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AWS European Sovereign Cloud

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Re: AWS European Sovereign Cloud

#21

Post by 6r17 »

Yeah.... no thx. Hard voice against it and anything that comes from the US. There is tons of stuff that is genuinely cool, we got tons of stuff it would be barbaric to spit in the soup.

However I'm pretty sure at this point that even the GAFAM are tired of this situation and that they don't care if giants their size show up in Europe. I'm genuinely thinking that what is also happening with AI (eg : free knowledge drop) is some kind of mechanism to allow those new giants to emerge in other places than US.

Being the bright star that takes all the broken stuff on the head is not always the smartest move - at some point if you are blocking everything from showing up just because you exist, you are just slowly creating conflict against you - which i'm pretty sure the GAFAM are not interested in.

I'm pretty sure there is a lot of power dynamic shift happening just now, AI bubble is just a tool that permit it -- the amount of startups that are allowed to launch on the simplest product are crazy --

tldr : creating incumbents then beating them is a display of power ; not caring is a display of power, having too much money is a display of power, being blocked due to political and social movement is weakening the velocity of these entities - i'm pretty sure atp that creating new giants in Europe would help them more than to continue in what appears like a colonialist endeavor - which they probably don't like either (they just want to market and win)

Idk I might be extrapolating like a mad man

Re: AWS European Sovereign Cloud

#22

Post by bflesch »

crazygringo wrote: post #12
nikeee wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if the software is developed and potentially backdoored in the US and deployed by the EU team in the sovereign region? Or did they rewrite the entire AWS stack?

I don't think there are any protections against that. On the other hand, you'd have to ask yourself how realistic it is that the US is forcing Amazon to secretly backdoor its own software for US spying abroad? I can't give an answer on that one, you'll have to form your own opinion. I imagine that if a back door were ever discovered, AWS's reputation would tank so hard that a lot of companies would probably never do…

Maybe you missed when Microsoft blocked the email account of the chief prosecutor of the international court of justice: https://www.heise.de/en/news/Criminal-Court-Microsoft-s-emai...

Of course these services are backdoored.

Re: AWS European Sovereign Cloud

#23

Post by DevelopingElk »

I worked on a team deploying a service to European Sovereign Cloud (ESC). Disclaimer - I am a low level SDE and all opinions are my own.

AWS has set up proper boundaries between ESC and global AWS. Since I'm based out of the US I can't see anything going on in ECS even in the service we develop. To fix an issue there we have to play telephone with an engineer in ESC where they give us a summary of the issue or debug it on their own. All data is really 100% staying within ESC.

My guess is that ESC will be less reliable than other regions, at least for about a year. The isolation really slows down debugging issues. Problems that would be fixed in a day or two can take a month. The engineers in ESC don't have the same level of knowledge about systems as the teams owning them. The teething issues will eventually resolve, but new features will be delayed within the region.

Re: AWS European Sovereign Cloud

#24

Post by bflesch »

margorczynski wrote: post #16

If I'm not mistaken the US (e.g. intelligence agencies) can still require them to provide client data and respect US sanctions? AWS should be ditched altogether and something Europe based chosen even if it requires investment.

Yes, 100%. They are fully compromised and an extension of US dominance. They can and will be weaponized against us.

Same with Apple iCloud - one day Europeans will wake up and see that all their pictures have been deleted.

Re: AWS European Sovereign Cloud

#25

Post by eCa »

blibble wrote: post #6

> The AWS European Sovereign Cloud is the only fully-featured, independently operated sovereign cloud, backed by strong technical controls, sovereign assurances and legal protections. independently OPERATED, not independently owned therefore: still under the jurisdiction of the US regime

> still under the jurisdiction of the US regime

Exactly, this seem pointless for people serious about staying away from US owned data stores. I know first hand of EU based businesses that left AWS (and all other US owned services) before 2020 due to customer (B2B) demand which in turn was due to the Cloud Act[1], and for whom it today would be completely untenable to return.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act

Re: AWS European Sovereign Cloud

#26

Post by trebligdivad »

nikeee wrote: post #9
crazygringo wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it breaks the law in the EU, then the European employees staffing the data center refuse, because they don't want to go to jail or pay fines. That's the entire point of setting it up like this. Think of it like fast-food franchises. They have to sell the same food and use the same branding and charge the same prices. But if McDonald's tells you to start selling cocaine on the side, you tell them nope, that's not i…

What if the software is developed and potentially backdoored in the US and deployed by the EU team in the sovereign region? Or did they rewrite the entire AWS stack?

If the EU employees can look around the code, it would then get quite interesting if they were to point out a backdoor. which they would of course raise with an EU based CERT. In a way that protects US customers as well having a set that can't be stopped from doing that.

Re: AWS European Sovereign Cloud

#27

Post by x86cherry »

snihalani wrote: post #8

Why is this valuable?

Critical infrastructure. The US has a history of forcing their way into many parts of it [1] and we know they use it for leverage whenever it's suitable. Furthermore, if you control the information flow of a system, then decision making based on that information becomes dependent on those who control it.

[1] https://www.radiofrance.fr/franceculture/guerre-economique-c...

Re: AWS European Sovereign Cloud

#28

Post by sega_sai »

I was actually surprised to see this: "As we make this change, we will continue to work as a blended team of EU residents and EU citizens, with all personnel working from EU locations, before gradually completing our transition to EU citizen operations for the AWS European Sovereign Cloud." This looks like a more serious attempt to make it independent of US meddling. It will not protect it fully, but still.

Re: AWS European Sovereign Cloud

#29

Post by ignoramous »

bflesch wrote: post #24
margorczynski wrote: post #16

If I'm not mistaken the US (e.g. intelligence agencies) can still require them to provide client data and respect US sanctions? AWS should be ditched altogether and something Europe based chosen even if it requires investment.

Yes, 100%. They are fully compromised and an extension of US dominance. They can and will be weaponized against us. Same with Apple iCloud - one day Europeans will wake up and see that all their pictures have been deleted.

> one day Europeans will wake up and see that all their pictures have been deleted

Possible this happens due to bugs in iCloud's GDPR implementation.

Re: AWS European Sovereign Cloud

#30

Post by Kwpolska »

EC2 pricing: https://aws.eu/ec2/pricing/on-demand/

The prices for the only region in Germany are very similar to the prices in eu-west-1 (Frankfurt), except in € instead of $, so that’s basically a 16% markup by today's exchange rate. Also, AMD CPUs appear to be completely missing.

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