[graemep]

The problem is that European (in the EU and outside) countries do not have the same ability to sanction the US as the US has to sanction them.

If the US imposed sanctions that blocked access to cloud services a lot of the government and the private sector would just shut down.

Take what happened to the French ICC judge and imagine that happening across a whole country and far more pervasively (because a lot of people he deals with will not follow US sanctions, but would have their own services cut off if his country was sanctioned): https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2026/02/18/us-sanctions-t...

[DiogenesKynikos]

The EU could absolutely find ways to hurt the US economy just as much as vice versa. It doesn't have to use the same tools as the US. Just ban major US companies from doing business in the EU. Impose massive fines. Get creative.

The EU economy is on par with the US economy. The EU has plenty of ability to hurt the US economy.

The reason this doesn't happen is because the EU isn't a country. It doesn't have a unified central government. It's 27 different sovereign states, each with their own completely different foreign policy. The type of policy I'm describing requires a unified political leadership willing to play for high stakes.

This is why China has been so much more effective than the EU in the trade war with the US. It's not that China theoretically has better cards to play. It just has a central government.

[mike_hearn]

EU economy is not on par with the US economy. This is a dangerously old belief. That was maybe true in 2000 but not in 2026. EU GDP per capita is ~$48k and US GDP per capita is ~$94k. US economy is nearly twice as big. Quarter of a century of higher growth will do that.

EU does run a trade surplus with the USA. In a big fight the USA would, strictly speaking, have to replace more stuff than the EU would. However that ignores the makeup of the things being traded. EU exports to the US is dominated by pharma products that the US could make generics of, misc machinery that can often be replaced by Chinese competitors now, and luxury goods the US doesn't strictly need. US exports to EU are critical for the functioning of the economy (assuming you count tech services as exports).

It would be catastrophic for the world if there was a serious trade war between US and EU but if it involved major disruptions to tech services the EU would fold within days. There are no home grown replacements for most US software and no ability to make them anytime soon (especially as any broad spectrum sanctions would include frontier AI models).

[ben_w]

> EU economy is not on par with the US economy. This is a dangerously old belief. That was maybe true in 2000 but not in 2026. EU GDP per capita is ~$48k and US GDP per capita is ~$94k. US economy is nearly twice as big. Quarter of a century of higher growth will do that.

I think per capita is not a useful measure here? The populations are unequal.

By nominal exchange rates, the US economy is estimated to be $31.856T this year; the EU's $23T; by purchasing power parity exchange rates, the EU is $30.678T.

Exchange rates matter for what actually gets traded, but they're also easily shifted by interest rate policies. But even with this, any simplification of economics sufficient to fit in a comment is going to be very misleading about questions of who is more or less dependent on global free trade, the US or the EU. Even the complexity you list: I suspect there's an office or five in various EU nations filled with economists trying to work out exactly what would go down if there was an EU-US trade war and how to remove the critical points of failure.

> US exports to EU are critical for the functioning of the economy (assuming you count tech services as exports).

> It would be catastrophic for the world if there was a serious trade war between US and EU but if it involved major disruptions to tech services the EU would fold within days.

Yes, but this is kinda the point of all the digital sovereignty stuff.

It was already weird to me, as an iPhone app developer in Germany making apps for Germans living in Germany where sometimes the only language option was German, that I had to tick a box while uploading apps confirming that any encryption in the app would be in compliance with US export laws*; now, it's unacceptable.

* https://developer.apple.com/help/app-store-connect/manage-ap...

(Irony, that page links to https://bis.doc.gov/index.php/policy-guidance/encryption which for me has an SSL error)

[embedding-shape]

> It would be catastrophic for the world if there was a serious trade war between US and EU but if it involved major disruptions to tech services the EU would fold within days. There are no home grown replacements for most US software and no ability to make them anytime soon (especially as any broad spectrum sanctions would include frontier AI models).

It's true that much of our infrastructure depend on US parties, but there are regions, governments, municipalities and more that is already 100% independent, although they're few right now, growing every day though.

But it's a misconception that it's 100% dependent on US SaaS and services, when already there are islands of people running their own infrastructure already today. People won't just give up if the US somehow cuts all connection, they'll just collaborate with the people who's infrastructure continue running like nothing happened, and it'll happen fast as a lot of services depend on that to work.

[graemep]

> It's true that much of our infrastructure depend on US parties, but there are regions, governments, municipalities and more that is already 100% independent, although they're few right now, growing every day though.

What about the devices people use to use this infrastructure? Most individuals use American controlled smartphones and American OSes on computers. What about private businesses?

[embedding-shape]

> Most individuals use American controlled smartphones and American OSes on computers.

Do most individuals really? I think in America, it might seem like that, but if you visit countries like Peru, Spain or Asian countries, you'll realize there are huge mobile companies completely outside of the American hegemony that are popular in the world too, although maybe they're unheard of in the US. Last time in Peru I probably saw more Xiaomi phones than anything else, and also Huawei is popular.

[DiogenesKynikos]

US GDP is only about 30% larger than EU GDP in nominal terms, which is not enough to matter in this discussion. It's "on par" for all intents and purposes. The EU has plenty of ways to hurt the US economy very severely.

