@Em0nM4stodon
Actually, it's more than just a Windows and Google thing - it's about AI. If Artificial Intelligence starts getting out of control and starts heading down Terminator Road, one of the first defenses would be to shut down the internet world-wide.
Alternatively, if AI goes rogue one of its first actions against humanity would be to shut down the internet.
Either way, it doesn't look good . . .

@Em0nM4stodon

Maybe this would be a good thing, to give people the push they need to stop using those and move to better alternatives.

In my personal life, I don't depend on any of those. But I would be impacted as my employer depend on those. At the same time, I see more job opportunities outside the US if this ever happens.

@Em0nM4stodon My workplace would fall apart completely if either Google or Microsoft went away. Billion-dollar corporation in Australia.

@Em0nM4stodon What will happen (long term) is that trumpista arrogance will marginalize the U.S., which has historically received significant benefits for being viewed as a stable and trustworthy country with respect to finances, etc. This won't happen overnight but I imagine that everyone is nervous and are planning how to limit any dependency on the U.S. You'll probably see a migration from Windows or MacOS to Linux, just to limit exposure.

@Em0nM4stodon successfully migrated our UK based workers' co-op from Google Workspace to Infomaniak's ksuite (Swiss based) earlier this year and we're much happier (plus our bill is waaay lower). The ksuite also replaces Slack and Zoom, so more services for less money and all encrypted.
Our website is hosted independently in the UK. Newsletter is with EmailOctopus, a UK company.
Won't be sad if we lose Instagram tbh.
I guess we might be impacted indirectly if payment processors like PayPal and Stripe go down but we could find a work around.
Of course, these are all small business solutions and should be separated from personal or activist ones.

@Em0nM4stodon no. my country would be *fucked*. NZ exists entirely on O365, AWS, and Google apps. Why? Because NZ is terrified, legitimately fearful in some ways, of the idea of running servers onsite

@Em0nM4stodon We're safe here in the UK, as our government will happily cave in to any demand from the trump clown circus, (aka the administration).

@Em0nM4stodon ... I'd be very, very, *VERY* tired, but happy.

@FreakyFwoof @Em0nM4stodon lol. If the EU keeps this up, no tech company will wanna sell there either. P.S. Joking don't worry. would never happen.

@Em0nM4stodon all i can say to that question is that when i was working and it was in the banking industry all of this had been thought of and that was years ago. it's why all our cloud hosting was done outside the us.

@Em0nM4stodon

Not really. Europe has realized their massive digital dependency from the US too late and now the plan is basically: "let's keep licking Trump's balls and hope he doesn't cut us off".

@Em0nM4stodon paranoia.

@Em0nM4stodon my guess is only Russia, China, North Korea, Iran and Cuba may have that.
That kind of puts in perspective the concept of freedom we generally use.

@Em0nM4stodon

The same questions apply even inside the US.

What if the entire Microsoft cloud failed?

@Em0nM4stodon it is not.
- Like not at all!

@Em0nM4stodon I would feel the impact personally as I'm dependent on Google, but I try to decrease this. For work I would be mostly fine but our customers are dependent on Microsoft and Amazon and some of there services they get from as are connected to azure and co. So there will be an impact. Also I don't know about the dependencies the Datacenter and power companies have. Electricity is very important. So the impact will be at least indirectly.

@Em0nM4stodon have you ever heard of ISDS (investor state dispute settlement)?

⬆️ @Em0nM4stodon

>> If you live outside of the #UnitedStates, do you know if your country has a plan if the #US government decided to cut access to #Google, #Microsoft, and #Amazon products overnight?

What better way to nuke the #tech #broligarch cartel in the US swiftly and for good? Go for it #USA.

@Em0nM4stodon Thanks @Em0nM4stodon I'm reading this at 23:20 and now mixing all of this into the usual how to sleep soundly type thoughts.

Stuff it, I know a nice dry cave that I could happily live in. On fact, I may go and have a look tomorrow anyway.

@Em0nM4stodon I raised this at work before I retired. They didn't take it seriously.

@Em0nM4stodon Apple , Meta, Visa & MasterCard are few other critical ones missing on that list.

@Em0nM4stodon Hmm, interesting concept. Would the companies actually follow such a command? Because, they would lose all that revenue. Interesting.

@Em0nM4stodon on the whole, I’d say no, they’re not ready. But I think that’s more to do with the belief in the current mind rot passing, or the very real possibility of those companies actually leaving the US if it doesn’t.

