'The EU runs on Microsoft' – and Uncle Sam could turn it off, claims MEP

European tech leaders are waking up to the risk of the US simply turning off their IT services. The Register FOSS desk attended the 2026 Open Source Policy Summit in Brussels last week. The tone of the event was distinctly different to that of the same event three years ago. We encountered new notes of determination, expressed …

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet when I pointed this out in 2005

No cookies for me.

Fuck you all.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: And yet when I pointed this out in 2005

You haven't quite got the hang of 'discussions' on the 'interWebs' !!!

You can have an opinion, it may be 100% valid & true ...

BUT if it convinces no-one ...

then 'hard chesse' ...

the discussion about the 'Cat video' wins ALWAYS !!!

Don't take it personally ... the 'interWebs' as a whole has a rapidly decreasing IQ and attention span !!!

In spite of the fact that I also saw this coming, after Herr Trumps 1st act [POTUS Trial run 001], I hope that the EU & the rest of the world break their dependance on US Tech because this reduces the risks in these unsafe times.

[Amazing how history always manages to play the same tricks generation after generation, while everyone in looking in 1 direction [Putin] the real problem is somewhere else [Herr Trump] !!!]

:)

[Mrs Spartacus]

Re: And yet when I pointed this out in 2005

You're spot on.

Some n decades ago (I refuse to provide my date of birth, officer) I was sat next to a Royal Navy Lt Commander poring over some special very-long-wave radio kit, trying to analyze a message from a submarine. When I asked what the problem was, he simply said "I have a very low signal-to-noise ratio".

The phrase has stuck with me ever since, it was the earliest time I'd heard it. During the subsequent development of the interweb, and the cesspit it's become, it seemed apt. It sums it up nicely.

[I could be a dog really]

Re: And yet when I pointed this out in 2005

I recall discussions last century - when Microsoft was first making noises about subscription models, but failed. Even back then it was clear - subscription model == "sign blank cheques, the provider will decide what value to put on it when you want access to your own information". But as usual, too many people took short term convenience over long term freedom and jumped headlong into the mire we now see them in.

[IGotOut]

Re: And yet when I pointed this out in 2005

Oh your THAT ac, thought you were the other one.

[DrewPH]

Re: And yet when I pointed this out in 2005

And yet you post anonymously when I'd have thought you would want us to check back and verify the public comments you made in 2005...

[Doctor Syntax]

"We need code and speed, in place of coal and steel."

Nice one. We ancients remember the origin of the EU was the European Coal and Steel Community, rebuilding Europe after the damage of WWII.

[Liam Proven]

> the origin of the EU was the European Coal and Steel Community

TIL (Today I learned) something new. Thanks.

I reckon Doc Joch had been working on that line for a while. He didn't get a round of applause, but he deserved one. ;-)

[Tim99]

Yes, the idea was that steel and coal were essential for armament production. If they were controlled and integrated it would be almost impossible for the European members to go to war with one another. Churchill was a supporter, but did not want the UK included.

[kmorwath]

Actually back then coal and steel were the basis of the industry - any industry - not armaments only, and the fight for those resoruces (especially between France and Germany, while others, like Italy had no sources and depended on imports), were at the heart of the european continent wars. Ensuring a freer flow would improve the economy, avoiding the reusgence of facism and avoiding the appeal of communim among the blue collar workers.

[Smartypantz]

Nothing has changed

Except today its "Energy" (of which a lot is still coal) and "Rare earths".

[Headley_Grange]

Apt, considering that the Chinese dumping of cheap steel has all but destroyed the UK's steel production capacity.

The article is about Microsoft but the UK - and probably many other European countries - would struggle to be self-sufficient in anything. The basics - energy, food, clothes, transport - all depend on the rest of the world. The last 25 years of globaliztion has seen commodities, production and services move to the cheapest areas of production. It might not take the UK long to be self sufficient in food but there'd be no more strawberries at Christmas and our diet would revert to the more austere and seasonal one I remember from my youth.

[WhoMeGuvNah]

I genuinely wonder if certain people would hate self-sufficency if it meant no strawberries at Christmas.

[0laf]

Yep that's the rub. I don't think it would be too hard for the UK to be self sufficient in terms of food but the population might not be too happy about what they'd be eating.

Mainly root veg plus cabbages and a return to seasonality.

[VicMortimer]

Keep your Juche to yourself. I'll take the strawberries.

[Annihilator]

The risks and benefits of globalisation are pretty well understood though. The idea that every single country has its own ability to make everything it could ever possibly need is a very isolationist view. It makes sense for countries to specialise in certain areas, and to think that the UK for example (and let's just focus on IT here) would have an Intel/AMD-esque company to build chip, as an example, is pretty nuts - the cost to build a chip fab plant simply wouldn't pay for itself. Same with every country developing its own office suite would be madness too.

Where it becomes dangerous, is when monopolies appear and you're stuck with that one country. The whole point of the balance is meant to be a friendlier version of the old nuclear "mutually assured destruction" adage - yes you can isolate a country, but it'll bite you on the bum as they'll look to isolate you too. This is the bonkers thing that a certain north american government seems to not understand..

[Doctor Syntax]

The issue isn't self-sufficiency as such. It's not even about monopoly. It's about external control of critical infrastructure and the monopoly only comes into it as it's subject to external control. That said, breaking the monopoly with something freely available is the best way of dealing with the control problem.

[Jimjam3]

One big disadvantage of globalisation is the large amount of energy that needs to be devoted to transporting said items across the globe.

[rg287]

One big disadvantage of globalisation is the large amount of energy that needs to be devoted to transporting said items across the globe.

Yes and no. The energy per tonne is really very low, and falling with modern interest in sail-assisted freighters. Battery-electric also works for coastal freight and ferries. On a continental basis, investing into public transport (namely railways) can make transport emissions negligible compared with shipping or air-freight. And passenger travel for that matter. Flights from London to Amsterdam simply shouldn't exist given there's a perfectly good high speed railway there (it just needs to be run better, at higher capacity).

50% of shipping is moving hydrocarbons around, so if we move to non-hydrocarbon-based energy (renewables, nuclear, etc) then that cuts global shipping in half.

We also need to remember the idea of comparative advantage, and that miles don't necessarily mean an excessive carbon footprint. For instance, we are often implored to support local British farming and buy British lamb instead of New Zealand. However, due to the fact UK farming is much higher density, the overall carbon footprint of UK and NZ lamb is about the same - but ours is made up through pharmaceuticals and feed supplements, which basically break even with the transport cost from New Zealand (UK farming is higher density due to land prices, farming practices and climate - NZ can grow grass all year round where we have to bale hay and do supplemental feeding in winter. British farmers need to run more sheep/acre to be economically viable, which increases parasite load and drug use, etc).

Which is not to say we shouldn't buy British, but the idea that products which have to travel a distance are inherently inferior to something locally produced is not true.

As others have mentioned in the silicon world, there's simply no way every country could produce wafers, run semi-conductor fabs and package chips just for domestic consumption. Not to mention the supply-chain (noble gases, the right ultra-pure sand for wafer production, etc). Most countries just don't have those natural resources, same as we simply can't grow cocoa or coffee in Western Europe (notwithstanding energy-intensive heated greenhouses), and cereal crops don't grow well in the tropics.

Globalisation is great - buy from the people with the natural resources to do it best and cheapest. The only constraint we really need to put on that is monopoly controls (e.g. letting China corner the market in Rare Earths, having a huge % of semiconductor manufacturing in one or two countries on the Pacific Ring of Fire, letting the USA trample over the software market with MS/Google/Oracle, putting energy prices at the mercy of OPEC/Putin, or finding out most of our agricultural fertiliser comes from Ukraine), which not infrequently overlaps with national security concerns (buying steel from China is actually, mostly, fine. But we do need to maintain a bit of capacity for defence purposes, hence why the MoD ended up just buying out Sheffield Forgemasters to guarantee a sovereign casting capability).

