The scope is not large enough
>> without leaning quite so heavily on US providers
It should be to remove all dependence on US providers. The US is not Europe's friend. The Orange sex abuser has said as much.
Europe shrugs off tariffs, plots to end tech reliance on US
US tariffs may be squeezing Europe's trade balance, but they are also pushing governments and businesses to spend big on keeping tech closer to home. A new forecast from Forrester says that European tech spending will climb 6.3 percent in 2026, lifting the continent's tech bill above €1.5 trillion for the first time, as …
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Tuesday 3rd February 2026 22:07 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: The scope is not large enough
More broadly, yesterday's News (quoted from euronews; referred to as a "push for 'Made in Europe' strategy" by Reuters):
"European Commission vice-president and industry commissioner Stéphane Séjourné on Monday urged the European Union to adopt a “European preference” within the single market to counter intensifying competition from China and the US."
... maybe some movement ... ;) -
Wednesday 4th February 2026 19:53 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: The scope is not large enough
>I doubt it was agents from the Western European countries who blew up the pipelines…
"Germany is seeking to extradite a Ukrainian man arrested in Poland on suspicion of diving down to the Baltic sea bed to plant explosives in the 2022 Nord Stream gas pipeline attack."
The anti-Russia, pro-Ukraine, factions in the west are pretending not to be aware of that, Ukraine's part in the operation, Zelenskyy's apparent approval of it.
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Tuesday 3rd February 2026 17:52 GMT Gavsky
Re: The scope is not large enough
"The US is not Europe's friend" - I always remember that Trump isn't forever & most Americans are decent, friendly & faithful people, so shouldn't be counted with him. We will return to Statesmanlike behaviour, respect for the law, friends & allies. All this too, shall pass.
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Tuesday 3rd February 2026 18:19 GMT Doctor Syntax
Re: The scope is not large enough
There is clearly nothing in the way the US runs its affairs to prevent someone like Trump getting to the top again. There's also the old say that the us doesn't have allies, it has interests - didn't that one come from a former US President?
It was always foolish to get into this dependency position whatever the nature of the US government. What Trump has done is to alert people to that folly.
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Tuesday 3rd February 2026 18:42 GMT doublelayer
Re: The scope is not large enough
That is true, but you imply that other countries do have working protections. None does. The unfortunate part of democracy is that people who get elected can be stupid or evil. The unfortunate part of non-democracies is that people who take power are almost always evil and many of them are also stupid. Anything unethical the US is doing can be done again, even if they fix it in the middle. Anything unethical the US is doing can also be done by other countries, and depending on the size of that country and your country's reliance on it, it can have the same, smaller, or larger effect. Keep that in mind when deciding how to plan.
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Tuesday 3rd February 2026 23:41 GMT Doctor Syntax
Re: The scope is not large enough
One of the features of the US constitution is that it combines head of government and head of state. In general countries with a PM or the like as head of government that position depends on being able to put together a Parliamentary majority and, although having some power of patronage in appointing ministers the PM depends on continuing support. They can't go off in their own direction with the elected representatives at best trailing behind trying to stop them. And they're unlikely to have got to that position without having had at least some experience in government or, after a long period in opposition, of at least shadowing one or more ministerial positions.
Another is the way the judiciary is appointed. If I read news reports of a Supreme Court decision from the US it will very often say which President appointed them. If I read something similar from the UK there'd be no similar comment. Lord Chancellor is a member of the government of the day but the rest of the judiciary as appointments on merit, not political appointees. Admittedly recent UK governments have seemed to chafe under the restraints of an independent judiciary but at least it's a sign that it works. The US Supreme Court, by contrast, seems to have given even ex-Presidents a get out of jail free card for whatever they might have done.
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Wednesday 4th February 2026 03:02 GMT doublelayer
Re: The scope is not large enough
"One of the features of the US constitution is that it combines head of government and head of state."
