Breakups are painful. A great battle is afoot on the "data
sovereignty" ground, for sure.
It's over a year since I spoke at Cloud Native Media [0] on the urgent
need to extricate sensitive processes and data from US American
companies.
At the time there were a few angry reactions - mainly from people
accepting the risks for the first time and acknowledging how deeply
enmeshed/dependent their operations are. Most of the assembled
creators, CEOs, journalists, fully understood and were enthusiastic
about relocating away from US BigTech.
It's March 2025 and the US has gone full-fascism. AFAICS, all of US
BigTech (bar some tepid resistance from Apple) has fully aligned
with an agenda that is unconscionable to liberal democracy.
Yet we still have problems like UK government departments that are
running on Microsoft Teams or casually using Google docs in ways that
seem wholly inappropriate to security and safety of data and users.
Where I'm working on sensitive projects I find myself repeatedly
having to point out that we urgently need independent end-to-end
encrypted video chat and collaboration tools.
For email I've started removing some @gmail recipients in CC
where they are not strictly NTK.
> It's March 2025 and the US has gone full-fascism.
It's amazing to see people say things like this as if the US was any different before. Trump just put an honest face on fascism and imperialism. Before, they were exercised in a 'polite', polished manner. Even by Obama who stomped down the Occupy Wall Street.
It's amazing to be the one saying it! I'm generally reflective and
reluctant to take up slogans. But once the jackboots started proudly
and openly signalling it on the world stage, it got a bit difficult to
keep pretending otherwise. God knows we all tried. For at least 10
years anyone who spoke of what they saw coming was attacked, banned,
piled-on and ridiculed.... all those "Good People" (many of them here)
did the fascists work for them. It's understandable. Nobody wants to
feel uncomfortable, right? But now is the time for more
self-honesty.
Yes, it was different before. The status quo may have been fascistic and certainly imperialist but still would have been far more preferable to what's coming.
It's over a year since I spoke at Cloud Native Media [0] on the urgent need to extricate sensitive processes and data from US American companies.
At the time there were a few angry reactions - mainly from people accepting the risks for the first time and acknowledging how deeply enmeshed/dependent their operations are. Most of the assembled creators, CEOs, journalists, fully understood and were enthusiastic about relocating away from US BigTech.
It's March 2025 and the US has gone full-fascism. AFAICS, all of US BigTech (bar some tepid resistance from Apple) has fully aligned with an agenda that is unconscionable to liberal democracy.
Yet we still have problems like UK government departments that are running on Microsoft Teams or casually using Google docs in ways that seem wholly inappropriate to security and safety of data and users.
Where I'm working on sensitive projects I find myself repeatedly having to point out that we urgently need independent end-to-end encrypted video chat and collaboration tools.
For email I've started removing some @gmail recipients in CC where they are not strictly NTK.
[0] https://cybershow.uk/blog/posts/cloud-native-talk/