[LINK] Is Europe Divorcing Big Tech?

[Kim Holburn]

https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/europe-divorce-big-tech-trump-cloud-exit-plan.php

Trump’s alliance with tech titans has Europeans considering alternatives.
June 5, 2025 By Sarah Grevy Gotfredsen

s the bromance between tech titans and Donald Trump has unfolded—X posts about “disgusting” legislation notwithstanding—Europe has 
grown increasingly uneasy about relying on US tech products. In Denmark, the media industry is actively seeking out non-US 
alternatives. Journalisten, a Danish publication roughly equivalent to this magazine (whose name translates as “The Journalist”), 
asked several news outlets and communications professionals whether they are exploring other options, and found that all of them 
were. “Like most Danish companies, we are steeped in American technology,” one editor in chief told the publication. “If we suddenly 
can no longer trust American suppliers, we have a huge problem, and it will be very difficult and expensive to get out of it.” This 
shift is driven by concerns that Trump could one day wake up and decide to force Big Tech to pull the plug on cloud services to 
Europe. It’s a hypothetical risk—and, some say, a small one. But if it were to materialize, the consequences could be “a disaster of 
biblical dimensions,” per one security expert. As such, Torsten Pedersen, the minister of national security, recently asked Danish 
companies and authorities to prepare for such a scenario, and to have an exit plan.

Denmark isn’t the only European country concerned about Big Tech: in the spring, for instance, the Dutch parliament passed eight 
motions urging the government to reduce its dependence on US tech companies and to adopt European alternatives. But in Denmark, 
growing tensions over Greenland—an autonomous territory of Denmark that Trump has made no secret of wanting to acquire—have added an 
extra layer of anxiety among officials. Trump has said that he “doesn’t rule out” using military force to take control of Greenland, 
and a Wall Street Journal investigation revealed that the US has ramped up its intelligence-gathering efforts in the territory. 
Indeed, Exoscale, a Swiss-based Web-hosting provider, told Wired that it has seen an uptick in customers looking to move away from 
cloud giants like Amazon—and that Danish clients have been explicit that the tensions over Greenland were a motivating factor behind 
the shift.

At least one US tech giant—Microsoft, which generates about a quarter of its business in Europe—has pledged to protect its customers 
there. In a blog post published in April, the company announced plans to expand its European data-center capacity by 40 percent over 
the next two years, an effort intended to give Europeans more control over their data (though some have argued that physical 
location doesn’t matter since the US has some extraterritorial powers). Microsoft also said that, while such a scenario is 
“exceedingly unlikely,” it would resist any US government order to shut down cloud operations in Europe.

And yet, last month, the Associated Press reported that Microsoft did “cancel” the email address of Karim Khan, the chief prosecutor 
of the Netherlands-based International Criminal Court, which was slapped with US sanctions after it issued arrest warrants for 
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his defense minister for alleged war crimes in Gaza. Unable to access his mailbox, 
Khan (who is currently under investigation for sexual abuse, which he denies) reportedly switched to Proton, a Swiss 
end-to-end-encrypted email service.

Microsoft denies that it ceased or suspended services to the ICC. Nonetheless, the cancellation of Khan’s email has spurred some 
European cybersecurity experts to further advocate for digital sovereignty. According to DR, the Danish public broadcaster, in their 
search for alternatives to Microsoft, the Danes are looking south across the border to Schleswig-Holstein, the northernmost state in 
Germany, where sixty thousand public sector employees have been instructed by German authorities to replace Big Tech software with 
open-source alternatives. The initiative has been underway for five years, but by September, employees are expected to have 
uninstalled Microsoft Office and switched to LibreOffice, an open-source office suite. The shift is being driven by a desire to 
achieve digital independence. But there’s also a financial incentive. Licensing agreements with tech giants are expensive, and 
transitioning to local solutions could save the state millions of euros.

In the long term, at any rate; in the short term, transitioning to EU-based tech alternatives might be painful. The shift requires 
uprooting the digital habits of thousands of employees who currently rely on tools like Gmail or Microsoft Office, in exchange for 
alternatives that may not yet match them in quality. According to the Wall Street Journal, Europe is producing far fewer 
“unicorns”—privately held startups valued at over one billion dollars—than the US and China; the US currently has six hundred and 
ninety such companies, whereas Europe has just a hundred and seven. There’s a sea of theories explaining why Europe’s tech industry 
continues to lag behind. One major factor is the lack of consistency in laws, languages, and cultures across European countries, 
which makes it harder for potential unicorns to scale. The Journal also suggested that Europe’s commitment to work-life balance may 
limit its competitiveness: Europeans tend to work fewer hours, and are thought to be less productive during those hours. Fueled by 
rising transatlantic tensions, that pace may soon begin to accelerate.


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Kim Holburn
IT Network & Security Consultant
+61 404072753
mailto:kim at holburn.net  aim://kimholburn
skype://kholburn - PGP Public Key on request