Trump can pull the plug on the internet, and Europe can’t do anything about it
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It'd take some time to organise a replacement organisation but it's not like those systems collapse when the central service goes down. We do have our own root servers and the internet can survive a month or two of not being able to register new tlds or assign subnets.
On the flipside, I wonder how US multinationals would fare without SAP.
My partner is a primary architect of AWS to build a replacement the size and scope that could replace US cloud computing isn’t reasonable unless they already have been developing this for years behind the scenes. The people who understand these systems at scale are few and far between
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sometimes the only way something worthwhile ever gets done in the first place is because somebody started on it without realizing how hard it would be.
Yes, that's a good point. We both benefit and suffer from humanity's overly optimistic moments.
often the achievement lasts a lot longer and outweighs the trouble by orders of magnitude.
True too, but Columbus might not be the clearest example of that.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]Ah yes, I hadn't intended that part to be considered a continuation of the Columbus point. "Sometimes idiots like Columbus get things done that nobody else was gonna do because everybody else understands just how monumental the task actually is and are deterred from doing it" is a separate point from "often even when a project was more trouble, time and effort than bargained for, it's still worth it". My apologies for the confusion. I've edited my other comment to make it clearer on that score.
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Companies also probably have servers in other places, meaning perhaps they’d connect through elsewhere
Depends on company, but that worst case scenario is that all US companies would shut down all their services in Europe overnight. Every big player has datacenters around the world and if it's just the traffic between continents which is shut down then the effect is way less radical, absolute majority of Europe already connects to datacenters near them even if they use Microsoft/Google/Amazon/etc services.
For example with my employer dropping every US based company would be a hell of a work, specially if it's needed in a hurry. We, as well as a ton of others, rely on Microsoft services for all kinds of communication and should that go away we'd need to make quite a few phone calls around couple of continents just to set up a common ground on where and how to start building new infrastructure and how to keep communication lines open.
Though if it were for a few hours, maybe let people see the consequences of their dependence, and what life would be like without these services
Few hours is a short time. There's some problems around the globe all the time which affect various services on various levels for few hours all the time. Few days of complete blackout and C-suits start to really sweat (plus it costs significant amounts of money via lost productivity).
if anyone knows how to block connections based on location, feel free to enlighten me
You'll need a firewall/router which can do geoblocking. Based on quick search at least pfsense seems to have some options available. If I were to try that I'd set up a pfsense on a virtual machine, set up geoblock on that and use that as a gateway for my testing devices while leaving the rest of the network as it is so that I could limit/choose what devices may behave strangely and still have normal functionality for the rest.
I assume there's a ton of other options too besides pfsense, but the key words are 'geoblock', 'firewall' and 'router' or something around that. Also I assume that most of the stuff you find explains how to block incoming traffic based on geoIP, but it should be relatively simple to adapt those for outgoing traffic as well.
I was mainly mentioning servers outside US in the context of me blocking access to/from US personally. If US blocked it all everywhere, that woudn't be possible. You'd at best have the data up to that point in time, until the block, but no further, unless the companies update their servers physically, with, like, USBs, CDs, Floppy Disks.
As for already connecting to data centers nearby, some of my top US connections, according to NextDNS, are, ironically, from Spotify, which, afaik, is European.
Few hours is a short time
Yeah, but remember this also affects everyday people. I was mainly thinking of them, I guess. Akin to a nation-wide power outage. You see just how much you depend on it, and what it'd be like without it. It may already be so ingrained in one's everyday life. To realise to what extent, can be eye-opening. Most people probably wouldn't expect, and could be surprised, by stuff mentioned, such as GPS and payments, not working. Or just something that, in the background, relies on a big US company, like Amazon servers or somethingpfsense
Will look into that. And also look for the keywords, see what else I can find. Let's see if I go through with such experiment -
But honestly, disconnection from the US cloud providers is a lot bigger than you seem to think. A ton of governmental services are hosted on US cloud providers. Pulling that plug would mean blackout for a crapload of governmental services, which we have grown to depend on.
It would also mean a huge hit on their own tech sector, if not near wipeout.
