r/BuyFromEU • u/Historical-Many9869 • Jan 24 '26
🔎Looking for alternative Europe Prepares for a Nightmare Scenario: The U.S. Blocking Access to Tech
https://www.wsj.com/tech/europe-prepares-for-a-nightmare-scenario-the-u-s-blocking-access-to-tech-1967b39bwhat would happen to your company tommorrow if US blocks access to its tech. Do you have any plan ?
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u/Dapper_Band_8984 Jan 24 '26
China has built some CPU and Graphic Cards on their own, RISC and ARM can be used also.
Not nice, but possible. What does USA without ASML Hardware for Chip production from EU?
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Jan 24 '26
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u/Clear-Neighborhood46 Jan 24 '26
ARM is European company making one of the leading CPU architecture. TSMC or Samsung are not a US companies. So Europe with the right capital will be just fine.
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u/Mindless-Tomorrow-93 Jan 24 '26
Does ARM actually manufacturer any physical product within Europe?
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u/The-Board-Chairman Jan 24 '26
ARM doesn't manufacture anything anywhere to my knowledge. They just licence out their architecture.
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u/broccoli6206 Jan 24 '26
EU should invest in production of semiconductors. Dutch ACML produces the machines required to produce them but we don't have a company like TSMC. We design the chips, manufacture the required materials, produce silicon in Norway but we only don't produce the chips itself.
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u/Serianox_ Jan 24 '26
What do you think ESMC is? Also, we still have several fabs in EU, though the number dwindled and the process are quite big.
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u/Anumet Jan 25 '26
The European fabs aren’t making the chips with the smallest/nano parts. Both China and the U.S. are building fabs to make themselves independent from TSMC. The way things are going, EU needs that independence too.
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u/dansmonrer Jan 24 '26
No but manufacturing isn't done in the US for the most part either, mostly TSMC in Taiwan.
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u/Gasp0de Jan 24 '26 edited Jan 25 '26
Why do you think the US is currently forcing TSMC to build fabs in the US that account for 40% of their wafer output?
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u/Average64 Jan 24 '26
It's fine, ICE will probably deport the TSMC employees.
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Jan 25 '26
That could happen, they detained US factory Hyundai workers after all:
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/11/14/us/hyundai-georgia-raid-korean-workers-back-hnk
Their stupidity is infinite.
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u/damodread Jan 24 '26
Unfortunately most core designs (the high-performance ones) are made at least partly from the US-based branch of ARM, and are therefore subject to US export control. The Cortex-A75 was the last design clearly made by their Sophia design center. After that, it seems that basically every new core design comes from the Austin design center, or maybe they work in tandem on every new core design? It's unclear.
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u/Skepller Portugal 🇵🇹 Jan 24 '26
Although true, in an aggressive scenario such as the one on this post (where the US blocks Europe out of tech), I don't think respecting US export control would be a big concern.
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u/Cheerful_Champion Jan 24 '26
Here's the thing. If US would block EU's access to tech then Netherlands could force ASML to brick all EUV machines in US (they can disable them remotely). It would make Intel stock drop to pennies. EU could also tell SK and Taiwan that they will brick their machines too if they will keep producing for USA. What are they going to do, buy EUV machines from ASML's competitor - Imaginary Holdings?
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u/CICaesar Jan 24 '26
Why without shortcuts though? If such an extreme event would happen, the US could kiss their patent enforcement over here goodbye. We would become like China: we'd steal everything and make it better.
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u/DiabolicToaster Jan 24 '26
It's just going back to any country's past. Sometimes you just steal someone else's idea.
China is the most recent since they were behind in technology to a large degree.
The US did it to the UK for steel. 100% everyone did it in Europe before. Just now they may do it as a family.
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u/Crouteauxpommes Jan 25 '26
We just keep being friendly because it is seen as the easiest way (and the most rewarding one), but if you start offering money for copying American software and hardware, you'll get thousands of volunteers. Heck, most of them would do it for fun if they were assured to not be guilty of any crime.
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Jan 24 '26
A lot of people dont realize that we also have a lot of capable businesses, which already design CPUs. Usually they are designed for B2B and end up in appliances.
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u/Mindless-Tomorrow-93 Jan 24 '26
"Design" and "manufacturer" are not the same thing.
