18 ms·

As he just found out, that's exactly what the EU can do. And as he's about to find out, the EU is way too important a market for the American economy to ignore

• abc123abc123 3mo ago
  I think rather, that it is the EU who cannot live without US cloud services and AI-services. Imagine if the US, behind closed doors of course, threatened to cut off all cloud services. Huge parts of the public and private sector could collapse.
  • w3ll_w3ll_w3ll 3mo ago
    We would build our own alternatives. Russia is a much smaller market (120 million people) and they have their own tech companies.
    • f6v 3mo ago
      > We would build our own alternatives. Right, and we haven’t because we just don’t wanna? The gap between US/China and the EU in AI is becoming wider by the day. Russia has like 3-4 large tech companies (Sber, Yandex, VK, and maybe Ozon). And they completely rely on foreign hardware. I don’t even want to imagine how could Russia start building frontier AI in these circumstances.
      • hparadiz 3mo ago
        It's actually pretty sad for the EU that the biggest tech company names on the continent are all Russian.
        • zurfer 3mo ago
          ASML, SAP, ARM, Spotify, ... How do you define biggest? Can't be by market cap.
        • ben_w 3mo ago
          Not that "largest by market cap" says much, given that it corresponds to "oh look a monopoly" as much as it does "innovation and real growth" (and also "bubble"), but you're wrong. Market caps of Russian examples from above: Sber: $84 bn - https://companiesmarketcap.com/sberbank/marketcap/ https://companiesmarketcap.com/sberbank/marketcap/ Yandex: RUB 1327B (~= $17 bn) - https://tradingeconomics.com/yndx:rm:market-capitalization https://tradingeconomics.com/yndx:rm:market-capitalization VK: RUB 176.7B (~= $2.3 bn) - https://smart-lab.ru/q/VKCO/MSFO/market_cap/en/ https://smart-lab.ru/q/VKCO/MSFO/market_cap/en/ Ozon: $8.9 bn - https://companiesmarketcap.com/ozon/marketcap/ https://companiesmarketcap.com/ozon/marketcap/ Market caps of bigger EU tech firms: ASML: $533.84 B Siemens: $223.14 B SAP: $202.96 B Seagate Technology: $164.43 B - https://civixplorer.com/post/most-valuable-eu-companies-market-cap-2026 https://civixplorer.com/post/most-valuable-eu-companies-mark...
        • antonvs 3mo ago
          Don’t believe everything you read in Pravda.
      • maligenligen 3mo ago
        We hadn't because we didn't have to.
      • petesergeant 3mo ago
        > Right, and we haven’t because we just don’t wanna? The EU hasn't because European investors are shy about deploying capital. If you look at European weapons and aerospace, it's clear there's no particular technical or capability barrier.
        • f6v 3mo ago
          There was a very real barrier to building tech companies. We couldn't listen to Spotify at work during the time people seriously called Berlin the "SV of Europe" (our office was in the neighborhood called "SV Backyard"). Why? We didn't have enough bandwidth, and the wait time for fiber was measured in years.
          • petesergeant 3mo ago
            I remember 2008 very differently, was this a very localized Berlin problem?
            • ben_w 3mo ago
              From anecdotes around me now I live in Berlin, I believe it extended at least into Brandenburg. Even in 2019, some coworkers were complaining that the best offer from their landline company (in one of the small villages just outside the Berlin city limits) was dialup. Berlin's reputation post reunification has been "poor but sexy".
            • f6v 3mo ago
              Nah, I’m talking 2016. I have no idea about commercial internet outside Berlin. But my residential connection in suburbs of Aachen in 2015 was copper.
      • ben_w 3mo ago
        > Right, and we haven’t because we just don’t wanna? The gap between US/China and the EU in AI is becoming wider by the day. We've repeatedly built things, they often get bought by US companies. This doesn't necessarily even involve them moving office, as for example Deep Mind was founded in the UK (while it was in the EU) and is still there (HQ: London; research offices in France & Germany so still in EU too) despite now being owned by Alphabet.
      • piva00 3mo ago
        > Right, and we haven’t because we just don’t wanna? We have, they get bought by American companies as their exit strategy. If American companies decide to shutdown access then there's no pressure from the behemoths to stamp out competition, it would just be natural that alternatives take over since the market clearly exists and without American tech companies filling that market it would be pretty easy for alternatives to grow.
    • bluecalm 3mo ago
      It's a culture thing. There are even smaller markets like Taiwan that developed industries EU didn't. Western EU countries are very risk averse, anti-business and has too conservative hierarchy to develop this kind of culture. You can see it as early as in school system where the focus is on rising the floor while forgetting about the ceiling.
