EU weighs restricting use of US cloud platforms to process sensitive gov data

3 days ago

The EU is considering rules to restrict member governments' use of U.S. cloud providers for sensitive data.
The author argues that relying on U.S. digital infrastructure is risky due to distrust and past violations of trust.
Some EU member states are heavily dependent on services from Google, Microsoft, and Amazon, which may resist reducing this dependency.
Current data residency rules (like Microsoft's Azure in the EU) may not fully protect data from U.S. jurisdiction.
Concerns include U.S. extraterritoriality, potential software backdoors or killswitches, and spying via alliances like Five Eyes.
Vendor lock-in and the lack of EU alternatives at comparable cost and quality pose challenges for reducing reliance.
The shift to cloud services is driven by managerial decisions to reduce IT staff and costs, rather than engineer choice.
The EU's own digital ID initiatives may inadvertently reinforce dependence on U.S. tech giants like Google and Apple.

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