The West undoubtedly overconsumes. The average US consumer throws away 100lb (45kg, 5.2 adult badgers or 0.001 Australian trams) of clothes per year. Textile waste in the US and Europe is horrific. We undoubtedly need to reduce consumption (in all parts of the economy - food, textiles, e-waste, etc) and lower hydrocarbon usage for transporting the remainder.

In some respects we require more globalisation, not less. For instance, there is no import tax into the EU on green coffee beans, but a substantial tariff on roasted or instant coffee - encouraging growers to ship green beans and not develop local processing industries (to protect mostly German roasters). The upshot is that we're shipping water around the world (in the beans), instead of roasting in Africa where it's hot and they have ample solar resource for low-carbon processing, and then shipping the roasted/dehydrated product.

[Lon24]

"Flights from London to Amsterdam simply shouldn't exist given there's a perfectly good high speed railway"

I totally agree. I had to go there, transit time was not an issue. Going via Eurostar or Hook of Holland ferry was around £150/200. Easyjet was £25. I don't mind paying more to go green but that is getting very silly.

[Anonymous Coward]

"The risks and benefits of globalisation are pretty well understood though. "

No, they aren't undestood at all where the decisions are made. "What's the cheapest?" and who cares even if the servers are in North Korea. Or USA, same thing.

*Someone* sure understands, but they aren't asked.

[Al fazed]

You need to get pout more

Whilst I totally agree with the main thrust of your observation, I believe your distopian view is not uncommon.

However, contrary to mass public opinion, we can use hydroponics, aqaua culture etc, to grow strawberries etc, well out of season, er as long as Microsoft, AWS and Palantir etc take no part in the production process or the supply chain.

There are other physics myths which we via public education, have been force fed in the UK. Over the years many people repeat the same myth without having caught up with real life.

Energy from water ?

1. you get hydrogen and oxygen for a drop of water using a small photo voltaic panel.

2. the gases once release expand at rate and can, in a sealed system drive a piston.

3. After maximum expansion pressure has been utilised, reversing the polarity of the current reassembles the gases into the original drop of water and piston returns to base.

4. No waste, no heat produced.

My plasma physicist pal who explained this to me many years ago, was swallowed up by that Aldermaston Research place shortly after he was given his doctorate at Maudlin College, Oxford..

Obviously

ALF

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: You need to 'get out' more

Please demonstrate:

3. After maximum expansion pressure has been utilised, reversing the polarity of the current reassembles the gases into the original drop of water and piston returns to base.

It reads like you place 2 electrodes in the mixture of Oxygen & Hydrogen ... apply power and you have water !!!

I am sure the description of what you do & what happens next is a 'little' too brief and is missing some 'detail' !!!

:)

[Headley_Grange]

Re: You need to get pout more

Sure, with heat, water, polytunnels and fertilizer you can grow anything anywhere anytime but if we had to grow all our own food then farmers wouldn't be allowed to waste space and resources growing luxury soft fruits out of season. They'd be growing potatoes, wheat, barley and sugar beet with a few luxuries, like turnips and parsnips, chucked in to keep the population sweet.

[Jimjam3]

Re: You need to get pout more

Energy from water?

Err it’s not a source of energy, in fact in your example photons are. And to tell you the true you would need a massive amount of them to split H2O into their corresponding gases. Never mind the rest of the nonsense steps described.

Maybe you meant to put an /s at the end of your post?

[Liam Proven]

Re: You need to get pout more

> Energy from water ?

Yeah, no.

You've dressed it up in fancy wording but what you said is "why don't we just build perpetual motion machines?!!!?"

[Steve Davies 3]

Re: No waste, no heat produced.

Almost anything that moves will generate heat due to friction. It might be small in the grand scheme of things but it is there. Even Air bearings generate some heat in the air molecules.

[Missing Semicolon]

Labour are seeing to it that self-sufficiency in food is a distant dream.

[rg287]

Labour are seeing to it that self-sufficiency in food is a distant dream.

The Tories and Whigs did that. We haven't been self-sufficient for food since the 1700s. During WW1/WW2 we got somewhere close to calorie self-sufficiency, but that involved wartime economics, rationing, giving farmers free labour (land girls), and still left us open to shortages of salad and vitamin-rich/nutritious foods because you can't survive on basic starch sources alone. You also have to be selective in whether you allow things like barley to be used for whisky/beer or turn the land to wheat for bread. At what point does the population mutiny?

Modern farming can do a lot in terms of labour-saving. And we have better fertilizers (albeit many imported) and much more sophisticated soil science knowhow. But there remains the question how sustainable the wartime surges were in the long-run when you consider things like soil health and limiting your fallow periods/rotations to maintain high output for 4-5 years. We know we need to rewild significant portions of the country for climate resiliance (flood defence, water table management, etc) and maintaining pollinator biodiversity (see: Loch Neagh ecosystem collapse), along with growing commercial timber (pivoting to engineered wood and paper products in favour of steel and plastics, etc).

And as Adam Smith himself noted, you could grow grapes in Scotland (with a heated greenhouse), but the wine it made would be awful. Better that Scotland sticks with Whisky and we buy our wine abroad (albeit UK vineyards are developing at pace, but sub in any other climate-specific crop).

[nobody who matters]

"It might not take the UK long to be self sufficient in food but there'd be no more strawberries at Christmas"

There are a growing number of UK farms producing strawberries in the UK all year round - on a large scale - in large greenhouses. The need to import strawberries for the UK market in wintertime is dimishing significantly.

As for complete UK self-sufficiency in food production - very little chance if the Government continue to allow farming to be financially squeezed so that farmers are only too happy to assist with the Goverments insistance on covering the countryside in solar panels, and allowing eco-fanatics to prevent them from producing food efficiently.

[cookieMonster]

I’m not qualified to enter into a detailed discussion on this topic, but here in France a large number of wine producers are installing solar panels in their vineyards. The are two benefits in doing this, they sell the generated electricity thus subsidising their income and also have a protective shield for their crops when the hail storms come, thus reducing the damage to the crops. How effective this is I’m unsure off, but it’s a thing down here now.

Pint icon as there’s no glass of wine icon.

[Anonymous Coward]

A greenhouse isn't sufficient to allow many of the things we like to eat in the UK to grow in the UK.

These greenouses need to be heated as well. I had a conversation with a salad farmer (didn't know there was such a thing till I met him) and he was pulling out of that business becasue energy prices were so high it was impossible for him to make any profit. But he also said the salad farming economy was wrecked throughout northern Europe due to energy prices.

Not an issue if you like you potatoes and turnips but if you like your salad veg you'll be growing your own soon or paying a large premium.

[nobody who matters]

"These greenouses need to be heated as well. "

They do indeed, and increasingly large scale greenhouses are being heated using heat from an anaerobic digestion plant (which would otherwise just be waste, discharged to the atmosphere). There is a 10ha greenhouse on a farm near Boston, Lincolnshire which was erected specifically to harness the waste heat from an AD plant that had been built there a few years previously (the main purpose of which is electricity generation).

And yes, it produces strawberries all the year round (around 1200 tonnes of them!)

British Sugar have a similar AD plant and an 18ha greenhouse set up near Kings Lynn, fueled by the waste from processing sugar beet - it used to produce a large proportion of the tomatoes sold in the UK, but nowadays is used for pharmaceutical crop production, which is significantly more profitable).

In both cases, the AD plant is primarily for electricity generation feeding into the grid, and that is where the money is made, so the heat is just a waste by-product, and for the greenhouses is effectively free.

