- Reliance on US cloud services exposes organizations to unilateral access cutoffs by the US government and legal instruments that allow access to data stored in Europe.
- Special agreements, extra encryption layers, or intermediary companies do not realistically mitigate the underlying risks of US laws and sanctions.
- Many organizations use paperwork like Data Privacy Impact Assessments, Data Transfer Impact Assessments, and risk acceptance registers to justify continued use of US clouds instead of pursuing real alternatives.
- A large consulting industry profits from creating complex governance documents that obscure rather than solve the fundamental security and privacy issues.
- The only honest justification for using US clouds is trusting the US government to act reasonably, but this trust is not shared by many Europeans.
- True digital autonomy requires investing in European technology and rebuilding internal IT expertise within governments and organizations.