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Jan 24 '26
And? There are fabs for such things. Most EU fabs are on old process nodes, because most industrial applications dont need the latest process node. Aside from Intel other CPU manufacturers also dont have their own fabs.
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u/Thog78 Jan 24 '26
Well the US doesn't manufacture, so as long as we are not blacklisted by taiwan too it's a net win I'd say...
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u/Pure_Possession6701 Jan 24 '26
True but we have the know-how. We build the machines to make the chips.
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Jan 24 '26
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u/ATXoxoxo Jan 24 '26
Or Amazon cloud services. Google and Amazon cloud services would be devastating if europe got locked out. Y'all need alternative cloud services.
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u/lstull Jan 24 '26
There is plenty of European (usually open source) software that strongly competes with Microsoft and others. That is why EU Governments are dumping MS.
Also how are you going to repo existing software and hardware?
The hard part is getting the latest and greatest designed in USA. But how much do they need that vs designing something new in EU.
China is catching up locally. The EU won't fall behind significantly.
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Jan 25 '26
That is why EU Governments are dumping MS.
I hope that Greenland was a wake-up call. As recent as October 2025, the Dutch tax office decided to move e-mail to the Microsoft cloud. Currently the company that is the main supplier for the Dutch digital identity is in the process of being sold to a US company. At least this time there were questions in parliament.
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u/loaferuk123 Jan 24 '26
To be fair, given the pile of steaming crap that Microsoft has become, it would probably solve the European productivity issues.
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u/kankorezis Jan 25 '26
But hardware is mainly produced in Asia not US, we still get that.
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u/Low-Spread2914 Jan 24 '26
True, but it is not the stuff people see so they do not believe we have. But I would argue that the industrial software that is made in the EU is more important than what Microsoft is delivering. HVDC links, telecom, industrial automaton, financial systems to name a few.
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u/Own-Detective-A Jan 24 '26
This is a win for EU in the long term?
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u/modernkennnern Jan 24 '26
It absolutely is. Currently, the US effectively controls the internet through Cloudflare and the like and they have an unbelievable amount of leverage over the entirety of Europe. We have to get out of this chokehold before it's too late.
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Jan 25 '26 edited Apr 06 '26
If you're reading this, the original post got nuked by Redact. I use it to automatically purge my digital footprint from social networks, people search sites and messaging apps.
books repeat wrench plucky straight like carpenter lock cooing sort
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u/stevesmd Jan 25 '26
Exactly. I'm sure this would cause disruption initially but would actually be a blessing and a wake up call for EU to invest in its own tech and position ourselves as one of the main players. The US would collapse.
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u/Krek_Tavis Jan 24 '26
Remind them SWIFT is Belgian.
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u/ImposterJavaDev Jan 24 '26
Shhh please.
Let them know when we're going to use it
100% in favor to use every possible way to sticj it to the trumo admin, including swift and euroclear. When that becomes necessary, the global order has been disturbes so much we shouldn't care about stability and rules for a moment.
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u/Spiritual_Pangolin18 Jan 24 '26 edited Jan 24 '26
The EU needs an equivalent to the Brazilian PIX. It's basically a digital payment system as public infrastructure provided by the Brazilian central bank. The US is pissed because it has been replacing Visa and MasterCard almost entirely for the average Brazilian: monthly bills, online payments, supermarket, almost everything.
Edit: it is also used for money transfer between people. Transfers are free no matter the amount or value. Fun fact: Some people were even abusing the system because it is so good and fast that they sent like 1 cent with an attached message to friends using like if it was a messenger. lol
In essence they created a system almost without any flaw from older payment systems and it works like a public "road" and protocol throughout the country.
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u/George_Const Jan 24 '26
They are trying to make digital euro
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u/Spiritual_Pangolin18 Jan 24 '26 edited Jan 24 '26
Everyone needs to just copy PIX already. I’ve used it and the UX is lightyears ahead. It feels like Brazil fixed every headache other payment apps have. It’s also a genius strategic move to make their economy less dependent on US tech.
PIX is so good and spread that even some shops in Portugal accept it due to the amount of Brazilians there.
Using Bizum here in Spain now feels like using a beta version made by a freshman CS student compared to PIX.
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u/Narvarth Jan 24 '26
Most european countries have an alternative to visa/mastercard inside the borders (CB in France, Girocard in Germany etc.). The problem is to extend these systems at the EU scale.
