I recently talked with a guy who builds software for small & medium sized German insurance firms and he says almost all of their clients are working on removing US services from their tech stack due to perceiving them as highly risky. This includes cloud services, office tools, AI tools, etc. So far he said the switch is a mixed bag with some successes and some blunders, but the push is very clear.
Highly anecdotal stuff, but maybe this cut is deeper than I expected.
Are there small & medium sized German insurance firms? Aren't they all big?
the usa controls the only 2 mobile OSes that are in current widespread use
of course, they still want to run software in someone's "cloud" rather than getting us some goddamn servers, but hey if the "cloud" is not owned by billionaires from surveillance-land that's a bit less bad.
Sane British IT policy would start by banning Intel processors and maybe nationalizing ARM.
The straws that have broken are constant price upgrades to O365, Windows 11 hardware requirements and the disabling of the ICC prosecuter’s account.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/05/20/larry-ellison-oracle-trump-election-challenges/
https://www.businessinsider.com/the-cia-made-larry-ellison-a-billionaire-2014-9
https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/12/larry_ellison_wants_all_data/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/05/13/trump-tech-execs-riyadh/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2022/12/20/elon-musk-spotted-world-cup-final/
Koch launched a Silicon Valley venture capital firm in 2017.
https://www.bizjournals.com/wichita/news/2024/04/03/koch-disruptive-venture-capital-funding-ai-invest.html
https://www.axios.com/2017/12/14/koch-tries-its-hand-at-venture-capital-1513277500
#PrinceBonesaw invested in Google, Palantir, Apple, Oracle & Microsoft in 2018.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-06/google-thiel-stand-out-in-saudi-prince-s-silicon-valley-tour
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/07/heres-a-look-at-who.html
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Q1: Can Trump shut it down with an executive order?
Q2: Can it run on premise or a national sovereign cloud?
time they will probably make it clear that a pretend solution is incompatible with basic EU rights (their position demands that). Crystal clear, as in no matter what the EC pretends, the national courts will have their guidance to ignore the Commission. (And many MS constitutional courts made their acceptance of the EU/EU treaties conditional upon constitutional identity → the EC is ignoring EU basic rights at their own peril.)
And on the AI side, most US AI providers simply cannot even begin to fulfil the AI Act requirements when it comes to safety & transparency. Interestingly, Meta might be the only US AI provider that might, not by design, but by their own requirements of adjusting their moderation, has potentially the technical flexibility to adjust to the EU regulatory landscape.
Just consider ATS. The cool systems that most Fortune 500 companies use to screen CV before they even reach humans.
In the EU, this is a discrimination suit-wave waiting to happen:
GDPR disallows automatic decisions by computers that have significant effects on humans ✅
EU Act deepens the pit by giving the user the right for a clear and easily understood argumentation why they were rejected ✅ (Something that the classical US LLM with baked in "universal global rules" safety layers generally has problems to provide)
And now comes the coup de grâce, photos on CVs.
That's a totally MS-specific habit. In Austria, the saying goes that a good CV starts with a visit with a professional photographer. In Belgium it's frowned upon strongly.
Rejecting a CV because it has a photo or does not, especially when it comes from an EU citizen from a different EU MS, that might have different cultural standards, doesn't that sound like indirect discrimination by nationality? Something that the EU institutions strongly frown upon.
So yes, there is a huge, let's call it "legal enforcement debt" in the EU (similar to technical debt if you want so), concerning our American friends.
And with #Trump emphasizing that the USA is not really an ally, but becoming more hostile by the day, it's rather obvious that this moratorium on enforcing EU laws against US corporations (and their EU customers) might stop at any time.
Maybe each service on their own is fine. But they have all shown subservient attitudes. If the powers want access to data, it will be given. If the government decide to tariff or pull long standing arrangements they will. It's not a stretch that we could wake up one day with no access to large amounts of our data.
That's without looking at diverging values; gone are US promises of equality, diversity, no sustainability...
The funniest example was one firm switching to Zoho mail. They said using an Indian service was way less risky than using a US one.
It's hard to describe how much goodwill towards America Trump's policies have erased.
I said for years that Chinese internet-services for westeners are safer then American ones. The Chinese may spy as much, but they won't taddle to the domestic secret services and police. 😁
Then I checked -- Zoho is much cheaper. ($1USD vs $4USD for similar amounts of storage).
There are plenty of receipts, but this is a decent summary: https://www.cnbctv18.com/politics/the-politics-of-zoho-founder-sridhar-vembu-19228641.htm
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