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Another European agency shifts off US Tech as digital sovereignty gains steam

(www.zdnet.com)
245 points CrankyBear | 3 comments | 31 Oct 25 16:39 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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mentalgear ◴[31 Oct 25 17:38 UTC] No.45774588[source]▶
Why would ANY global business still rely on U.S. Tech? The U.S. government, through their executive orders and dissolving of the separations of powers, has demonstrated its ability to unilaterally disrupt or shut down private technology services at will. How can any business justify depending on U.S.-based tech infrastructure when its access could vanish overnight on a political whim by an unstable president?

If there is no rule of law, capital, talent and trust are flowing out of that country - for good reason.

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mrtksn ◴[31 Oct 25 18:57 UTC] No.45775442[source]▶
> Why would ANY global business still rely on U.S. Tech?

Because it's pretty refined since it was funded with resources so great that it was intended to serve global level audience?

I don't believe that EU will have comparable quality "tech" without restricting US market access in EU. Unfortunately, refined high quality software requires considerable resources and no one will invest those considerable resources when the US companies can just offer better software at lower price thanks to their lead and deep pockets until the EU companies go out of business. Sure, EU doesn't need to discover everything again but they will need to pay top talent world class money for years until their products become refined.

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embedding-shape ◴[31 Oct 25 19:39 UTC] No.45775870[source]▶
> I don't believe that EU will have comparable quality "tech" without restricting US market access in EU.

> Sure, EU doesn't need to discover everything again but they will need to pay top talent world class money for years until their products become refined.

Just like the US didn't need to rediscover the inventions of cars, submarines, the web, the printed press and more to be able to build better iterations on those, wouldn't the exact same apply the other way?

It feels like whatever you're saying today could be said the other way in the past, so why does it really matter?

The fact on the ground is that people don't trust the US overall as much, even less the leadership of the US, so whatever dependency has been built up over the years, has to be fixed, no matter if the "local" technology is shittier at the moment.

I'm sure Americans felt the same about printing presses back in the day, where some things you just have to be able to do without needing the permission of others far away.

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jaredklewis ◴[31 Oct 25 22:48 UTC] No.45777556[source]▶
> Just like the US didn't need to rediscover the inventions of cars, submarines, the web, the printed press and more to be able to build better iterations on those, wouldn't the exact same apply the other way?

Running a software business in Europe is not against the laws of physics or anything, but it is also worth considering why Europe doesn’t already have a thriving software sector. The US shooting itself in the foot might help a little, but there are still lots of internal barriers, like those outlined in the Draghi report.

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1. embedding-shape ◴[31 Oct 25 23:08 UTC] No.45777717{3}[source]▶
> but it is also worth considering why Europe doesn’t already have a thriving software sector

Why is that your impression of the software sector in Europe? Just because there isn't a "Eat the whole world Google/Amazon/Microsoft" company that ends up in American business-news, doesn't mean the it isn't one of the most well-paid and comfortable sectors in the continent, just like everywhere else, compared to other sectors.

I think as a whole it seems like Europe in general and particularly the EU has a lot more focuses than just "Tech Innovation", although it's still one part needing improvement. Even the report you referenced mentions the energy sector as a top priority, and slow steps are taken to upgrade infrastructure at all sorts of levels and sectors.

Software is but one part of life, but of course many of us here get lost in focusing a lot on software itself, I'm guilty of it myself too.

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2. jaredklewis ◴[31 Oct 25 23:37 UTC] No.45777895[source]▶
I'm not making any normative judgements, just descriptive ones. Maybe the way Europe is right now is perfect, far be it from me to say otherwise, I don't even live there.

But in the context of "digital sovereignty," it seems to me that so many giant pillars of tech (desktop OSes, mobile OSes, cloud platforms, enterprise crap like Salesforce, and so on) are managed by American firms. So if Europe wanted to take all of those things in house, that would require a significant expansion of the European software sector. And that wouldn't be super straightforward due to the many obstacles to things like venture capital funding outlined in the Draghi report.

Now I'm more than a little skeptical of the whole "digital sovereignty" concept. There's a reason every country doesn't it make it's own airplanes, cars, wine, espresso machines, and medical devices; those reasons apply more or less equally to software development. The cost of “sovereignty” is very, very high. But, if we do buy into the idea that countries need to diversify away from American software, I think that necessarily entails a large increase in the software sector of places like Europe.

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3. ◴[01 Nov 25 12:23 UTC] No.45781097[source]▶