How is that relevant? In most countries where that is not the case, the head of state is a ceremonial role with no power at all, and in many others, the head of state is a person with theoretical power which they don't use because it would be hideously authoritarian. This has come up before, and last time I asked for the last time the monarch of the UK used the power they have in opposition to the head of government. The last example I could come up with was the removal of the Australian PM in the 1970s, an act so unpopular it nearly got Australia to expel the monarch and become a republic with the new and the old PMs both supporting the republic plan. I contend that this separation has no effect on government power.
"In general countries with a PM or the like as head of government that position depends on being able to put together a Parliamentary majority"
And in countries with a presidential system, the president must win an electoral majority too which in many cases, though not now in the US, requires experience in government. The question is what can happen afterward, and parliaments have shown that dictators can manage to get their majority and use it, with Russia in the 2000s and Italy and Germany in their fascist periods being obvious examples of successful conversion from parliamentary democracies to authoritarian states.
"Lord Chancellor is a member of the government of the day but the rest of the judiciary as appointments on merit, not political appointees."
That is a good step and possibly one the US should adopt. I should point out though that the UK used the same system, one politician being able to nominate judges, until that was implemented in 2006. It's not the fundamental difference in structure you imply, and unlike in the US, where changing that would require a constitutional amendment but would then take another one if an aspiring dictator wanted to reverse it, the 2006 decision could be reversed much more easily if a UK parliamentary majority wanted to entrench themselves.
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Wednesday 4th February 2026 14:01 GMT The Indomitable Gall
Re: The scope is not large enough
Except the point was effectively supposed to be that the president is the MD of USA Plc, and answerable to the "board" up on Capitol Hill.
The president wasn't a directly elected position, because the public had already elected people to represent their interests and make decisions on their behalf.
The president of the union was originally elected by representatives of the states, and when some states made the decision to open it to public vote, the others were quickly pressured to follow suit.
Now they're in a position where the public think the president is where all power lies and if they like the president, they get shirty when the senate and congress aren't letting him do whatever he wants, because they see that as anti-democratic.
I hope that the next president after Trump will be the last one elected by public vote and they'll go back to the state legislatures going back to forming a collective interview board to find the best man for the job.
The public can do that (eg Mark Karney in Canada) but don't always (if Trump isn't a clear enough example, just look at the UK...) and they often don't really get a direct choice (Mark Karney may have turned his party's fortunes around after Trudeau, but the Tories and Labour here have put up a series of damp squibs and in Boris Johnson the most inept bumbling populist you can get unless Nigel Farage buys a pair of clown shoes.)
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Wednesday 4th February 2026 13:49 GMT The Indomitable Gall
Re: The scope is not large enough
The US has hacked its laws around whatever they deem most beneficial at the time.
The problem is that this leaves many gaps and loopholes that can be exploited by bad actors. The US legislature continues to justify having these loopholes because "we're America, and we're good people", but all it takes is one demented fruitloop to get to powerand the loopholes are suddenly nuttier than a fruitcake.
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Tuesday 3rd February 2026 19:15 GMT VoiceOfTruth
Re: The scope is not large enough
I would like to believe you. Alas I see it - Trump has a lot of supporters. There are a lot of would-be Trumps in the USA. There are people queueing up to be the next Trump, to take it further where Trump was too mild.
I have posted several times that I regret the passing of the more-decent era in the USA. What we are seeing now is not a blip. We have seen how easy it is for the USA to make an agreement one day, and tear it up on a whim. We have seen the USA agree to UN resolutions, only to ignore them. Even its closest neighbours had trade agreements which were torn up.
I think there are a lot of people in the USA, well meaning - seemingly like yourself, who think it's OK to dismiss the Trump era as a simple anomaly and we'll all be friends again. The trust is gone.
