Some people might interpret this comment as political commentary, but it’s actually just the reality of what people are saying and doing.
There’s a lot of data to suggest that America’s recent policy of reducing its soft power around the World & decoupling itself from alignment with interests of allies is causing increased interest and prioritisation of sovereign capability across tech, defence, public health and policy programs.
This was a campaign strategy/promise for the US President. I’m not going to comment on whether it’s good for the US or for the allies, but I will note it could have been better anticipated by all: the only real surprise is the speed and depth.
It raises some interesting questions - it’s one thing to say you don’t want Microsoft or Starlink in your infra tech stack, or don’t want to use AWS or GCP, but where does the line stop? Does the UK get out of Trident? Does the UN General Assembly get out of New York? No idea, but the fact these are conversations probably happening right now is remarkable.
>This was a campaign strategy/promise for the US President.
I don't remember seeing "if you elect me I'll destroy NATO, threaten allies, and make sure even USA's oldest allies hate us" as part of the campaign.
Perhaps you could link that promise from the time before the election?
As to your questions, I think people are hoping that rule of law returns and there is an outbreak of common sense. No-one really expected US president will align with Russia and a cult of pseudo-Christian white-supremacist nationalists will worship him as the second coming as an expectation. That the Senate, SC, and tech leaders have fallen in place behind that (the latter literally paying fealty to their god-king) is complete insanity.
> I don't remember seeing "if you elect me I'll destroy NATO, threaten allies, and make sure even USA's oldest allies hate us" as part of the campaign.
You weren’t paying attention, or spent to much time in wrong echo chamber.
> No-one really expected US president will align with Russia and a cult of pseudo-Christian white-supremacist nationalists will worship him as the second coming as an expectation.
I'm sorry but everyone who was paying attention expected exactly that.
> No-one really expected US president will align with Russia and a cult of pseudo-Christian white-supremacist nationalists will worship him as the second coming as an expectation. That the Senate, SC, and tech leaders have fallen in place behind that (the latter literally paying fealty to their god-king) is complete insanity.
I think it's completely expected that the Senate Republicans would do what they were told, and the multi-decade project to stack the Supreme Court with extremists to overthrow Roe v. Wade was something that was very obvious while it was happening.
> No-one really expected US president will align with Russia and a cult of pseudo-Christian white-supremacist nationalists will worship him as the second coming as an expectation. That the Senate, SC, and tech leaders have fallen in place behind that (the latter literally paying fealty to their god-king) is complete insanity.
I would like to remind you of Project 2025. While Trump claimed to know nothing about it prior to being elected, so far he's appointed every editor/contributor to the document/project to his administration and achieved more than half of the stated goals of the document.
>No-one really expected US president will align with Russia and a cult of pseudo-Christian white-supremacist nationalists will worship him as the second coming as an expectation.
QAnon happened during Trump's first term. The support for Trump by the alt-right and white supremacists were so well known they were written about in the mainstream media.
Trump's links with Russia have been well known for decades. He literally started his construction business doing deals with the Russian mob.
Hell, even Trump's sexual abuse issues were right there for everyone to see. "Grab'em by the pussy" would have ended anyone else's entire political career, it just made Trump more popular.
>That the Senate, SC, and tech leaders have fallen in place behind that (the latter literally paying fealty to their god-king) is complete insanity.
Why do you think Trump packed the court with candidates hand-selected by the Federalist Society?
Did people miss the creeping right-wing shift in the Republican Party after 9/11? The ascent of Evangelical Christianity and Christian nationalism? The normalization of authoritarianism and fascism within the Conservative movement has been happening since the days of the John Birch Society. The dark enlightenment shit in SV goes back to Curtis Yarvin in the early 2000s.
All of this was seen coming from miles away.
All of this was warned about.
Shouted about from the rooftops and on the streetcorners.
For years.