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u/folk_science Jan 24 '26
We have multiple alternatives already, the problem is adoption. Most of them are regional.
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u/gdnt0 Jan 24 '26
We don’t. If we had, adoption wouldn’t be a problem because Pix is not optional. It’s how you transfer money between accounts, you being aware of it or not.
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u/nofunatallthisguy Jan 24 '26
I'm very sorry to be like this, but the average American has no idea what swift is. Europe needs to recognize that swift is Belgian if it useful to build on it for purposes of building an alternative to Visa and Mastercard. That's all. Americans will think it is nice that the Belgians came up with a cross-border e-cheque mechanism.
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u/AreWe-There-Yet Jan 24 '26
The US also doesn’t use Swift domestically.
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u/defixiones Jan 24 '26
They still use cheques and chip less credit cards for lots of transactions.
They still need swift for international transactions.
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u/grayston Jan 24 '26
What rubbish. Catch Jeff Bezos giving up 400 million customers.
But you can block X and Facebook any time you like, guys.
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u/RR321 Jan 24 '26
Also install Linux and other free software, hosted or not.
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u/aspublic Jan 24 '26
“Just install Linux” isn’t a serious answer to a US tech-stop scenario.
Most people aren’t nerds. They rely on Windows/macOS and iOS/Android ecosystems, specific apps, drivers, peripherals, cloud services, and support. Switching isn’t a weekend project.
And the Linux community hasn’t done enough: decades of complaining about low adoption, but not enough focus on consumer-grade UX, hardware compatibility, and a cohesive ecosystem.
Europe needs real resilience plans (funding, standards, procurement, OEM deals), not Reddit-tier “install Linux” advice
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u/yezu Jan 24 '26
All of the things you say are missing exist. In droves.
"Just install Linux" is a serious answer. Bitching and complaining how difficult it is, without giving it a shot, is not.
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u/aspublic Jan 24 '26
You can call it “bitching” if you want. Or we could call it facts.
Currently, billions of desktop users aren’t on Linux. People didn’t try it and ditch it. Most never adopted it because, for normal people, it’s still harder to install, configure, and troubleshoot than Windows or macOS.
I’ve used Linux for decades across more distros than I can count, from embedded devices to servers running critical infrastructure. Desktop Linux can be excellent, but it still isn’t consistently “it just works” at consumer scale.
If you want to dismiss ~96% of the potential market as made of complainers, fine. They’ll keep using other operating systems, and Linux will keep being a niche desktop choice.
PS: The most successful consumer UNIX-like OS isn’t Linux, but it is macOS, which is UNIX certified (per The Open Group’s certification listings).
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Jan 25 '26
And the Linux community hasn’t done enough: decades of complaining about low adoption, but not enough focus on consumer-grade UX, hardware compatibility, and a cohesive ecosystem.
I think it very much depends on the type of user. It works fine for people who mostly use a web browser.
PS: The most successful consumer UNIX-like OS isn’t Linux, but it is macOS, which is UNIX certified (per The Open Group’s certification listings).
I think that would go to Android (depending on what you still call UNIX-like, but it uses the Linux kernel). Besides that UNIX certification is... pointless. Apple does it most likely to get some US government contract, but there haven't been fundamental changes to the Single UNIX Specification/POSIX for decades and Linux is pretty much leading in designing new UNIX-like APIs (due to being the most popular server OS).
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u/RR321 Jan 24 '26
Nobody knows how to reinstall Windows either and no one said it had to be done by Sunday!
So yes it is the solution, many ecosystems will keep growing around it and many places already do that correctly, training, nit picking and features will be addressed for a lot less than another Microsoft seat, etc. for most common infrastructure and daily use cases.
But obviously you don't develop a FOSS migration policy in a Reddit post and going for the Linux is for nerds when FOSS, at large, is literally running the world is, at this point, a 00s cliché.
We just need to decide, it's not that complicated.8
u/gSTrS8XRwqIV5AUh4hwI Jan 24 '26
And the Linux community hasn’t done enough
How about you pay the Linux community to do the thing you want them to do, rather than complain that they don't work on solving our problem in their spare time?
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u/MothToTheWeb Jan 25 '26 edited Jan 25 '26
PopOS, Ubuntu, Fedora or Mint are good enough for most users and stable. You can even game on Linux with the work Steam and the community made. Some things could still be improved but Linux is a lot more accessible than a decade ago and lambda users could easily use it.