"Not an issue if you like you potatoes and turnips"

Add to that: carrots, parsnips, beetroot, leeks, onions, cabbages, Brussels sprouts, cauliflowers, spinach, kale, broccoli etc.........all of which are produced all year round on UK farms - outside; in fields, with no greenhouse needed at all.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sprouts can't be grown all year round. There's a rule about sprouts that they can only be ready to harvest when it's so cold that your eyeballs freeze and your lips crack so badly that you can't speak, smile or eat anything that doesn't fit on a teaspoon for 3 days. From literally bitter experience as a kid in the 70s

[nobody who matters]

True, but we don't actually get them all year round (we don't import them from anywhere else), but nowadays they are available from UK production for more than half the year.

I wasn't keen when I was young either, but now they are my most used green veg.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, didn't make it clear. I was talking about picking them for extra pocket money at Christmas, not eating them. I can't stand the sight of them, never mind the taste.

[David Hicklin]

> to prevent them from producing food efficiently.

The solar farms around here are part of the regular field rotation for sheep so the land is not wasted at all.

[JulieM]

Individual vs Collective

And that's why attempting individual self-sufficiency is actually a bad thing. You will always end up with more of something than you can make use of and not enough of something else. A much more viable strategy is collective self-sufficiency, with enough diversity to allow a surplus for one member of the group to end up cancelling out another member's deficit.

[Anonymous Coward]

no more strawberries at Christmas

I'm from Glasgow. WTF is a strawberry?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: no more strawberries at Christmas

The sweet red mush inside that ball of crispy batter.

[VicMortimer]

Self sufficiency - the idea that North Korea is doing everything right, and every country should aspire to be more like North Korea.

[Roland6]

> It might not take the UK long to be self sufficient in food

Well you have to go back a long way to get to a time when the UK could be considered as being self-sufficient in food; potentially before the Napoleonic wars of 1805-1815 when the UK's population was a little over 10M.

However, given modern technology, I suggest we could be mostly self-sufficient with a population of circa 35M. the challenge is getting there whilst maintaining a civilised society.

[that one in the corner]

> our diet would revert to the more austere and seasonal one I remember from my youth.

Although it was seasonal and the basic ingredients were more - basic - the food of my youth was varied and enjoyable (except the broccoli, of course).

But then, my mum was a good cook and she made sure that we all knew how to cook (and did so for the family): there is more than one way to prepare potatoes and a vast range of breads.

To my shame, with all the modern 'convenience' my cooking skills have gone downhill as the decades progress: it is easier to maintain your abilities, in the face of so much else to do and so little time, when it is a commonplace necessity to do so.

[SundogUK]

The US Marshall Plan was for rebuilding Europe after the damage of WWII. The European Coal and Steel Community was planned as a way of stopping it happening again.

[Headley_Grange]

Hope Springs Eternal

Sure they could turn it off but Microsoft's markets, together with those of many other US S/W companies, would disappear within a couple of years as countries all over the world developed their own or turned to non-US alternatives. Microsoft might not even survive the share-price drop that would result from it. That would be something to remember Trump for.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Hope Springs Eternal

Indeed it might be long-term damaging for Microsoft if that were to happen. The short term damage to their customers would be greater. The ideal strategy from Microsoft's point of view would be to ensure their customers wouldn't be damaged. If they're serious about providing sovereign service for their customers they need to ensure that the service they provide in other countries is at sufficient arm's length that a US government of any persuasion couldn't reach that far. They also need to do that for business customers as well as government. I doubt they've done that.

There's also CLOUD Act and National Security Letters to consider.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Hope Springs Eternal

Oh, it's much, much worse what Microsoft does.

As I pointed out before, with the AI it has snuck into everything it can live intercept, transliterate and then interpret and analyse every conversation that is held over Teams (read: Echelon NG). It already has a firm grip on email, and for IP theft you're helping it along with Purview where you identify what is important so they can ignore the dross - and you store it all on THEIR systems.

Add to that that your login protection is worth squat as Microsoft is the last element in your authorisation and authentication chain and they can make their own access codes without breaking a sweat, and given that THEY hold the access logs too you won't even know they (or their agency friends) have paid you a visit. And I haven't even asked if their security updates are really updates, that's more for conspiracy theorists.

And you walked right into this.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Hope Springs Eternal

"Add to that that your login protection is worth squat as Microsoft is the last element in your authorisation and authentication chain"

Oh, no it isn't.

"And you walked right into this"

Oh, no I didn't.

I hope you don't write code without hte appropriate conditionals.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Hope Springs Eternal

Just check your login process - you will see it go to login.microsoft.com where it picks up the authentication token. Yes, it starts from "your" Entra but the end of that long chain is Microsoft.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Hope Springs Eternal

Let me repeat: I hope you don't write code without the appropriate conditionals.

sddm has a dependency on elogind but elogind doesn't have a dependency on Microsoft (just to ensure that, Agent P's abomination is not installed).

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Hope Springs Eternal

" If they're serious about providing sovereign service"

They can't, literally. Just because of CLOUD act. They *can* buy services from a third party, but then it's not a Micsoft service anymore.

[Liam Proven]

Re: Hope Springs Eternal

> Microsoft's markets [...] would disappear within a couple of years

"You say that like it's a _bad_ thing."

Look, if we have WW3 -- when we have it? -- then it's over anyway.

That's why they're all in Go For Broke mode anyway. Strip mine the assets, hide 'em, build their bunkers and hide in 'em.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Hope Springs Eternal

But don't forget that MS doesn't have a choice if Trump picks up the phone and instructs Satya to do it.

I too couldn't see MS invoking MAD (mutually assured destruction) willingly, but the way things are, they might not have a choice.

I think it would be a great thing (although not for the victim) if it did happen to some large entity (say the government of a country that doesn't like the orange one's backside) - it would give everyone else some sense of urgency and scale of the risk to themselves.

IT angle - experience shows that it can be hard to sell a UPS or backup system to a client ... until just after they've had a power cut that corrupted their server and/or lost important information that wasn't backed up. At present, most governments are still in denial that there's a risk - in the UK, government departments really would grind to an immediate halt if MS flicked the switch and (from observation) Defence seems determined to make themselves even more reliant rather than less.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Hope Springs Eternal

Not just MS - many government departments use AWS, and rely on Oracle for back office, a repeatedly hacked US corporation for user authentication, a certain US company for the overwhelming majority of government mobile phones, etc etc.

[TimMaher]

Re: Oracle

Yup. Just ask anyone in Birmingham.

[Liam Proven]

Re: Hope Springs Eternal

> But don't forget that MS doesn't have a choice if Trump picks up the phone and instructs Satya to do it.

Don't forget?

That is THE KEY POINT OF THE ARTICLE.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Hope Springs Eternal

"Sure they could turn it off but Microsoft's markets, together with those of many other US S/W companies, would disappear within a couple of years as countries all over the world developed their own or turned to non-US alternatives."

While true, *everything* within Microsoft systems would be permanently lost, right now. Most countries would not survive that, but collapse immediately.

AFAIK there isn't a country which could run national bureucracy manually. Or without Microsoft.

I see that as a serious security problem .... i.e. no security at all: MS/US government/NSA has access to every single thing state is doing or even planning to do.

That's literally no security - situation.

Here in North state moved whole citizenship registry to AWS. Everything is now accessible to NSA and making fake identities with all of that data is trivial.

Then the morons said that nono, we didn't do anything wrong, fully knowing that exporting *any* of that data outside country is literally illegal.

Idiocy at that level should be a shooting offence.

[Eclectic Man]

Reality bites

I am unlikely to be popular for this, but, the fact is that the USA military and intelligence 'communities' are deeply embedded in both the UK's and the rest of NATO's military and intelligence gathering organisations. The USA's NSA is embedded in the UK's GCHQ, the USA's armed forces are embedded in the UK's armed forces. The UK buys weapons from the USA that can only be used with their permission. The UK's nuclear deterrent is rented from the USA and can only be used with American permission. How long would 'our' F35's fly without American support?