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Tuesday 3rd February 2026 20:51 GMT 8bitHero
Re: The scope is not large enough
As an American citizen, I echo your sentiments, and wish they were true. But we need to remember that 60% of the people that bothered to vote choose this outcome. I also see no signs in speaking to friends and co-workers that there has been any "whoops - that was a mistake" moment (and I live just outside of Minneapolis). At it's core (ignoring the racial component which is still unfortunately very much a thing) this is still very much an Urban vs Rural, and haves vs have nots conflict - and none of those underlying issues have been solved. Maybe we have free and fair elections this year and in 2028 - but that isn't guaranteed right now, and even if we do I am not convinced the majority of Americans have really changed their minds. It saddens me greatly, but I don't think we are a country that can be trusted, and I don't see that changing soon.
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Wednesday 4th February 2026 14:08 GMT The Indomitable Gall
Re: The scope is not large enough
Haves vs have-nots...?
Not quite.
The key to populism is to get one group of have-nots blaming others. When Trump tells unemployed white folk that the immigrants are stealing their jobs, that's what we get. And then the people regularly called "trailer trash" or worse end up cheering on ICE assaulting and murdering people because they're acting against the "bad guys" who are "taking our jobs".
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Wednesday 4th February 2026 13:24 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Trump isn't forever
Indeed, but what surprised me the most is the pure unadulterated hate the MAGA contingent has for non-Americans and Democrats.
It is not that they voted for the Orange King, but that they applaud his Salvadoran concentration camps, stolen children, murdered demonstrators, racism, his naked misogyny, and his contempt of the handicapped.
These voters are ready to vote for a worthy successor to finish of the work.
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Thursday 5th February 2026 11:42 GMT Claude Yeller
Re: Voting
"120% of the voting population will vote to continue as is"
More likely, 50% of the population will be struck from the voter rolls without notice.
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Tuesday 3rd February 2026 15:14 GMT Anonymous Coward
Oh....Sovereignty Again...................
Quote: "...domestically controlled infrastructure..."
Daydream!!!
Everything connected to the internet can be hacked by..............
- Chinese hackers
- Russian hackers
- Fort Meade hackers (....Snowden....)
- Cheltenham hackers
"Sovereignty"..................PLEASE give me a break!
Thinks.........."air gap"........"private data centre"........................
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Tuesday 3rd February 2026 15:31 GMT Jason Bloomberg
Re: Oh....Sovereignty Again...................
I see sovereignty and hacking as two separate issues.
The first is controlling one's domain, putting moats around your castle, air gaps around your computing tech - and we certainly need one in the Atlantic.
Then comes the challenge of making those work, keeping the hackers out and data being exfiltrated or given away to the enemy. While 100% air gaps can work in limited circumstances they are not practical when there is still a need to digitally communicate with the rest of the world, or even select partners.
We shouldn't be isolating ourselves, hiding in the dark; we should be isolating the enemy, embracing our friends, and need to be dynamic in doing that as the sands shift.
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Tuesday 3rd February 2026 16:39 GMT Doctor Syntax
Re: Oh....Sovereignty Again...................
Go back and read the title of TFA. "We" is ourselves and fellow Europeans in this context. And note that "Europeans" covers more than the EU. Yes, there may be Anglophone countries with common interests too. Canada certainly has common interests in this although Quebec wouldn't thank you for calling them Anglophone.
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Tuesday 3rd February 2026 18:36 GMT Doctor Syntax
Re: Oh....Sovereignty Again...................
The Anglosphere is looking more than a little worse for wear these days. It was a handy construct for the US to wield when it suited them to have a few largely Anglophone countries to support them. It required the participants to believe in it. Clearly the US no longer does. It's now just a collection of the former components who must build their alliances - or not - as they see fit. It would need a lot of effort to build the trust needed to put it back together, along with a forgetting of the basic US foreign policy of having interests, not allies.
What Trump has done is to remind us of what was always the case.
