Good for the gander.
So all the same reasons we are told not to trust hardware and services from China.
Euro firms must ditch Uncle Sam's clouds and go EU-native
I'm an eighth-generation American, and let me tell you, I wouldn't trust my data, secrets, or services to a US company these days for love or money. Under our current government, we're simply not trustworthy. In the Trump‑redux era of 2026, European enterprises are finally taking data seriously, and that means packing up from …
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Monday 2nd February 2026 12:42 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Good for the gander.
The US has never been trustworthy all Trump has done is take the covers off and turn up the dial on it.
EU and the UK have always danced around this and wheeled out nonsense about a 'special relationship'. It's bollocks but has always been bollocks.
The USA is (and has been for all of modern history) powerful enough to do what the hell it likes.
It care not a jot about the UK, the EU or any other nations other than Russia and China. The EU might make the US uncomfortable but it's a loose enough bag of nations to be mostly ignored.
It's on the UK and the EU for taking the easy route and sucking on the poisoned teat of US tech like there was no downside. Not to mention selling every business and IP of value to US investors waving a pile of greenbacks at the owners.
Now getting the EU and the UK weaned off the US will be a protracted and very painful process. And knowing the UK we'll make a bit of noise and then carry on as before until it bites us on the arse. But then we can just blame some foreigners as usual and most people will do what Rupert Murdoch tells them to anyway.
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Friday 30th January 2026 11:57 GMT Steve Button
Not a Trump thing.
I think you are right not to trust the US government (or any government) with your data, but the previous lot were up to some pretty shady tactics too, weren't they? Especially during Covid.
Don't make this a Trump thing, not everything is about that clown. Perhaps we should rename "The News", as "What has Trump done now"? Can't we talk about something else?
"I think you all know that I've always felt the nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the Government, and I'm here to help." Reagan.
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Friday 30th January 2026 12:30 GMT Roland6
Re: Not a Trump thing.
Trouble is, many of the mitigations for dealing with a pandemic need to be authoritarian to be effective. The challenge is preventing “mission creep”, which those in power seem to relish in.
The “vaccine passport” is a case in point.The system of issuing a simple vaccine record card, whilst wide-open to abuse, assumed the vast majority of people were trustworthy and honest.
The vaccine passport, basically, said people weren’t trustworthy, hence the need for an overly bureaucratic instrument.
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Friday 30th January 2026 13:03 GMT Steve Button
Re: Not a Trump thing.
"many of the mitigations for dealing with a pandemic need to be authoritarian to be effective"
They weren't effective. Full stop. We didn't lock down in the UK Christmas 2021, and the disaster that many predicted never materialised. China had a truly "authoritarian" lock down, which was effective to a point, but was totally unsustainable. You can't live like that. Is that what you would recommend for everyone? Because anything short of that just doesn't seem to work.
"assumed the vast majority of people were trustworthy and honest."
A lot of people didn't want that particular vaccine. They had already had Covid. They were concerned about side-effects. They felt it was a new and untested technology. That's their right. It shouldn't stop them from flying or eating in restaurants or driving a truck.
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Friday 30th January 2026 13:23 GMT Steve Button
Re: Not a Trump thing.
ANYWAY. Let's not re-hash old arguments. If you disagree with me on this, that's your right and I respect that. We can have a difference of opinion. I'd still have a beer with you down the pub as a fellow geek. I've been a lockdown sceptic since about halfway through the very first one, when I worked out it just can't work.
The actual point here is that all governments eventually want to get all authoritarian and, for example, clamp down on those pesky protests by people who object to things they don't like the government to do. Trump would love that power, and so would Starmer and The Conservatives before him. It would also be nice to control the press, so they can just get on with the worthy task of running the government without all that pesky scrutiny. It's all for the greater good, don't you see?
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Friday 30th January 2026 13:59 GMT Androgynous Cupboard
Re: Not a Trump thing.
I flew into New Zealand from the UK about two days after their lockdown eased to visit elderly family. I met a number of people with the same opinion as you - COVID, meh it's not all that bad! Lockdown was a waste of time.
I told them about first-hand conversations with my medic friends at multiple hospitals in the UK, where people were being removed from ventilators because there weren't enough to go around and they were considered statistically less likely to survive than someone else, so they were taken off and left to die. Or about one particular guy that came in in a very bad way and and who actually apologised to my friend (ward nurse) that he'd been a sceptic but now he really, really believed COVID was a real thing. He died too.
In NZ their death toll was low double figures, so it's perhaps not too surprising they didn't see what the fuss was all about. But you seem to have forgotten that in the first wave in Italy, mortality rates were 2.5% - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8883532/. No-one had any idea where the disease trajectory was going to go, but on the limited information avaiable at point you can easily make an estimate of over a million dead in the UK. A lockdown is the only rational response at that point.
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Friday 30th January 2026 14:31 GMT Steve Button
Re: Not a Trump thing.
Seriously? After all this time I'm not going to convince you, and you aren't going to convince me. They stopped using ventilators because they were killing more people than they were saving.
Anyway, the article was about data sovereignty and authoritarian governments. Covid was just an example of how that can go wrong.
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Saturday 31st January 2026 12:00 GMT Roland6
Re: Not a Trump thing.
@Steve - having a bit of a multiple personally moment - arguing with yourself?
In my comment, I explicitly didn’t comment on whether the way (authoritarian) actions were performed impacted their effectiveness in controlling a specific epidemic/pandemic. Likewise with respect to vaccine passports.
WRT vaccine passports: Too many years back, I needed a whole bunch of vaccines to go somewhere, the visa issuing consulate was happy with my cheaply printed vaccine card which my NHS doctor had simply written in the relevant boxes my name, the vaccine, dates of the relevant injections and their initials.
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Saturday 31st January 2026 22:38 GMT MachDiamond
Re: Not a Trump thing.
"That's their right. It shouldn't stop them from flying or eating in restaurants or driving a truck."
Up to that point, you were going pretty good. The proper thing was keeping a distance from others outside of your circle. That the "vaccines" being developed were bypassing recognized protocols for safety and efficacy was a big concern of mine. I do think it was a good idea to limit or even close down places where people normally congregate such as restaurants. Driving a truck shouldn't have been terribly hard to work some distancing protocols around.
I work for myself and much of what I do doesn't need anybody to be around while I do it. Suits me too. I'm not anti-social, but I can go along just fine for a while if it means not getting ill or subjecting myself to "cures" that turn out to be rather questionable.
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Monday 2nd February 2026 09:04 GMT MJI
Re: Not a Trump thing.
I now have long covid as I caught it after a return to office. From people who went out and about without a care, and themsleves came into the office ill.
Yes been vaccinated so did not get too ill at the time, but it is over 3 years now, and only just starting to recover.
I nearly medically retired, luckily WFH is OK.
PEM is no laughing matter.
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Friday 30th January 2026 15:31 GMT Andy The Hat
Re: Not a Trump thing.
I remember Margaret on Facebook during Covid. She'd been an established expert in parenting, road pothole repairs, returning worn stuff to Sainsbury's and knew everything about shades of eyeshadow. Lucky for us, during Covid she had just turned 19 and was able to give us great advice as she was now fully qualified as a leading expert in global pandemics, viral contagions and containment methodologies (qualifications cited: she had a really bad cold once, an std twice, knew how good bleach was in the toilet and could two-thumb type) ... Looking back on it, I wonder if she was orange?
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Saturday 31st January 2026 17:49 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Not a Trump thing.
"But what do I know, I'm only a biologist?"
Ditto, and I agree. I live with someone who works in infectious disease research. They agree, as do all their colleagues.
But these are all just experts with decades of experience in handling epidemics. What do they know?
Btw, the US' mishandeld initial response to the pandemic caused roughly a million deaths, most of them preventable.
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Sunday 1st February 2026 09:31 GMT Claude Yeller
Re: Preventable deaths
"But most of them were Americans so..."
Moreover, they were mostly old and/or poor. Not people the ruling party cared for.
