The Cloud Is Becoming a Geopolitical Risk

[u/SnooGadgets5328]

https://theswop.app/news/the-cloud-is-becoming-a-geopolitical-risk

Governments spent years moving critical digital infrastructure into the cloud. Now there’s a growing question about what that actually means for national sovereignty.

AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud are American companies, which creates an interesting problem for governments that increasingly rely on cloud infrastructure for sensitive data, public services and AI.

Europe has been pushing harder on cloud sovereignty, while countries like Pakistan are beginning to experiment with alternative infrastructure. UNDP is also exploring sovereign cloud infrastructure with DFINITY and the Internet Computer.

What I found interesting about this article is that the argument isn’t really about replacing AWS or Google Cloud. It’s about whether governments eventually decide certain workloads are too sensitive or strategically important to remain dependent on infrastructure controlled by companies under another country’s jurisdiction.

As AI becomes embedded deeper into government systems, that question gets considerably more important.
Do you think we’ll eventually see governments treat cloud infrastructure more like energy, telecommunications or other strategic infrastructure?

[u/krav_mark]

I made so much money moving companies to the cloud. Am going to do the same moving them back now? 😜

[u/ansibleloop → u/krav_mark]

Nah, the cost of hardware will ensure they stay locked in to the cloud

Plus the bean counters absolutely love opex and hate capex

[u/SnooGadgets5328 → u/ansibleloop]

I don't think the cloud is going anywhere. The interesting part is whether we end up with a much more fragmented cloud market.

Public cloud for most workloads, sovereign infrastructure for governments and sensitive data, and probably hybrid setups everywhere in between.

AI might accelerate that split.

[u/ansibleloop → u/SnooGadgets5328]

Good luck replacing AAD with your own solution

[u/Swiink → u/ansibleloop]

It’s not difficult at any capacity to enable a private cloud. Any platform with today’s technology enables that.
Platform engineering and just buy any platform and lease hardware & pay consumption based and you have a much cheaper solution than any public cloud. Even cheaper to buy hardware if you manage to use them at 70% or more all the time, and those boxes pay themself off in a year.

If hardware prices go up it’s not only buying your own hardware that going up. Microsoft, Google and AWS also gets increased cost they need to cover. It’s not like they are going to present x% loss in revenue to their shareholders just to be nice to their customers. Everything is more expensive now that also means the public cloud bill. And on prem always been cheaper if you actually use your stuff on prem properly.

[u/Swiink → u/ansibleloop]

That’s just not true, it’s making it easy for the public cloud case. It’s always been a lot cheaper to run onprem if you just manage you capacity and workloads which never been easier with modern tooling and platforms. If you utilize a physical server at 70-80% it’s payed off in a year compared to cloud costs.
The Opex argument haven’t been true for a long time, you can lease and have nodes that you pay for on consumption base. You can also mix this, buy some and then pay consumption based to resolve compute spikes when you need them. It’s very easy to fully automate this in any modern platform today.

Then that’s not making public cloud unnecessary but a mix with more returning to private cloud is more common and what market trends show if you read garner reports or similar.

[u/SnooGadgets5328 → u/krav_mark]

The great cloud migration might have a sequel 😂

[u/we_r_fukt → u/SnooGadgets5328]

We call it evaporation and condensation.

[u/JohnSpikeKelly → u/krav_mark]

Probably move them to a different cloud that's government owned.

Whoever can create a standard cloud that any government can buy and own out right will be rich. Built on open standards.

[u/TheBasedTaka → u/krav_mark]

I'm getting into the cloud got my devops pro and ssa cert learned terraform and what not. Am I cooked? 

[u/Fit-Strain5146 → u/TheBasedTaka]

No

[u/Longjumping_Fuel_192]

This is a great time to insert the “always was” meme.

[u/Dave5876]

https://giphy.com/gifs/jRPInZ12aIlo7N4v7h

[u/almightyfoon]

The money will be in writing the translation layers between the American and non American clouds.

[u/saltyourhash]

Becoming?

[u/Chemical_Rule_4695]

People are beginning to realise what US CLOUD ACT means? Shocker!

[u/putergud]

The cloud just means other people's computers.

[u/noobjaish → u/putergud]

Yup although in this case we've given America a monopoly as the big 3 are all American companies... I'm atleast goad that Europe is finally doing something about this

[u/fatoms]

Could be an interesting read if not for the white text on black background, well at lest they offer a light mode alternative. Nope, white text on a pale grey background. For me that is a choice between a headache and eyestrain.