Even if they would let us, disentangling the UK's intelligence and military from the USA would take years. And not to mention the high probability that there are people in the pay of the USA in important positions in the UK that are not officially known to be working for the USA. It may not be quite so bad in other countries, but the USA will probably let us 'have our fun' when it comes to getting rid of MS (after all they probably have 'kill switches' for the replacement software anyway), but at far as letting us genuinely disengage from American control, not a chance.

(Sorry)

[VoiceOfTruth]

Re: Reality bites

You are stating facts, so expect down votes.

Europe is occupied by the USA. Britain is a rump state, in hock forever.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Reality bites

Europe is occupied by the USA.

Correct. It's a vassal continent. The price paid for US involvement in WW2.

Since then, corporations, at the behest of successive US governments, have worked to enrich China, starting with the Nixon-Mao love-in. They created a monster that's grown out of control and now the US is unable to direct sufficient resources to control all parts of the globe simultaneously. That's the root cause of all the geopolitical chaos which we're living through currently. It's back to spheres of influence and, unfortunately, the European lapdog is about to become the plaything of the Russian bear and Chinese dragon.

Mark my words, the insanity set to ensue in the coming years will make many, if not a majority, of Europeans considering the unthinkable - was the wrong side victorious in WW2?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Reality bites

"The price paid for US involvement in WW2."

BS. It's just colonialism as usual. US is of course 'spreading freedom' instead of calling it colonialism, but that's what it is. All of it.

Germany had lost the war long before D-day as campaign against Soviet Union failed totally and Nazis lost almost all of their army. What was left was barely enough to keep occupied countries occupied and couldn't offer any significant resistance to attacks.

If anyone, Soviet Union was the hero here, just for their own reasons.

Basically US army came to empty land and declared themselves winners. As usual. US history doesn't tell it so, so none of the americans know it. As usual, too.

[rg287]

Re: Reality bites

Yes, Hitler lost the ar the day he opened an Eastern Front.

Now, that's not to be too hard on the Americans (who can always be counted on to do the right thing... eventually), whose troops fought well and hard on D-Day.

But American help merely expedited victory. Germany was done, the Soviets had ground them down (at great cost) in the East - US involvement sped up the process and saved it being a long, drawn-out grind in the West.

[WSWS]

Re: Reality bites

You do realise that the Americans gave the Soviets literally *millions of tonnes* of equipment, right?

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Reality bites

You have some good points and a lot of it goes back as far as Harold Wilson's government.

But "after all they probably have 'kill switches' for the replacement software anyway". Really? Please point to the kill switches in FOSS.

[Eclectic Man]

Re: Reality bites

Please point to the kill switches in FOSS.

I did say "probably", and if I knew, I would alert the relevant bug people, not publicise it on this website. In any case just because something is open source, does not mean it is safe, see:

"The International Obfuscated C Code Contest" at https://www.ioccc.org

[Liam Proven]

Re: Reality bites

> In any case just because something is open source, does not mean it is safe

"Trusting trust."

Better than trusting Bill Gates, TBH.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Reality bites

I would trust Bill Gates more than the current crews running big tech, or the left-pondian government (albeit that doesn't say much, as doubling something indistinguishable from zero is still indistinguishable from zero). And when it comes to his orangeness, ISTR comments a decade or so later about there couldn't be a US President worse than GWB...

[Northern Lad]

Re: Reality bites

Time to forget Bill Gates, he's long gone from MS, although he may have a part time 'consultancy' role on paper, prob gets a few bucks a month :-)

Going to be funny when Billy dies, suddenly everybody will have to work out who really runs MS :-)

[Dan 55]

Re: Reality bites

Intel ME/AMT.

[VoiceOfTruth]

Re: Reality bites

>> Please point to the kill switches in FOSS.

Kill switches? None that I know of. But there are sanctions. US law prevents open source projects being shared with North Korea, for example.

People will say 'well that's North Korea'. Try telling that now to Canada.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Reality bites

"US law prevents open source projects being shared with North Korea, for example."

And how do they prevent it?

[VoiceOfTruth]

Re: Reality bites

By having people like ICE thugs smash down your door and disappearing you.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Reality bites

I knew ICE were getting as far as Italy for the Winter Olympics but this is the first time I heard of them in North Korea.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Reality bites

The hope is that they feel so at home they'll stay there..

[doublelayer]

Re: Reality bites

The law may try to prevent it, and it would succeed in the sense that people don't sign support contracts with Pyongyang, not that North Korea has any interest in paying foreigners to maintain their software, but North Korea has all that open source code, same as anyone else, and they use it. They use KDE as their desktop environment and lots of components from Fedora, and the US does not try to punish the KDE community or IBM/Red Hat for that because neither did anything to help them. US law does not, nor could it likely succeed, try to enforce people keeping open source code from North Korea's maintainers.

[kmorwath]

Re: Reality bites

That's an example that shows very well why FOSS would be a very bad idea for EU software development - they would basically work for free for US, China & their friends. Which won't do the same, nor say thank you.

I've listenet to Eric Schimdt trying to convince EU to produce open LLM models - I wonder why he doesn't ask US companies to open soruce theirs....

But the saying "what is yours is mine, what is mine is mine!" is what make both hypercapitalisys and communinst leaders look like the same thing.

[nobody who matters]

Re: Reality bites

"The UK's nuclear deterrent is rented from the USA and can only be used with American permission

That is incorrect.

The UK nuclear deterrent (Trident) is not rented from the US; it is owned by the UK and the nuclear warheads fitted to it are UK designed and manufactured.

It is true that whilst Trident was bought by the UK, the way it works in practice is that the individual missiles themselves are stored and maintained in the US when not deployed in the UK,s Vanguard class submarines, whilst the British warheads are manufactured, stored and maintained by the AWE at Aldermaston.

Nonetheless, whilst installed in the Royal Navy boats, they are not under US control. The UK does not need US permission to use them, the US has no right of veto under the sale terms, but the the sale agreement with US does make clear that the weapons are fully committed to NATO and their use independently of NATO action should only happen where there is a "supreme national interest" in doing so.

The nuclear weapons of both the UK and France are outside of US control. The nuclear weapons held by other European countries however are leased from the US as part of their NATO committments and therefore the US does directly control when and how those weapons may be used.

The rest of your post is largely correct, I think, and you have articulated the same concerns over the deep intertwining of US and UK systems that this presents to the change in the European/UK relationship with the US.

[Eclectic Man]

Re: Reality bites

OK, thanks for the information about Trident.

However, the UK's new F-35A nuclear weapons are only usable with American permission, see:

https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/uk-confirms-us-control-of-nuclear-weapons-for-f-35a-role/

"The UK’s planned air-launched nuclear capability for its F-35A Lightning II aircraft will rely on US-controlled weapons under NATO’s nuclear sharing arrangements, the Ministry of Defence confirmed.

Responding to a parliamentary question from Conservative MP Mike Wood, Minister of State for Defence Luke Pollard reiterated that the nuclear weapons assigned to NATO’s dual capable aircraft mission are United States assets and remain under US control and custody."

[nobody who matters]

Re: Reality bites

"However, the UK's new F-35A nuclear weapons are only usable with American permission,"

That is just disingenuous deflection of the discussion.

Any nuclear weapons to be delivered by RAF F35s would be used as part of existing commitments to NATO and will be drawn from US stocks in the first place - those stocks including the nuclear weapons leased to other NATO members in Europe. The UK does not have any nuclear warheads/bombs for dropping from aircraft - previously held UK stocks of airborne nuclear warheads were decommissioned and disposed of over 20 years ago, so we no longer have any and there is no intention (or money) to acquire any.

The UK is neither acquiring extra nuclear warheads for airborne delivery , nor is the UK going to reduce or replace Trident with them.