Texas Lt. Gov. Urges Old People To Sacrifice Themselves To Save Economy Amid Coronavirus
“Those of us who are 70+, we’ll take care of ourselves but don’t sacrifice the country,” Patrick said. “Don’t do that. Don’t ruin this great American Dream.”
The lieutenant governor asserted that grandparents have a “choice” to make in the face of “total collapse” in the economy.
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Saturday 31st January 2026 19:03 GMT FuzzyTheBear
Re: Not a Trump thing.
We need a new vaccine and here's how you can help world : we need an anto moron vaccine. Prevents people from becoming morons .. There's a dortune to be made :) I know , i know don't thank me fhis idea .. you will become rich and all i ask in return oifc your everlasting gratitude .. Enjoy your newly found fortune :)
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Saturday 31st January 2026 02:45 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Not a Trump thing.
Come on... "White House has said repeatedly there won’t be a federally mandated vaccine passport." That's the Biden White House. It didn't even make it past 'trial balloon' level in '20-'21, and here you are litigating it 5 years later as if it was something they actually decided to force through.
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Friday 30th January 2026 13:46 GMT retiredFool
Re: Not a Trump thing.
How can we forget the implication of injecting bleach as a cure from the orange doctor? Or that orangey got covid and unlike the recommendations the administration was giving to take some pet drugs for eliminating parasites, he got top tier medical care with the latest anti-virals. Or that he was on oxygen with 24x7 doc supervision. Again unlike the rest of us who were told to suck it up and get a backbone. How quickly magats forget the past.
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Friday 30th January 2026 14:41 GMT Steve Button
Re: Not a Trump thing.
You were doing quite well right up until "some pet drugs for eliminating parasites". That's drug that's been administered literally billions of times to humans, and is one of the safest anti-parasite drugs with a seriously low side-effect rate. Don't be CNN. Be better.
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Friday 30th January 2026 17:26 GMT Number6
Re: Not a Trump thing.
Someone researched it[*] and it was effective in some cases. The body's immune system has some control over the proliferation of intestinal parasites, but the effective Covid treatments at that point suppressed the immune system and allowed the parasites to multiply to the point where they contributed to the death of the host. So if you were in an area where parasites are endemic, taking medication to kill them at the same time as Covid treatment was effective. Outside of those areas, there was no noticeable effect.
[*] it was a published paper that tried to make sense of all the small-scale studies that either claimed it was effective or not, and noted the correlation. I didn't keep a link to it.
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Saturday 31st January 2026 09:20 GMT Jellied Eel
Re: Not a Trump thing.
[*] it was a published paper that tried to make sense of all the small-scale studies that either claimed it was effective or not, and noted the correlation. I didn't keep a link to it.
There have been quite a few published papers and studies into whether Ivermectin has/had any effect vs Covid and the jury still seems to be out. But it was one of the curious aspects to the Panicdemic. Don't take Ivermectin, you are not a horse. Implying it wasn't safe or approved for humans, despite it being a widely used and effective anti-parasitic. But that's part of why it piqued my interest, ie why would an anti-parasitic be at all effective against a virus? Some papers seemed to suggest it had an effect, some that it didn't, or to have any effect, it needed to be given in potentially dangerous doses.
But much panic and FUD, and circumventing normal medical rules to flog vaccines that hadn't been properly tested, but the drug dealers made billions. It's also something that's still being researched intensively because Covid hasn't gone away, is still circulating and may still mutate into something dangerous to people who aren't already immuno compromised. Luckily we now have more evidence regarding who's at high risk, and how to treat it.
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Saturday 31st January 2026 11:41 GMT Roland6
Re: Not a Trump thing.
I think at the time there was much focus on treatments that were either directly effective against SARS-Cov-2 (aka COVID-19) or gave the body a better chance of overwhelming the virus (this was the primary reason for the use of medical coma and ventilators).
As our understanding grew, about what COVID-19 did to the immune system, so we became more aware of how it made the body more susceptible to other conditions. This is one of the big problems with Long-Covid.- where the conditions exhibited by any individual seem to be dependent upon what organs SARS-Cov-2 “ravished” and so left damaged and susceptible, and upon the viruses etc. they encountered during their recovery highly vulnerable recovery period.
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Saturday 31st January 2026 13:58 GMT Doctor Syntax
Re: Not a Trump thing.
"But much panic and FUD, and circumventing normal medical rules to flog vaccines that hadn't been properly tested, but the drug dealers made billions."
Certainly much FUD although we may not be referring to the same material.
But let's stand back a moment and consider.
This was a novel disease-causing agent. History tells us what damage can be wrought by those, in fact they don't need to be novel, just long enough after the last outbreak to leave the population immunologically ill-prepared. Without treatments and with severe enough symptoms the deaths can account for several tenths of the population in very short order. Time is of he essence.
In those circumstances it would be grossly irresponsible of the medical profession and then government not to take urgent action.
That includes epidemiological modelling using what ever data was to hand which, initially was a small sample from China. Yes, as time went on it would be refined but it's no use saying we'll wait for a more precise worst case prediction before deciding on what action is justified if by that time, in absence of action, it's killed 10% of the world population. Note that : worst case prediction justifies action; not responding to worst case prediction is no better and no less irresponsible that crossing fingers and hoping for the best.
It's no use arguing that the historical pandemics were taken against a background of no effective medical knowledge. In the early days that was very much the situation with Covid - it's a novel disease so by definition there's no knowledge of effective treatment beyond nursing care. That included ventilators given that it's a respiratory disease but they have the problem of being invasive which carries risk, so use in any given case is a matter of balance, and scarce which would be a more severe limiting factor. What medical knowledge would say is that as a viral disease it won't respond to antibiotics so no amount of penicillin would be of use except against secondary infections. Anti-retroviral treatments might be possible but in short supply. The best options would be to reduce spreading rate and get cracking on a vaccine in parallel with which, start very quick trials of treatments to improve outcomes of infections that weren't prevented. From the latter it was discovered that CPAP machines were as effective as ventilators in many case, non-invasive, cheaper and available in quantity; and also anti-inflammatories also improved outcomes.
As to vaccines, a few years earlier, before the use of m-RNA, development would have been a slow process. About the turn of the year the Chinese provided the genome of the virus which meant that development could start immediately and take a feew weeks. Where time was the essence that was important. No, clinical trials were not avoided. They were certainly telescoped but again time was of the essence. They showed effective immunity and, on that scale, no side effects. Like everything else in medicine balance of risks was involved. Yes, use at scale beyond clinical trials caused some deaths, more would have been caused by waiting. It isn't even possible to say whether those who died from those side effects wouldn't have died from Covid otherwise.
Frankly I think that everyone involved in the vaccine production and trials did a brilliant job producing an effective response at essential speed deserves congratulations. They do not deserve ignorant denigration and nit-picking.
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Saturday 31st January 2026 22:46 GMT MachDiamond
Re: Not a Trump thing.
"Don't take Ivermectin, you are not a horse. Implying it wasn't safe or approved for humans"
It can be perfectly safe for humans, but a really bad idea if your health might be compromised by a serious virus. Those sorts of drugs are also a good idea to be supervised by a doctor which is why they require a prescription. You don't want to wake up from a coma and a load of surgeries to be told that since you were on some other meds for something else, you really did not want to be shot up with that.
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Sunday 1st February 2026 17:13 GMT Paul Hovnanian
Re: Not a Trump thing.
"Don't take Ivermectin, you are not a horse. Implying it wasn't safe or approved for humans, despite it being a widely used and effective anti-parasitic."
At least our left-wing press was honest about it. "Don't take Ivermectin. It's reserved for treating parasites in POC." Not diseases of the rich (by implication).
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Monday 2nd February 2026 12:51 GMT Jellied Eel
Re: Not a Trump thing.
At least our left-wing press was honest about it. "Don't take Ivermectin. It's reserved for treating parasites in POC." Not diseases of the rich (by implication).