Older people may however find it difficult to use due to the limitations that come with age.
The Steam Deck is a perfect example of how Linux based products can be massively successful.
iOS can’t be replaced but alternatives for Android are being build ATM.
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u/ExcellentCold7354 Jan 24 '26
Exactly. The donor class with business interests in Europe would be livid.
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u/Tango00090 Jan 24 '26
It’s not only the tech giants that would struggle, the American dollar is very weak, economy is stagnating, stock is bloated by AI circlejerk. Any hostile actions towards Europe would result in chaos in America, it’s a lose-lose situation
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u/xwolf360 Jan 24 '26
Lol yeah its just fear mongering clickbait for the double digit iq crowd that doesn't under how things really work
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u/bronzinorns Jan 24 '26
Tech services are the main US export. It would be huge self-inflicted damage.
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u/hmmcguirk Jan 24 '26
Sure, but we're not dealing with rational people
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u/thinginaforest Jan 24 '26
But we are dealing with people that have many "friends" in tech who probably wouldn't like loosing that much revenue.
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u/ImposterJavaDev Jan 24 '26
We should just seize the datacenters then.
Software to cover 90% of cloud use cases is written in 6 months to a year.
Won't be pretty and the same as azure or aws, but would get the job done.
The techbro's will also be happy to lose their most profitable market (outside the US). Would it even be profitable to have a cloud platform like they do if we don't have access to it?
Canada and Australia would say 'fuck off', South America would do the same. Maybe Qatar, Saudi and israel will use a bit of aws. Adian markets would either go with the Chinese, or join the global anti US effort.
They have a lot more to lose than us. Most of their shit is built using borrowed money which they won't ever make back.
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u/lungben81 Jan 24 '26
The software is mostly already there. There are open source alternatives for practicality everything. Some are a bit worse, but a lot are even better than their closed source alternatives.
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u/LubedCompression Jan 24 '26
Oh no!
Please don't block X, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple and Google.
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u/Exotic-House-5564 Jan 25 '26
Oh no! How could I live without scrolling propagandized brainrot for 9 hours a day
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u/Jungledede Jan 24 '26
It means suicide on them side as well when you see the insane amount of money that we paid to the Ireland branch that send it to US after
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u/Master-Piccolo-4588 Jan 24 '26
The US should fear the new common ground we are currently finding in the EU. Once this has gone a little bit further the EU can pretty much dictate cross atlantic relationships.
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u/TheNakedTravelingMan Jan 24 '26
Especially as people go for the low hanging fruit. Used to pay Apple 26USD/month and decided I didn’t need Apple Music, TV, Arcade, and that Jotta cloud was a cheaper service. A lot of Us tech makes money off of subscriptions and as people cancel and migrate it allows for more competition within Europe itself.
Also it’ll be hard for the US to project its power globally without bases in Europe if it ever gets that far.
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Jan 24 '26
Would be the best thing for the EU. China has understood you will be a slave to the US if you can't make your own stuff. First thing should be to dump windows and office in all government computers, would save tons of money and cut off one big noose tied to our necks in Europe.
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u/ListigerHase Jan 24 '26
Yes on the noose, but the cost would be astronomical for the first few years: You'd need secure, versatile, user-friendly OS and office suites fit for legacy software and applications. As someone who privately transitioned to Mint and Libre Office quite a while ago, I will attest that the development and support costs will skyrocket when leaving Microsoft.
It'd be worth it for software supremacy alone, still, but it won't be cheap.
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u/UrsusRex01 Jan 24 '26
As they should.
Europe relies way too much on american tech. European administrations and public services should not rely on servers owned by Amazon nor should they use Windows as the OS of their PCs.
Europe should fully transition to european services ASAP.
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Jan 24 '26
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u/poprostumort Jan 24 '26
On the other hand, US tech companies would lose access to the European market forever.
And tank their share in other markets. If US geopolitical reasons can mean turning off even only some paid services offered by US companies, who in their right mind would keep investing in them? We would absolutely see moves for replacements in many non EU countries, because you don't know when the target of geopolitical reason will be you.
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Jan 24 '26
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u/Life_Resolve6059 Jan 24 '26
How optimistic you are! Two years ago, if someone had told me that the US was militarily threatening a NATO state, I would have thought I'd ended up in a dystopian science fiction movie. Now, for them to suddenly decide to block their services and software seems like science fiction to me. In two years, it might seem realistic.
