[causalmodels]

The article's Karim Khan example pretty deeply undercuts the thesis. Losing access to your bank account is the actual coercive power. Losing a Microsoft email is an inconvenience in comparison.

The real 'military bases' are banks.

[a_humean]

If your business has everything on GCP/AWS/Azure (which is very common) and the Americans choose to weaponinse US tech against your country or business, then unless you have non-US backups you are probably dead and all of your employees unemployed. If you are a state, all of your services and functions are probably dead and you have to rebuild from nothing. That is certainly true of my company and there are some mutterings starting where I am internally about worst case disaster recovery if suddenly one of these suppliers just disapeared.

In this new world you cannot trust that this will not happen. As a European relying on the Americans is honestly probably little better than relying on the Russians and probably on par with relying on the Chinese in terms of risk profile. Note we are actually for all intents and purposes at war with Russia.

The amount of leverage the Americans have over Europe is insane, and every captial should be trying to mitgate that risk asap.

[formerly_proven]

European companies largely do not recognize this as a risk because they consider B2B contracts with Microsoft or AWS essentially iron-clad.

[zwaps]

This is because Europeans can not listen.

Microsoft executives under oath said that they will not be able to honor those contracts if there is pressure from the US administration. We should know this, but we keep forgetting: laws, contracts, courts etc always bow before political and military might. In peacetime, we delude ourselves into thinking it aint so.

The situation is now clear as day. What op stated is 100 percent correct.

The US will have successfully invaded an EU country by 2027.

They will, if it comes to this, immediately and successfully weaponize all three hyperscalers.

It is abundantly clear where thinks are going.

If any country, organization or company is not prepared for this by mid 2026, they are blind and deaf

[surgical_fire]

You are correct. In Europe, governments and businesses should treat the US as a hostile foreign country, and relying on anything from there is a massive risk.

The only thing is that weaponizing the hyperscalers would also be disastrous for the hyperscalers. They would be liable to lose their assets in Europe, access to European markets, etc and so on. Which would as a consequence cause a tangible harm to the US economy itself.

Not that in Europe we should rely on it for anything. Any business is wise to move away from any sort of dependency that is subject to US pressure. Governments in particular should consider it a matter of life and death.

[Roark66]

We (Polish) have been raising an alarm about Russia since the first Chechen war and it took additional dozen+ years and a land invasion of a European country before countries in Western EU woke up.

Do you think they are going to be quicker reacting to danger from the other side?

I highly doubt it. EU is like a huge steam ship. It takes a lot of effort to turn it. But once it gets going good luck stopping it. This will have consequences for the EU-Us relations for the rest of this century.

I fact it is exactly what a Russian agent if he managed to become a president of US would do. A Putin's wet dream basically. Be hostile enough towards Russia to preserve appearances - seize a tanker or two, while undermining long term US and EU interests (the interests of these two are naturally aligned very well, it takes much more than an idiot to drive a wedge between them).

[surgical_fire]

The thing is that the EU is a complex structure. The interests of countries such as Poland, Italy, Germany and Ireland differ wildly, which is why things are so slow to maneuver, politically speaking.

I always considered that the over reliance on US a weakness. It was comfortable because it postpones some difficult discussions (for example, in terms of defense and military spending it is completely bonkers for the EU to not act as a federal entity). Since this subject is thorny, it was alright to rely on the US for defense and just kick this can down the road.

The US becoming hostile at least forces the countries in the EU to face reality a little, and perhaps speed some things up (see for example the recent EU-Mercosur trade agreement).

[Eddy_Viscosity2]

The other factor is that both Russia and the US have people 'on the inside' in the EU governments. They bought them. They own them and they do what they are told.

[Tepix]

This used to be true but it's rapidly changing.

[epolanski]

My clients are slowly but surely migrating to European cloud vendors, Scaleway especially.

[general1465]

> If your business has everything on GCP/AWS/Azure (which is very common) and the Americans choose to weaponinse US tech against your country or business,

these companies have datacenters in Europe too. It is not wild to think that if push comes to shove and US cut off Europe, then Europeans can just take control over those European data centers and restore access to GCP/AWS/Azure in Europe because these datacenters are on their soil and predominantly employing Europeans.

[Roark66]

>. It is not wild to think that if push comes to shove and US cut off Europe, then Europeans can just take control over those European data centers and restore access to GCP/AWS/Azure in Europe because these datacenters are on their soil and predominantly employing Europeans.

Good luck with that. Those systems are extremely interconnected. We should (and are) be building sovereign EU equivalents to not just cloud providers but also major services like google/ms 365 and so on.

[Woodi]

> Google/ms/aws...

Meh.

EU need to start with own PC hardware factories first. And PC compatible designs. What is unlikely - on first sight of troubles they will buy everything from US. As all good 3rd Word countries do.

[jsiepkes]

There are plenty banks owned and operated within the EU. One bank folded for US pressure but when push comes to shove the EU can force banks in the EU to uphold EU rules and regulations.

That's not the case for digital infrastructure like Google Workspace, Google cloud, Office 365, AWS, etc.

[wickedsight]

> when push comes to shove the EU can force banks in the EU to uphold EU rules and regulations.

This made me realize that many people who are extremely critical of the power the EU has, have no idea how much that power is often protecting them.

This is not a dismissal of the fact that it's absolutely critical to stay vigilant about how that power is used. But it's quite clear that without that power, the US would've abused theirs way more within Europe.

[phi0]

When the US sanctioned Hong Kong’s Chief Executive in 2020, because of a law allowing extradition to China, no single bank was letting her open an account, including Chinese ones. She was receiving her salary fully in cash.

The EU compelling banks to do business despite US sanctions seems pretty unlikely even if relations continue to degrade.

[tomjen3]

AWS, etc has datacenters in the EU.

Microsoft relies on the EUs courts to recognise their property rights.

[Qwertious]

>Losing a Microsoft email is an inconvenience in comparison.

Losing access to data is potentially worse than losing access to your bank account. I doubt Microsoft will let you grab a copy of all your emails after they block/ban you.

[epolanski]

You may have tied your services, e.g. your digital bank account to your email.

This is a very major inconvenience.