There was a lot of dishonesty still, or just paranoia, FUD and impersonations of headless chickens. So when it happened, there was panic, and models-
https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2022-01-18/debates/AB251DCA-8088-485C-BF49-3999C4EE9AC5/Covid-19ForecastingAndModelling
We know that the Opposition supported lockdown from the word go, but a little more opposing might have been helpful. The BBC and the Guardian have been salivating at state control and doomsday scenarios.
And Professor Feguson with his doomsday model, and ignoring travel restrictions to get laid. But then both Labour and Conservatives were also caught partying and breaking 'social distancing' rules. But then BoJo also caught Covid and was apparently quite ill. But one case that may also have involved pre-existing conditions and obesity. But we had lockdowns, mask mandates, leper laws. No card? no travel, event attendence, begone foul creature & of course there was an app for that.
But others saw profits, so assorted scandals from people flogging PPE that wasn't really very effective. Or the drug dealers piling in to flog patent remedies like the Balm of Gilead, a very expensive anti-viral that was looking for a market. But we settled on mRNA vaccines (ok, and a more traditional vaccine) and the drug dealers rejoiced. UK demonstrated a Brexit advantage and ordered megadoses. This upset Ursula von der Liar who'd texted her mate and ordered billions more for the EU. Then threatened to steal vaccines destined for the UK because we'd cheated and ordered them first.
And of course the Bbc salivating and ran doomsday clocks, simulating death rates and spreading the FUD..
But people died. In the US, a motorcylist crashed and died. But his body was tested Covid positive, so was recorded as a Covid death, rather than from the accident. And there was a lot of this, with no real distinction as to whether a person died from Covid, or with Covid. That wasn't helped by the US implementing a bonus system, so US hospitals getting (from memory) $7,000 per Covid patient, and incentivising reporting. But that also made it a tad tricky for scientists & statisticians to understand the actual impact, ie people who died from Covid, or died from unrelated conditions.
And then there was mRNA. Previously considered too risky to be used outside some narrow applications and trials. Then suddenly became the magic bullet that would boost share prices because we ordered billions of doses, even though trials and approvals had been rushed and had some dubious data. And also came complete with some more lies, duly amplified by the media. mRNA vaccines do not modify cells. Obviously BS because that's how they work. Modify our mitochondria to churn out spike proteins until the cell dies, and hopefully new cells won't keep doing this. Or that the spike proteins wouldn't cross the placenta, which of course they did, so babies born with those spikes. Or spike proteins shedding, which I think is kind of an 'And?' thing, but then there were some bizarre conspiracy theories, like confusing nanoparticles with nanotech and assuming this was a Government Plan! to control us via nanotech and 5G. People are weird.
But then we also had Thalidomide and the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. Sometimes, not trusting your government or drug dealers can be a GoodThing.
So some time later, scientists are still crunching data and figuring out what went wrong, and what went right. Drug dealers are of course pushing for more mRNA, even though data around risks and efficacy is still being crunched. I know this, because one of my relatives is a pretty senior medical statistician trying to clean up data and answer the question 'WFT is Long Covid?'. Especially as it might be an adverse effect from the vaccine, not Covid.. Which sort of makes sense given spike proteins trigger an inflammatory response, and many people reporting Long Covid were fully boosted. Answering that is a huge scientific and political challenge, ie politicians don't want mRNA as the answer because their policies may have harmed a lot of people.. And we still don't know that answer, especially as things like PCR tests used to diagnose a lot of Covid cases weren't that reliable either.
TL;DR though is there's a lot of unknowns and annecdotes. I tested positive, but didn't notice any symptoms. But then being part of the herd, I didn't enrol in the biggest & most dubious medical experiment in human history. But other people got very sick, some died, some report Long Covid. Jury is still out on the real science, and also just how Covid came to be, and if funding gain-of-function off-shore was a good idea, or even lawful. Dr Fauci is, of course very much in denial about that. Wet market. Must have been the wet market. Not the research lab with a questionable safety record he'd been paying to do gain-of-function research into corona viruses..
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Tuesday 3rd February 2026 09:23 GMT Lipdorn
Re: Not a Trump thing.
Very safe. According to the WHO, ten times safer than Tylenol or Aspirin. Both probably do nothing for Covid. Immense wasted effort on banning it forcing desperate people to drink horse de-wormer that as other not safe for humans anti-helminthics.
Imagine all of the drama that would have been saved if people could get something that the WHO considers safer than tylenol or aspirin in a form fit for humans with decent dosing instructions.
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Tuesday 3rd February 2026 12:46 GMT Roland6
Re: Not a Trump thing.
>” in a form fit for humans with decent dosing instructions.”
We are talking about your average American here…
Over the years several first aid wound sprays and associated products have disappeared from shelves in the UK. Enquires discover the reason for discontinuing sales is because of incidences in America of people using a product clearly labelled as “for external use only” for the treatment of sore throats etc. Other medicines have also been removed from sale (or diluted) because (American) idiots have decided to increase their dosage Just because it is safe to take 1000mg of Paracetamol four times a day (for a few days), it is not advisable to consume 4000mg in one go…
[Aside: whilst we mock Americans, anecdotal reports from many poor countries indicate that many don’t understand that a course of antibiotics has to be completed and taking only a single tablet or stopping part way through because you are starting to feel better will not benefit and could be counterproductive.]
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Sunday 1st February 2026 17:03 GMT Paul Hovnanian
Re: Not a Trump thing.
"Trump was president during COVID"
Shhh. We have yet to develop a vaccine for TDS. It took several months after Biden's team cancelled Operation Warp Speed for the public to forget its existance. And accept the replacement program as the One True Cure. Numbers of deaths during this delay are not easy to come by.
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Monday 2nd February 2026 12:26 GMT Alan_Peery
Re: Not a Trump thing.
States that followed anti-vaccination "thinking" and blocked anti-epidemic precautions suffered quite significantly more deaths. This can be seen clearly if you compare the groups of states before and after the availability of the vaccines:
https://x.com/ablueview/status/1601072491593859072
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Friday 30th January 2026 12:29 GMT John Hawkins
Re: Not a Trump thing.
Not exactly - just pointing out that with previous presidents it's been relatively easy for other countries' leaders and their voters to pretend that the US had their best interests at heart.
Trump makes it pretty obvious whose interests are important and whose are not.
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Friday 30th January 2026 12:28 GMT wolfetone
Re: Not a Trump thing.
"Don't make this a Trump thing, not everything is about that clown."
Yeah, you're right to a point.
Let's make this about America not being a reliable ally anymore. It's bad enough he's the figurehead, but it's what is under him that has put him there and it's what is under him that are the problem.
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Friday 30th January 2026 13:50 GMT Filippo
Re: Not a Trump thing.
>Don't make this a Trump thing, not everything is about that clown.
Nobody (who matters) is "making this a Trump thing". If this was being seen as "a Trump thing", the EU would just grit its collective teeth and wait until 2028. It's not like anyone can build an independent digital infrastructure in 2 years anyway. No, this is very much a USA thing. The reasoning that's going around is that we can't be certain there won't be another lunatic, if not right after Trump, then after two, three or ten Presidents after him.
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Friday 30th January 2026 17:55 GMT Doctor Syntax
Re: Not a Trump thing.
Certainly Trump gets a good blasting there but this line near the start is the significant one in the view of many of us "In the Trump‑redux era of 2026, European enterprises are finally taking data seriously"
The key word in there is "finally". It's Trump's behaviour that's finally waking people up to what they should have been taking seriously well before his arrival on the scene.
After GDPR came in, for instance we've seen all sorts of privacy fig-leaves put in place to make it OK to keep sending EU citizens' data* to the US for processing and that was even before the CLOUD Act.
* that included UK citizens originally and Brexit has not improved that situation.
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Saturday 31st January 2026 09:41 GMT Jellied Eel
Re: Not a Trump thing.
After GDPR came in, for instance we've seen all sorts of privacy fig-leaves put in place to make it OK to keep sending EU citizens' data* to the US for processing and that was even before the CLOUD Act.