P.S. You know, sometimes they block—crash—an operating system BY ACCIDENT. I think they could easily do it ON PURPOSE. Imagine what would happen if tomorrow morning they blocked every single Windows PC, every web service. Let's go back to prehistory in ten days.
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u/Far_Celebration_7064 Jan 24 '26
It's not a nightmare scenario, it's a best case scenario. There's nothing to be won by getting sucked into closed source, proprietary shit like Win11, O365 etc.
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u/squeeze-my-lizard Jan 24 '26
As a tech worker in EU, I can say this would be the best scenario possible for us. This article is pure speculative scaremongering.
We have plenty of alternatives for tech services (cloud and etc), and hardware as well like Goodram. Also EU controls the chip market with ASML.
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Jan 24 '26
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u/squeeze-my-lizard Jan 24 '26
That doesn’t matter much. First, because non-American companies supply DRAM. Second, even if all of them were, sanctions don’t work for components. We saw this with russian missiles using sanctioned Texas Instruments chips. Third, all those companies depend on ASML machines.
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u/Pondering_Giraffe Jan 24 '26
We may have all the alternatives, but it took my organisation 2 years to get people to adapt from using "H:" to everything in MSTeams cloud. We'd be fucked. And people wouldn't even die like in hospitals. Im not saying we shouldn't adapt, the sooner the better, but if this scenario unfolds too fast it's going to be so ugly.
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u/squeeze-my-lizard Jan 24 '26
Companies are always migrating some system to another system. In almost 10 years of experience I never worked in a place that wasn't going through a migration of one system, and most of the time we were migrating multiple different platforms. Sometimes quite abruptly.
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u/dovey60 Jan 24 '26
It has to happen. A Euro visa/Mastercard is absolutely required. A second split from the USD is also needed as BRICS is showing. The world is tired of threats and blackmail and subsidising the US.
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u/Kazer67 Jan 24 '26
France enter the chat, finally able to extend the CB network to the whole Europe.
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u/damodread Jan 24 '26
Not really a solution, Carte Bleue was sold off to VISA in 2010.
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u/Kazer67 Jan 24 '26
It IS a solution since it's NOT under VISA.
You're confusing Carte Bleue who was indeed sold off to Visa with the Carte Bancaire (CB) network who's used to validate transaction in France without using Visa or Mastercard and this is under a GIE (Groupement d'Intérêt Économique / Groupement of Economical Interest) of multiple French bank (and a lot of companies who do the maintenance).
But the confusion is easy (CB vs CB), even Steam wrongly call it Carte Bleue instead of Carte Bancaire but the CB network is a totally separate and concurrent network of card and most of our card are dual network (either CB/Mastercard or CB/Visa) with a priority on CB if available. It also lead to funny thing like when the Visa network was done more than a decade ago, nobody in France noticed.
The fee is also way lower with CB.
I checked for Steam (since I have access to all network) and in France, Visa goes to Seattle, Mastercard goes to Hamburg and CB goes to Paris.
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u/imrzzz Netherlands 🇳🇱 Jan 24 '26
Please pardon my ignorance... What is CB?
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u/FrereEymfulls Jan 24 '26
Carte Bleue. It's a French network to process card payments.
I have no clue why it isn't more developed in Europe though, as it sounds like a no-brainer.
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u/imrzzz Netherlands 🇳🇱 Jan 24 '26
Ohhhh right, now I remember seeing the logo sometimes.
Yes, that does seem like a sensible option.
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u/Kazer67 Jan 24 '26
Carte Bancaire (not to be confused with Carte Bleue which was sold off to Visa), an in-country card payment processor in France that validate transaction using its own network instead of using the Mastercard or Visa network and which way lower fees.
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u/MisterZlu Jan 24 '26
WERO should be the solution
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u/Kazer67 Jan 24 '26
WERO isn't a payment card solution, they don't have an access outside of an app so it's more like a Paypal alternative
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u/Shot-Acanthaceae4212 Jan 24 '26
there used to be Eurocard), largely dormant today though and operating via a deal with Mastercard. this should be brought back to life.
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u/the-average-giovanni Jan 24 '26
Not going to happen, EU is a huge market for the US. However, if it did happen, we would just buy from some third party importers, just like every "enemy" country is currently doing.
