Communications without Musk and Trump: Cloud Kootwijk

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In the beautiful Dutch booklet Over en Uit: Driekwart Eeuw Radiocommunicatie 1900 - 1975 (‘Over and out: 75 years of radio communications’), we read:

1916: As a result of British cable censorship, free communication between the Dutch government and the Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies was no longer feasible.

(Dutch version of this post is here)

The Netherlands was dependent on foreign countries for communication, which had already caused problems earlier:

1899: During the Second Boer War from 1899-1902 between England and the South African republics of the Orange Free State and Transvaal, telegrams from the Netherlands (…) were censored by British officials. (…) In a state of war, all cable stations in British territory were placed under state supervision (…) to exercise censorship.

There was little that could be done about this initially:

As a small country, the Netherlands could only afford to maintain connections with neighboring countries and had to rely on mail or the vulnerable transit over others’ telegraph circuits for communication with overseas territories.

However, since communication with Indonesia was crucial, the Netherlands began the construction of the mighty Radio Kootwijk in 1918:


By Wikimedia user China_Crisis - Own work, CC BY-SA 2.5

This project was no small feat. The work in the Netherlands was so extensive that a separate train connection was built for materials and workers. Housing was also constructed for civil servants (separate for married and unmarried) and workers.

In 1923, the radio connection was officially opened. The power consumption of the installation, at 400 kW, was comparable to a modern data center, which at the time was an astronomically large amount of electricity.

Thereafter, extensive pioneering took place with new and more efficient radio technologies, and in 1927, the first telephone call was made ("Hello Bandung"). Prior to this, only telegrams could be sent.

Until well into the 1960s, “Radio Kootwijk” remained important for Dutch communication with the world. Today, it is still in use for conferences and meetings.

And now in 2025

Around the beginning of the 20th century, we suffered from the dependency on foreign countries for communication with our overseas territories and interests. Technology slowly made it possible to escape this dependency, and we did so back then.

Now in 2025, Europe, the Netherlands, and specifically the Dutch government have decided to run all their communication and file processing through American servers, backed by weak and unbelievable promises that this will be fine. The fact that the American computers would be located in the EU does nothing for availability and confidentiality.

It’s hard to grasp, but the current plans are for our government to fully rely on these American servers, under American control. Businesses and municipalities have already collectively taken this step earlier. This is happening all across Europe.

This would already be a bad idea if things were going well in America. But they are not.

We are highly dependent on American IT and communication service providers. We can’t easily replace them. They offer a vast number of services on a massive scale.

But it is an INTOLERABLE thought that our government, police, defense, hospitals, and healthcare will soon be completely unable to communicate with each other without American approval! Or without them reading our (tax) files and messages, for that matter.

Unfortunately, the transition to these American services is already far advanced. There’s no stopping it. For more than 20 years, we’ve been buying nothing else; our own industry has withered. We regret that the local baker, butcher, and poulterer have disappeared from the shopping street. But we never bought anything from them anymore, so it’s our own fault.

In a similar way, our own abilities to manage email, communication, and file processing have been seriously weakened.

“Cloud Kootwijk”

It is high time, before it is too late, to build a “Cloud Kootwijk” where our (European) governments, healthcare, and authorities can still communicate with each other without the permission or knowledge of America. We can still manage it now. And this should not be a theoretical facility; it must actually be used daily. Because experience shows that ’emergency networks’ during disasters turn out to be either not ingrained or don’t work at all.

If clearly defined (“email, chat, video calls, file sharing, calendar”), it is feasible to do this in the short term. And it doesn’t even require building new train connections or creating special power supplies. But it won’t be easy: 24/7 availability, security, and ease of use are not something you get for free. We need to get to work. “Bring the demo, not the memo”.

Wouldn’t it be great if with a new “Cloud Kootwijk,” we could be certain that we couldn’t be brought to a complete standstill in the Netherlands and Europe with 1 executive order?

I propose we meet soon to make plans… at the Radio Kootwijk meeting location.

Feel free to reach me at bert@hubertnet.nl to discuss! Put “Kootwijk” in the subject so I can find your mail easily.

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