Status-Q

About 25 years ago, friends and I ran a website called Living Without Microsoft. It was a news, reviews and advice hub for anyone considering the revolutionary idea that you could actually use a computer – maybe even run a company, school or government department – without being dependent on Windows and Office; without incurring the significant costs that a monopoly could impose; and without the viruses and other security risks associated with Microsoft software.

It wasn’t, we pointed out, that we had anything against Microsoft per se (though many people did back then, and with good reason). We just believed that the situation was unhealthy and wanted to educate people about more wholesome alternatives. It has to be said that it was quite a challenge at the time: perfectly possible for individuals, but much harder for companies that needed to run accounting software or do desktop publishing.

Fortunately things are much easier now, and many people can run their lives quite happily with little or no reference to Microsoft, if they want to. This is partly due to the success of the web and the fact that Open Source software has essentially won the race to power the world’s servers. It’s partly because Microsoft failed, despite desperate attempts, to control the world’s web browsers that gave access to them. And it’s significantly due to the success of Apple and Google when it comes to the hardware and software that we actually sit in front of and carry in our pockets daily.

But there may be a bigger problem looming on the horizon.

You see, Microsoft, Apple, Google and Meta are all American companies. And (as the recent minor AWS outages demonstrated), a very great number of other organisations depend on infrastructure which is either physically in the USA, or is owned by companies which are.

And as Donald Trump seems ever more keen to become the new Putin, this may be a problem, and it may affect you. Sooner than you think.

There was a scare earlier this year when Trump regime imposed sanctions against the International Criminal Court because he didn’t like them criticising Israel, and shortly afterwards the ICC prosecutor who was his main target lost access to his Microsoft services. Later, Microsoft denied that these were in any way connected, but further information has been scarce, and the thing that really worried people was not whether it actually happened, but the fact that it now seems totally plausible that it might. In October, the ICC announced that it was ditching Microsoft Office in favour of an Open Source alternative.  Mmm.

This is a pattern that is starting to become more common, as the idea of ‘digital sovereignty’ becomes ever more desirable. The German State of Schleswig-Holstein moving 30,000 PCs to Linux and LibreOffice is one recent example. A ministry in Denmark has been doing the same thing. The Austrian Ministry of Economy started the adoption of Nextcloud, hosted on its own hardware, when its licence for Teams and Sharepoint expired. And just last month the main Belgian DNS registrar announced that it was leaving AWS, and put out a request for proposals from European alternative platforms. “The geopolitical reality is forcing us to think more carefully about our infrastructure”, they said. “Ten years ago, we made the decision to switch to AWS, which has certainly benefited our services. But the world has changed, and those benefits no longer outweigh the risk we run if the US suddenly imposes restrictions or tariffs on cloud usage.”

So let’s imagine that Trump decides to invade Greenland. I like to think that the whole of Europe would be up in arms and would start significant economic reprisals against the US, but even if our leaders continue to be as weak as they have been in response to some of Trump’s other actions, we can still perhaps imagine one of the following taking place:

• Your country’s leaders do have the guts to be outspoken about it, and Trump decides to switch off your country’s access to AWS or Azure or Google Cloud or iCloud, or double your IT costs by imposing 100% tariffs, or even just impose bottlenecks to slow down your internet access to US-based services.
• Your own government announces that you must promptly move your data out of any data centres controlled by US companies.
• Your employees, as a matter of principle, object to your company’s dependence on and financing of a US company, and go on strike until you sort it out.
• Your biggest clients decide that they will only purchase products or services from companies who are not at risk from repercussions of ‘the tense geopolitical climate’.

… and I’m sure you can think of other variations.  You may not find them all plausible.  But it only takes one.

A few days ago, the village in which I live, and much of the surrounding area, had a power outage. I looked out of our upstairs windows, and all was dark. It only lasted a couple of hours, but we sat there feeling a little bit smug, I must confess, because a couple of years ago we had installed sufficient solar panels and batteries at home to run the house for about 24 hours, even in winter, without needing any power from the grid. Our neighbours were lighting candles while we boiled our electric kettles and settled down to stream movies on TV, having been unaware for quite some time that there was an outage going on around us.  More importantly, at this time of year, our heating system, though gas-based, still had an electricity supply to run the valves, controls and thermostats.   Sometimes it’s your less-obvious dependencies that can cause you the biggest problems in case of failure.

As I read about the threats to NATO and the talk of America possibly invading part of Europe, I became rather conscious of how much of my digital life is dependent on US-controlled infrastructure. Where do I host my blog? My email may be stored in this country, but what about the DNS service that tells people where to send it? I have Zoom and Teams calls with clients next week – what would happen if they became unavailable? I host a significant amount of my technical infrastructure myself, in preference to depending on cloud services, but I realised that even I have a long way yet to go.

So here’s my question for you to ponder today: If your access to American-controlled cloud services was suddenly interrupted, seriously curtailed, or became prohibitively slow or expensive next week, would your school or university still be able to function?  Would parents and students even be able to find out whether it was open? And will it be you, or your business competitors, who are left sitting in the cold and dark by candlelight?