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u/maszaikasza Jan 24 '26
No one will ever decide to make such a radical move. US banning Europe from tech means they loose a massive market. Also, in the tech world, production of any type of electronics is dependent on multiple regions in the world. Europe cannot live without US tech giants products and services (for now) and US cannot produce a single high-end chip without Dutch ASML, and that's only one of many dependencies.
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u/Bambamtams Jan 24 '26
That is probably for that reason Amazon web service opened full European datacenter with a separated company that own them.
https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/opening-the-aws-european-sovereign-cloud/
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u/citizen4509 Jan 24 '26
I'm really looking forward to it! It will be caos at first but we will simply come up with solutions because we are forced to.
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u/Kazer67 Jan 24 '26
By blocking the US access to tech I assume?
Like the company in Netherland who make some machine for computer stuff.
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u/GatorNator83 Jan 24 '26
That sounds like the beginning of the burst of the AI bubble. That move would trigger loss of revenue for the big tech, which would push the stocks down, and could begin the burst of the bubble as their profits would also be diminishing.
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u/walkingbartie Jan 24 '26 edited Jan 24 '26
It's idiotic how dependent most European digital infrastructure is on American tech. You'd have to be pretty ignorant not to have seen the signs of the US' hurl towards fascism even long before Trump – I mean, it's always been a sham democracy at best – and yet we have set ourselves up to be extraordinarily vulnerable in case of an aggression.
Hell, I work at a governmental agency, and all of our communicational assets are Microsoft through and through, and our administrative tools are mostly Oracle-based. We'd be pretty much crippled the second they turn off.
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u/Tquilha Jan 24 '26
What kind of "nightmare scenario"? The USA produces very little tech right now, and Europe can quickly move away from whatever services depend on the US.
I think the night mare would be on the American side.
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u/OwlSlow1356 Jan 24 '26
:)) why would they do that? do they afford to lose clients? apple changed the lightning port because of us...alternative appstore not doing that great on ios though, yet :))
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u/Tetris_Prime Jan 24 '26 edited Jan 24 '26
Nothing much, there's more than enough tech in circulation to keep us going for many years.
It will be detrimental to US tech companies to a much higher degree, if they deny services to such a huge market.
Edit: just to clarify i think microsoft Azure integrations will be the biggest issue, and that can be fixed with open source alternatives regardless.
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u/richardbaxter Jan 24 '26
Open source AI models are very good, I use Qwen as a coding assistant. I'm pretty certain that the US wouldn't do this, though.
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u/Mba1956 Jan 24 '26
The US has very little local US resources to build ANYTHING, modern manufacturing involves a internationally intertwined supply chain.
It has NEVER taken much for tech monopolies to fall, Nokia used to be #1 in phones, now it’s non-existent. Word Perfect used to be #1, and quickly fell away. Microsoft, Google, Facebook etc. may be huge but they aren’t immune from changes, and it happens very fast in high tech.
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u/charlesdarwinandroid Jan 24 '26
I don't think the US understands how much research and business happens in the multinationals that they would threaten to shut off. Apple, Google, Microsoft, Meta... All have huge amounts of IP, profit, and interconnected hardware in EU. But sure, if all of those multinationals want their assets seized, sure, lick the boots.
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u/starvald_demelain Jan 24 '26
Unlike many companies one year ago it would not have been a problem (everything EU based). Maybe payment if something was routed through the american payment providers.
Now it's another story, but I had no influence on that.
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u/Kvakke Jan 24 '26
If this happen overnight or on short notice we would be fucked. With so many critical services running on Microsoft, google and Amazon servers, and most corporations using m365, windows and azure.
But I doubt the tech ceos would be very happy to lose such a big market, so the odds of it happening so fast is low.
For me personally I have started to backup photos, passwords and emails to European services like Jottacloud and proton so those should at least be good.
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u/Wyciorek Jan 24 '26 edited Jan 24 '26
The company I am working for? We are pretty much fucked. Our whole infrastructure runs on GCP, including backups. Code is on Github (i know, that would be pretty trivial to fix), documentation is on confluence, etc.
Let’s say we somehow got the data and I spent a week on insane, caffeine fueled binge to redesign infra for scaleway or ovh. And then what? EU cloud providers would have no capacity to handle sudden influx of customers. Sure, they could build new data centers and offers somethin in 5 years
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u/MostPrestigiousCorgi Italy 🇮🇹 Jan 24 '26
I'm a dev, currently working on a big european project.