There's also fig-leaf removal. EU data sovereignty might be a nice idea, but it doesn't mean privacy. Just it'll be the EU spying, not the US. So we still have Chat Control heading down the pipeline. But on the Airbus front-
https://thehill.com/policy/international/5714881-gulfstream-certification-trump-aircraft-tariff/
Additionally, the president stated he would decertify “all Aircraft” made in Canada, specifically citing Gulfstream’s Canadian rival, Bombardier Global Express.
After Canda decertified some Gulfstream products. No idea why, but fun in the US exec jet space, and Trump flies Boing for both his personal and private jets. Which might also be a sensible data sovereignty issue for Airbus, especially after allegations of US spying on Airbus and industrial espionage from Boing.
And in other news, the EU has twigged that swapping dependency on Russian oil & gas for dependency on US might not be a good idea either. Especially with a government that runs like Barter Town. Who runs Barter Town? Sanctions On! So no oil and gas for Cuba this week, next week it might be the UK for daring to negotiate trade with China, which is a situation where Brexit has helped. UK can negotiate trade deals that are in the UK's interests rather than relying on the EU to negotiate trade deals that might not. Plus Texas has announced a big expansion in gas generation, and US bit-barn buildouts are busily eating into US gas supplies, increasing prices and reducing the amount available for export.
And then for extra fun & games, currently we have Trump and 'Drill baby, Drill' but in a few years time, Democrats might retake control of the taps and ban or restrict oil & gas production. Luckily the UK still has North Sea and onshore deposits, but unluckily, we have Millibrain in charge of energy so we're not allowed to exploit those and make money flogging oil & gas to the EU, even though they need it desperately.
But such is politics. The spat over Greenland though has shown the US isn't a reliable partner or ally, and been a rather large wake-up call for our 'leaders'.
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Sunday 1st February 2026 10:18 GMT Roland6
Re: Not a Trump thing.
>” Luckily the UK still has North Sea and onshore deposits, but unluckily, we have Millibrain in charge of energy so we're not allowed to exploit those and make money flogging oil & gas to the EU, even though they need it desperately.”
From the context of your piece, it’s actually “luckily” not “unluckily”.
What Milliband is doing is a good thing strategically for the UK: once it’s “dug up” and sold then we no longer have any for ourselves, an important consideration given how limited the North Sea reserves are. Selling such a finite asset for a quick profit is the institutionalised Conservative short-termism mindset, which has greatly contributed to getting the UK into its current mess,
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Sunday 1st February 2026 12:45 GMT Jellied Eel
Re: Not a Trump thing.
What Milliband is doing is a good thing strategically for the UK: once it’s “dug up” and sold then we no longer have any for ourselves, an important consideration given how limited the North Sea reserves are. Selling such a finite asset for a quick profit is the institutionalised Conservative short-termism mindset, which has greatly contributed to getting the UK into its current mess,
Erm, No, it's Millibrain, his 'Friends of the Earth' sponsored Climate Change Act and then 'Net Zero' that have got us into this mess. That's very visible now with the UK having one of the highest energy costs in the world. The US economy benefitted greatly from their 'dash for gas' shale gas boom, but then Biden reversed that, increasing US energy prices. Then along came Trump and 'drill baby, drill' to reverse that again, and we need to feed the insatiable appetite of AI datacentres.
Which we can't do with windmills and solar.
So using good'ol wiki, "UK sources give a range of estimates of reserves, but even using the most optimistic "maximum" estimate of ultimate recovery, 76% had been recovered as of the end of 2010.[citation needed]
Hmm, no sources to support the claim of 'Peak Oil', but that's been a claim made since the '50s and people keep finding the stuff. Plus politics again, like this infamous quote from an 'expert'-
It is pretty clear that there is not much chance of finding any significant quantity of new cheap oil. Any new or unconventional oil is going to be expensive.
— Lord Ron Oxburgh, a former chairman of Shell, October 2008
Because Ronnie Oxburgh supped the kool aid and now makes money from making energy more expensive-
He is honorary president of the Carbon Capture and Storage Association, chairman of Falck Renewables, a wind energy firm, an advisor to Climate Change Capital.
So busy making money from making oil & gas ever more expensive. So 'new or unconvential' oil is made more expensive as a matter of policy, ie duty rate, higher corporation rates, 'windfall' taxes that curiously aren't applied to well, wind subsidy farmers. Or just making fraccing impossible, even though the UK may have massive onshore reserves. But thanks to the anti-energy policies promoted by vested interests like Oxburgh and regulatory capture from idiots like Millibrain, oil & gas production has been in steady decline since the CCA. So refineries closing, oil companies pulling out of production and exploration, and the 'renewables' scumbags profit massively. And then there's coal.
But based on conservative estimates, there's still a lot of oil, gas and coal we could be exploiting, but thanks to policy, we're not, so since the CCA have flipped from being a net producer to having to depend on imports. Which is one of the more surreal aspects of energy 'policy', especially when we support things like the imminent bombing of Iran. Or just the UK's 'AI Revolution' that's somehow going to have to be run off bateries. Or we could reverse some of the anti-oil & gas policies, and give us the breathing space to build enough new nuclear to meet Net Zero targets & bit-barn demands. Then maybe we'll also figure out fusion and can then make synthetic oil & gas, which is possible today except production needs a lot of cheap energy, which 'renewables' of course can't deliver.
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Sunday 1st February 2026 14:03 GMT Roland6
Re: Not a Trump thing.
Totally missing the point. We are very obviously in the initial skirmishing of the long forecasted resource wars, where those with resources will benefit and those without…
As to peak oil etc etc., I did a much simpler calculation: what is the UK’s annual consumption of gas and oil and dividend that into the known UK reserves. The resulting (very small) numbers are quite interesting and thought provoking…
Wrt the mess UK electricity and gas supply is in, that goes back decades to decisions made in the 1080s and 1990s under the Conservatives…
Strip out the “renewables” from the current supply and you’ll realise the UK would be in an even worse place, being even more dependent upon imported gas and oil - most likely from the then cheapest supplier Russia…
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Sunday 1st February 2026 14:41 GMT nobody who matters
Re: Not a Trump thing.
"....busy making money from making oil & gas ever more expensive."
When you actually examine the price of oil (Brent Crude, usually taken as the principal benchmark), the price of oil has peaked and fallen away several times in the last 40 years, most recently a spike to its highest ever following the massive drop during Covid. Since that peak in early 2022, the price has been erratic, but nonetheless the trend has been very distinctly downwards, and gives no real indication of that general trend not continuing.
The current oil price (despite a small spike in the last week or so) is broadly similar to the price of Brent Crude 20 years ago. The data is easy enough to find (in easy to interpret graph form) on any number of oil related websites which will come up with a basic internet search.
So, "making money from making oil and gas ever more expensive"? No, not really.
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Saturday 31st January 2026 16:18 GMT Jason Bloomberg
Re: Not a Trump thing.
It's Trump's behaviour that's finally waking people up to what they should have been taking seriously well before his arrival on the scene.
That's why he's at the top of my Best President Ever list.
For years the powers that be have deluded themselves and indoctrinated their citizens into believing America is their friend and soulmate, none more so than Britain which has long pretended there is a Special Relationship.
Trump has shattered that illusion and hopefully forever. Though I don't reject an American partnership in the future, if America returns to international norms in her foreign relations.
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Friday 30th January 2026 18:38 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Not a Trump thing.
I totally agree. The PATRIOT Act was enacted long before Trump became involved in politics.
And before that NSA operatives where warning Hollywood writers and directors about massive spying on the population, resulting in the prophetic movie "Enemy of the State" which foretold much of what we endure today.
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Saturday 31st January 2026 01:11 GMT DS999
Sorry you don't get to "both sides" Trump's authoritorian governance
He's gone way way way further than any previous president (or at least any president since Andrew Jackson) and all indications are he will keep pushing the envelope further and further until some outside force stops him: judges, people voting democrats into control of congress who bog him down in investigations, people in the streets refusing to see the US turn into 1930s Germany, or best of all Trump having a massive stroke and turning into a vegetable who can't speak or feed himself.
