[beloch]

If a politically stable nation with a good international reputation were to guarantee government respect for data privacy for data centres housed on its soil and run by its companies, that nation could become the Swiss bankers of data.

Rolling your own "digital sovereignty" is not going to be cheap for most nations, and many other nations simply won't be trusted by anyone, least of all their own citizens.

It's a bit flabbergasting that U.S. tech companies didn't see this coming years ago and lobby hard for the U.S. to repeal anti-privacy legislation like the CLOUD act. Their lunch is sitting out in the open, completely unwatched, waiting to be eaten by somebody else and it's far too late to do anything about it.

[AnthonyMouse]

The more astonishing thing is that people regularly talk about this in the context of hosting providers when by far the more significant threat is mobile platforms.

There are a zillion hosting companies, many of them outside the US. Now which mobile platform are you going to use that doesn't give one of two US companies root on your population's phones?

[noir_lord]

I have a sliding scale of devices I trust more or less (I trust nothing completely).

At the top of the trust scale is a self built desktop running fedora then way further down is my apple devices (iPads) and then even further down is my android phone.

Open source on hardware you control is the least worst option but since the hardware comes from abroad/countries I don’t trust much (including the US) not perfect.

[EdiX]

Soon thanks to Digital ID all your important business will have to go through the devices you trust the least.

[Avamander]

There's nothing about a digital ID system that would inherently require the use of a pre-approved OS.

Some countries went with SmartCards that you can use on any platform that can communicate with a card reader basically.

[sam_lowry_]

Hah, you wish. See how maintainers of a reference implementation resist removing Google dependency here: https://github.com/eu-digital-identity-wallet/eudi-app-andro...

[noir_lord]

Probably but I’ll just end up with a separate device just for that.

[xethos]

This is in no way a solution to the population-scale problem of a belligerant nation having root on the citizenry's mobile phones/cameras/GPS units/network scanners

[aembleton]

> Now which mobile platform are you going to use that doesn't give one of two US companies root on your population's phones?

HarmonyOS

[AnthonyMouse]

Something with ~0% market share outside of China and which trades the US having root for China having root is not a viable alternative.

In theory you could have something produced by a country other countries might be willing to trust, but the number of countries that are both trustworthy and large enough to sustain a globally-viable platform is practically the empty set at this point.

Which means the thing it calls for is something open source, since that both allows contributions from multiple countries and solves the trust issue by leaving no single entity in control of it.

[adjejmxbdjdn]

One of the ironies of the TikTok-China discussion was that as an individual in the US, I would much prefer the Chinese govt have access to all my data over the U.S. government, just like I suspect individuals in China would be much better off if the U.S. government had all their data over the Chinese government.

So giving your data to the Chinese government, while not a great solution, may still be preferable over giving it to the U.S. for someone in the EU given the closer relationship between EU governments and the U.S. than EU governments and the Chinese government.

Of course, this may be the opposite of what you want from a national perspective.

[tiahura]

My bank account is much more likely to get wiped by Chinese hackers than the CIA.

[MichaelZuo]

This doesn’t sound well reasoned.

If the USA were to ever weaken into irrelevance then yes messing with foreign HarmonyOS users might have some possibility that can’t be easily dismissed.

As long as the USA doesn’t become completely toothless then the incentives would point in the opposite… as long as Huawei behave scrupulously they are nearly guaranteed to win and dethrone the incumbents for most of the world.

[AnthonyMouse]

The US has already banned Huawei from doing business in the US.

Moreover, everybody knows how the enshittification cycle works at this point. They don't openly betray you when they have 0.3% market share, they just fit you for a noose that gets tighter as their market power increases. But because everybody now expects that to happen, who is going to use it to begin with if it's not open source and correspondingly resistant to rug pulls?

[MichaelZuo]

Did you misread some words?

I dont see how US decisions on Huawei are relevant to the prospects of HarmonyOS in the future, when that’s already been priced in?

[Zigurd]

Viability is debatable. There are tens of millions of smartphone users in the US who are vastly more exposed to US law-enforcement abuses and intrusiveness than anything China would care to try. Chinese emigres excepted.

In other words China doesn't have to be trustworthy as long as the mountains are high and the emperor is far away.

[kubb]

You could take your analogy further, and consider why the Swiss banking isn’t so opaque anymore. Hint: people who did really inhuman things used that system to store their profits, and the Swiss society, developed and stable as it is, decided that they don’t want to bear the moral cost of it anymore.

[remus]

> ...decided that they don’t want to bear the moral cost of it anymore.

And of course the external pressure to loosen banking secrecy laws has been huge, particularly from the US e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UBS_tax_evasion_controversies

[embedding-shape]

But ultimately the Swiss decides what Switzerland does, and the population deciding they didn't want that, was the deciding factor. Been pressure on Switzerland about that for a long time, from many countries, and in fact still there is, as many still think they're not doing enough. Not everything in the world happens because of the US :)

[rich_sasha]

The US department requests that all foreign financial institutions share all their US clients details.

Wanna refuse? No problem. Of course you can. You're outside the US jurisdiction.

But every USD transaction you do is subject to, IIRC, 30% tax. Unless the US decides to block it altogether.

[throwwwll]

You are naiive and/or stupid. And/or gaslighting. Most likely the latter since you have to sugarcoat your message with trailing emoji.

