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A huge reason why you shouldn't rely on American tech companies.
You really think if America attacks, it won't start with a cyber attack? And not a shitty DDoS attack but literally turning off huge parts of the internet for you?
To be fair, this train wreck happened in slow motion. It was clear the US was going down in flames 15 years ago. You guys should have been working on this threat since then at least.
The same companies are dragging their feet when it comes to switching, or even just trying, any kind of alternatives. They always wait for someone else to do the leg work.
It'll cost them :(
Yes, but that'll be NEXT quarter.
"Soverign," huh. I would prefer to live in a world where you don't need to be a sovereign state in order to get software that doesn't have a built-in remote kill switch.
Open source is the answer, but the worshipers of Mammon want control so they too can rent seek. Thus the "Sovereign"
I work from Spain for a French company, they ate Microslop cock everyday and they don't want to stop... I really want it to happen.
At least one multinational in Ireland that I'm aware of has been investigating FOSS alternatives to common tools like Matrix instead of Slack/Teams.
Slack and Teams are tiny, I think, when compared to other cloud services - my company could easily migrate from slack to something else (some pain involved, but very doable). Even a sudden disconnect, there's still email and other tools to get everything on the same page.
Migrating our products and data from Azure, if that got cut out of the blue? We'd probably be out of business before that was achieved.
Same, except I don't work in Spain.
"I fear ransomware but i'm not gonna put more money on it or backups. Only for a short while, after being struck by it." -All companies.
the twist is that corp's don't fear ransomware at all, since they expect to be bailed out by their governments if it hits them /hj
Europe spent decades outsourcing its digital infrastructure to US companies because it was cheap and convenient. Now everyone is shocked to discover that dependence creates leverage. A US tech kill switch doesn’t even need to be used: the possibility alone is reason enough for Europe to build its own stack.
What's with that bad website? looks slopcoded with slop images from 2024. I am all for using AI in software development, but it should be used to reach a higher quality of a product, not a lower one.
Also, the contact link opens a LinkedIn profile (i.e. on a US website).
That's not really sovereign, if you ask me.
We thought we were allies. We were, until Trump came along and decided that any leverage should be used to his benefit. That works in the short perspective, but will be a disaster in the long run.
Imagine a marriage where instead of working together, you try to exploit the other person at every opportunity.
usa tech today is no different than the blankets they gave the natives way back when. They both come with an unintended surprise.
Add Australia. Fear of us tech kill switch
We do need to have more discussion about opening eftpos to handling credit transactions. Sure, it has nowhere near the reach of the American big two but it’d fill the hole in an emergency.
It would be a rough month nothing more.
There are several companies that bankrupt or suffered big loss after a planned ERP replacement, I really think it would be more than just a rough month. They are not prepared, and aren't preparing
I think that says more about those companies management than anything else.
In some countries we've seen the most inefficient parts of our economy (public sector) able to do such a change. We've also seen the entire continent's change its energy supply in a year.
I have zero doubts in a dynamic private company's ability to do such a transition relatively unharmed. In fact they do this regularly, going from aws to azure, from azure to gcp, and so on. It just depends on who's buttering up the CTO at the moment...
A rough month? I don’t believe most companies can recover that fast when Microsoft switches off outlook, teams and sharepoint.
It does deeper than that. Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure being cut would be a killer. I really doubt StackIT could scale quickly enough to fill a gap created by either of those
Let me assure you that it would be much more than "a rough month". You have no idea how many factories run on US tech. Most would grind to a halt, with no chance of restarting in any reasonable amount of time.
OPs title is misleading. Makes it look like Europeans shouldn't switch off US cloud, while the article talks about the risks of the US turning off the US cloud.
You'd have to bring that up with the editor of that particular site.
They used the title:
75% of European businesses fear a US tech kill switch could deal an economic 'death blow' – driving a search for sovereign alternatives
Which does not have the same amiguity.
Then they changed it after I posted it. I never edit the headline.
That's annoying, but at least it validates my complaint XD
The title says at the end "with sovereign alternatives needed" ... it's pretty clear I would say, and not too much different from "driving a search for sovereign alternatives" imho.
I'm puzzled where you get the implication that Europeans shouldn't exit US cloud from the headline ?
The headline of the post is consistent with the article ( unless it changed between you reading it and when I saw it).
Both the headline and the article are making the case for getting off US cloud due to the potential impact. We do have to migrate before turning it off though
The language "switching off US cloud <...> could deal an economic blow" can be interpreted in two different ways: the US companies switch off access for EU companies, or EU companies switch off from the US cloud to some alternative.
Well, it could if read on its own, but when it follows the "fear of US kill switch" it's pretty clear that they're talking about a risk of the US switching off access.
On the other hand, given the agent of the first half of that sentence ("European businesses"), it is also reasonable to assume that they would be the ones "switching off" from US cloud in the second half. It is poor headline writing.
Not really, since it's talking about what they fear, not what they plan to do.
It is totally reasonable to assume that a "fear" is motivating those companies to do something. Given at least 5 people here misunderstood the headline it's pretty clearly ambiguous and thus bad. It would be really easy to fix too, e.g.
75% of European businesses fear a US tech Kill Switch as much as a ransomware attack — being cut off from US cloud and services could deal an economic death blow, with sovereign alternatives needed
OK, I can now see the alternate interpretation although I didn't read it that way. Cheers
But the tankies will tell you a kill switch isn't a threat if you just buy Chinese technology. Chinese solar inverters, EVs, and other stuff are safe as remote control isn't a problem and will never happen, tankies say.
Whataboutism
Remote control of thousand of devices is way less probable than simply deciding to cut cloud access to EU businesses (Which could literally take only seconds).
Because Chinese is the only alternative?
Because Chinese is the only alternative?
This is not true. And China is at least as much a threat as the US. This is pro-China propaganda slop.
Strawman and false dichotomy.
Besides the fact no one listens to tankies in the first place, the big push here and in the wider sphere is regaining European sovereignity, so no one with a functioning brain cell is saying "substitute everything american for chinese" they're saying "make everythihg critical euro controlled"
Where's the evidence of at least one remote kill switch in solar inverters coming from China?
Meanwhile the US can definitely cut off its IT and financial services within seconds, they have done this exact shit before to other "adversaries", and it would be devastating for europe because of decades of dependence.
Whatever a remote US operator can do can also be done by a remote Chinese operator. Europe needs to (re)gain more of its sovereigtny, especially as China is widely known to use all kinds of coercive tactics whenever the regime in Beijing deems it appropriate.
But we're talking about different classes of thing entirely.
Relying on a US-based cloud provider means that they own your data, own your processes, pretty much own your organization. They can kick you off the platform with a click of a button and you'll be left with nothing. The kill switch is implied by the mode of operation here.
Relying on a China-provided solar inverter means that you own the inverter. Until such time as there is a clearly existing remote kill switch in an inverter coming from China, what you're doing is just pro-fossil-fuel FUD.
I won't advocate for chinese-built EVs here. Fuck cars.
Relying on a China-provided solar inverter means that you own the inverter. Until such time as there is a clearly existing remote kill switch in an inverter coming from China, what you’re doing is just pro-fossil-fuel FUD.
This is always the same discussion. The threat by China is very real, we can see the regimes coercive tactics literally everywhere. Turning that around and calling it "pro-fossil fuel FUD" discredits you completely. It's Chinese propaganda speak at its best.
this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2026
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