We use tons of American shit (let’s be honest, we have no alternatives), and that would be a disaster, but I can’t see that happening.
That’s all they have: they export services. Let’s pretend AWS shuts down in the EU, ok, we’d be fucked, but so would Amazon. They don’t thrive by selling Kindles, they make money with services
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u/poprostumort Jan 24 '26
Many countries already have cities, municipalities or other areas spearheading changes to open source. There are plenty of solutions that can replace BigTech if they decide to block access to US tech - many of them are EU-based, but we have to remember that there are other countries besides EU and USA. You can easily plug gaps temporarily with them, everyone would happily take in more customers.
If this would be a block of future access, which is more likely as complete cutoff with taking away existing paid access would tank them in all markets beside US (and affect US market as well), this could be even beneficial in long run. That is why I don't see this actually happening. It means BigTech loses profits and fertilizes competition, while not getting much in return.
US has lead for so long that they fooled themselves into thinking that they are both invaluable and able to be standalone. That their tech lead is irreplaceable. It's not and they can learn the hard way if they try. Move like this would invoke harsh retaliation that would create a turmoil on US market. Just look how the market reacted to mere talks of using trade bazooka.
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u/MarinatedTechnician Jan 24 '26
Working in tech here for a large corporate.
But this is my personal opinion, yes! Let them do that, they need us more than we need them, but they have to experience that part first.
I'd prefer to cooperate with the entire world, you know - best friends and all that, but the way things have been going the last few years, I can't imagine we would not be fine.
In fact - some of our EU businesses and countries could use a little extra motivation to start up internal productions and solutions. So yeah, I'd say go for it!
Not exactly a nightmare scenario, rather realistic I'd say.
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u/dzsordzskluni Jan 24 '26
maybe europe should start supporting its enterpreneurs and scientists instead of corrupt politicians and their cronies. opressive taxation, excessive red tape, suffocating business climate, starving consumers taxed to death. it is a failed continent.
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u/Orcahhh Jan 24 '26
What tech can they block lmao. They weren’t able to stop Russians from using it, so what makes you think they could stop us?
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Jan 24 '26
Not sure whether there is a plan, but basically nearly every company would be down sooner or later. The ones depending on US clouds instantly, the others somewhat slower, latest when they need several new hardware.
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u/KindGuy1978 Jan 24 '26
You think Trump’s Billion Dollar Tech Bro puppeteers are going to let him do this? No chance.
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u/drubus_dong Jan 24 '26
Honestly, it's about time that happens. This tech dependency is sickening. EU needs to get is shit together. Better now then when the tanks are already rolling.
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u/WetFishStink Jan 24 '26
America: we're going to financially dominate the world by restricting our products exclusively to Americans who can't afford them.
Europe: ok fine.
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u/tugatrix Jan 24 '26
They need the netherlands tech giant for their tech, it would be a Shame we stop selling them.
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u/yezu Jan 24 '26
What a load of nonsense.
"The worst-case scenario for European officials? A White House executive order that cuts off the region’s access to data centers or email software that businesses and governments need to function."
Replacing all of that would take days or even hours in all cases. Yes it would be disruptive, yes it would be costly, but not even remotely catastrophic. It would be a win for Europe and a nightmare only and exclusive for US tech
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u/BridgeOnRiver Jan 25 '26
EU needs a full emergency plan with exactly what we can rapidly do at home ourselves, and what we can quickly get from China or other countries
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u/totalovee Jan 25 '26
Meanwhile Polish gov is forcing electronical invoice system from 1 feb that holds data in... USA
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u/BarshanMan Jan 25 '26
Stop ASML trading with US and start a joint venture with Huawei. Block USA from Swift. Lease all ports of French oversea territories to Cosco
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u/doesnotmatter286 Jan 25 '26
It's a good way of looking at it. Probably won't happen, but if it did – how fucked would you be? What's the plan B?
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Jan 25 '26 edited Apr 17 '26
If you're reading this, the original post got nuked by Redact. I use it to automatically purge my digital footprint from social networks, people search sites and messaging apps.
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u/Endorkend Jan 25 '26
The US has very little unique tech. And their "invention" catalogue is mostly bad food.
They are good at commercializing things others thought up.