UBS tried to hold for as long as they could, and the choice the US given them is "pay a fine (accrues daily) or be cut from world financial system run by dollar".

UBS ultimately paid a 780 million fine. The rest of Swiss banks followed suit immediately.

Many things in the world happen, and most of the dumb bullshit that happens is imposed by US. This naiivete has to stop, the times have changed, and you, you spefically are part of the problem.

[jschveibinz]

Please maintain proper decorum. Ad hominem attacks aren't beneficial to the discussion on HN. Thank you.

[fransje26]

> Hint: people who did really inhuman things used that system to store their profits, and the Swiss society, developed and stable as it is, decided that they don’t want to bear the moral cost of it anymore.

That's a nice re-write of history.

What actually happened is that the US said: cut the crap and leave the opaque banking to us, else...

[fakedang]

Exactly. Post that pressure, the US, specifically Wyoming, is a much better tax haven than any Swiss canton.

[throwwwll]

> Swiss society decided

Nice attempt at whitewashing and gaslighting, but the only entity here that decided that is the fucking US of A.

[beloch]

The Swiss didn't vet their clients. If Vladimir Putin wants to contract a data centre on your soil for the privacy, you can always have regulations that say, "No.".

[AnthonyMouse]

The entire premise of "other countries can trust your companies to protect their privacy" is that you can't. "US reads Dutch emails" is the thing you have to not do.

[dmurray]

You can be strict about who you do business with while still respecting their privacy once they are set up.

The respectable, politically popular country setting this up would simply say yes to the International Criminal Court, but no to Putin.

This doesn't work well as a blacklist of "everyone's allowed unless they turn out to be sanctioned", because some shell company or reseller could register and actually be a front for Russia or whatever other bogeyman. But just serving enormous respectable organisations is a big niche in itself.

[AnthonyMouse]

But now you're proposing something that doesn't solve the problem for the vast majority of people, since nearly everyone is neither the International Criminal Court nor Vladimir Putin.

[dmurray]

It might solve it for the majority of people by compute use, though. Charge $100,000 one time auditing fee to get approved for it. For a Fortune 500 company or EU government agency or a big NGO that's nothing.

[petre]

If the payments go through SWIFT, the problem is solved if either party is sanctioned.

[zrn900]

> It's a bit flabbergasting that U.S. tech companies didn't see this coming years ago and lobby hard for the U.S. to repeal anti-privacy legislation like the CLOUD act

The US big tech has been in bed with the US establishment since eternity.

[hinata08]

> Rolling your own "digital sovereignty" is not going to be cheap for most nations

neither are Microsoft 365 subscriptions at governmental scales

No offence, but I do believe a few Dutch ppl could run email servers for cheaper

[lII1lIlI11ll]

It is not as simple as banking - people tend to want low-latency and high-speed connection which necessitate the data center to be in close proximity. Which basically means that founding a country with strong data protection laws somewhere in Antarctic won't get you many clients in Europe.

[Chris2048]

> people tend to want low-latency and high-speed

that might change is privacy is an option. The real problem is the cost of building in the middle of nowhere, even if you use spare Starlink capacity, where do you get power & personnel from?

[lII1lIlI11ll]

> where do you get power

Wind, hydro, sun? This is 2026 after all.

> personnel

Depends on what that theoretical country would offer. Some kind of strong constitutionally-enshrined protections for privacy and perhaps from tyranny-of-the-majority exploiting upper-middle class like all other western countries and with strong IT jobs market? Are you kidding, sign me up!

[Chris2048]

The original post was "somewhere in Antarctic", what does that offer?

[lII1lIlI11ll]

I chose Antarctic as an example because it is one of few places on Earth with significant uninhabited land where one could theoretically establish a new sovereign state. Are you implying that all popular green energy technologies are somehow unfeasible there?

[Chris2048]

Yes, the "somehow" is that no one want to live there, and the associated expense of building there probably outweighs the benefits. I'm also sceptical you could establish a new sovereign state there.

[AnthonyMouse]

If the premise is that you want to host data for people in Europe who don't want it to be under the control of the US then Frankfurt is a lower latency place to be than Virginia anyway.

[lII1lIlI11ll]

OP had a much stronger premise ("guarantee government respect for data privacy for data centres housed on its soil") than what you described.

[vitalyan1234]

that's a psyop from the cloud evangelism era. a few hundred milliseconds of latency make fuck all any difference for 95% of things, even voice/video calls.

[lII1lIlI11ll]

That is just like, your opinion, man? I personally find it a very poor experience talking to someone over high latency connection when we tend to always start talking over each other.

[valzam]

The question is, is that really only due to data center geo? I am always amazed how low latency and high quality Facetime between Europe <-> Australia is. Seems like good engineering can overcome less optimal geographics.

[lII1lIlI11ll]

I find that hard to believe. Are you implying that Apple is running their own fiber network providing low-latency connection between Europe and Australia? Or what kind of "good engineering"?

[deaux]

I can vouch for GP's exact experience. Facetime does feel much smoother than other videocalling apps for Aus<>Europe. Of course they don't run their own fiber network. The good engineering is making it feel smooth and good despite that. At its core, nothing about computing is smooth. Everything is based on making it feel that way, using countless techniques.