- Gaia-X is a harmful and expensive distraction that should be abandoned because it does not create a European cloud and holds back progress.
- Gaia-X is not an EU project and does not aim to build a cloud; it focuses on abstract standards for data governance and interoperability, not practical cloud services.
- The standards produced by Gaia-X are incomplete, outdated, and irrelevant to essential cloud-native operations like object storage or virtual machines.
- Gaia-X attracts members like Amazon and Microsoft who have no incentive to create European competitors, and its existence misleads policymakers into thinking progress is being made.
- The initiative consumes significant resources (potentially over 200 million euros) that could be better spent on practical cloud initiatives.
- Future efforts should focus on practical, self-hosted standards and leverage existing European hosting providers to create a credible alternative to hyperscalers.