No one cared because it was women and gays and people of color, "leftists" and "liberals" doing the warning. They were dismissed as delusional. Americans only trust in the authority of white men, and half the country swept Trump into power specifically because they wanted a white supremacist Christian revolution purging "DEI" and "feminism" and "progressivism" and "secularism" from culture and government. Even Trump's own supporters warned us about their intent. They literally published it in a document, with bullet points and everything, and Americans trusted the white guy with his fingers crossed behind his back - despite being an infamous liar, con-man and holding views that align perfectly with Project 2025 - because the alternative would mean trusting that a "leftist" could be right about something, and having a black woman president. Can't have that. We had a half-black man in the White House who was at best center-right and Americans lost their goddamn minds about him being the Marxist Black Panther Antichrist.
Americans don't get to say they didn't see it coming. This was the most easily telegraphed arc of fascism ever in the history of civilization. The US has been playing it on easy mode and still lost.
Don't think you'd have much luck convincing say a German that they shouldn't use Mistral because it isn't German sovereign. But you might have luck with that line against china or america.
Or put differently depends more on the fault lines in public perception than strict borders
Which goes to show maybe it's less about literal sovereignty than wanting to rely on parties less prone to exploit the reliance for stabbing you in the back.
Considering it took decades of absolutely no meaningful action against the US tech sector's cavalcade of object lessons in 'They "trust me". Dumb fucks', and orgs were still eagerly ripping out homegrown system solutions to get all their communication and storage locked into Azure and AWS at the most four years ago, I'm not sure whether to feel relieved or exasperated that there are some signs of real reactions this time.
Yes. My first-hand experience is that there's huge demand for it in the UK at the moment, for data sovereignty in particular.
LLM inference is currently a secondary concern - lots of conversations, some pilots and PoC implementations but not much beyond that (yet). I'd expect that market to grow substantially over the next couple of years, though.
Note that "sovereignty" isn't seen as a binary thing in this context. Rather, organisations are using a risk planning approach: mapping out potential sovereignty concerns, then building strategies to mitigate them. Think of it as the start of a wave that will likely continue to build for the rest of the decade.
Big-bang onshoring operations aren't really on anyone's radar at this stage, but it's great to know that there are more UK-based options are becoming available.
US tech is currently being weaponized against the ICC and its member judges in Europe[1], and the US is threatening to annex Greenland, as a result all (former) US allies are scrambling to get rid of their strategic dependency.
> as a result all (former) US allies are scrambling to get rid of their strategic dependency.
In a very limited way. Some countries are moving some government systems off US suppliers, but its very limited.
Somethings are going the other way. For example (there was a post about this on HN a few days ago) the new EU ID/age verification app depends on Google or Apple attested phones.
There is no real effort to push the private sector off American systems. Your government might technically function but its going to be crippled if your private sector has ground to a standstill.
It's still limited, but the shift has been dramatic over the past few month alone. It's hard to tell what the situation will look like in a few years. Unless the midterms are a democrats landslide (which the GOP has tried to prevent as much as possible with gerrymandering) I don't see the trend stopping anytime soon.
It is if your country isn't in the US and (a) GDPR requires data residency in UK/EU; (b) you're concerned about capricious actions by the US govt cutting off access to US-controlled services (cloud, payments systems, etc).
I’d say it’s more than a marketing strategy, it’s reflecting real demand. Countries have legal requirements (or increasingly strong preferences) for the kind of guarantee that data/inference sovereignty gives.
Some people might interpret this comment as political commentary, but it’s actually just the reality of what people are saying and doing.
There’s a lot of data to suggest that America’s recent policy of reducing its soft power around the World & decoupling itself from alignment with interests of allies is causing increased interest and prioritisation of sovereign capability across tech, defence, public health and policy programs.
This was a campaign strategy/promise for the US President. I’m not going to comment on whether it’s good for the US or for the allies, but I will note it could have been better anticipated by all: the only real surprise is the speed and depth.
It raises some interesting questions - it’s one thing to say you don’t want Microsoft or Starlink in your infra tech stack, or don’t want to use AWS or GCP, but where does the line stop? Does the UK get out of Trident? Does the UN General Assembly get out of New York? No idea, but the fact these are conversations probably happening right now is remarkable.