It’s one of those situations that, sure, they could, just like a monkey could purposely snap the branch where he and his friend are sitting on and both fall.
As for Europe, yes, it would be a painful transition, but eventually it could build its own infrastructure anyway
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My partner is a primary architect of AWS to build a replacement the size and scope that could replace US cloud computing isn’t reasonable unless they already have been developing this for years behind the scenes. The people who understand these systems at scale are few and far between
There's no "behind the scenes" there are plenty of EU-based cloud providers. Including SAP though that's not why I mentioned them.
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MS pulled access to the azure environment of a (Russian owned) bank in NL and despite NL court orders asking for the data to be made accessible, it took diplomacy and a US court order to get access. This was not during trump admin.
We’ve been saying “this would never happen” and trump admin has slowly been shifting the Overton window.
In that case they didn't want to risk liability. They're not going to do something guaranteed to lose them lots of money just to make daddy Trump happy.
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It would also mean a huge hit on their own tech sector, if not near wipeout.
It’s one of those situations that, sure, they could, just like a monkey could purposely snap the branch where he and his friend are sitting on and both fall.
As for Europe, yes, it would be a painful transition, but eventually it could build its own infrastructure anyway
eh, in the Netherlands we would just cut off all their datacenters, maybe even the internet hub we have to the US.
so go ahead -
Honestly, as an American living in Silicon Valley, I would be overjoyed if Europe became the primary kickstarter for open source alternatives to the existing US corporate infrastructure, that bends to the knees of the Federal government. Even here at home, myself and some of my co-workers aren't too keen on the existing status quo tools because there are too many caveats - from rent seeking subscriptions to the inability to verify if something is tampered with.
In the same way Valve saw how having all their eggs in the Windows basket led them to dive head first into linux development, I hope the EU's realization of the risks in the US tech sector lead it to developing unified, well funded OSS alternatives. I would certainly install them.
as a European formerly living in silicon valley.. we are working on it. and thanks to the orange turd in charge it's been fast-tracked.
and when all hell breaks loose, we'll just stop sending ASML machines your way. best of luck idiots (not all of you) -
Talk about clickbait ......
Article title: trump can pull the plug on the internet and europe can't do anything about it (my emphasis)
First line: the U.S. could unplug Europe from the digital world (not "pull the plug on the internet")
And then further down: "The fatal vulnerability is Europe’s near-total dependency on U.S. cloud providers."So first, it's "the internet", then it's "unplug europe from the digital world", then it's "europe's dependency on US cloud providers"
So it's NOT "the internet", and it's NOT "unplug europe", it's disconnect european customers from US cloud providers.
Methinks Monseiur Pollet doesn't understand very much about the internet.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]It's even less of a thing. Things like AWS have datacenters in Europe, where most of Europe-side of traffic is hosted. Even if Trump made executive decisions to stop any internets companies doing business in Europe, it would have ZERO impact on the subsidy. Any cloud issues would really only impact "vertical scaling cloud-native" bullshit software, there are plenty and most reasonable companies are based on more sane (and less expensive) hosting solutions, which are in-house European.
Takes a massive fool to think European companies are basing their data in US continent, where the ping would be >150ms, and speeds would be far slower and less manageable.
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as a European formerly living in silicon valley.. we are working on it. and thanks to the orange turd in charge it's been fast-tracked.
and when all hell breaks loose, we'll just stop sending ASML machines your way. best of luck idiots (not all of you)Hey, just put the word out for my work visa, please! XD
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Talk about clickbait ......
Article title: trump can pull the plug on the internet and europe can't do anything about it (my emphasis)
First line: the U.S. could unplug Europe from the digital world (not "pull the plug on the internet")
And then further down: "The fatal vulnerability is Europe’s near-total dependency on U.S. cloud providers."So first, it's "the internet", then it's "unplug europe from the digital world", then it's "europe's dependency on US cloud providers"
So it's NOT "the internet", and it's NOT "unplug europe", it's disconnect european customers from US cloud providers.
Methinks Monseiur Pollet doesn't understand very much about the internet.
Methinks Monseiur Pollet doesn't understand very much about the internet.
It's like tubes. With trucks in them. It's simple!