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Tuesday 3rd February 2026 15:20 GMT ParlezVousFranglais
There may be a push for homegrown tech, but last I looked, both the UK and EU still happily allow the brightest and best such companies to be bought out by overseas competitors, and there is very little in place to prevent that from happening.
Further, if such preventative blocks were put in place, then it could quite easily have the unintended consequence of pushing new investment outside of the region, as entrepreneurs started discovering that potential paydays were then much reduced.
So while I agree with the overall direction, I'm not sure that the path is quite as clear cut as some people believe
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Tuesday 3rd February 2026 17:03 GMT Doctor Syntax
Re: Well.....I'm Racking My Memory.................
Quoting myself from a recent thread.
It matters a good deal less on who makes the S/W than who controls the service that runs on it. The hierarchy is:
The service
The software
The hardware
The main risk is having services provided by businesses under extra-territorial control. The risk with S/W is the subscription model moving it up into the service tier. The hardware is mostly not a problem except possibly appliances such as routers and firewalls with embedded software.
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Wednesday 4th February 2026 08:55 GMT Strangelove
Re: Well.....I'm Racking My Memory.................
Actually here in the UK we have a great no of very good quality technical campaniles, designing all sorts of clever things, from risc microchips to medical instruments, and makers of special vehicles and vaccine research etc.
The problem is that almost none grow to compete with the foreign pile high sell cheap merchants, who wait and copy to take the lions share of the market, and in a lot of cases ideas are only prototyped here but then depend on foreign efforts to be made economically at scale for the mass market..
That's not has hard to fix as not having any "good ideas" folk, but it is still a significant structural problem,
M.
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Wednesday 4th February 2026 17:32 GMT JulieM
Re: Well.....I'm Racking My Memory.................
Yep. Nearly 30 years ago, I had an idea for an improved gas multipoint water heater that required neither an electrical supply nor a permanent pilot burner. No-one was interested in developing it (and I had connections in that industry in those days).
Several years and a change of jobs later, I found a Continental manufacturer selling "my invention".
In this country, no-one cares about a new idea unless it makes the already-rich even richer.
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Friday 6th February 2026 17:18 GMT Roland6
Re: Well.....I'm Racking My Memory.................
>In this country, no-one cares about a new idea unless it makes the already-rich even richer.
The very early history of Dyson is very much along this line, it is a real shame that once Dyson became a member of the rich he changed his spots and now one would believe how close he came to being a totally unknown and just another herioc english failure.
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Tuesday 3rd February 2026 15:31 GMT Philip Storry
I believe that if we're to create any kind of Sovereign Cloud it will have to be through a government-owned company.
Partly so that profits can be re-invested to assist in growth and service development, but also to avoid loss of sovereignty through sale.
The US Cloud Act means that any US-owned company is incapable of providing the required security. As does an act in China. And no government wants to be seen to stand in the way of the Almighty Market, lest the City take its revenge.
So we should prevent it from ever being a problem by making it a government-owned but arms-length and not-for-profit company.
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Tuesday 3rd February 2026 17:12 GMT Doctor Syntax
Without all the screaming, I also disagree.
What governments can do and should is specify local ownership and management as a requirement for systems running critical or sensitive services, both for their own use and for critical infrastructure providers. Another thing they can and should do is recruit sufficient staff able to manage the contracts if they are outsourced or to bring operation in-house if appropriate.
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Wednesday 4th February 2026 19:34 GMT The Indomitable Gall
An EU-owned system would inherently be "arms length" because everything EU can't be corrupted when one group get into power, because every country has different parties with different priorities and interests. Imagine at alternate reality where the US states all had local parties and the president wasn't directly elected by popular vote. This alternate reality sounds pretty good today....
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Tuesday 3rd February 2026 16:07 GMT elsergiovolador
The buy-out issue is mostly a symptom, not the disease. Overseas firms can only buy UK companies if the owners are willing to sell, and the system increasingly nudges them in that direction.
