Frankreich verdrängt amerikanische Technologie aus der Regierung. Wird Europa folgen?

I think so. The past few years have shown that when you have a domestic alternative, threats from the US are not as critical.

This doesn’t mean we need to ban American products everywhere, but in the public sector and in critical areas of national and civil security, priority must be given to European options.

It passed fairly quietly in the run-up to the World Economic Forum and the crisis surrounding Greenland. But in mid-January, French President Emmanuel Macron made a remarkable statement in a speech at the French military base in Istres. “A year ago, Ukraine was still heavily dependent on the US military,” Macron said. “Today, France provides two-thirds of the intelligence.”

Ukrainian and international experts confirm that French intelligence services have gained in importance over the past year.

With the launch of a third satellite, France completed its CSO network. Previously, Ukraine sometimes went days without receiving new information from the French. Now, the three satellites provide information about Russian troops and their movements several times a day. Another French satellite network, CERES, detects Russian radars.

Just this week, it was announced that the French government wants to replace American video conferencing services such as Microsoft Teams and Zoom with the French alternative Visio. 

France is continuing along the path it embarked upon decades ago. Since Charles De Gaulle, France has been one of Europe’s pioneers in the field of strategic sovereignty. This is not only reflected in the development of its own satellite network. It has also been working for years on alternatives to American big tech solutions.

In 2020, for example, the French state, through the state-owned company RATP, bought the navigation app Mappy as an alternative to the American Google Maps and Waze. Since 2023, French ministers, secretaries of state, and their staff are no longer allowed to use foreign messaging apps such as WhatsApp, Signal, or Telegram. They were required to switch to the French Olvid or Tchap, which was developed by the government.

“In Europe, there has of course been concern for some time about how dependent we are on the big tech companies and the privacy risks that this entails,” says Maaike Okano-Heijmans, researcher in the geopolitics of technology and digitization at the Clingendael Institute. These concerns have been around since the US passed the Cloud Act in 2018, which allows American companies to be compelled to share data with the government. We now know that even giants like Microsoft bow to Trump’s power.

When the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu last year, Microsoft blocked ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan’s email account under pressure from Trump. “So it goes beyond data security,” says Okano-Heijmans. „The continuity of service provision is also at stake. Companies and organizations run the risk of crucial services such as email suddenly being blocked.“

On the initiative of the European Commission, five states, including France, the Netherlands and Germany are now joining forces to develop open source software services such as email. Not a moment too soon, according to Horan. “European states used to focus solely on price and user-friendliness. It’s time we made security a priority too.”

Doubt the UK will follow suit, pm still has trump’s sausage in his mouth, not a pretty image but nonetheless true imo

Lets hope it does.

What EU needs is a new „Digital Act“.

1 Trillion. Kind to ask more, but to build what is needed to be independent and beyond that.

I wish it also obligates and helps french administrations to migrate on a large basis.

Open source infrastructure is what we need. Make everything accessible and transparent. Government can’t hide behind contractors and ressource can be shared across Europe so we have some common tools.

Right now we are throwing money away. we are throwing data away, we are wasting ungodly amount for stuff that should be part of our common EU digital Fabric.

Reddit is an American-founded, just saying.

Too bad parts of Dutch government doesn’t care