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Saturday 31st January 2026 09:46 GMT Jellied Eel
Re: Sorry you don't get to "both sides" Trump's authoritorian governance
Judges *should* not be restricting action. Only the electorate. That's the point of democracy, and why cancelling elections is totalitarian.
Disagree. We figured out a long time ago that seperation of powers is a good thing to provide checks & balances against kings or dictators. So an independent judiciary is rather important to provide those checks, and prevent abuse of powers. Slight snag is when that judiciary starts becoming political, rather than neutral. Which was perhaps inevitable when the government gave itself powers to appoint the judiciary. See assorted claims of Democrat or Republican judges block X (not the Twitter X) or claims that governments stack the Supreme Court in their favor.
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Saturday 31st January 2026 16:27 GMT Jason Bloomberg
Re: Sorry you don't get to "both sides" Trump's authoritorian governance
Judges *should* not be restricting action. Only the electorate.
Constitution and Law, with Judges enforcing compliance with both, are the only things saving a nation from dictatorship and mob rule by a minority.
The only reason to remove judges is to facilitate dictatorship and the fascism which inevitably comes with one.
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Saturday 31st January 2026 22:53 GMT MachDiamond
Re: Sorry you don't get to "both sides" Trump's authoritorian governance
"Constitution and Law, with Judges enforcing compliance with both, are the only things saving a nation from dictatorship and mob rule by a minority."
Up to a point. There's lately been (in the US) judges telling law enforcement that they can't arrest people. People with active warrants or strongly implicated in a crime. A judge can free them with zero bail, but a preemptive ban isn't(shouldn't) be within their powers. A dismissal of charges is also not something they can do without due process. If the prosecution drops the case, that's a different story. If the prosecutor isn't dropping the case, it must go through the process and be heard in court.
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Saturday 31st January 2026 20:03 GMT doublelayer
Re: Sorry you don't get to "both sides" Trump's authoritorian governance
Judges should restrict action if and only if that action is already against current laws, but when that is the case, they absolutely should because that is their job. If a government wants to do something and the law says they can't, then it shouldn't and usually can't wait for the next election for voters to decide, from the few options available, whether they'll end up supporting it. If the government wants to do that, they have to change the law. If they don't, then judges have the power and the responsibility to stop the unlawful actions, reverse their consequences, and forbid those actions from being repeated, and if those judges are not obeyed, the rule of law has broken down.
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Monday 2nd February 2026 11:56 GMT Alan_Peery
Re: Not a Trump thing.
Shady in allowing major fraud I'll give you, both in the UK and the US.
If instead you are advocating for reckless ignorance of science in opposing masking, social distancing, and vaccination in the face of a contagious disease with unknown short and long term consequences, please go and be hermit somewhere and stop endangering others near you.
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Friday 30th January 2026 12:00 GMT VoiceOfTruth
It is unfortunate, but true
Europe and the USA are not 'partners'. The USA is a rival, despite what the gullible or idiotic European politicians say. The truth is Europe is occupied by the USA. At the end of the cold war, Russia as heir to the Soviet Union, went home without firing a shot. The USA remained. It's missiles and nuclear weapons remained. As Russia has been invaded by Britain, France, and Germany throughout its history, it's no wonder the Russians keep a wary eye at the 'peace loving' West.
Now Canada is upset that Alberta separatist groups are having meetings with USA regime officials. Carney, the man who talks by excessively waving his hands, says it's unacceptable and the USA should respect Canadian sovereignty. Perhaps he needs to open his eyes. Carney said nothing when the USA illegally invaded Venezuela and carried out a kidnapping.
For years and years European and Canadian politicians have followed American orders, thinking they were 'on the same side'. They did this at great expense to their own economies, and accepting American interference in their policies. The view in Washington was simple: Europe and Canada are weak.
Slowly but surely, the American regime will boil Europe and Canada like the proverbial frog. Tariffs here, threats there. It's already happening. The European and Canadian governments will eat the American curate's egg.
The USA is not our friend.
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Friday 30th January 2026 18:40 GMT doublelayer
Re: It is unfortunate, but true
So, if I'm understanding your argument correctly, controlling it for 45 years, until they were forcibly expelled, is totally fine? Not counting those parts of Ukraine and Georgia they still control by force and Belarus they control by propping up a friendly dictator? They didn't go home immediately, they didn't go home without firing shots, they did none of the things you're incorrectly giving them credit for, and therefore any points you might have had that aren't completely fictional have been hidden under your clear attempt at ignoring obvious history.
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Friday 30th January 2026 13:37 GMT KittenHuffer
Re: It is unfortunate, but true
"Perhaps he needs to open his eyes. Carney said nothing when the USA illegally invaded Venezuela and carried out a kidnapping."
That was because the Orange one went on his 'I want Greenland' rant. Did you not realise the timing of that? It was timed to make everyone indignant about that, it was ramped up and up, until what he had done in Venezuela had dropped far enough out of the public eye ..... then all of a sudden he backed off as if he never meant it.
Wait until the next thing he does that the World would get indignant about, and then there will be another 'Greenland' that will be used to distract everyone.
If you look back you will find a number of 'Greenland' like threats that have come and gone (mainly tariffs), and you will normally find something that he wanted to distract you from just before or right at the start of the threat.
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Friday 30th January 2026 13:42 GMT Doctor Syntax
Re: It is unfortunate, but true
Or maybe t'other way about. Venezuela was intended to make everyone else think "It could be me next" but everyone else stuck together and he had to go back and tell the faithful about his success which was, in fact, the status quo that he'd ignored up to then.
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Sunday 1st February 2026 14:00 GMT retiredFool
Re: It is unfortunate, but true
I expect the group that was hangin with pedo ep is quite large. The director for melania has creepy photos with him. And the secretary of commerce Lutnick has also been implicated. I can think of no other reason except running a giant underage prostitution ring with very very rich/powerful people that epstein had those islands and fancy apartments. He was a pimp of epic proportions catering to the Robin Leech crowd. We have seen it before to a lesser extent with people like Weinstein and Cosby. But this guy seemed to know everyone who was anyone. I can only stomach reading some of what has been released until I get nauseous. What little I've read with things like eps telling a client sure I can send the jet over or come to the island for the big party. Why do I read nothing about follow the money?
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Sunday 1st February 2026 14:50 GMT Roland6
Re: It is unfortunate, but true
Whilst I have little sympathy for Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, I do think he is just a convenient fall guy
Epstein would have wanted him to demonstrate to his paying friends and acquaintances that he did have connections, in addition to girls.
The media and US establishment calls for him to testify in the US, is just an avoidance of looking at the people who funded Epstein - America’s rich men, many of whom will have financed Trump…
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Wednesday 4th February 2026 02:30 GMT the Jim bloke
Re: It is unfortunate, but true
I assumed Venezuela, Greenland, and Iran were attempts to distract the media from Epstein.
This has been noted by those paying attention
Trumps acts of international diplomatic vandalism have a tendency to occur at the same time as some domestic scandal he doesnt want on the front pages at that time...
So Ukraine gets a peace deal which is essentially total capitulation to Putin, to distract his home voter base from some news story about a hooker or something..
Venezuela, Iran, Gaza, Greenland, all being used as a distraction, because his local politics cannot stand scrutiny.
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Monday 2nd February 2026 02:34 GMT Mike VandeVelde
Re: Russia as heir to the Soviet Union, went home without firing a shot
The Nazis were defeated when they invaded the USSR. The USA just mopped up the remnants and lived fat off the pillage. The USSR took less than they deserved of Europe, a staged meeting in Berlin. The USSR was not as savage as the USA and thus could not afford to win the nuclear arms race. So here we are. That is my opinion and no amount of downvotes can ever convince me otherwise. Bring on your exagerrated millions of killed and I will counter, bring on your arguments of efficiency and I will laugh and laugh and laugh. The couple of centuries of capitalism have already failed much harder than the few decades of communism ever did. Maybe Europe can maintain some monasteries again and maybe we can rebuild some other way. More likely all of this will be forgotten, who knows anything about the struggles between the picts and the celts and the vikings and the vandals since Pax Romana wiped the slate clean, all vague legends now, similar to the aztecs and the inca and the pueblo and the maya over here in "North America". Nobody anywhere is doing anything to avoid another dark ages. Thank goodness I'm getting old enough to not be conscripted into picking up a spear, I can not appologize profusely enough to our descendants.