Running a business here has been turned into a slow grind unless you already have deep pockets, specialist advisers, and a tolerance for permanent regulatory churn. After a few years of that, many founders conclude there are no “sunlit uplands”, just more cost, more paperwork, and less upside. Selling up or relocating starts to look rational rather than greedy.
That is what happens when the institutions meant to safeguard fair competition and long-term national interest stop doing so in any meaningful way. Meanwhile public money flows freely to large foreign firms via incentives, special deals, and procurement, while domestic businesses face higher taxes, worse services, and shrinking support.
In that environment, it’s not surprising that homegrown companies cash out early. The problem isn’t that Britain is too open to acquisition. It’s that it has become increasingly hostile to building and sustaining independent businesses in the first place.
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Tuesday 3rd February 2026 16:45 GMT Doctor Syntax
"both the UK and EU still happily allow the brightest and best such companies to be bought out by overseas competitors, and there is very little in place to prevent that from happening."
Having being European owned and managed as its USP would provide a good deal of protection. A potential buyer would have to view the non-sovereign potential as outweighing the prompt loss of the existing customer base.
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Tuesday 3rd February 2026 15:29 GMT Anonymous Custard
Yes Minister...
The UK, Brexit or not, is heading the same way, putting more weight behind domestic AI compute, cloud infrastructure, and homegrown chip efforts.
So the UK govt AI policy will be running it on a Raspberry Pi 5 sitting somewhere in Whitehall?
Or at least it was until this morning's price rise announcement, which has probably put the hardware beyond the budget...
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Tuesday 3rd February 2026 16:07 GMT Anonymous Coward
Meanwhile, back in the real world
This is all vapourware.
I'll believe the tanker has changed course when the job adverts reflect it. Which they don't.
The unpleasant truth is so many people have "invested" so much in being able to put up with MS that there will be a plethora of "reasons" why any individual outfit can't switch.
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Tuesday 3rd February 2026 17:34 GMT Doctor Syntax
Re: Meanwhile, back in the real world
The unpleasant truth is so many people have "invested" so much in being able to put up with MS that there will be a plethora of "reasons" why any individual outfit can't switch.
The people with "reasons" need to be reminded that people who bring solutions are more highly valued within an organisation than those who bring problems.
I'd like el Reg to provide us with an update on the Danish switch - maybe a summary of the various European moves away from MS. Liam?
In the meantime I was struck by reading in another place that those Excel wizards are seen in some instances as a block to overall process improvement. Attempts to provide some sort of integrated workflow get stuck when someone who refuses to move from the hugely complex spreadsheets they use (which suggests to me a pretty bad bus factor in the whole operation).
Migrating to non-MS S/W should see this as an opportunity, not a problem. Introduce the new workflow bypassing the obstruction with a replacement application on the basis that the spreadsheet won't work an longer and no, we're not making exceptions. The obstruction's role is now redundant and they can either take up a new role or discuss redundancy terms.
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Tuesday 3rd February 2026 18:58 GMT doublelayer
Re: Meanwhile, back in the real world
The people who want the change need to be reminded that a lot of people don't understand why. If you run it and are in the position to demand what you have demanded, it works. If you're not, then you're seen as the person bringing the problem (cost of replacement, some software needs to be rewritten, known disruption to processes, potential additional disruption, etc) and the person advocating Microsoft has the solution (one more M365 annual payment and people keep going).
If you want the change to happen in a place you don't have total control of, you need to do a little more to point out why the change is necessary to people who don't have a full understanding and a lot more to show them how to fix it without breaking everything, because you don't often get to say that something's important enough that you can ignore the pain and expense of implementation. Perhaps the EU has enough people doing both of these that they can do that. Many of the previous attempts haven't. Your approach isn't going in a good direction.
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Tuesday 3rd February 2026 23:54 GMT Doctor Syntax
Re: Meanwhile, back in the real world
Fair enough.