      • petcat 3mo ago
        They'll blame it on WWII but both South Korea and Japan were similarly devastated and both managed to develop world-class technology industries in the ensuing decades. Europe is the outlier and it's pointing to something fundamentally wrong that it was only able to produce a handful of interesting technology companies in all these years.
        • 9dev 3mo ago
          You're just blinded by propaganda. Europe has produced thousands upon thousands of interesting technology companies - it's just that very few of them are information technology companies. Claiming that something is wrong with Europe in general because it didn't produce interesting technology is an utterly ridiculous and uninformed take.
          • phicoh 3mo ago
            I think it is a marketing failure. The web was mentioned before, but ARM, Wifi, Bluetooth, the CD, all European inventions. There are core parts of the internet that are completely dominated by a European company but nobody knows. If we go back to the past, everyone had a Nokia phone at some point. There are services companies like Booking and Spotify. Then Linux and Python are from Europe as well.
  • jackvalentine 3mo ago
    You can do that, once, if you want to trigger an avalanche of realignment away from the U.S. Not only would you lose the 450 million odd EU customers, but the rest of the world will reconsider doing business with you as well.
  • petesergeant 3mo ago
    > Imagine if the US, behind closed doors of course, threatened to cut off all cloud services. Huge parts of the public and private sector could collapse. I think the EU member states would declare it a matter of national emergency and nationalize the relevant assets, with every other country these American companies sell to taking notes and considering doing the same pre-emptively, providing a huge investment boost to EU tech companies (and almost certainly China) while tanking the US economy, and poisoning the ability of the Americans to sell to Europe for the next hundred years. You don't win the opium wars by threatening to cut off the supply of opium.
  • 9dev 3mo ago
    If they did that, their pension system (in huge parts built on stock) would collapse. The American tech market is largely saturated, and needs room to grow. The EU is a market of almost 500 million people with a lot of money. The US simply cannot ignore it.
  • istoleabread 3mo ago
    And achieve what exactly? EU being dependent on US cloud services also mean EU being a big part of their revenue. Parts of EU public and private sector may collapse but they will also switch to their own alternatives, the broken trust and lost revenue on the other hand will definitely not be recovered by US companies.
  • hparadiz 3mo ago
    It would hurt the EU more than it would hurt us and they're in denial about it.
    • cryptonym 3mo ago
      Let's say you are right on this. What's the point of hurting yourself? There would be no meaningful benefit.
      • hparadiz 3mo ago
        Oh man you wanna talk about benefits? I actually don't even think the US should have given the internet to the world. It's basically been one giant gift. Sure it's created a situation where we sell the tech both as software and hardware and that has allowed us to redirect wealth from the world to the US however in hindsight it's making our enemies stronger and allowing technology like drones to proliferate. An alternate reality where we didn't do that would be a reality where people would be smuggling American tech to their countries the way they did with jeans in the 80s. We basically decided to make a bunch of money on the tech over the past 50 years but it's actually created a situation where our soldiers are gonna be dodging drones in the next big conflict where as if we never allowed advanced chips to proliferate around the world we would be sitting high on tech that is basically magic to the rest of the world. In hindsight I'm not sure if it was a good idea.
        • 9dev 3mo ago
          If there's one thing all historians agree on, it's that collaboration has always been the winning strategy in human history. If the US had never opened up their innovations to the world, they wouldn't have been able to extract the gargantuan amount of money from it they did. If the US had not instated the Marshall plan after WW2, there would never have been as close ties between Europe and the US. If American companies hadn't outsourced much of the manufacturing to poorer countries, the standard of living would be a lot lower than it is today. If USAID hadn't improved and saved the life of millions of humans, American companies wouldn't be met with such universal acceptance and opportunities to sell their goods as they have. It's not like the US isn't massively benefitting of their investments in the rest of the world. But it sure looks like you're pretty aligned with the current administration there, so we'll both see how this plays out in real time.
  • ben_w 3mo ago
    > Huge parts of the public and private sector could collapse. Today, yes. The possibility of this, combined with how seriously Greenland was taken, means the EU is collectively saying "as a matter of urgency, we need strategic independence from the US". This will take a while. Ironically, access to AI will make the transition much faster. However, this is currently mutual interdependence: if the US actually cut off non-AI cloud to the EU, the US would screw over one of their major suppliers thus preventing them from supplying stuff, and leave itself entirely at the mercy of China. If it cut off AI to the EU, there goes a big market for tokens and the current data centre supply looks even more sketchy than its effect on electricity prices has already made it look. (But one bit of good news is that US electricity prices would come down).