[Eclectic Man]

Re: Reality bites

Sorry for the late reply, but you do know that AWE is in very frequent contact with their American counterparts don't you? When DOGE fired a lot of the USA's nuclear staff, the AWE staff who relied on them in order to maintain the UK's 'independent' nuclear deterrent were at a loss. The American managers were reduced to contacting their former staff on Facebook and other commercial sites to get them back.

Even if the Americans do not have the ability to directly prevent the launch of a nuclear Trident missile, they could make it impossible for the UK to maintain its nuclear deterrent for very long.

(I have a friend who currently works at AWE, and visits the USA regularly for work.)

[rg287]

Re: Reality bites

However, the UK's new F-35A nuclear weapons are only usable with American permission, see:

Yeah, but nobody cares because that whole acquisition is pointless.

The B61 is a tactical weapon with a sub-megatonne yield. We will never use a tactical nuclear weapon because it then crosses a line to the point where strategic nuclear weapons might be used. We don't ever want to lower the threshold for use of nuclear weapons.

If it all goes wrong and strategic weapons are being used, British F35As could barely reach Eastern Europe with a full combat load. Even if staged forward, they'd make it to Russian targets well after the ICBMs. And we're only buying 12, so at best you might have 3-4 actually airworthy and available to deploy. 4 sub-megatonne weapons in a shooting match between multi-megatonne MIRVs. Whoop whoop. Our enemies will be shaking in their boots.

[VoiceOfTruth]

Re: Reality bites

>> the US has no right of veto under the sale terms

You have your head really deep in the sand. The USA can and would prevent the use of Trident. A written agreement with the USA is not worth the paper it is written on - ask Canada.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Reality bites

No, they physically do not have that capability.

As another has stated, the missiles loaded on the UK boats are owned by the UK and controlled by the UK - there is no connection to the US. If the US wanted to stop the use of them, they could not do it - at least, not by the sort of "kill switch" or remote permissioning arrangement you assume.

What would be a problem is that the missiles are returned to the US and put back into a shared pool to be maintained in the US by a US contractor. And we draw replacements from that shared pool for ongoing use. Should we "fall out" with the US, then we'd lose access to that maintenance process, and the missiles would quickly go past their service/maintenance intervals. I doubt they'd stop working, just like food doesn't magically go from "perfectly fine" to "rancid green fuzzy ball" at midnight on the expiry date printed on the packet. But it would be an "interesting" exercise working out how long they remain "safe" to use.

From a deterrent PoV, an adversary would have to assume that we still had the capability to launch - simply because we would, just with a slightly higher (and increasing) risk of it not going to plan.

[VoiceOfTruth]

Re: Reality bites

>> there is no connection to the US. If the US wanted to stop the use of them, they could not do it

UK Trident missiles are entirely dependent on the USA for targeting.

I feel confident that Trump has already hinted at this in the 'backroom discussions' with Britain. It's more tariffs, or no missiles.

[pkme]

Re: Reality bites

That's not true. From the UKDJ -

"The missile uses a kind of stellar sighting guidance system and inertial navigation to take a reading from the stars to work out the missile’s position and make any adjustments necessary. They do not require GPS."

[VoiceOfTruth]

Re: Reality bites

Do you have any actual verification of that? Maybe that's what the dumbos at the MOD think. Maybe that's what the dumbos at the MOD have been told.

Maybe, just a bit more than than maybe, the missiles supplied to the UK do not actually work as it says on the tin.

[Sandtitz]

Re: Reality bites

"Maybe...Mayber...Maybe...maybe"

So you don't actually know the subject at hand but it doesn't stop you from postulating fantastic theories as fact. Fascinating.

Please keep digging yourself deeper!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Reality bites

Isn't that typical though, for a user/website/video channel with "truth" in its name?

Besides, even if it did use GNSS, there are many services available other than GPS. Even my phone works with 4 of them!

[midgepad]

Re: Reality bites

The problem with that is that if the USA could, then so could another State level actor.

The devices are available for inspection, and are surrounded by clever people with a personal interest in there being no unexpected behaviours.

[doublelayer]

Re: Reality bites

By the time someone decides they want to fire nuclear missiles, paper agreements and the economic or political leverage you're talking about no longer matter. If the US wanted to stop someone who was already determined to launch nukes, they would probably have to threaten military consequences. Your concerns might be more relevant in smaller-scale events, but if the question is whether the missiles would fire, the answer is yes, and if someone with the ability feels it's worth launching them, there's not a lot that can stop them.

[Roj Blake]

Re: Reality bites

The missiles are leased from the US. The US would be insane to export ICBM technology without a kill switch. Most of our medium-and long-range weaponry also relies on GPS for guidance. And guess who owns that?

[Excused Boots]

Re: Reality bites

It is assumed that GPS will be one of the first things to be destroyed in an all-out war, so designing your ultimate deterrent weapon to be reliant on it would be a bit shortsighted. The missiles are not really ‘leased’ from the US as such, the UK owns some 58 which are taken randomly from a shared (with the USN) pool of missiles. The US is not exporting ICBM technology.

Presumably any ‘kill switch’ would then have to be installed in all the missiles, including those used by the USN. Trident is a weapon of absolute last resort, they have no abort, no disarm, no self-destruct nothing that could, potentially, be ‘hacked’ by an adversary.*

The reality is that, if, in absolute extremis, the PM authorises a Trident launch, the message will get through, the missile(s) will launch (maybe some failures are to be expected), the warheads will find themselves over their designated targets and the physics package will detonate.

*There was an embarrassing launch failure during a test in 2024(?) which turned out to be due to the extra equipment fitted to provide telemetry, and as it was a test, to ensure that it did follow the prescribed path.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Reality bites

Yes, DASO (demonstration and shakedown operations) failures are ... a bit embarrassing to say the least. But as you point out, the actual failure was due to the test package payload, and as colleagues are happy to point out, the bit we're responsible for worked perfectly - the test missile was launched. Not our problem if the blue touchpaper failed to light it.

[SundogUK]

Re: Reality bites

They're not leased, they don't use GPS and you are talking out your arse.

[Pete Sdev]

Re: Reality bites

While the UK's Trident WoMD can be fired without permission from the US, the USA could nuclearly disarm the UK over (a probably fairly short) time by simply no longer providing support or maintenance for the actual missiles. The warheads themselves being obviously not much use if you can't launch them.

Coming up with a new equivalent missile system and retro-fitting the subs would take a not insignificant amount of time and money.

Icon -> obvious

[lvd]

Re: Reality bites

"USA could nuclearly disarm the UK over (a probably fairly short) time by simply no longer providing support or maintenance for the actual missiles

It would be nice to think that there's a bunch of Defence Science and Technology Laboratory boffins somewhere working quietly on the UK being able to do its own maintenance and store all the missiles over here. Were I the PM, that's the first thing I'd have instigated when the orange oaf was re-elected. Second thing would have been getting the Dreadnought boats altered to be able to carry French missiles as well as Trident and the third would be to talk to the French government about buying some.

But this is a British government we're talking about, so that probably hasn't even crossed Starmer's mind.

Not that I'm a fan of a nuclear Armageddon - I grew up during the Cold War - but the one thing the last few years have shown us is that the lout in the White House and the warmonger in the Kremlin only understand the use of force, or the threat thereof.

[Liam Proven]

Re: Reality bites

> the USA military and intelligence 'communities' are deeply embedded in both the UK's and the rest of NATO's military and intelligence gathering organisations.

That's the point of Dirk S's line:

Don't look at the mountains in the distance. Focus on the concrete steps you can take now.

I don't just make this stuff up, you know. I've done it. I have worked in several different "100% Microsoft" companies in the last decade, and used Linux and FOSS to do it.

Either a Linux desktop and remote-desktop clients, or Windows with locally-installed LibreOffice etc.

The loud MS pundits say it can't be done, that the compatibility isn't there, that you can't round-trip.

