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Microsoft gets twitchy over talk of Europe's tech independence

theregister.com

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Re: Microsoft gets twitchy over talk of Europe's tech independence

#71

Post by toxicunderGroov »

ta1243 wrote: post #63
philipallstar wrote: post #2

I think this is long overdue, just like Europe's sudden investment in militaries to pull its weight in global defence. More competition is better.

Europe has tried this in the past and the US has vetoed it. The dirty secret is America wants Europe to spend more money with American companies, not just spend more on defence. America would rather 80% of a 100b defence industry than 20% of a 300b defence industry, both from a financial point of view and from a strategic point of view.

They had a good thing going on but that will stop the moment our infrastructure is in place. And pretty soon like the US Europe will be looking to get a return on those investments :)

Re: Microsoft gets twitchy over talk of Europe's tech independence

#72

Post by prmoustache »

cruzcampo wrote: post #40
Mossy9 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First order of business should be to detach the governments from Microsoft. Probably the hardest part of this whole tangle is that the governing bodies are so bound to MS that any move can hit back twice as hard. It's easier to legislate the consumer side, since it's not directly affecting the efficiency and budgets of the organizations making the legislation. Thankfully, it seems that a movement from inside governme…

Are there any specific Microsoft products you would prioritize? I'd envision building a plug-in replacement to facilitate switching.

I think what makes Microsoft so hard to challenge is not one product but the fact they have a tightly integrated ecosystem. Everything is coupled with the Active Directory, Azure and Office365. By themselves these components aren't irreplaceable but no company has ever been able to offer as wide a range of products.

Re: Microsoft gets twitchy over talk of Europe's tech independence

#73

Post by belter »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #10
pjc50 wrote: post #3

> "The Cloud Act grants US authorities access to cloud data hosted by US companies. It does not matter if that data is located in the US, Europe, or anywhere else." Exactly. So long as that is true, the idea that an EU datacenter run by Microsoft can be "sovereign" is nonsense. Having an in-EU owned cloud becomes a national security issue. Tech independence is a long way off though. I wonder if, like the carbon trans…

Forget about access. What happens if Trump, tomorrow, orders Microsoft to cut off some government because they were mean to him or whatnot? How much leverage does a European economy running on American technology hand D.C., and do you really trust us to safeguard that power responsibly?

There’s virtually nothing, technically or managerially, that can slow down the massive iceberg that is Azure and Microsoft.

Call it cynical if you like, but I see it as a plain statement of fact that as of May 2025:

- A cloud platform riddled with security vulnerabilities.

- Two major breaches that exposed customer data to other customers.

- Widely disliked by seasoned cloud professionals who are forced to use it.

And yet...it’s thriving....Microsoft’s earnings yesterday showed Azure and other cloud services up 33% year-over-year, and the stock jumped 9% in after-hours trading.

Re: Microsoft gets twitchy over talk of Europe's tech independence

#74

Post by belter »

ta1243 wrote: post #62
Delphiza wrote: post #6

While governments may be interested in moving stuff off Azure/AWS/GCP, in my experience, most businesses don't care enough. It is difficult enough to get them to spend money on the bare minimum needed for security. Yes, they will want 'sovereign data' because it looks good on the annual report, but most would not do it for double the cost. Europe and other parts of the world should reduce their dependency on American…

European tarrifs on AWS/Azure/GCP would be an option. European tech companies expanding into SAAS is less of a mountain than physical production.

"EU could tax big tech if Trump trade talks fail, Von der Leyen tells FT" - https://www.reuters.com/technology/eu-could-tax-big-tech-if-...

