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 becomes nearly impossible to shop online, wire money to family overseas, or rely on anything tied to 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. This occurred 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 those involving 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 a list with 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.” This high-profile case provides a glimpse into the profound 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 this looming threat and their own over-reliance on U.S. technology. Trump’s diplomatic escalations and the upending of international norms, including the capture of 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 to reclaim their digital sovereignty. This shift in thinking comes as the Trump administration has become increasingly unpredictable.
In Belgium, the country’s cybersecurity chief Miguel De Bruycker recently conceded 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.-dominated digital infrastructure, and urged the European Union to strengthen its tech across the bloc.
The European Parliament voted on January 22 to adopt a report directing the European Commission to identify areas where the EU can reduce its reliance on foreign providers. Parliamentarians stated 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 as the European Commission is moving to bring more of its technologies and dependencies onto its own turf.
In a concrete step, 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. They date back decades to at least 2001 when the U.S. introduced the Patriot Act after the September 11 terrorist attacks. The Patriot Act allowed U.S. intelligence agencies to surveil the world in unprecedented ways, including spying on the communications of citizens of its closest allies in Europe, despite the bloc’s strict data protection rules. Microsoft conceded in 2011 that as an American company it could be compelled to hand over Europeans’ data in response to a secret U.S. government order. Much of this surveillance was revealed in practice through classified documents leaked by then-NSA contractor Edward Snowden in 2013.
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. Tech workers have called on their chief executives to speak up against the rising brutality of U.S. federal immigration agents. Independent guides encourage users to get off U.S. tech services, while several websites promote alternatives to Big Tech products and services, such as open source tools developed in Europe.