[graemep]

The EU is not necessarily the right comparator. If it came to that level of conflict its possible that not all EU countries would side against the US, its also possible some non EU countries would. However, i agree with your broad point that some European alliance is roughly comparable to the US.

However:

1. European countries are low growth and therefore of diminishing economic importance. Every year that goes by North America and Asia and other economies become comparatively larger.

2. What the US supplies Europe is going to do greater immediate damage to Europe than what Europe supplies the US. The US can turn off things that start hurting economically broadly and immediately and are hard to replace: cloud services, payment systems, etc. Things that only hurt when stocks run out, or that could be bought from elsewhere have less impact.

[embedding-shape]

> If the US imposed sanctions that blocked access to cloud services a lot of the government and the private sector would just shut down.

You don't think they'd rather maybe find alternatives rather than shutting down? Sure, it'd be sucky probably for a long-time, but it's not like we don't have IT professionals who can stand up physical servers, email servers and what not, plenty of local municipalities do so already, so somewhere there is expertise already.

People generally don't just give up and throw their hands in the air in the face of difficulties, even less so when the governance of their country depends on it.

[jandrewrogers]

I think you are underestimating the supply chain problem. You can't stand up extra servers you don't already have in extra data center capacity you don't already have. The whole point of the cloud is that you don't have these assets.

While you can acquire these assets the lead times would be several months at a minimum, and probably years if everyone is trying to do it at the same time. It isn't an issue of knowhow, the required physical infrastructure doesn't exist.

[embedding-shape]

Say Microsoft/Google/whatever my local municipality is using right now, gets blocked tonight, and tomorrow everything US-related is offline. It won't (and can't) take months for them to get one server up and running for them to continue with their administration. As mentioned, other municipalities in the country already are 100% independent, running everything themselves, either they're willing to help out the rest of us, or at least provide expertise enough so we can. Then the country is filled with FOSS nerds like myself, who wouldn't shy away from stepping in to help either.

Probably the larger cities would take longer to solve, but I don't think "We cannot get server hardware from the US" will be the biggest problem, it'll be around national organization until the biggest fires been put out. Putting one server in each ajuntament would basically be enough to get 80% of the local municipalities up and running again.

[mike_hearn]

It wouldn't only affect local governments, it'd also trash all the businesses, banks, national governments, etc. Google on its own getting blocked breaks the entire internet because so many websites rely on the free services they host. Remember there are no European search engines of any quality and only Mistral as a European AI provider, so even just findings things would be difficult.

[embedding-shape]

You underestimate how resilient and effective people can be when needed. Yes, as mentioned earlier, it'd suck for a while, but we'd come up with solutions pretty quickly, as the entire country would rely on that.

Pretty much exactly a year ago, I was about leave home to go buy something, when the power was cut, garage door didn't open. Fine, jump into a taxi, and both of us notice that seemingly the entire town is without power. Once we arrive at the store in another town, same thing.

Turns out, the entire country had lost power, and would be without power for pretty much the rest of the day, and same thing in neigboring Portugal. We were literally without power, internet and cell-phone service for pretty much the entire day.

Did the entire of society pretty much was put on hold for a day? Yeah, but still we managed to go on with our day. I owed the taxi driver until the next time I saw him, the store accepted the same thing so we could buy some stuff, they noted down everything on paper, and so on.

We did survive, and thanks to humans being humans, we all could pretty much survive even that day.

Loosing Microsoft/Google/AWS would indeed be pretty much on a smaller scale, mostly impacting IT and everything related to IT, which is large swaths, but just like every other problem, it'll be worked around both temporarily and permanently, it's just in human nature to do.

Again, I'm not saying it wouldn't suck, nor that it wouldn't be difficult, but also, it wouldn't take a year before emails are being sent between companies again either.

[graemep]

It was just one day. I have experienced multi-day power cuts and it was bad enough in a developing country that was largely a cash economy. it would be a lot worse in Europe now.

I think Europe now is far more dependent on IT systems than you think. They are almost as essential as electricity. You found a taxi driver you would see again - how would one get an Uber and when would you meet an Uber driver again? How long can shops keep extending credit?

Its not just losing Azure/Google/AWS. It means losing security updates to smartphones, not being able to use Windows logins for your laptop, not being able to make card or phone payments, possibly not being able to withdraw cash. Without security updates American OSes will become insecure. How long will it take to replace the OS on every smartphone and desktop? What about defence? Will those F35s keep working without IT support? What about medical and hospital systems?

The IT impact is on top of everything else, not the only impact.

Its one thing for things to come to a standstill for one day, but the economic impact of things coming to a standstill for weeks is very different. At best it is an instant deep recession. It will mean running out of essentials, even food as logistics is heavily compromised. Even over 30 years ago the CEO of a logistics company told me that IT was critical to their business - that will only be more true today. You can do stuff on paper but at greatly lowered efficiency.

it might not mean a total collapse of society, but it will mean a huge amount of economic damage, and far more than any combination of European countries (e.g. EEA plus UK) could do to the US.

[DiogenesKynikos]

And it would mean the permanent end of American dominance over the international software and cloud compute market.

You can only ever play a card like that once. Afterwards, no one will trust you or use your services again.