders give a rat's ass about data sovereignty if it means a lower profit forecast. It'd take legislative action for us to move away from an all-Azure stack.

And yes, that sucks big time. If Microsoft stops playing nice with the EU we're going to have to pivot most of our tech stack on a moment's notice.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago

Yep one of the big drivers is flexibility in capex vs opex. They’ll shape the contract whichever way you want but on prem is straight to capex. I think. I’m not an accountant.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I'm pretty sure all three of those companies host server farms in Europe. I doubt they would give them up just to fluff Trump.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 days ago (1 children)

MS pulled access to the azure environment of a (Russian owned) bank in NL and despite NL court orders asking for the data to be made accessible, it took diplomacy and a US court order to get access. This was not during trump admin.

We’ve been saying “this would never happen” and trump admin has slowly been shifting the Overton window.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago

In that case they didn't want to risk liability. They're not going to do something guaranteed to lose them lots of money just to make daddy Trump happy.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 days ago

oh no

[–] [email protected] 15 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Time for EU to start a new web, WWWUS. World-Wide-Without-....

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 days ago

WWWEU.. Pronounced as "Wii U". 💅

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