Trump can pull the plug on the internet, and Europe can’t do anything about it
Author: Mathieu Pollet
published on June 19th in Politico
Trump is back — and with him, the risk that the U.S. could unplug Europe from the digital world.
BRUSSELS — Donald Trump’s return to the White House is forcing Europe to reckon with a major digital vulnerability: The U.S. holds a kill switch over its internet.
As the U.S. administration raises the stakes in a geopolitical poker game that began when Trump started his trade war, Europeans are waking up to the fact that years of over-reliance on a handful of U.S. tech giants have given Washington a winning hand.
The fatal vulnerability is Europe’s near-total dependency on U.S. cloud providers. Cloud computing is the lifeblood of the internet, powering everything from the emails we send and videos we stream to industrial data processing and government communications. Just three American behemoths — Amazon, Microsoft, and Google —hold more than two-thirds of the regional market, putting Europe’s online existence in the hands of firms cozying up to the U.S. president to fend off looming regulations and fines.
Sovereignty hawks in Europe have long voiced concerns that cloud reliance means U.S. agencies can snoop on sensitive data of Europeans stored on American-owned servers in any location, thanks to U.S. laws.
Now, in a political cycle that has seen the U.S. president flip laws on a dime and the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor lose access to his Microsoft email after being sanctioned by Washington (following arrest warrants for top Israeli officials), there are genuine fears the U.S. could weaponize its tech dominance for leverage abroad.
“Trump really hates Europe. He thinks the whole purpose of the EU is to ‘screw‘ America,” said Zach Meyers, director of research at the CERRE think tank in Brussels. “The idea that he might order a kill switch or do something else that would severely damage economic interests isn’t quite as implausible as it might have sounded six months ago.”
Alexander Windbichler, the CEO of Austrian cloud firm Anexia, said he wished the “IT guys” like him had spoken up earlier about the “unhealthy dependency,” arguing that the European cloud industry has for too long avoided lobbying and politics in favor of focusing on technological competitiveness. Would Trump pull the plug on cloud services in Europe? “I don’t know. But I never expected that the U.S. would be threatening to take Greenland away,” Windbichler said. “It’s crazier than shutting down the cloud.”
How ‘what if’ became reality
Warnings began a couple of months after Trump moved back into the White House.
“It is no longer reasonable to assume that we can totally rely on our American partner. There’s a serious risk that all of our data is used by the U.S. administration or infrastructure [is] made inaccessible by other countries,” Matthias Ecke, a German social-democrat lawmaker in the European Parliament, told an event in March.
“The risk of a shutdown is the new paradigm,” the boss of French champion OVHcloud, Benjamin Revcolevschi, told the same event. “Cloud is like a tap of water. What if at some moment the tap is closed?”
The technology equivalent of turning off the tap would be cloud companies being ordered by the U.S. administration to stop services in Europe. Cloud computing works by giving businesses virtual access to data storage and processing power, massively widening capabilities thanks to their vast networks of physical data centers around the world.
And while a breakdown in service remains an extreme scenario, U.S. tech giants no longer dismiss it as a possibility.
Microsoft in April said the company would add a binding clause to its contracts with European governments to keep them online, and fight any suspension orders in court. While President Brad Smith claimed the risk of the U.S. administration ordering American tech firms to stop operations in the EU was “exceedingly unlikely,” he admitted this was “a real concern of people across Europe.” Microsoft also outlined fresh features this month in a bid to calm European nerves.
Amazon announced a new governance structure for its so-called “sovereign offer” in Europe to ensure “independent and continuous operations” and alleviate concerns. The company reportedly prepared staff to address questions from customers about international bans, instructing them to say that “in the theoretical case that such sanctions ever came to pass, [Amazon’s cloud unit] would do everything practically possible to provide continuity of service.”
Several experts are asking what power U.S. companies would have to resist the White House. “If that political dimension turns hostile, how credible is it that companies with the best intentions can challenge their president?” Cristina Caffarra, a tech and competition economist and honorary professor at University College London, told POLITICO.
The news that the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court Karim Khan in May had access to his Microsoft-hosted email cut after U.S. sanctions over the arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has further raised concerns. Microsoft declined to comment on its exact involvement leading to Khan’s email disconnection, saying only more generally: “At no point did Microsoft cease or suspend its services to the ICC.”