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Tuesday 3rd February 2026 06:24 GMT Mike VandeVelde
Re: Russia as heir to the Soviet Union, went home without firing a shot
I've read a few. How many people died in the Irish Potato Famine? How many people died in the savagely brutal conquest of the americas? How many people died in the dirty thirties dust bowl? How many civilians burnt alive in allied firebombings and the dropping of atomic bombs in world war ii? How many people died in CIA sponsored wars through out central and south america over the last 80 years? Never mind the much much harsher horrors in africa and asia? As if Stalin spent his entire life personally shooting in the head with his pistol an endless orderly line up of millions of innocent victims. As if everything that ever hapenned in the east can be personally attributed to some or other communist leader, while everything that ever happened around the world because of the freedom loving west was righteous and justified. Gross.
Nevermind that oligarchy couldn't care less about capitalism vs communism, liberalism vs conservatism., anarchism vs libertarianism vs authoritarianism, whatever ism makes the powerful more powerful, pitting one against the other being the best strategy. And people gobble it up with gusto. A circus sideshow to distract the masses while the rich get richer. As if pick a telco or pick a bank or pick an insurance company are so much more svelte under capitalism than anything communism was allowed to come up with in its short repressed and distorted time so far on this planet. Gross.
Free markets are the perfect tool to bring the greatest benefit to the greatest number of people, WHERE COMPETITION IS POSSIBLE. Allowing capitalists to get their fingers into infrastructure and governance is A RECIPE FOR DISASTER WORSE THAN ANY OTHER SYSTEM EVER DREAMED OF. My name is Mike VandeVelde and I look forward to being quoted in future history books about the fall of the current system of norms.
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Friday 30th January 2026 18:44 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: It is unfortunate, but true
The U.S and Europa are partners...still. But the huge influx of immigrants both in the U.S. and Europa are ethnically changing both populations and could undermine common and shared beliefs.
At least Trump is doing something about both legal and illegal immigration. Politicians in Europe, including the UK, are basically powerless or unwilling to do anything about it, fearing it could rise up tensions and lead to a civil war.
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Saturday 31st January 2026 01:21 GMT nobody who matters
Re: It is unfortunate, but true
"But the huge influx of immigrants both in the U.S. and Europa are ethnically changing both populations...."
The "huge influx of immigrants" into the US which did very much change the ethnic population took place took place in the 16th,17th and 18th centuries when Europeans started taking the land from the indigenous Indians.
I think modern day 'white' Americans principally directly descended from those European immigrants have a fucking cheek to give modern day immigrants the brutal and inhuman treatment that they clearly are doing.
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Saturday 31st January 2026 17:02 GMT witty user name
Re: It is unfortunate, but true
I agree but will add that ICE is detaining native Americans as well.
https://oklahomawatch.org/2026/01/26/native-americans-are-getting-swept-up-by-ice-republicans-say-there-will-be-mistakes/
I will add, too, that it’s oversimplification to speak as if ICE is all white. 30% for example are Latino.
https://www.latinorebels.com/2020/07/06/latinosiceborder/
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Friday 30th January 2026 12:09 GMT breakfast
Thinking about corruption
It did occur to me that Amazon paying twenty million dollars to the Trump family to make Melania, a film that clearly nobody wants or has any interest in, was fairly unambiguous bribery, and that if one was based in a country with strong anti-corruption laws that took them seriously, using Amazon services might expose one to risk.
Of course, when it's a company as wealthy as Amazon nobody does take anti-corruption seriously, any more than anyone thinks about any kind of enforcement action against X when their AI does clearly unlawful things, but in a world where the rule of law mattered more than making American billionaires more wealthy this kind of thing would have consequences.
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Friday 30th January 2026 12:20 GMT SnailFerrous
Re: Thinking about corruption
Similar to former PMs and Chancellors getting hundreds of thousands for giving speeches at banks that no one listens too. If you do nice things for us, we'll make sure nice things happen for you. So much less grubby and more easily denied than brown paper bags stuffed with cash.
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Friday 30th January 2026 12:14 GMT Anonymous Coward
If you are running a European government…
Europe native cloud and services are no longer a nice‑to‑have but a business continuity plan requirement.
It is amusing to see Reform struggling to comprehend matters. They thought and campaigned to regain “sovereignty” from “The EU”, only to now discover it had already been sold to the US.
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Friday 30th January 2026 12:42 GMT xcdb
Re: If you are running a European government…
I realise you were being a little facetious, but that would be making their point wouldn't it? Besides, sovereignty in the brexit/reform.eu sense would surely be about the ability to make your own decisions and your own mistakes. Including handing critical stuff to a US-owned provider subject to the PATRIOT and CLOUD acts :/
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Friday 30th January 2026 13:31 GMT Roland6
Re: If you are running a European government…
> being a little facetious
Yes, a little.
however, in the Brexit/reform.eu sense it is clear all EU members (both prior to Brexit and now) have the freedom to make “mistakes” and hand critical government stuff to US-owned operators…
Trump has done everyone a service, looking back we can see both UKIP and the Conservatives Eurosceptics/Anglophiles thought a post-Brexit UK could cosy up to their special “buddy” the US; becoming some form of 51st state - now such ideas are laughable.
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Friday 30th January 2026 13:51 GMT retiredFool
Re: If you are running a European government…
I'd agree and add that by bringing it home, EU is fostering its own cloud/infrastructure future. It may cost a little now, and capitalism depends on letting you be lulled into saving a buck today, so that the owners can squeeze a buck out of you tomorrow. A game of monopoly anyone?
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Friday 30th January 2026 12:15 GMT Anonymous Coward
Maybe people will start listening now?
(posted as Anonymous Coward for obvious reasons)
I've been harping on about the fact that the EU has been setting itself up to be blackmailed by the USA when it suits them for years. Nobody wanted to listen.
Now, the problem is on our doorstep and doing something about this problem quickly will be very difficult. The company I work for (a state owned company) is completely dependent on the good will of the US administration and Microsoft. We wouldn't be able to divorce ourselves from Microsoft's cloud in anything less than a year, even if there was an EU company which could replace Entra, for example.
The entire company works on Office365. All our documents (and I'm sure this includes documents which should have never left an air-gapped computer) are in M$ cloud. Our entire authentication and authorisation system is dependent on M$.
Just replacing the cloud functionality won't get us off our addiction to M$ operating systems, which run 90% of all the servers and PCs that we have.
Through complacency and magical thinking, the rest of the world has allowed themselves to become technologically dependent on a country which has adequately proved itself to be an unreliable and dangerous ally at best. There are no quick fixes for this dependency.
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Friday 30th January 2026 12:40 GMT Roland6
Re: Maybe people will start listening now?
I know, I’m not anonymous, when posting anonymously, to the operators of ElReg(*), I’m just anonymous to the majority of the readership - both registered and unregistered, and search engines that trawl the site for nefarious reasons…
(*) I include government agencies who have “privileged” access to servers and the third-parties ElReg shares data with.
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Friday 30th January 2026 21:13 GMT thedarkstar
Re: Maybe people will start listening now?
Then why do you risk visiting El Reg if its such a potentially dangerous site?
I know many other forums exist for characters such as yourself, do us a favour and visit them instead would you. Maybe check how secure there sites are whilst you're at it?
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Friday 30th January 2026 12:56 GMT lordminty
Re: Maybe people will start listening now?
"the EU has been setting itself up to be blackmailed by the USA when it suits them for years."
They did they same with Russia, by guzzling Russian gas and oil. And to a lesser extent with China, with electronics, electronic components and auto components.