The loud MS pundits, though, we must remember are the folks that are too technically incompetent to run Linux and too bigoted to run Macs. They're the scum floating at the top of IT. They don't know JACK from Pipewire, and they are wrong.

You can do it. I know because _I have done it._ For years at a time. The companies never even knew. It works fine. Even Thunderbird can now talk direct to Exchange without plugins.

You focus on the achievable stuff.

1. Add new local clients on existing OSes. Help users adapt.

2. Remove expensive proprietary client apps. Put 'em back for the 0.1% who need them and make it clear *all* costs are going on their budget.

3. Now you have more open client apps, add new standards-based server ones. Start turning off the paid ones and consolidating and downscaling.

4. In parallel you can start replacing some client OSes.

You do this aggressively and in 1 PC refresh cycle you've saved 25% or something of the license budget, Finance is on your side and likes you, and you've reduced your exposure to attack as well.

Placate the loud tech-nitwits in suits with shiny Macbooks.

End result: no change in strategy, no big bang, but you cut your outgoing costs, you cut licence fees, you cut malware vulnerability, and you're still in the same networks and partnerships and the others don't even know you shifted.

Don't move mountains. Dig up the paved-over garden and regreen it. Leave the mountains where they are. Worry about the yard.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Reality bites

"The loud MS pundits say it can't be done, that the compatibility isn't there, that you can't round-trip."

And once you've set your direction towards the mountain that becomes an incompatibility on MS's part. If the MS pundits see that as a problem it's up to them to bring solutions.

Set digital sovereignty as a policy, the strategy has to follow and suddenly everything looks different. It's the policy makers who have to be won over and it seems as if that's happening.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Reality bites

All very fine ... unless corporategovernment department policy is to go full steam into deploying and using every tool in the M365 suite, embedding them in business processes, and making it ever harder to turn around.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Reality bites

unless corporategovernment department policy is to go full steam into deploying and using every tool in the M365 suite, embedding them in business processes, and making it ever harder to turn around.

You work for government too?

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Reality bites

Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Reality bites

He/she(/it?) is correctly referring to the process of entanglement that Microsoft uses to make their later removal very, very difficult and prohibitively* expensive.

* _{If you follow standard accounting behaviour of not looking further than one's nose is long and carefully avoid looking at CAPEX and OPEX combined}

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Reality bites

He/she/it?) was replying to a post predicated on what happens if one policy is set with an assumption that a policy would be set in the opposite direction. Possibly that wasn't meant but it was what was written. On the whole I think stumbling in the dark rather than actual policy is where we've got into the mess of governments and businesses being stuck with Windows/Office<365.

Go back to my original point. When policy is set strategy, CAPEX, OPEX, Old Uncle Tom Cobbleigh and all eventually end up following. Anyone interested in their own career development could usefully invest a little of their time in researching alternative technologies.

[doublelayer]

Re: Reality bites

The problem is that your approach is easy when you have total control of everything. If you actually do have total control of everything, then it's close to the best approach. You probably don't. Liam's approach is better for the many situations where you might have that policy but not an infinite budget or complete permission to accept any pain, system outages, employee firings, etc that you frequently recommend. It's nice to dream that whatever change we want will be mandated by people who give us free rein to implement it in whatever way we think best regardless of the consequences, but I've never been given that power before and I don't think you will this time.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Reality bites

"I don't think you will this time."

I won't, I'm long retired.

But to go back to the premise of Liam's report. It's very simple. The policy makers are starting to wake up to the fact that there's a real political risk in their dependency on service providers under control of a whimsical foreign government. That awakening will surely be faster in mainland Europe than the UK, sadly.

To use the analogy, once it's decided - as a matter of policy - which mountain is being aimed for then that's were the steps will be directed. Depending on the sense of urgency, budget will become available, partly because policy directs strategy and strategy will determine the criteria for how projects get implemented and partly because smaller steps will be taken in that direction. Once that starts to happen it will be a better career move to be able to bring solutions rather than problems.

[Zack Mollusc]

Re: Reality bites

Why not implement a tax on the use of 'foreign' software? Harder to justify £20,000 a year on office 365 when the tax is another £90,000 on top, plus another £90,000 for the operating system.

I doubt that anyone can hide their telemetry from the spooks.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Reality bites

"You can do it. I know because _I have done it._ For years at a time. The companies never even knew."

That is getting harder to do though. Network access control and posture checks mean it's increasingly hard to fly under the radar like that, and if it does come to the attention of IT, you're into conversations about compliance and so on, and it can get very awkward.

In some organisations that could end up a serious disciplinary matter. And just because you have an argument for what you're doing, it doesn't mean that there's someone willing to listen to it.

I don't disagree with the intent here, and I've done some of this myself, but I'd be wary of advising people to do this without a lot of thought as to what they're getting themselves into.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Reality bites

It's things like Recall and turning to Coprolite that will make compliance harder. Companies with compliance requirements should really be looking hard at what they deploy.

[Liam Proven]

Re: Reality bites

> it's increasingly hard to fly under the radar like that

You have seized hold of the wrong end of the stick and are growling and pulling at it.

The EU is made up of governments. Governments own and run their own computers. They choose what they run.

It's not about evading controls. That's an irrelevant minor side-issue.

The point is, you can run in a networked controlled MS-centric environment with mostly or entirely FOSS tools. It works. It may not work _great_ but that does not matter as much as _it works at all_.

That means that if you are willing to accept a few pains and annoyances, you can do this, now, today, with free tools.

And there are two arguments why this is worth it:

1. For a state-sized entity, you can save hundreds of millions of dollars. Not "not spend" but save: as in, keep the money inside your state, rather than send it to a somewhat hostile foreign state.

2. Don't forget, the 100% pure all-MS solution is _already_ riddled with pains and annoyances. It's an over-complicated mess which the company can't even pretend it can fix any more and so instead it's leaning hard into adding more annoyances, such as crappy LLM bots, integrated spyware, etc.

So you can't lose. Yes it will cost billions. But you're spending billions _anyway_.

No it won't work very well. But it doesn't work very well anyway.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Reality bites

"The loud MS pundits say it can't be done, that the compatibility isn't there, that you can't round-trip."

They're idiots. Of course, that's *the reason* they're MS pundits.

Previous company was running basically everything on Centos and IIRC only financial department had couple of windows machines for some obscure software of theirs. Nowadays you wouldn't need even those and could use a cloud for similar stuff.

[SundogUK]

Re: Reality bites

"The UK's nuclear deterrent is rented from the USA and can only be used with American permission."

This has not been true for decades. The UK deterrence systems are developed here: https://www.awe.co.uk/

[CharliePsycho]

Re: Reality bites

Urban myth.

Just how long do you think it took us to crack the pathetic US code surrounding the Trident guidance and firing systems?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Reality bites

Mostly correct, but it's a commonly mistaken assumption that the UK cannot use it's nuclear weapons without U.S. permission. What the U.K. cannot do is repair, service or restock them. They can however fire them is they wish without checking with Uncle Sam.

The F-35 is similar. Personally I'd be looking seriously at the latest Grippen rather than the F-35 if I was the MoD. It's somewhat cheaper too.

[rg287]

Re: Reality bites

The UK's nuclear deterrent is rented from the USA and can only be used with American permission. How long would 'our' F35's fly without American support?

The nuclear deterrent is operationally independent. We can launch without US approval (which, y'know, might not come in a nuclear exchange if comms were lost). It's not policy independent in that going against the US's wishes could see us lose servicing support, which would then see the missiles expire past their service intervals. But this is a largely academic point in a post-nuclear landscape. Under what circumstance are we going to fire one or two Tridents and then want the rest serviced?