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Hey, just put the word out for my work visa, please! XD
wrote on last edited by [email protected]they're expanding, so most likely hiring.
the world can't get enough of the 2 nm chips (not much more smaller after that for probably a decade).
they're building machines as fast as they can.
I'm a CNC machinist and have made plenty of parts for them and have friends that assemble cleanroom parts for them.
plenty of work to go around.
you don't even need to speak Dutch there, English is fine.
and guess what? we even have great public transportation.
come one come all, apply today!
and get away from that hellhole the US has become. it used to be us (one for all, all for one), now it's just them the elite.
I lived there 24 yrs, from the golden age of silicon valley (late 90s) to its inevitable enshittification.
glad I got out before it's demise. -
they're expanding, so most likely hiring.
the world can't get enough of the 2 nm chips (not much more smaller after that for probably a decade).
they're building machines as fast as they can.
I'm a CNC machinist and have made plenty of parts for them and have friends that assemble cleanroom parts for them.
plenty of work to go around.
you don't even need to speak Dutch there, English is fine.
and guess what? we even have great public transportation.
come one come all, apply today!
and get away from that hellhole the US has become. it used to be us (one for all, all for one), now it's just them the elite.
I lived there 24 yrs, from the golden age of silicon valley (late 90s) to its inevitable enshittification.
glad I got out before it's demise.I'm currently hosed by the fact that I am in the middle of completing my Electrical Engineeing degree (approx. 2 years left), and I don't believe my credits would be transferable to an institution across the Atlantic (never mind the cost, shudder), so I can't even think about escaping until at least 2027.
If there's a better way forward so I can safely leave the nation and still achieve my degree, I'm all ears, but at least to me it seems my hands are a bit tied.
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It would also mean a huge hit on their own tech sector, if not near wipeout.
It’s one of those situations that, sure, they could, just like a monkey could purposely snap the branch where he and his friend are sitting on and both fall.
As for Europe, yes, it would be a painful transition, but eventually it could build its own infrastructure anyway
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I'm currently hosed by the fact that I am in the middle of completing my Electrical Engineeing degree (approx. 2 years left), and I don't believe my credits would be transferable to an institution across the Atlantic (never mind the cost, shudder), so I can't even think about escaping until at least 2027.
If there's a better way forward so I can safely leave the nation and still achieve my degree, I'm all ears, but at least to me it seems my hands are a bit tied.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]I'm not too knowledgable about schooling and transfer credits but I would def send a letter (or email) to ASML describing your current school (perhaps not political) situation and who knows, maybe they pay for the whole ride. paid learning is a thing here.
I believe as well visas for critical jobs. doesn't hurt to ask -
It's even less of a thing. Things like AWS have datacenters in Europe, where most of Europe-side of traffic is hosted. Even if Trump made executive decisions to stop any internets companies doing business in Europe, it would have ZERO impact on the subsidy. Any cloud issues would really only impact "vertical scaling cloud-native" bullshit software, there are plenty and most reasonable companies are based on more sane (and less expensive) hosting solutions, which are in-house European.
Takes a massive fool to think European companies are basing their data in US continent, where the ping would be >150ms, and speeds would be far slower and less manageable.
Takes a massive fool to think European companies are basing their data in US continent, where the ping would be >150ms, and speeds would be far slower and less manageable.
It's actually simpler than that: It's not in regulatory compliance. Cloud providers need to host their data centers in different regions because of geopolitical instability, including the distinct possibility of this scenario, among other localized regulatory factors. These companies may be headquartered in America but they still are at the whim of many different governments.
Source: I have an AWS certification
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Talk about clickbait ......
Article title: trump can pull the plug on the internet and europe can't do anything about it (my emphasis)
First line: the U.S. could unplug Europe from the digital world (not "pull the plug on the internet")
And then further down: "The fatal vulnerability is Europe’s near-total dependency on U.S. cloud providers."So first, it's "the internet", then it's "unplug europe from the digital world", then it's "europe's dependency on US cloud providers"
So it's NOT "the internet", and it's NOT "unplug europe", it's disconnect european customers from US cloud providers.
Methinks Monseiur Pollet doesn't understand very much about the internet.