That's the problem with the EU and the UK, they've both deindustrialised themselves to the point that they have zero self-capability and live by the motto of "We'll just buy it in".
Not "Let's build our own EU Cloud champion".
Like Trump or not, he's right that the West in general has become far too reliant on buying stuff in. How many components in the average US branded server are made in the US?
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Friday 30th January 2026 22:42 GMT Glen 1
Re: Maybe people will start listening now?
It's worth remembering that most advanced microchips depends on machines originating from the Netherlands.
The nature of the world economy's interconnectedness means it is also a pain point for the US.
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There in lies and interesting question. Can the rest of the world "persuade" the US to play nice. Or has it already gone down the North Korea/Fox news rabbit whole of "We have always been at war with East Asia"
The number of Americans on social media suddenly thinking it's their God given right to invade Greenland seemingly out of nowhere. They've been whipped up and aimed.
Just As sad to see as the UK "patriots" trying to burn down refugee accommodation.
What can we do about it? We've already got COVID lockdown denialist elsewhere on the thread. They are already among us. There are non so blind as those who will not see.
Or referring to the video footage coming out of Miniapolois, Vance more or less got up and said - "The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command"
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Friday 30th January 2026 13:52 GMT Doctor Syntax
Re: Maybe people will start listening now?
"There are no quick fixes for this dependency."
Quite so, but when's the best time to start? Obviously "then" but that boat was missed. So when's the next best time to start? Obviously "now". If all you're paralysed by panic your actual time is going to be "when it;s too late".
If your board asks what to do they're going to want staff to providesolutions, not problems. Are you going to be someone who's already looking around and trying to find solutions?
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Friday 30th January 2026 14:28 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Maybe people will start listening now?
Not my problem. I'm only a cog in the machine.
The company's leadership (you know, the ones who get paid 20 times my salary) are those who are responsible for getting us in this mess. If they had any vision, any qualifications for their positions, any concept of technical dependencies and risk management, they would have seen this coming and would have already been executing the plans they made years ago to escape from this situation.
As it is, they're keeping their heads firmly stuck in the sand while they continue to take home their obscene pay cheques.
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Friday 30th January 2026 15:49 GMT Doctor Syntax
Re: Maybe people will start listening now?
There are a lot of people who, if they'd had the vision, would have seen this coming long ago. Recent developments have made it more obvious. Carney's speech seems to have been analysed in the sort of press they're likely to have read. Many of then - maybe your lot, maybe not - are starting to wake up.
How far up the IT chain does the "can't do anything about it" run? Do you have any suggestions if someone a bit further up the chain starts asking questions in anticipation of questions from further up? When it all goes critical are you part of the problem or part of the solution?
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Monday 2nd February 2026 13:28 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Maybe people will start listening now?
As someone who has been in this business for decades, of course I have suggestions about how the company could start to mitigate these risks and regain control over both their infrastructure and their data. My advice would start with "move everything back on premises". That mitigates the kill switch that Entra represents and removes sensitive commercial documents from Microsoft's cloud. Kick out Office365 and replace it with either locally installed MS Office or LibreOffice. Kick out Teams and replace it with something developed here in the EU. Long term, kick out Windows.
However, I have no budgetary responsibility, no strategic responsibility and no money to spend. The company has people with swanky sounding job titles like CIO, CTO, Systems Architect, etc. All with handsome salaries that make mine look like pocket money. I am isolated from the people who make the decisions by at least four layers of middle management. The chances of them coming to me and seeking my advice are zero. My immediate manager knows my opinions and is aware of the precarious situation that our addiction to Microsoft's products creates. He can't do much either.
When things go pear shaped, the only thing I'll have to enjoy is Schadenfreude.
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Friday 30th January 2026 12:48 GMT elsergiovolador
Deception
AWS recently made its European Sovereign Cloud available. This AWS cloud, Amazon claims, is "entirely located within the EU, and physically and logically separate from other AWS Regions."
That doesn't make it "sovereign". Cloud Act still applies and Krasnov's pawns can rummage through servers as they please and EU customers will never know.
These idiots are blinded by wine and steaks.
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Friday 30th January 2026 13:30 GMT JimmyPage
Yawn
Sorry, but this has been pointed out for the past 2 decades by all the people no one listened to (i.e. the ones who knew their shit but were sacked by beancounters).
Fuck 'em. They sacrificed security for economy and are now whining like girly-men. Where were they when i suggested all of this in 2005 ?
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Friday 30th January 2026 13:30 GMT Lomax
> Brussels is pushing an open source‑led exit from hyperscaler lock‑in
Well done EU, you got there in the end! Now put your money where your mouth is and use some of those Euros to support Jolla and SailfishOS. When talking about "digital sovereignty" surely nothing can be more important than the software running on the digital mole we all carry in our pockets. Since the smartphone is now a mandatory tool for everything we do, gatekeeping all our communications, with full access to all our secrets and all essential services, it needs to be open to review. Every last line of it. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that the very survival of free democratic society depends on this happening. Today.
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Friday 30th January 2026 13:31 GMT Tron
There is no Sovereign European/EU Cloud.
Which may be a problem.
Yes, the US is now untrustworthy, but would a French company trust a British or German operator? The EU is not a sovereign entity, and the UK is not even in the EU anymore.
If you want to be secure, your intranet does not touch the public internet (so no cloud, no SaaS and no AI). The bits that do touch the net need to be run on prem from entirely separate servers.
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Friday 30th January 2026 13:55 GMT retiredFool
Re: There is no Sovereign European/EU Cloud.
Weirdly up until trump II, I expect France/Germany/Brits trusted each other less than the US. I'd suggest EU reconsider that and try very hard to form a tighter union. Although the US may break into civil war at the rate things are going. Almost a repeat of the boundaries of the first one.
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Friday 30th January 2026 14:01 GMT Doctor Syntax
Re: There is no Sovereign European/EU Cloud.
"Which may be a problem."
The problem may be the idea of a sovereign European cloud. That leads to panicking because there's nobody comparable in size with AWS & Azure. It's overall capacity that's needed, not necessarily all in one place. Microsoft needs to be big in order to run everyone's Office<365. There are plenty of services who can run your NextCloud.
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Friday 30th January 2026 13:54 GMT Cruachan
It's good news for all of us greybeards, who learnt about IT in the days of "don't put all your eggs in one basket", never mind a basket that belongs to someone else. Undoing all those cloud migrations because PHBs the world over demanded "cloud" without ever knowing what it meant or the potential consequences.
There was an argument for small businesses who could get access to email or ERP systems or other LOB apps more easily, when economies of scale meant that the providers could give access to companies who couldn't otherwise justify buying the software or the hardware to run it, but now we've gone too far the other way and many companies don't even offer an on-prem solution any more.
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Friday 30th January 2026 14:20 GMT Doctor Syntax
"There was an argument for small businesses who could get access to email or ERP systems or other LOB apps more easily, when economies of scale meant that the providers could give access to companies who couldn't otherwise justify buying the software or the hardware to run it,"
And yet there were solutions. Back in the 90s/early 2000's I had a client I did occasional support for who ran a small, single premises engineers' suppliers business - an industrial estate unit with a warehouse and a counter - with a server based on PC hardware running SCO and a small ERP system. About the only slightly unusual bits of the server were the multi-RS232 card for the terminals and printers and the backup tape drive.
Further back in the 80s the Z8000, 68000 and MIPS were he basis for small servers, usually tower format, running some version of Unix from 7th edition onwards and an RDBMS such as the then small Oracle or, preferably, Informix which enabled a number of software houses to put together general purpose or industry-specific packages for users to run in-house. The success of the big corporations of today was to persuade user companies that they couldn't actually do that, or at least it would be more expensive if they continued to.
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Saturday 31st January 2026 10:05 GMT Jellied Eel
Further back in the 80s the Z8000, 68000 and MIPS were he basis for small servers,
Don't forget what might have been, ie the good'ol Transputer-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transputer
The transputer was the first general purpose microprocessor designed specifically to be used in parallel computing systems. The goal was to produce a family of chips ranging in power and cost that could be wired together to form a complete parallel computer.
