It isn't uniform by any means but the US runs on a physically independent cloud, often in their own facilities, designed by the big cloud companies. When using the public cloud for unclassified work (e.g. working with outside vendors), the data is only allowed to reside in specific data centers that have been vetted by the government, not all US regions have the same authorization. For example, government data in an S3 bucket in the public cloud may only be accessed and processed within the same region, which can be annoying if your infrastructure is elsewhere.
The US is far ahead of most countries when it comes to government use of the cloud. Other developed countries often learn how to do it from the US but are less comfortable with the technical requirements, which slows down adoption.
This is a great point. For example, near where I live there’s a massive Google cloud warehouse out in the middle of a field next to the highway. Inside of that warehouse there’s a separate section for servers belonging to the US government that can benefit from all the electricity contracts Google has negotiated, the physical security and fences that Google has set up, and the fiber optic cables they’ve laid.
It’s the best of both worlds, they get the decades of research Google has put into systems engineering and fault tolerance while retaining the security of having their own servers.
Other developed countries are less comfortable because all the major cloud providers are US-owned companies and the NSA has a very, very long history of using US companies as information security weapons.
Not that they're the only ones. Israel has been busy stuffing investment cash into the pockets of Unit 8200 members so they can found security software and service startups coughSnykcough
Physical isolation is kind of irrelevant for the concerns being voiced here no? It's not like Europe's main worry is random people walking in and yanking hard disks out of servers in datacenters.
The US is far ahead of most countries when it comes to government use of the cloud. Other developed countries often learn how to do it from the US but are less comfortable with the technical requirements, which slows down adoption.