As for "our" F35s, I wonder how the US would maintain "their" F35s without support from UK vendors? In particular the B-variant, since the lift-fan is from RR. But all three have significant UK componentry, including the Martin Baker ejector seats, with BAE providing rear fuselage, EW suite and avionics. The US does have domestic vendors and could - for a price - onshore most of it's British dependencies, but it would be hard, painful and expensive and involve a certain amount of reverse engineering. Undoubtedly there would be a period where the majority of the F35 fleet was grounded because they'd hit their service intervals and hadn't got the bits they needed. They'd have to fall back to -teen fighters and F22. Meanwhile ours would admittedly be grounded almost indefinitely. It'd be cheaper to just buy more Eurofighters than onshore F35 componentry.

At the end of the day, this is the peace globalisation gets us. We are somewhat wedded to the US, but the US is also wedded to us (and Europe). For sure, depending on your scope, a break-off hurts us more than them. They can perhaps replace their dependencies more easily. But the dependencies in both directions are non-trivial.

The relative percentages of parts and workshare don't actually matter. Both sides need 100% of the parts to make it go zzzzooom.

[C R Mudgeon]

Re: Reality bites

"disentangling the UK's intelligence and military from the USA would take years"

Then the best time to start is years ago. But the second-best time to start is now.

Which is why I hope Canada will go with the Gripen over the F-35. I don't know which is the better and/or cheaper plane. I do know that it would make me quite nervous to hand, to the country whose leader has openly and repeatedly expressed a desire to possess my country, a potential kill switch over a significant chunk of our air defense.

Call me paranoid if you will, but things under the orange baby have already gotten far worse than I'd have imagined a year ago. And, as his niece Mary Trump says, with him "there's no bottom".

[Pete Sdev]

Re: Reality bites

Canada's plan if invaded by the US (again?) appears to be to go for guerrilla tactics. (E.g. https://thedefensepost.com/2026/01/21/canada-military-us-invasion/ )

Given the reputation of Canadian fighters, the US would probably experience a snowy Vietnam and lose.

Keep your elbows up my Canadian friends!

[3arn0wl]

EU politicians finally getting it

An excellent piece. Thank you Liam.

It's encouraging to hear that Europe's politicians are finally understanding the benefits of FOSS.

That they see the advantage of "Public money : Public code."

And that some EU entities are moving in the right direction.

It's good to hear the UN endorsing open source too.

[Like a badger]

Re: EU politicians finally getting it

It's encouraging to hear that Europe's politicians are finally understanding the benefits of FOSS.

Understanding is not much help. The EU has been very good indeed at understanding and articulating problems, writing well researched, well written reports on all manner of challenges (growth, technology, critical minerals, environment, defence, etc etc) but the one thing they've absolutely no track record in is fast decision making, or radical change. There's only three people need to agree not merely on the desirability to make this happen, but that their organisations will henceforth MAKE IT HAPPEN: von der Leyen, Merz, Macron. If they committed then most of the rest of the EU would follow, perhaps slowly, maybe with some holdouts (Hungary, Italy?). That would be a defining moment for Europe, except that it won't be. They will choose to skirt round the decision, and so they won't issue the necessary instructions and policies to make the EU digitally independent. More likely they'll kick off a round of workshops, more research, analysis, technical reviews, pan-Europe working parties.

Trump (and the urgency) will be history long before all the talking in Europe has led to anything substantive, it'll go on the back boiler, people will lose interest, and the outcome will be zip. Sadly.

[3arn0wl]

Re: EU politicians finally getting it

I don't know so much… it would appear that Trump has Europe rattled.

And being made publically aware of vulnerabilities should be a wake-up call to any political administration.

We all know that there are parts of Germany and France well on board with FOSS already - Denmark and Spain too. Only last week there was news about the French government rejecting US voip apps in favour of a home-grown alternative - https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/27/france_videoconferencing_visio/ Obviously, it would be good to see them go further…

But from what Liam was saying, there seems to have been strong arguments all round in favour of FOSS - economic, security, dependability/reliability, privacy,… It's gone beyond being a philosophical debate, and is perhaps being recognised as an imperative.

[Liam Proven]

Re: EU politicians finally getting it

> There's only three people need to agree not merely on the desirability to make this happen, but that their organisations will henceforth MAKE IT HAPPEN

No. You missed the smaller point here.

The reality is: this does not need to be some vast union-wide directive.

It can start today at state-level, in smaller states like Sleswig which are not major economic powerhouses, and smaller countries like Denmark which is critically theatened by climate change and knows it.

That is the point of the "don't look at the big scary mountains, look at your own feet" thing.

Don't start with the big international cooperation.

Start with asking "do we need a regional-govt-scale Win11 rollout, or can we stick with 10 + patches, switch to FOSS productivity apps this year, FOSS servers next year, and a FOSS OS the year after, and then skip the entire upgrade? Before this gen of kit is depreciated?"

[collinsl]

Re: EU politicians finally getting it

And if PC hardware is about to increase in price by 40%+ then there's further incentives to not want to upgrade it just for W11's requirements.

[gosand]

Re: EU politicians finally getting it

I would have liked to see something in the UN Open Source Principles about Education on Open Source, making a point to specifically teach the next generation(s) about it.

[kmorwath]

Re: EU politicians finally getting it

UN wastes so much taxpayers money that if I were working for them I would be very keen to get also code for free from some people who sees a fraction of my monthly income for doing nothing.

EU gains nothing from FOSS - it would just give more code to BigTech to exploit, and to its enemies like Russia, China & C. too.

EU money should be spent to make EU software industry more competitive, without giving any advantage away in exchange for nothing.

FOSS could work in a very different world, not the one we are seeing now.

[elsergiovolador]

Uncle Krasnov

Whilst turning it off is a possibility, for uncle Krasnov it is better to have it turned on and read all your state secrets.

Wouldn't be surprised if law enforcement having such a trouble prosecuting anyone is because of kompromats gathered via Cloud Act.

[collinsl]

Re: Uncle Krasnov

The people around Trump in the security space may well have this view, but Trump himself is too mercurial and petty to be able to hold a long-term and sophisticated goal in his head if someone annoys him sufficiently for him to want to hurt them economically - hence the tariffs randomly imposed whenever someone does something he doesn't like or says something mean, only to be removed when the adults in the room give him a suitable compromise to withdraw down.

[kamen_n]

I always find these technological tensions "too important to be left only in the hands of technologists."

If push comes to shove, the EU can respond much like it responded to Trump's attempt at annexing Greenland: with "finwarfare". In that case, his Trumpness shat up and went back home wagging his tail in a matter of minutes once the Central European Bank started dumping US bonds on the market.

The problem is that, in the cases where US technofascist businesses like Microslop or Google have acted, the EU hasn't understood that as an act of war. Maybe it's about time they (we) did.

And then, yes, let's think about some proper, solid and sovereign European technological infrastructure. Public funding = libre software, oh, and also those weird undersea cable things, please.

(Because the threat from Russia is way more serious than that gringo stuff from across the pond.)

[nobody who matters]

I remain in search of any evidence to convince me that the threat from Russia and the threat "from across the pond" are entirely separate from one another!.

[Liam Proven]

> are entirely separate

They aren't.

Russia is militarily weak AF. It's been unable to beat Ukraine, a poor nation riddled with corruption.

But Russia has known ever since its alleged democratic transition that it's weak and poor. What it has is excellent psyops skills from nearly a century of controlling public though, and it's rolled this out at international scale thanks to social networks.

Brexit: Russian money, Russian disinfo, placing incompetent fools in power and letting the systems self-destruct.

Trump: Russia. Exactly the same.

Alt-right: Russia. Amplify Neo-Nazis, make people think denying global warming or vaccines or whatever is independent thought.

Neo-reactionaries, demonisation and corruption of "woke", new evangelical religion (including extremist christianity and islam)? Russian backed, Russian aided, Russian facilitated.

Foment discontent and discord and you can weaken both individual enemy states and entire alliances of them.

And this goes for international economic alliances as well: for instance driving wedges between Britain and Europe, and Europe and America.