I suppose I should have made more clear that I'm basing it on a recognition at government or board level that the present situation is risky. This is, after all the premise of TFA.
I'd hope that anyone in the UK government would, for instance, assume at least the possibility that anything they write or discuss, any spreadsheets they prepare, any presentations they put together using any US-owned cloud could get back to anyone in the US government who wants to know and start from there. On that basis the person advocating Microsoft 365 is not only not bringing a solution, they are part of the problem.
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Wednesday 4th February 2026 03:08 GMT doublelayer
Re: Meanwhile, back in the real world
I would hope that the people with the authority would understand the risks of the tech they're using too and, having known that, would come up with a clear plan of where they wanted to go which they could stick with. Experience hasn't led me to believe that those hopes will be rewarded. Politicians are not good at understanding tech, providing resources for tech improvements, or sticking with any plan for the years it would take to fully change something this large. That's why, even when people sound supportive, I still try to find ways to make the change as easy as possible so I have to ask them for less help, therefore if they end up not being that motivated, maybe I can still manage it.
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Tuesday 3rd February 2026 16:34 GMT Doctor Syntax
"organizations scramble to buy AI-optimized servers and supporting infrastructure"
Why?
What they should be scrambling to bout is H/W optimised for the line of business applications that they've moved to foreign owned cloud purveyors. Given that they've been running such applications without AI for years and given the low ROI being reported for AI the priorities should be clear. If - and it's a big if - AI still looks worthwhile once they've done that, then they can look to adding AI-optimised servers.
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Tuesday 3rd February 2026 17:44 GMT Tron
Artificial idiocy.
A secure system is on prem, doesn't touch the public internet, does not use AI, and does not use SaaS or the cloud. At which point you can use any OS or software without worrying if it is American, because after set up, it never connects to the outside world again. No updates, no failed updates, no sending data back to the mothership.
Do this and your infrastructure/intranet is secure.
AI has no ROI/value/use and is a security/resilience issue. SaaS and the cloud are lock ins with security and resilience issues.
As for spending. Government spending doesn't count. They will spend whatever they want, as it isn't their money. Real spending may go down due to economic decline. Companies will be retrenching, hence all the redundancies.
Everyone needs to audit their tech with the above in mind and use less/simpler/non-networked tech, alongside paper if it costs less and makes sense. You do not need to record every piece of data you create for eternity.
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Tuesday 3rd February 2026 18:42 GMT Doctor Syntax
Re: Artificial idiocy.
"you can use any OS or software ... because after set up, it never connects to the outside world again"
Not if it's subscription software, you can't. It will check to see if its licence has been renewed. Given the trend of commercial software to move to a subscription model this limits choice.
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Tuesday 3rd February 2026 18:50 GMT Pascal Monett
I can't wait
I am hoping that I will see the day when Borkzilla, Oracle & Co are shut out from European borders and White House interference.
6.something% ? Are you kidding me ? You're going to need a lot more investment than that. You're going to need datacenters, you're going to need network administrators, technicians and even (shudder) actual desk jockeys that all know their job.
The good ones don't come cheap and you're going to need them if you really want this to work.
Time to put your money where your mouth is.
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Tuesday 3rd February 2026 23:08 GMT DS999
Gotta hand it to Trump
He took the idea of "America First" but because of his abject ignorance, stupidity, and inability to control his dementia addled impulses he's turned it into "America Only". Everyone now knows to flee reliance on American tech, American military hardware, American anything. It won't be fast, but now that it is motion it won't be stopped and it will be what he's remembered for in the history books. As the dumbest president in history, by far.
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Wednesday 4th February 2026 11:52 GMT elaar
Re: Gotta hand it to Trump
Exactly this.
If you continually use reliance on American technology/goods as a blackmailing weapon, then it may work at first, but will ultimately (in the medium to long term) cause large scale migrations away from that reliance. I would guess that the vast majority of Countries now wish to distance themselves from the US, and get their goods from elsewhere.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