A British first and that functionality is kinda handy for hyperscaling.. Which is why the concept ended up borrowed by Intel, AMD, Nvidia etc. Sadly Inmos was a victim of the Wintel axis of evil, plus some help from the government. But we did it once, we could, in theory do it again, especially when a lot of processor R&D (eg ARM) happens in Europe. We have the brains, we just don't have the will to create and mandate a EUroCloud running on EUro chips, OS and an app suite. Which for government use, could be forced, but it'd be an uphill battle to wean users off the MS ecosystem.
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Saturday 31st January 2026 20:55 GMT ecofeco
This. When I started, small on-site severs were the norm. Those that couldn't afford a server used beefed up PCs. And at the lowest, smallest end of the scale, just a regular PC for the mom and pop business.
That was in fact, the whole damn point of PCs. Freedom from the mainframe and timesharing.
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Friday 30th January 2026 14:37 GMT MortyCapp
Yes I agree, I am migrating my small business in several steps, with the end goal of removing as much US tech layers as possible.
Linux (European Distro)
LibreOffice or Collabora (not sure if I stay with OnlyOffice long term)
LibreWolf for browser
Thunderbird for mail client (I need to migrate to non US email providers)
NextCloud or Icedrive for online storage/collaboration.
There may be alternatives that I need to consider.
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Friday 30th January 2026 17:04 GMT NohSpam
Follow the money
While "This AWS cloud, Amazon claims, is 'entirely located within the EU, and physically and logically separate from other AWS Regions.'", no doubt revenue still flows back to the US, in some cases, with some suppliers, with little to no tax paid where the revenue was generated.
There are many reasons to localise these services, both geographically and organisationally: localise revenue & sovereignty, make it cheaper (eg through open software & protocols for maintenance, improvement and client portability), de-enshitify, detoxify, maintain privacy, cut exploitative US practices, etc
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Friday 30th January 2026 18:07 GMT Doctor Syntax
Re: Follow the money
'entirely located within the EU, and physically and logically separate from other AWS Regions'
Note that they didn't say it's really separated from them. Never be bemused by a list, always look to see what's not in it.
The whole thing is headed by an Amazon exec. What happens when a US President says "I'm sanctioning Europe. Stop providing IT services to them. And Amazon, don't forget to tell that exec of yours with that sovereign thing that that includes him."?
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Friday 30th January 2026 18:47 GMT Anonymous Coward
Known problems
The issues with American cloud providers have been known for almost twenty years, but were swept under the carpet due to commercial and political pressures. Now Europe is waking up and realizing it's knee-deep in the manure. Sorting this out will take at least five years if not more.
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Friday 30th January 2026 20:03 GMT DoctorNine
I'm being truthful... Honest!
As an American academician of some years experience with unintended IT consequences, I am totally, 100%, behind this move to separate EU data systems from the US. We need look no further than Clapper or Snowden to realize that there is no data security when the alphabet services start playing hardball. It seems clear to me that Windows 11 and all these 'snapshots', were concocted in some national security service's fever dream, leaving all of us with no remaining shred of privacy, regardless of our country of residence, or judicial domain. All 'clouds' run by Microsoft, Oracle, Apple and their ilk are compromised. This is grossly intolerable. I am certain that more Americans would object to all of this, if they really knew what was happening to their privacy, but they simply don't. Ignorance may be bliss, but it cannot and will not keep your files safe. So please, my most dear European colleagues, stop this monster from acquiring evil dominion across the entire globe. I say this quite selfishly, as I don't want to be left with no digital options. Maybe if someone, somewhere, can just say no, I will be able to opt in to their services, and leave the mean kids to play in their corrupt sandbox all by themselves. I'll most fervently try to not play in that sand, if Big Brother's own cats have turned it into a litter box. D9 out.
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Friday 30th January 2026 22:16 GMT JLV
Trump’s policies have led to a reduced appetite for American goods and services across the board. Countries are putting out friendly feelers to China. Tourism dropped like a rock. US weapons purchase are being second-guessed and avoided.
It’s amazing how Republicans haven’t clued in yet that becoming a pariah isn’t great.
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Saturday 31st January 2026 15:44 GMT Anonymous Coward
Get out of the DMCA
There can be no meaningful progress in reigning in US Big Tech as long as the EU and other countries remain signed up to the DMCA. They all willingly gave away their ability to compete in return for US trade deals with no tariffs. That worked out well.
I suggest reading some of Cory Doctorow's latest posts. The transcript of the speech he gave at the 2026 Digital Government Leaders Summit in Ottawa sums it all up pretty well from a Canadian perspective, but it equally applies to the EU and others as he pointed out in the next day's article;
https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/29/post-american-canada/
https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/30/zucksauce/
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Saturday 31st January 2026 19:17 GMT JesperH
What about the CDN
Interesting article. Especially calling the Amazon EU bluff.
I am however surprised about the dialog on data sovereignty being limited to the storage and the end used software.
What about the delivery layer - the CDNs.
Also there you are equally exposed and equally in the hands of US based hyperscalers.
What are your thoughts on the CDNs being left out in the data sovereignty debate?
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Saturday 31st January 2026 20:33 GMT doublelayer
Re: What about the CDN
I think they're a smaller part of the problem. The most sensitive data and operations, the things that would cause the most chaos in the nightmare scenario, don't need to go through CDNs and most of them probably don't. Internal data on government, industrial, or infrastructural systems generally doesn't need to use a CDN because copies of it aren't being transmitted in bulk. CDNs are a much bigger thing for public-facing services, and the consequences of those going down tends to be smaller. CDNs are also often easier to switch at short notice. Therefore, though it might make sense for a company outside the US to build a competitive product for people to switch to, it's probably not something that needs a lot of effort or funding when compared to building a new set of productivity software or a place to operate lots of processes.
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Saturday 31st January 2026 23:02 GMT MachDiamond
in-house or don't
If there is some sort of process or workflow that can't be done in-house, maybe it doesn't need to be done. It might also be fine to implement something that is much simpler and doesn't have every bell and whistle that nobody uses.
I have to admit that when I had a manufacturing company, I outsourced my payroll processing so I will say there are circumstances where it's a good thing. The big payroll companies almost never get audited (on a customer level) as they know more about payroll than the government drones and it just made the auditor look stupid to keep losing. I, on the other hand, am not an expert in payroll so the likelihood that I'd make a mistake and have to pay fines costing more than a year's worth of payroll service was too much of a risk. Even if I had not made a mistake but was audited, that would cost more than the service for a year.
A government has many more resources and it shouldn't be an issue to do their functions under direct control (and no freakin' contractors")
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Sunday 1st February 2026 17:49 GMT Reginald O.
Trust? Who's got the key?
Before Trump, was there any reason to trust Google Drive, iCloud, One Drive, Dropbox, Azure, AWS?
Has Snowden really been forgotten?
Before you put anything remotely sensitive into the cloud you got to ask yourself, ...who's got the key?
If it isn't you, then you got troubles.
I don't know how EU cloud services work, but the question remains the same, ...who's got the key?
And, shouldn't admins actually read the TOS and Privacy Polices once in awhile to understand what they really say,...and don't say?
Frankly, companies that really want private, secure data should home brew their own cloud and pay someone who knows how to do it right, to do it right,
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Wednesday 4th February 2026 02:48 GMT the Jim bloke
I would have trusted them to recognise their own self interest... That the world was actually set up in the favour of USA interests already, and there was no need to rock the boat..
Trumps MAGA brownshirts are all about publicity and spectacle, overt bullying and ego gratification - along with a probably unhealthy dose of outright extortion and corruption.
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Monday 2nd February 2026 12:22 GMT sketharaman
Hope the movie has a better ending this time
USA has a long history of weaponizing its currency and technology against Rest of World. Trump is not the first POTUS to do so, he probably won't be the last POTUS to do so. The necessity for self-reliance has always been there. The question is of capability. Let's see how the self-reliance movie plays out this time.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
