Trump Has Europe's Internet Switch – And He Could Flip It Any Time
🔹 Donald Trump is back in the White House – and with him come growing fears among European politicians that the US president now has the real power to paralyze the continent's digital pathways.
🔹 Most of Europe's digital infrastructure runs on US cloud services – and Washington could shut them down at any time.
🔹 Microsoft, Amazon, and Google are trying to reassure the public, but even they admit that if a direct order comes from the White House, resisting it will be almost impossible.
Europe under US digital control
European servers, government emails, banking systems, cryptocurrency exchange data – all of this flows through cloud services managed by US companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google. Together, these three giants control more than two-thirds of the European cloud market. And whoever controls them controls Europe's digital heartbeat.
Right now, that person is Donald Trump – a president who has never hidden his willingness to use power assertively. For many in Europe, this is a wake-up call.
Could Washington really disconnect?
Since Trump returned to power, European lawmakers have sounded the alarm. They say it is no longer unthinkable that the US government could issue a direct order to suspend cloud services or block access to data – and that US companies would have no choice but to comply.
German MEP Matthias Ecke warns that Europe can no longer blindly trust its US partners. He points to Trump's well-known impulsiveness as a serious risk that could lead to sudden and damaging decisions.
It's already happening
This is not just a theoretical threat – it has already begun. In May, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, lost access to his Microsoft-hosted email after the US sanctioned him for issuing arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Although Microsoft claims that it never suspended services to the ICC, trust has clearly been shaken.
Former Meta lobbyist and current MEP Aura Salla commented: “US companies naturally have to obey US law. That means Europeans cannot rely on the stability and security of American-managed systems.”
Europe hijacked?
Benjamin Revcolevschi, CEO of the French cloud company OVHcloud, compared the situation to a tap: “The cloud is like a tap. What happens when someone decides to turn it off?” And right now, that tap is controlled from Washington.
Austrian tech leader Alexander Windbichler adds, “I never thought the US would threaten to take Greenland. This is even crazier than shutting down the cloud.”
Is Europe's response too little, too late?
The European Commission is now looking for solutions. One idea is a trust label for cloud services that guarantees immunity from foreign government interference. But the plan is stalled – France supports it, while countries like the Netherlands are still reluctant to disengage from US providers.
It is becoming harder to ignore the risk. Documents revealed that the US State Department began lobbying the European Commission as early as September 2023. The Commission's technology department refused to publish their exchanges, saying that this would "undermine relations" between the US and the EU. Lobbying continues.
EuroStack – A path towards European digital sovereignty
A long-term plan is called EuroStack – a 300 billion euro project to build a completely European digital infrastructure, from physical servers to software. The goal: complete independence from US cloud control.
The initiative is based on three pillars: “Buy European,” “Sell European,” and “Finance European.” It includes proposals for massive investments, government quotas for local tech companies, and a sovereign tech investment fund.
But Jörg Kukies, former Minister of Finance of Germany, warned that although the urgency is real, the alternatives to US services are still too limited: “There simply aren’t enough viable options yet.”
In summary
Europe may be waking up too late to the reality of its digital dependence on the US. With Trump back in power, the threat of digital blackmail is no longer science fiction. And while lawmakers rush to find a solution, full sovereignty remains a distant goal.
#TRUMP , #DonaldTrump , #USPolitics , #Geopolitics , #CyberSecurity
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