There has been a lot of commotion surrounding America and Trump lately. From the kidnapping of the Venezuelan president, the threat surrounding Greenland, to the deportation of legal residents. And I could go on and on. There have always been many reasons not to be enthusiastic about the “American Dream.” However, recent developments have changed the world order. In just one year, America has changed from a reasonably stable country to a completely unreliable and unpredictable one. This has many implications, including in the world of tech, apps, and software, which often come from America. Our heavy dependence on these makes us vulnerable to blackmail, so we urgently need to switch to European alternatives.
We are vulnerable to blackmail due to our dependence on US tech
It is almost inevitable that you, both as a private individual and as part of the organization where you work, volunteer, or go to school, are completely dependent on US technology. Think of everything that is made by or uses services offered by Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Meta (Facebook, Instagram), etc. Even without the recent developments, there were already many good reasons to move away from American technology services. Now it is truly urgent.
It is simply unacceptable that you and the organizations you are affiliated with depend on the whims of Trump and his administration for their functioning. American tech providers can simply shut down our access to their services. For example, to force us to give Greenland to America. In other words, our dependence on all these services makes us vulnerable to blackmail.
What could possibly go wrong?
Consider scenarios such as these:
- What if you suddenly lost access to your email?
- Or the photos in your iCloud, Google Drive, or Dropbox?
- What if you could no longer connect with your friends via social media?
- Or what if the primary process at your work stopped functioning because Outlook and Office 365 (Copilot) were no longer operational? Or Microsofts Azure or Amazon’s AWS?
- All your files are suddenly inaccessible and you can no longer communicate with your customers because social media is unavailable.
It sounds impossible. However, this has already happened to people, including the head of the International Criminal Court in The Hague. There is no reason to think that this cannot happen to all of us. What if, for example, the situation around Greenland escalates further?
The bigger picture: what’s going on?
What is actually going on? And why do you need to start NOW to make yourself and all the organizations you are connected to (and influence) less dependent on American tech? Today marks the start of the World Economic Forum in Davos. Although there is a lot to criticize about this meeting, a few interesting reports are published in its slipstream every year. In particular, the Global Risks Report*.
Here are some highlights from this year’s report:
- Geopolitical situation and, in particular, geo-economic confrontation: With cooperation mechanisms crumbling and governments withdrawing from multilateral frameworks, stability is under pressure. A contested multipolar landscape is emerging in which confrontation is replacing cooperation and trust—the currency of cooperation—is losing its value. This is exacerbated by armed conflicts between states. The trust that once existed has disappeared. This has implications in many areas, including technology.
- Technological risks: Misinformation, disinformation, and cyber insecurity are high on the list of risks, as are the potential negative consequences of AI. Well, where does all this technology come from anyway?
I think the risk of disruptions to a system-critical supply chain has been underemphasized this year. This was much more prominent last year. The term ‘supply chain’ often refers only to the logistical process: a shelf in the supermarket runs out of stock, an order is placed with the central warehouse, which places an order when stock falls below a certain level, the factory in China, for example, manufactures the product, and finally a ship sails to Rotterdam and a certain product arrives back in the supermarket via the warehouse. What is often forgotten is the role of (American) technology in this chain. It is precisely this aspect of business-critical processes that is currently extremely vulnerable due to the power that America has over it, because they can shut it down.
The Cybersecurity Report**, written by a consultant—and therefore much less critical and mainly praising all technological developments—states that only 11% of the private sector acknowledges that their resilience is insufficient. I hope for their sake that they have woken up in recent weeks.
Enshittification was already more than problematic, but not yet urgent.
For quite some time now, US technology companies in particular have been gaining monopoly positions, offering services with a poorer and poorer price-quality ratio and increasingly monitoring users (you and your organization!) on a larger scale (surveillance) and selling all the data they collect. This process is called enshittification, and this alone was reason enough to turn our backs on these companies and look for alternatives. However, this never felt urgent. That has now changed.
Migrating from US tech to European alternatives is more urgent than ever. In some cases, this is feasible (e.g., email, cloud storage, office applications, video conferencing, notes, search engines, and browsers), and we must carry out this migration as quickly as possible. This may be just enough to keep your organization running if the US pulls the plug and to save your private stuff. And then, for many organizations, there will probably still be quite a lot left that will be complicated to migrate. I am thinking in particular of all applications that run on Amazon AWS (or a similar cloud). This will take more time to accomplish.
Don’t wait any longer. Start today, deSHITtify NOW!
* World Economic Forum, Global Risks Report 2026
** World Economic Forum, Global Cybersecurity Outlook 2026