“Naturally, U.S. companies must comply with U.S. law,” Aura Salla, a center-right Finnish lawmaker in the European Parliament and Meta’s former top lobbyist in Brussels, wrote in reaction to the ICC news, adding that “for Europeans, this means we cannot trust the reliability and security of U.S. companies’ operating systems.”
Politicians and experts are arguing for a real European technology alternative. “You canfeel that you are one executive order away from losing access to critical technology and critical infrastructures,” said Francesca Bria, an innovation professor at University College London. “It’s become clear that Europe must not depend on any external power that holds the ability to pull the plug.”
A €300 billion backup plan
The push for Europe to move off the U.S. cloud confronts a stark reality: unwinding American technological dominance won’t be easy, nor cheap.
“If you look at the cloud, if you look at artificial intelligence, data centers, unfortunately, there simply aren’t sufficient alternatives to the offerings by the American digital industry,” Germany’s former Finance Minister Jörg Kukies said in April as he urged the bloc to proceed with caution on trade retaliation against Trump.
One industrial policy initiative gaining steam as a blueprint for how the bloc might go about rebalancing the scales puts the price tag at €300 billion. Authored by a group of tech experts and economists and supported by the European industry, the so-called “EuroStack” initiative aims to make Europe self-reliant in digital infrastructure all the way through to software.
The movement wants the EU to rally around three goals: “Buy European,” “Sell European,” and “Fund European.” They urge decision-makers to give EU firms priority in public contracts, setting quotas for government purchases and launching a EuroStack fund to back homegrown tech.
“There is nothing exceptional in this approach: these industrial policy tools have been widely used in other jurisdictions, including the U.S., for decades — as large public contracts powered the growth of today’s tech giants,” the organizers write.
It won’t be that easy, says Meyers from the CERRE think tank. “They are asking a lot of money for this project. Hundreds of billions. The idea that it is going to magically appear is pretty fanciful,” he said. Opponents such as the American trade group the Chamber of Progress argue the costs could soar past €5 trillion.
Several European countries and top lawmakers in the European Parliament have already expressed support for the EuroStack initiative, which was explicitly mentioned in the recent coalition deal in Germany.
Yet politicians are also walking a tightrope as they figure out how to balance any moves towards European sovereignty without being accused of protectionism, which could antagonize a U.S. reaction.
“No country or region can lead the technological revolution alone,” the EU’s tech sovereignty chief Henna Virkkunen told reporters in Brussels on June 5, presenting a strategy that also acknowledged the bloc “faces the risk of weaponisation of its technological and economic dependencies.”
In a bind
One rulemaking initiative in the works in Brussels could significantly limit Trump’s future influence to generate widespread digital disruption.
But the initiative, setting conditions for a new label designed to level up the cybersecurity of cloud solutions used by companies and administrations, has been stuck in limbo for months among EU countries precisely because it’s a sore spot for the U.S. The proposal could include a top-tier certification guaranteeing immunity from foreign laws.
It’s divided countries based on how strongly they are willing to pivot away from U.S. tech, and to speak out against the transatlantic relationship. A freedom of information request filed by POLITICO in October revealed multiple communications from the U.S. State Department to the European Commission dating back to September 2023, as Washington lobbied on the draft plans. The Commission’s tech department refused to release the documents, arguing that disclosure “would affect the mutual trust between the EU and the U.S. and thus undermine their relations.”
France has been a vocal advocate for using the label to put European data beyond the reach of extraterritorial laws like the U.S. Cloud Act, de facto sidelining Big Tech. “Geopolitical tensions are forcing us, more than ever, to question the sovereignty of our data, and therefore its hosting,” French Digital Minister Clara Chappaz said.
The Netherlands, heavily relying on U.S. tech, remained until recently a key opponent to using the label to shut out American hyperscalers. But the country’s strong Atlanticism has shown signs of shifting amid the recent transatlantic political turmoil.
As the European Commission’s first tech sovereignty chief picks up the initiative, the pressure is growing to unapologetically back made-in-Europe tech and to stand its ground as Washington pushes back.
“Europe blindly trusted the U.S. to always be there, and always on their side,” said Bria, the University College London professor. “The situation feels very different now.”
Here you can find the original article: Politico
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