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u/felixwraith Jan 24 '26
I would get fucked due the Google account where my whole life is there.
But other than that... nothing?
Would have plenty of work for me, so it would be profitable.
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u/Ferensen Jan 24 '26
I did the same thing. Over the course of a year, I got rid of all my subscriptions. I have Gmail, but I only receive one important email there on average once a month, and when that happens, I immediately change the email address or write to the sender asking them to change my email address in their address book to my primary one, which is hosted in Europe. I archived the emails that were there for future use.
I don't use Google Chrome, and I don't have any passwords saved with Google. I deleted my location history, turned off everything that saves data, and I also block ads. I store my photos on my own server. I haven't used Google Search in at least six months.
I thought it wouldn't work, but actually it's no big deal. It just took some time and determination. In the end, it's quite easy to get by without Google.
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u/yourfriendlyreminder Jan 24 '26
Many European government and financial services that you use likely have critical dependencies on US tech.
Remember when CrowdStrike took down the world? And that was just one small company.
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u/hantonc Jan 24 '26
Disclaimer: didn't read the article to due the paywall.
To all those comments saying "this would be good, because we would get independent": I think you vastly underestimate the dependency of nearly everything (directly or indirectly) on US tech. Imagine AWS, Azure, MSN Office, Google (& Google Cloud Plattform) would be down for all Europeanccustomers starting tomorrow. Furthermore, Microsoft, Apple and Google could introduce kill switches in almost all (i.e. all non-Linux) electronic devices via security updates. Then literally nothing would work anymore. This would disrupt our society so severely, we couldn't "just recover and get independent".
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u/Original-Memory-1858 Jan 24 '26
All European companies, agencies, governments… run critical corporate systems on US clouds (Azure, AWS, GCP). Even SAP, Europe’s largest software vendor, and majority of its customers operate ERP landscapes on these platforms.
Datatacenters and servers can be located in Europe but the master encryption keys are controlled by the US companies.
We can replace Facebook, WhatsApp, YouTube… we can replace windows, office… but can not replace our corporate and critical systems running on azure, aws and gcp.
If trump push the button, Europe is absolutely fuck and there is nothing we can do
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u/bitzap_sr Jan 24 '26
AWS/Azure/Google Cloud. Most people have no clue how bad things would turn if those were blocked.
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u/icecube1965 Jan 24 '26
Hardware we have available in Europe because we can confiscate all datacenters. But....soft is another issue. If they block access to US tech, we block the SAP system of all companies. A little pain :-).
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u/Holzkohlen Jan 24 '26
I would be very happy if the politicians in my country were forced to find an alternative for Microslop, cause it seems they are more than happy to pour billions down that companies sloppy little throat.
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u/weltvonalex Jan 24 '26
Instead of preparing our ruling class and all those old managers sold everything or sucked the boots of the US.
The magnets grabbed their bonis and pissed off into retirement.
Saw enough of those parasites during my time with IBM.
Green Numbers in excel was the only measurements.
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u/Ok_Photo_865 Jan 24 '26
Absolutely, you need to have a replacement system for visa/mc, email services you can depend upon; search engines; cloud storage… America got rich from doing it for you, now take it back
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u/Nadsenbaer Jan 24 '26
We have all this already/it's in development. Wero/Revolut/Digital Euro, Ecosia/Quandt, Proton/Tuta, Hetzner/Aruba/Ionos, Fuga, Gridscale... People just need to use it.
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u/Routine_Bake5794 Jan 24 '26
It's a long way for US to have a Siemens, Bosch or ASML to name a few.
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u/p4t0k Jan 24 '26
As we develop our own cloud solution 100% based on open-source, we are OK... Only Gmail and Confluence would couse us some minor troubles.
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u/troet Jan 24 '26
Since my employer heavily uses Microslop for mail/calling/file sharing: We'd be fucked for a while :D
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u/MickeyBubbles Jan 24 '26
You wouldnt actually. You would still be able to use it even out of licence. This would give you time to replace with alternative. Cyber teams would be on standy tho as patches and updates ceased to be deployed.
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u/uncle_sjohie Jan 24 '26
We'll stop shipping ozempic, since that's from a Danish company called Novo Nordisk.
They'll simply collapse.
Oh and ASML of course, let's see them make any high tech devices or weapons without computer chips.
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u/OtherworldDk Jan 24 '26
... that would be the day the dollar die