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by beached_whale 115 days ago
It isn't usually an American company doing the local operations, but a local subsidiary. Like Walmart Canada telling Walmart corporate to pound sand in the 1990's over Cuban pajamas. It's illegal for Canadian companies to participate in the US embargo of Cuba.

This is all well within the realm of what governments can and do regulate. Want to do business in a country with their laws or not is the choice.
2 comments
bombcar 115 days ago
At some point it comes to a head; Walmart corporate and the USA didn't care enough about Cuban pajamas, but in a situation where they DO care, you quickly get Вкусно – и точка.

The EU (nay, perhaps every country) should be prepared to deal with Microsoft or AWS completely cutting them off from access to all their systems - what would be the cost and impact?

We are rapidly heading to not one Internet, but country-specific internets that may or may not bridge to other ones in some cases.

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bee_rider 115 days ago
Apparently AWS sovereign cloud is designed to continue operating even if the US offices cut them off. The servers are in the EU and the people running them are subject to EU laws, not US ones.

Realistically a US executive could be legally required to give an EU engineer a command that they legally couldn’t follow. At that point I guess we find out if the engineers’ national or corporate identities are dominant. I suspect the former in most cases, but who knows?

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beached_whale 115 days ago
The US exec probably doesn't want to order them either. So the game would be played and they did their best. There's another article about the US fighting data sovereignty requirements/laws in other countries, but that relies on their quickly dwindling soft power.
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dijit 115 days ago
Canadian companies can't use Cloud providers at all then? I'm incredulous about that.

Google, AWS & Microsoft all nullroute the countries of Cuba, Iran and North Korea. Google also nullroutes Crimea.

So by using a cloud provider, you are participating in the embargo of Cuba.

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beached_whale 115 days ago
Not sure Canada has the leverage/market to get them to sway here. But a body like the EU has the leverage to force local operation and control.
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