Amid Trump attacks and weaponized sanctions, Europeans look to rely less on US tech

Imagine a world where your credit card no longer works, your Amazon account is shut down, and using U.S. tech companies is no longer an option. It’s almost impossible to shop online, wire bank transfers to an overseas family member, or rely on anything that involves the United States, including the U.S. dollar.

For one Canadian, this is now her reality.

Last year, the Trump administration added Kimberly Prost, a judge on the International Criminal Court, to its economic sanctions list, after she served on an appeals chamber that in 2020 unanimously authorized the ICC’s prosecutor to investigate alleged war crimes in Afghanistan since 2003, including U.S. service personnel. The United States is not a member of the ICC and does not recognize its authority. Several other ICC judges and prosecutors have also been sanctioned by the Trump administration.

Prost, whose name now shares the same list as some of the world’s most dangerous people, from terrorists to North Korean hackers and Iranian spies, described the effect of sanctions on her life as “paralyzing” in an interview by The Irish Times.

This high-profile case provides a glimpse into the disruption that being cut off from the U.S. can have on a person’s everyday life; lawmakers and government leaders across Europe are growing more aware of the looming threat facing them at home, and their over-reliance on U.S. technology. 

Trump’s diplomatic escalations and the upending of international norms, including the capture a foreign leader and threatening to invade a NATO and European ally, have caused some EU countries to consider moving away from U.S. tech and reclaiming their digital sovereignty. This shift in thinking comes as the Trump administration has become increasingly unpredictable and vindictive.

In Belgium, the country’s cybersecurity chief Miguel De Bruycker conceded in a recent interview that Europe has “lost the internet” to the United States, which has hoarded much of the world’s tech and financial systems. De Bruycker said it is “currently impossible” to store data fully in Europe as a result of U.S. dominating digital infrastructure, and urged the European Union to strengthen its tech across the bloc.

The European Parliament voted January 22 to adopt a report directing the European Commission to identify areas where the EU can reduce its reliance on foreign providers. Parliamentarians said the European Union and its 27 member states rely on non-EU countries for more than 80% of its digital products, services, and infrastructure. The vote was non-binding, but comes at a time when the European Commission is moving to bring more of its technologies and dependencies onto its own turf.

The French government said Tuesday it would replace Zoom and Microsoft Teams with its own domestically made video conferencing software Visio, according to the French minister for civil service and state reform David Amiel.

Concerns about digital sovereignty are not new and date back decades to at least 2001 when the U.S. introduced the Patriot Act in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks. The Patriot Act allowed U.S. intelligence agencies to surveil the world in ways it had never been allowed to before, including spying on the communications of citizens of its closest allies in Europe, despite the bloc’s strict data protection and privacy rules. 

Microsoft conceded years later in 2011 that as an American tech company it could be compelled to hand over Europeans’ data in response to a secret U.S. government order; it wasn’t until 2013 when much of this surveillance was revealed in practice through classified documents leaked by then-NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

At the individual consumer level, there has also been a concerted push to urge users to switch away from U.S. tech providers and technologies, with tech workers calling on their chief executives to speak up against the rising brutality of U.S. federal immigration agents. 

Independent journalist Paris Marx has a guide for getting off of U.S. tech services, while several other websites, such as switch-to.eu and European Alternatives, encourage users to use alternatives to Big Tech products and services, such as open source tools.