It is no longer safe to move our governments and societies to US clouds

The very short version: it is madness to continue transferring the running of European societies and governments to American clouds. Not only is it a terrible idea given the kind of things the “King of America” keeps saying, the legal sophistry used to justify such transfers, like the nonsense letter the Dutch cabinet sent last week, has now been invalidated by Trump himself. And why are we doing this? Convenience. But it is very scary to make yourself 100% dependent on the goodwill of the American government merely because it is convenient. So let’s not.

We used to think that grieving went through five stages: denial, protest, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. We no longer really believe in that theory, but when it comes to dealing with the US, many Europeans are however currently busily negotiating with reality.

Some of my more activist friends are already further along in their thinking, and clearly see that it is ridiculous to move our governments over to the American clouds at this stage. They rightly accused me of fooling myself by aiming for ‘at least not moving EVERYTHING to America’, while accepting that we’d still relinquish the majority of our systems.

Acknowledging painful changes is not easy. In the 1930s, the Netherlands realized the world was becoming pretty dangerous, and therefore planned to buy weapons and ammunition from Germany (!). However, the ordered weaponry was not delivered on time, or at least not in the way you’d want.

“Negotiating with reality” is for example the letter three Dutch government ministers sent last week. Is it wise to report every applicant to your secret service directly to Google, just to get some statistics? The answer the government sent: even if we do that, we don’t, because “Google cannot see the IP address”. This is complete nonsense of course, but it’s the kind of thing you tell yourself (or let others tell you) when you don’t want to face reality (or can’t).

Live image of IP addresses that, according to the Dutch government, don’t go to Google, but actually do go to Google

And why are we reporting all these job applicants to America? Because it’s cheaper, they say. The European alternative statistical software, which is already paid for and actually running on the government job site, isn’t as user-friendly either, they say. Nonsense.

With all sorts of magic legal spells like “DPIAs” and “DTIAs,” organizations attempt to justify transferring our data and processes to the US. There is a whole industry that has been aiding and abetting this process for years. People also fool themselves that special keys and “servers in the EU” will get you “a safe space” within the American cloud. It won’t.

All these efforts are not about whether it is wise to hand over control of our data to the US. It is all about if it is lawful.

But it won’t be lawful either — the legal basis for sharing personal data with American companies is dead since Donald Trump has neutered the special court that would make such transfers legal.

Donald Trump signing executive orders for the review of the EO which underlies the EU-US Data Privacy Framework

We now have the bizarre situation that anyone with any sense can see that America is no longer a reliable partner, and that the entire US business world bows to Trump’s dictatorial will, but we STILL are doing everything we can to transfer entire governments and most of our own businesses to their clouds.

Not only is it scary to have all your data available to US spying, it is also a huge risk for your business/government continuity. From now on, all our business processes can be brought to a halt with the push of a button in the US. And not only will everything then stop, will we ever get our data back? Or are we being held hostage? This is not a theoretical scenario, something like this has already happened.

Here and there, some parts of at least the Dutch government are deciding not to migrate EVERYTHING to the US (kudos to the government workers who are fighting for this!).

But even here, the details of Dutch policy are that our data will only ‘for now’ stay on our own servers. Experts are also doubtful whether it’s actually possible with the current “partial cloud” plan to keep the data here exclusively.

And then we come to the apparent reason why we are putting our head on Trump’s chopping block: “American software is just so easy to use”.

Personally, I don’t know many fans of MS Teams, Office, and Outlook. We are, however, very used to these software products. We’ve become quite good at using them.

But this brings us to the unbearable conclusion that we are entrusting all our data and business processes to the new King of America… because we can’t be bothered to get used to a different word processor, or make an effort to support other software.

Written down like this, it seems pretty bizarre, and that’s because it is. It’s also not easy to realize that our relationship with America is over after 80 years. It took time for me as well to accept that.

But it really is over. Stop the nonsense of complicated and long-winded legal arguments about why it would be legal to put our citizens’ data in the US. These arguments are not only naïve—they are also no longer true. The US has dismantled the official privacy framework. The deal is dead.

So stop surrendering our society to America. Have the courage to use different software and services. Even if it takes some getting used to.

And maybe, once in a while, European governments should have the guts to actually attempt to buy something else. Innovation doesn’t just happen without the promise of revenues. Spending just 1% on alternatives would mean billions of euros.

That’s a very small price to pay for a society that isn’t 100% dependent on “MAGA”, Donald Trump and Elon Musk. The world is far too dangerous for that.

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