[collinsl]

I wouldn't necessarily ascribe the attribution for these events entirely to Russia, more I'd argue that Russia gave them a helping hand to one degree or another once they'd started.

[C R Mudgeon]

Exactly. The cracks already existed, but Russia is more than willing stick a crowbar in and pry at them.

Which I think is what Liam meant. I didn't read his comment as suggesting that Russia *created* any of those problems.

[kamen_n]

I have to concede you have a point there.

[Anonymous Coward]

EU can respond much like it responded to Trump's attempt at annexing Greenland: with "finwarfare".

There never was any serious desire to annex Greenland - it was all about creating a few weeks of US and global diversion to allow Trump's goons to hide the worst of the Epstein evidence, and fillet out some salacious bits on other people.

[SundogUK]

"There never was any serious desire to annex Greenland"

This is true. The rest of your post is conspiracy theory bullshit.

Trump was just doing his usual hard ball negotiating - demanding way more than he actually wants and then settling for what he was really after.

[BasicReality]

"And then, yes, let's think about some proper, solid and sovereign European technological infrastructure. Public funding = libre software"

Europe's answer to everything. Have the government pay for it. That's why it's always been behind in tech. All these massive tech companies, built from the private market. That's where the real work occurs, and why Europe can't catch up. Change the mindset. Reduce regulations, make the market friendly to private investments, maybe you could turn it around.

[Doctor Syntax]

The best and most direct way to make the market friendly is to buy from it. As to investors, foreign investment would be counter-productive.

Remember, if you use proprietary services then you have to buy from the likes of Microsoft and they have to be that size because they're running everyone's services. If you use FOSS as the basis for your services then all you need is a supplier able to service a smaller group of customers. Even a government does not need a service provider the size of Microsoft, AWS or Google.

[ToothHurty]

`As he put it, "more or less every company and organization in Europe pulls from GitHub, because it uses JavaScript and Maven, so this applies to them too."`

They're not all american developers who run these projects though, a decent chunk are europeans. There's already movement away from Github because it's getting worse under microsoft's AI push in the last year. Add to this that most sane businesses will use a pass-through mirror to keep a cache of those packages and it's not a problem. So if Github was to be disconnected from Europe we'd be okay.

I'd be more concerned about Europe's dependence on Windows, along side using US based cyber security firms. If the US wanted to weaponise our dependence on their tech companys and shut Europe down they wouldn't kill github, they'd just push a bad update via CrowdStrike and brick the machines. So invest in retraining IT to manage linux machines in all government agencies, invest some development money into improving and vetting whatever open source tech we choose to rely on so those projects are funded and secure, and then protect European innovation and tech companies (and I don't mean build AI datacenters everywhere).

[BasicReality]

The US could turn us off inside one hour.

Maybe we should. Europe has really shown they can't be responsible and let people have their freedom. Maybe a few days without service would be a good thing. Put them in timeout.

[DrewPH]

Re: The US could turn us off inside one hour.

I had to scroll through 70+ comments to get to this... thank you for the breath of sanity.

Europe is so stagnant and decision-averse that taking their toys away is probably the only way to get them to make new, safer toys.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: The US could turn us off inside one hour.

FFS did you two not even read TFA?????

[anderlan]

The leverage is gone.

Every time in the past that sovereign governments wanted to remove the arbitrary artificial legal locks that have been imposed by government (directly resulting from trade agreements) upon software and hardware to the detriment of consumers and competition, the US has raised the threat of tariffs. Well, now there's nothing to lose but your citizens' and small firms' chains.

[Infused]

Section 230

There is also a huge risk if American politicians pull the plug on Section 230 & don't replace it, that the ripple effects hit the rest of the world. While cloud services could go dark to avoid liability is probably small, the fact is it is still possibly. I think all the political uncertainty will encourage more moves to digital sovereignty.

[frankvw]

Not to play devil's advocate here...

OK, maybe I am playing devil's advocate, but I have to point out that the US gov't can still hamper FOSS as well. Remember PGP being classified as a non-exportable weapon? Yes, I know it was created by an American in the US so the situation is quite different, but bear with me.

PGP eventually circumvented export regulations, but in quite a cumbersome way (printed source code) which is not an option for most FOSS products these days given the size of their code base. Nor would that loophole be relevant today. But consider what happened to Truecrypt. The devs abruptly discontinued it rather than build in a backdoor for the US gov't. Their advice to the user community to switch to Bitlocker leaves no doubt as to what happened and why. Fortunately Truecrypt now lives on as Veracrypt based in France, but it might as easily not have

Both PGP and Truecrypt have relatively small code bases, which makes migration out of US gov't influence easier. But what about the leading FOSS suites these days? They have devs all over the world, but still it would severely harm them if devs in the US (which make up a sizeable portion of the FOSS dev community) were to be cut off (i.e. forced to resign) from maintaining things like LibreOffice, Thunderbird, your mainstream FOSS web browser of choice (I can't really think of one, offhand, because I'm not sure Firefox and Chrome count as true FOSS), Apache, MySQL, PHP and what not.

Dependency goes much further than most people realize. A mate recently suggested I started using Smash instead of WeTransfer or Google Drive to send large files, because Smash is based in France while WeTransfer is based in the US. Great idea! Except that Smash exclusively uses AWS cloud-based services, which defeats the whole point.

Granted, the US can't simply shut Europe down in under an hour if they scuttle US devs. And switching from proprietary commercial US software to FOSS is definitely an improvement. But Europe should not fool itself into believing this will solve the problem. It mitigates it, no doubt. But more has to be done if the EU wants to be protected from the effects of US digital dependency. Starting by ditching Cloudflare, AWS, Google, AI and the rest of that lot entirely. And that won't be easy, so it won't be a popular move. And in politics every move is dependent on popularity or lack thereof, so I'm not too optimistic.

I hope I'm wrong. Time will tell.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Not to play devil's advocate here...

Some good points but "Fortunately Truecrypt now lives on as Veracrypt based in France, but it might as easily not have"

As FOSS it would have been very difficult for the US to prevent it being forked in that way and that really points out the situation. The existing code is out there and the most* a USG could do is stop US citizens from contributing**. That would be a truly stupid thing to do from a US viewpoint and fail to stop development continuing in the rest of the world which is, of course, much larger than the US (whether the current USG is aware of that is another matter).

* Actually it's maybe not the most. It might be possible, at least in theory, be possible to prevent FOSS being used in the US. In practical terms that's much the same as stopping the Norks using it and would also, to the extend they might succeed, be even more stupid than preventing its development.

** In reality, surely that would fail under the free speech principle.

[Anonymous Coward]

If pressure is brought to bear then I would suspect MS and the other hyperscalers will split into legal seperate US and EU companies. The split might be superficial but it would probably be enough for business as usual to continue. Tech and Governments are probably looking at Trump as a boil that needs to be coped with for a few years before it pops and is tidied up. But IMHO I don't think there will be any putting of the US protectionism; imperialism; D/Monroe genie back in the bottle.

[Doctor Syntax]

If the EU component were US owned that would fail. A franchise could be made to work. The alternative, of course, would be to move the HQ to some tax haven which owned the EU and US operations as subsidiaries.

[Archivist]

Good news!

VLC is now 25 years old. What a wonderful example of Open Source success.

[V R]

Who cares...europe is already behind

Right...Europe can crib and cry...you guys lost the battle for the cloud era..rightfully won by the US, india and China. While all you focused was on desktop software. Keep loving this ultra communist rhetoric on open source.

[Northern Lad]

Operation Turn EU Off...

FBI storm the head offices of MS, Google, Apple, with a presidential orders in hand and demand all online services to be stopped in the EU.

Any Managers suddenly setting up meetings to discuss adding such a contingency to the business continuity plan?

After all, Greenland hasn't been decided yet, and if someone wanted leverage what comes to mind now.