Re: Microsoft gets twitchy over talk of Europe's tech independence

#76

Post by mcv »

pjc50 wrote: post #3

> "The Cloud Act grants US authorities access to cloud data hosted by US companies. It does not matter if that data is located in the US, Europe, or anywhere else." Exactly. So long as that is true, the idea that an EU datacenter run by Microsoft can be "sovereign" is nonsense. Having an in-EU owned cloud becomes a national security issue. Tech independence is a long way off though. I wonder if, like the carbon trans…

If US companies are required to give the US government access the data, and companies operating in the EU are not allowed to give anyone access to data from EU citizens, then US companies are simply not allowed to operate in the EU anymore.

The only way out is to split all of those tech companies, which frankly isn't a bad idea at all.

Re: Microsoft gets twitchy over talk of Europe's tech independence

#77

Post by philipallstar »

ta1243 wrote: post #63
philipallstar wrote: post #2

I think this is long overdue, just like Europe's sudden investment in militaries to pull its weight in global defence. More competition is better.

Europe has tried this in the past and the US has vetoed it. The dirty secret is America wants Europe to spend more money with American companies, not just spend more on defence. America would rather 80% of a 100b defence industry than 20% of a 300b defence industry, both from a financial point of view and from a strategic point of view.

> The dirty secret is America wants Europe to spend more money with American companies

Well of course. Just as Europe wants American businesses to spend more money on the EU through fines.

Re: Microsoft gets twitchy over talk of Europe's tech independence

#78

Post by tzs »

pjc50 wrote: post #3

> "The Cloud Act grants US authorities access to cloud data hosted by US companies. It does not matter if that data is located in the US, Europe, or anywhere else." Exactly. So long as that is true, the idea that an EU datacenter run by Microsoft can be "sovereign" is nonsense. Having an in-EU owned cloud becomes a national security issue. Tech independence is a long way off though. I wonder if, like the carbon trans…

Having data in an in-EU owned cloud does not make it harder for the US government to get the data under the Cloud Act, because the Cloud Act isn't about the server. It is about who controls the data.

Suppose I'm a US company and I rent some storage space from a US cloud provider and put some data on their service using the APIs they provide their customers, and I rent some storage space from an EU cloud provider and put some data there using the APIs they provide their customers.

I'm the one who controls that data. The cloud providers just provide storage space for me.

If the US government wants to get that data using the Cloud Act they don't ask the US cloud company and the EU cloud company for it.

They ask me for it. I have to retrieve it, which I do using the exact same APIs I would use if I were retrieving it for my own use. To the cloud providers it just looks like a normal case of a storage client of theirs retrieving data.

Re: Microsoft gets twitchy over talk of Europe's tech independence

#79

Post by ta1243 »

philipallstar wrote: post #77
ta1243 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe has tried this in the past and the US has vetoed it. The dirty secret is America wants Europe to spend more money with American companies, not just spend more on defence. America would rather 80% of a 100b defence industry than 20% of a 300b defence industry, both from a financial point of view and from a strategic point of view.

> The dirty secret is America wants Europe to spend more money with American companies Well of course. Just as Europe wants American businesses to spend more money on the EU through fines.

Europe wants American companies to follow European laws when operating in Europe, same as it wants European companies to follow European laws when operating in Europe.

America does not want Europe to have its own defence industry, as this makes Europe less reliant on America.

Now I would argue that Europe needs to treat IT services (cloud etc) as a strategic importance like Food and Defence, and America has shown - not just over the last few months, but increasingly over the last decade, that it may not be the reliable partner Europe once thought it was.

That would mean subsidising IT in Europe and increasing barriers to non-european services -- i.e. artificially increasing costs of AWS and Azure, but Europe hasn't done that yet.

Re: Microsoft gets twitchy over talk of Europe's tech independence

#80

Post by rjmunro »

mattlondon wrote: post #49

Related: https://www.s3ns.io/en This is GCP run in an independent, non-google-owned air-gapped data center, operated by local employees in France. No US connection at all - Google just license their software from what I understand, and have no remote or physical access, so even if they did get a secret order to do something, they couldn't. This sort of thing is the way to go

If it runs on US made software, they could probably release a "critical update" whose real purpose was to add a back door for the US government.
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