  • latexr 3mo ago
    Humanity has lived for thousands of years without cloud and AI services. We can definitely live without those. In fact, considering the damage that is being done to the environment (and thus ourselves) in name of those services, we’d very likely be better off without them in the first place. A large reason US services have such a presence in Europe is that their flagrant disregard for rules and the pursuit of profit at all costs gives them an unfair advantage. If those US companies cut off their services, in the long run the ones in the EU would have the room to expand within the rules. That’s the opposite of the doomsday scenario you’re describing. Though of course an abrupt cut would be momentarily disruptive, countries in the EU are already taking steps to reduce reliance on US services (for example: LaSuite).
  • tjpnz 3mo ago
    The EU would counter that threat with the anti-coercion instrument. Shut Trump up really fast when he was last talking about annexing Greenland.
  • rspoerri 3mo ago
    Yes, think about that and how the shares would drop in an instant. Good thing european governments and industries start to work on real technological and financial independence. It is high time for cutting ties with a country that is acting as irrational and self centered as the usa.
  • throwaw12 3mo ago
    > Huge parts of the public and private sector could collapse. temporarily yes, then EU will be able to build them on its own. But what would also collapse is trust in all US companies, whole world will start working on their own solutions, no more AWS/GCP/Azure hegemony in the world. Everyone would close their internet, just like China did and develop own solutions
  • InsideOutSanta 3mo ago
    > Imagine if the US, behind closed doors of course, threatened to cut off all cloud services That would be the single best thing that could happen to the EU. I think people would be surprised by how quickly European and international companies and governments can rid themselves of the American tech stack. They use this stuff because it's convenient, solid, and cheap, not because it's the only option. > Huge parts of the public and private sector could collapse. Yes, both in the EU and the US, initially. It would also force the EU to finally invest in its own tech stack and end the US's ability to sell software globally. People seem to believe that America's global economic dominance is a law of nature that will never change, regardless of what the US does. But it's not. There is no American exceptionalism, other than what America worked for. If you continually kick your customers in the face, they'll eventually stop being your customers.
  • Ravus 3mo ago
    > In the cases provided for by the law and with provisions for compensation, private property may be expropriated for reasons of general interest. Excerpt from article 42 of the Italian constitution. This would cover, for instance, the entire eu-south-1 availability zone in AWS. I'm sure that other member states have their own provisions and you need to keep in mind that Google/Amazon/Microsoft employees in the relevant countries would predictably comply with local authorities, not obey a foreign power trying to collapse their governments. If your power comes from saying "I own that", it's crucial not to enter complete hostility with nations, the only entities who can reply, "Says who?".
    • rcxdude 3mo ago
      That kind of thing is very much a nuclear option, though. Firstly because the state that does it needs to be very confident it can operate the asset it seizes without overseas support, and secondly because doing so tends to be bad for business in your country in general, as people understandibly get nervous about having stuff in places that have shown a willingness to just take it.
      • Ravus 3mo ago
        Completely agreed, it is rational to de-escalate by several steps (e.g. to have cloud providers "spontaneously" decide to split into different, actually autonomous but still privately owned, corps, which in turn is a threat to returns of the home corp so they would put pressure on the US government not to escalate this far politically, and so on). It's just that the possibility of the "nuclear option" works as a deterrent.
      • vrganj 3mo ago
        The nuclear option would be the US pulling cloud services over night. This would be the counterstrike, not the initial nuke launch.
  • mrdevlar 3mo ago
    This already happened. The US government cut off a judge at the international criminal court from her Office365 account because she was pressing a war crimes case against Benjamin Netanyahu. It's the reason why in the last year you've seen multiple European governments very quickly build an escape hatch against US tech. We all expect that you'll use our dependency on US services as a weapon, you've already done so, so we're phasing you out. It'll take decades to repair the lost trust in US digital services among the governments of Europe.
    • moogly 3mo ago
      I call bullshit on the "very quickly" part there. It'll take a decade to phase out. And some don't seem interested at all (my employer for instance).
      • toyg 3mo ago
        Some are more exposed than others.
        • moogly 3mo ago
          I don't doubt there are some, but GP made it sound like every European company and institution is working feverishly on it, which just cannot be true.
          • mrdevlar 3mo ago
            A lot more people are working on it than I expected there to be. It's the one time where the European Union's inability to advertise what they're doing is paying off in their favor. Then again, good, the operation of government isn't meant to be done through a tweet. We should resist the corruption of government to idiotic soundbites on platforms owned by American billionaires.
      • petcat 3mo ago
        > take a decade More like several decades and 100s of billions of euros which nobody is going to pay. It will simply never happen and right now all the politicians are just quietly waiting for this whole thing to blow over.
