[palata]

> If anything "EU Tech Sovereignty" is a net negative for me.

Is it? If you live in the EU, the fact that pretty much all companies completely depend on US tech to work means that the US can not only spy on them (if Airbus uses Microsoft Teams, then the US government can ask Microsoft to give them access to the data and use that to help Boeing win contracts for instance), but also put pressure on those companies by blocking their access to that tech (it has happened).

The "sovereignty" part here is a net positive for anyone living in the EU. Net negative for anyone living in the US of course, because being in a dominant position does favour the US.

[villish]

The default stance should be that nothing you do is private on the internet. If we're talking spying then no service in any country will be secure unless fully encrypted with audits. Any country with an intelligence agency can force companies in their jurisdiction to give them access to data otherwise.

[palata]

Not sure what you are trying to say, except that it confirms my point: if a company in say, Germany, uses Microsoft and Google services for all their communications, then the US (!) can just get access to all their data.

Now if that company was using services based in Germany, then only Germany could access that data, which is obviously much less of a sovereignty problem (Germany interfering with Germany's affair is just a normal government).

[villish]

Sure for a German company in Germany that's perfectly reasonable, but we're not talking about each country in Europe having their own copy of AWS/Stripe/Search.

In reality all the data will be in France/Germany/Netherlands because that is where the infrastructure is. They also happen to be countries with world class intelligence agencies.

We need better services and protocols developed with privacy in mind from the beginning, no matter where it's hosted.

[palata]

> but we're not talking about each country in Europe having their own copy of AWS/Stripe/Search.

We're not talking about having hyperscalers in each country, but I could totally imagine each country having infrastructure.

> In reality all the data will be in France/Germany/Netherlands

Having the choice between 3 European countries is already a lot better than giving all the data to the US. The US has been a lot more hostile to European countries than "the intersection of hostility from France/Germany/Netherlands".

> We need better services and protocols developed with privacy in mind from the beginning, no matter where it's hosted.

Sure, I agree with that. But one doesn't prevent the other. Typically it's not practical to run LLMs in a privacy-preserving manner, so it's a lot better (in terms of sovereignty) to run a server in a place you trust than in a hostile country.

[villish]

> Having the choice between 3 European countries is already a lot better than giving all the data to the US. The US has been a lot more hostile to European countries than "the intersection of hostility from France/Germany/Netherlands".

History shows conflict seems to be inevitable. You can't assume all European nations will be friendly forever. I'm American, but my hope is that this knee-jerk reaction to just move everything possible to EU has more thought behind it. Improving upon what we currently have especially with respect to privacy so that everyone in the world may benefit rather than just clone American tech and calling it a day.

[palata]

Not sure you understood my point.

- IF you can choose to rely on one of [France, Germany, Netherland], then you would need to be in conflict with all three to be screwed.

- IF you can choose to rely on a service in your country, it's better for sovereignty.

Overall, it's all better for competition. The best would be competing services sharing an open core (or even everything).

> this knee-jerk reaction to just move everything possible to EU

The thought is that if you are in the EU, in terms of sovereignty you are better off giving your data to EU services. US companies give their data to US services, so of course it is much less of an issue there. And Americans are not the last to complain when US companies give their data to non-US companies...