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US orders diplomats to fight data sovereignty initiatives

reuters.com

41–50 of 509 posts

Re: US orders diplomats to fight data sovereignty initiatives

#41

I can’t imagine how any country would think the US is trustworthy enough to be the place where everyone stores their data. If companies cannot comply with data sovereignty laws then they shouldn’t exist at all. Personally, even as a US citizen, I’m hoping tech companies in Europe and Asia become independent enough to no longer be beholden to US interests. It’s clear that the era where any one country has global hegem…

I don't care if they go sovereign, but the GDPR crap is annoying. Would be funny if the US just forced them to get rid of it.

Re: US orders diplomats to fight data sovereignty initiatives

#42
> The cable said the Trump administration was pushing for "a more assertive international data policy" and that diplomats should "counter unnecessarily burdensome regulations, such as data localization mandates."

For any government in Europe, it should be extremely pressing to untangle itself as quickly as possible from US-based companies as suppliers.

But to be frank, even regulations should be unnecessary here. Private businesses in Europe (and elsewhere) should consider it an existential threat to depend on cloud services from the US. We are all one executive order away from having access cut.

Re: US orders diplomats to fight data sovereignty initiatives

#43
Misleading title by Reuters.

The title should be "US orders diplomats to fight _EU_ data sovereignty initiatives".

Why? Because the US is far too pussy to fight the other countries that have such initiatives - some of them reaching further than the EU's - knowing that unlike the EU those countries are definitely not going to take their shit.

I can tell you that if the US says to Japan or Korea, just to name two such examples, "stop enacting privacy/sovereignty laws that interfere with US big tech or we tariff you" , there's absolutely zero chance they're going to be listened to and the only thing it will do is make people hate the US.

Re: US orders diplomats to fight data sovereignty initiatives

#44
We are pivoting out of a huge number of US services at my job. I think windows, Google, PaloAltoNetworks and Aws will be the last we leave, but infoblox is out next year (that's part of my job right now), and old Cisco hardware will stop being replaced by new Cisco hardware in 6 months.

Re: US orders diplomats to fight data sovereignty initiatives

#45

I can’t imagine how any country would think the US is trustworthy enough to be the place where everyone stores their data. If companies cannot comply with data sovereignty laws then they shouldn’t exist at all. Personally, even as a US citizen, I’m hoping tech companies in Europe and Asia become independent enough to no longer be beholden to US interests. It’s clear that the era where any one country has global hegem…

I don't care if they go sovereign, but the GDPR crap is annoying. Would be funny if the US just forced them to get rid of it.

If you're not in the EU, what even is the impact on you that was caused by GDPR? You're essentially not affected by it unless you run a business, which now you need to take greater care of the personal data you store. Is that what's annoying you or what?

Re: US orders diplomats to fight data sovereignty initiatives

#46

I can’t imagine how any country would think the US is trustworthy enough to be the place where everyone stores their data. If companies cannot comply with data sovereignty laws then they shouldn’t exist at all. Personally, even as a US citizen, I’m hoping tech companies in Europe and Asia become independent enough to no longer be beholden to US interests. It’s clear that the era where any one country has global hegem…

> I’m hoping tech companies in Europe and Asia become independent enough to no longer be beholden to US interests What tech companies? At the end of the day, it's all about capital and IP. American domiciled VCs and companies can outinvest just about any other competitor, and much of the core IP for vast swathes of critical next-gen technologies (high NA EUV, Foundation Models, Quantum Computing) is in the US, but Am…

>American domiciled VCs and companies can outinvest just about any other competitor,

Because every investor in the world put their money in the US. They knew the best companies and people would centralize around that hub.

When the US is a rogue, isolated idiocracy -- already true, but the world takes time to adapt to this new reality -- how much of that money do you think will flow to the US?

Re: US orders diplomats to fight data sovereignty initiatives

#47
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine if the current administration does, Europe could retaliate by withholding ASML’s tech or even doing a mass sell off of US treasuries. Europe is admittedly not in a position of strength compared to the US, but there are still a lot of levers they can pull.

> retaliate by withholding ASML’s tech The problem is that the core technology that makes ASML's tech valuable is the EUV light source which is entirely designed, developed, and manufactured by Cymer in California, which is a US company that ASML acquired in 2013. That acquisition was permitted only under strict technology sharing and export-control agreements. I have no doubt that this administration would forcefull…

This framing gets the supply chain backwards. Cymer makes the source vessel, the part that generates tin droplets and converts them to plasma. But the laser that actually powers that process is a 17-ton, 40kW CO2 beast with 457,000 parts, built exclusively by TRUMPF in Germany. And the optics, mirrors smooth to tens of picometers that literally no one else on Earth can make, come from Carl Zeiss, also German, organized as a foundation that no foreign government can force into a sale. ASML only manufactures about 15% of an EUV machine's components. The rest comes from roughly 1200 suppliers concentrated in Germany and the Netherlands. Seizing Cymer gets you one subsystem with no laser to drive it and no optics to focus it.

The real problem with this theory is that EUV isn't a product with a capturable bottleneck. It's more like a standing wave of institutional knowledge distributed across organizations that have been co-developing at picometer tolerances for 30 years. TRUMPF's leadership described the arrangement as a "virtually merged company" with open books across all three firms. That kind of integration knowledge doesn't transfer via acquisition. China has been throwing enormous resources at this with access to published research and former ASML engineers, and their prototype still isn’t expected to produce working chips until 2028-2030. Saying the US could grab Cymer and start producing EUV machines is like seizing a transmission plant and calling yourself a car manufacturer.

Re: US orders diplomats to fight data sovereignty initiatives

#48
post #10
post #4

How can you be so confrontational and still want people to give you business and data? I really don't envy the diplomats' job at the moment.

Most 'diplomats' of the new USA are just grifters like Witkoff or Kushner. Real estate people cosplaying diplomats. The US as the world has known it is gone https://apnews.com/article/france-us-ambassador-kushner-far-...

By no means exclusive to the US (e.g. Peter Mandelson).

Re: US orders diplomats to fight data sovereignty initiatives

#49

I can’t imagine how any country would think the US is trustworthy enough to be the place where everyone stores their data. If companies cannot comply with data sovereignty laws then they shouldn’t exist at all. Personally, even as a US citizen, I’m hoping tech companies in Europe and Asia become independent enough to no longer be beholden to US interests. It’s clear that the era where any one country has global hegem…

I don't care if they go sovereign, but the GDPR crap is annoying. Would be funny if the US just forced them to get rid of it.

You don't have to interact with GDPR if you don't use EU companies?

Re: US orders diplomats to fight data sovereignty initiatives

#50
post #4

How can you be so confrontational and still want people to give you business and data? I really don't envy the diplomats' job at the moment.

This administration really, truly lives under the delusion that they hold "all the cards". In every engagement they think it is for them to dictate and everyone else to follow. Any graciousness they show is just kind benevolence. And the "diplomats" of this administration is a rogues gallery of Epstein associates (e.g. pedophile sex-trafficking garbage) and self-dealing criminals. Just a who's-who of garbage. They ar…

> This administration really, truly lives under the delusion that they hold "all the cards".

I think it's simpler than that: they think the world is a zero-sum game, so why bother being anything but utterly confrontational at every turn?

Of course, that's a childish way to view the world, but we're a childish people.

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