The US is a very small market when compared to the rest of the world, those orgs would sink by quarter end. Way over-invested in infrastructure overseas, and I’d imagine it would be seized by government very quickly due to importance as critical national infrastructure.

That doesn’t mean there wouldn’t be a digital cataclysm in the interim. There definitely would.

From my standpoint, I’ve been designing resilient systems for a long while, and that means controlling the software and infrastructure, which is deeply unpopular but the only way to avoid these outcomes.

@Em0nM4stodon Simply chaos!

@Em0nM4stodon no because we're too busy licking US' boots 🤷‍♂️

@Em0nM4stodon when can i move sounds blissful

@Em0nM4stodon
Goes beyond the national plan.

Each organization needs to have a business continuity plan that includes all significant US- based services, devices, and platforms becoming suddenly unavailable or unreliable.

Every bank, hospital, and utility, for example needs to have a documented, tested, and practiced plan

@Em0nM4stodon lol finito, not even remotely prepared

@Em0nM4stodon I live outside USA and I want my govt, not US, to cut usage of those services.

@Em0nM4stodon I genuinely believe people don’t care anymore, my entire life in tech has been a farce and a sham.

good luck to everyone who even gives a fuck

@Em0nM4stodon i have no idea. We have trusted the US since 1945 and I suspect we are completely unprepared for chonky’s fits

@Em0nM4stodon My work? I would be mildly inconvenienced as currently the github action workers are better than the other runners at my disposal, but this would be balanced by the opportunities to make fun of all colleague who went Microsoft 365 "but they promised data was hosted on a datacentre in the country".

Our institute @ethz.ch hosts local instances of gitlab, nextcloud, matrix, etc. that I actively use as redundancy (git) or primary storage (docs).

@Em0nM4stodon

It would take a few weeks for most critical government services to be back on line in Canada.

I and my family outside of the USA would not miss much; we already have working systems for most of those services, including a Euro Office collaborative setup. We have self-hosted email servers on three continents.

But private industry would collapse and self-immolate.

And that includes almost all the food infrastructure - now largely owned by US corporations.

@Em0nM4stodon i believe the term you are looking for is "unmitigated disaster". hell, our city website is sharepoint

@Em0nM4stodon
My company would literally stop working, as we're going all in in Microsoft services.
And I'd be standing there, pointing at the COO, laughing like Nelson Muntz, and saying "I told you".

@Em0nM4stodon Russia here. To summarize, probably more than most. Heck, a lot of it was cut from within already.
ISPs are already legally forced to install govt traffic filters and most recently globally trusted CAs stopped issuing certificates for local banks, forcing them to transition to certs issued by the govt's CA – the roots of which are installed manually or available preinstalled in Yandex Browser; there are no mandates to do either, but people prefer their online banking to be accessible.

Visa and MasterCard left in 2022, local MIR and SBP handle electronic payments, major socials have been banned before with citizenry being herded towards govt-affiliated platforms VK and MAX, hounded by incessant ads and competitors not working (inaccessible servers).

Businesses can subsist on pirated software and some local alternatives.

Overall, this disentanglement from the rest of the world is one of many things that made the incursion in 2022 possible. So… mixed feelings about this.

@Em0nM4stodon #China can supply all those. Didi is more popular than Uber in Mexico.

@Em0nM4stodon

The EU's next-generation digital ID system requires a genuine unmodified phone from a US manufacturer.

That entire continent would get a surprised look on its face and fall off the bottom of the screen. Doo-doot doot doot doo-doo-doo-doo doo-doot. Game over.

@Em0nM4stodon no, they do not.

@Em0nM4stodon I’ve asked that question for about a year, always met with blank stares. Same stare we used to get running pandemic scenarios for BCP work

@Em0nM4stodon My country's government included until recently a guy that came straight out of Microsoft and who only left to become mayor of the second largest city in the country.

That ought to tell you all you need to know about that.

@Em0nM4stodon we would be fucked.

@Em0nM4stodon Work in a Hospital in Canada supporting the IT infrastructure - and yeah, we do!

We have an offline physical PC preloaded with PDFs connected to USB printers available at all units in case the main EMR were to somehow spectacularly explode or all internet is lost - they'd revert to paper charting and bust out their pre made downtime kits with workflow instructions.

All units also have 'red phones' using dedicated copper circuits incase cellular or the main digital PBXes fail. 😅

@Em0nM4stodon nope, we are so guzzling the Microsoft/AWS koolaid here that we'd definitely grind to a halt. Might be why our current government is kowtowing to the US government and trying to turn us into a mini-US.

@Em0nM4stodon

NZ here. lol no.