  • PurpleRamen 3mo ago
    EU can live fine without US cloud services, and it's not very dependent on AI at the moment. If access would be cut off, companies would just switch to other solutions, which BTW are already there. The question is more how much time they would have to switch and adapt. An unannounced zero-day cut off would be of course harmful for a while (days, weeks, maybe months), but on most parts could be probably solved in a short timeframe for the important parts. Also, EU (and probably most parts of the world) are already switching away at this moment already.
    • petcat 3mo ago
      The EU is doing the exact opposite of switching away from US tech. In fact they just announced that the new EU digital ID wallet is going to require Google or Apple device attestation. That is two US companies in complete control of the fundamental digital ID system of the entire EU. Everything they say about "digital sovereignty" is performative nonsense because they simply have no other options and no capacity to build replacements themselves.
      • rcxdude 3mo ago
        This is bad largely due to the effect on individuals who may find themselves banned from such services with no due process. As a threat to the EU's sovreignty as a whole it's one of the easier things to move away from if it gets weaponised (in comparison to cloud services that are intertwined with a country's economy and bureaucracy)
      • graemep 3mo ago
        The EU and most of the rest of the world. The UK is talking about sovereign AI but doing much the same with pushing reliance on Apple and Google.
      • mqus 3mo ago
        they did not "just announce" that, it was a rather technical decision several layers down, made a while ago. Sure, some things are not easily created without US companies but the overall tendency is pretty clear and it is: reduce absolute dependencies.
  • wvh 3mo ago
    It would hurt, for a while. Then people would wake up and slowly better solutions would appear. Not unlike post-Trump NATO. But the US would have lost its leader position and a large market. I think the EU needs a kick under the ass to stop its comfortable inertia.
  • furyg3 3mo ago
    This is not a flip the switch tomorrow hypothetical. The fallout of such an action would be huge for everyone, including the US stock market. Here in Europe, every government and major corporation have recently added their dependance on US platforms to their risk management taxonomy. For the (unlikely) scenario you mention, for the scenario that their company/government somehow runs afoul of the US goverment and this is used as leverage, for espionage reasons, and for other reasons that may have already been in their risk overview (data privacy, compliance, etc) but were seen as manageable but are no longer so. For some anecdotes: My former employer just moved off of AWS to a EU provider and will likely also move away from Google Cloud for their internal needs, my current employer has started evaluating moving off of Azure at the request of our clients (though they dismissed the idea of moving off of Office 365 internally), and my partner's company (a large corporate) has started prioritizing a transition plan away from AWS.
  • surgical_fire 3mo ago
    Cloud services would hurt because of the data stored there. Suddenly being cut off your own data is obviously an upheaval. It also shows how untrustworthy a partner is when this threat is thrown around casually. Also why talks of tech sovereignty are a lot more prevalent now. If you brought that up 10 years ago, people looked at you as if you were a crank conspiracy theorist. Now everyone takes it seriously. Maybe a decade from now this will have been addressed. AI services are a lot less important than you presume. Cut access to it and the workd keeps moving as usual.
  • ezst 3mo ago
    What do you believe is so unique about US cloud providers? True, it's a de facto triopoly of American-incorporated businesses, but then what? It's not like computing is alien tech that only the US can own. The US doesn't even make the chips. It's commodity at scale with a bit of convenience sold at a steep premium.
  • sveme 3mo ago
    Which is when we'd enter economic warfare between the EU and US, something which no one wants to experience. If that were realistically threatened, and we've seen motions in that direction, it's about political and economical survival and we'd see a massive loss of market for US tech.
  • myko 3mo ago
    Not anymore :)
  • greenleafone7 3mo ago
    That's why our relationship is ending.
  • clownpenis_fart 3mo ago
    [dead]
• glimshe 3mo ago
  The EU can certainly do a lot, with the exception of producing their own major tech companies.
  • input_sh 3mo ago
    The end goal shouldn't be "monopolies, but European", the end goal should be no monopolies.
    • InsideOutSanta 3mo ago
      It's funny how people complain that the EU has no Google, when Google should never have been allowed to exist in the first place. The current tech dystopia is a direct result of the US failing to enforce its antitrust laws. Major tech companies are a bug, not a feature.
    • glimshe 3mo ago
      Is ASML "European" or a "monopoly" under your definition as one can't be both?
      • Kbelicius 3mo ago
        Why can't it be both? After all GP did not give any definitions. He simply and clearly stated: > The end goal shouldn't be "monopolies, but European", the end goal should be no monopolies.
  • bildung 3mo ago
    *ad companies