Rattled Microsoft promises EU cloud contingency plans amid fear fears of weaponisation by Trump
Redmond is "listening closely to the views of European governments and leaders."
Cloud
Microsoft President Brad Smith has promised to “uphold Europe’s digital resilience” in an extraordinary blog, in which Redmond promised that if it were ever ordered to “suspend or cease cloud operations in Europe” it would “promptly and vigorously contest such a measure using all legal avenues available.
"Microsoft is headquartered in the United States, but we provide cloud services to Europe through corporate entities headquartered in Europe... going forward our European datacenter operations and their boards will be overseen by a European board of directors that consists exclusively of European nationals," he added.
“We also are listening closely to the views of European governments and leaders. We recognize that European countries, like nations everywhere, need to have rock-solid confidence in the digital infrastructure on which they rely” he wrote.
Smith’s blog comes amid mounting concerns among swathes of European policy makers that their heavy dependence on US technology firms could be weaponised against them by a vindictive Trump administration that has been aggressively targeting individuals like former CISA Director Chris Krebs, institutions like Harvard University, and organisations like law firm Perkins Coie with all the might of the executive – and arguably none of the established due process they deserve.
(Perkins Coie is suing, supported by over other 500 law firms, alleging an “unconstitutional violation of the separation of powers;” Harvard’s lawyers meanwhile have told Trump that his attacks require “unsupported and disruptive remedies for alleged harms that the government has not proven through mandatory processes established by Congress and required by law…”)
Smith said: “We will designate and rely upon European partners with contingency arrangements for operational continuity in the unlikely event Microsoft were ever required by a court to suspend services. We are already enabling our partners in France and Germany to do this for the Bleu and Delos datacenters, and we will pursue arrangements for our public cloud datacenters in Europe,” he added.
See also: Microsoft to EU cloud firms: “Sorry, our engineers are busy and you misunderstood that agreement”
In further extraordinary contingency plans, he added that “we will store back-up copies of our code in a secure repository in Switzerland, and we will provide our European partners with the legal rights needed to access and use this code if needed for this purpose.” [Smith did not specify what code he was referring to.]
“Given recent geopolitical volatility, we recognize that European governments likely will consider additional options. Some of these may involve public financing to support European home-grown offerings,” Smith added in the April 30 post.
We recognize the importance of a diversified technology ecosystem, and we are committed to collaborating with European participants across the tech ecosystem,” Smith said, as Microsoft made five European commitments including ongoing investment in “sovereign” cloud data centres. He highlighted a partnership with Capgemini and Orange in France called “Bleu” that offers Microsoft Azure cloud services and Microsoft 365 productivity tools “operated under French control” and a similar sovereign cloud initiative in Germany via a partnership between Microsoft, SAP, and consultancy Arvato Systems that through SAP subsidiary, Delos Cloud GmbH, is creating a “sovereign cloud platform for the German public sector… in German datacenters and operated by German personnel.
Smith’s post comes weeks after Google announced that it would let Germany’s Schwartz IT group host and distribute “sovereign” Drive and Gmail services for the first time. Schwarz IT, the technology arm of Europe’s largest retailer, has become a major IT services provider in its own right to customers like Bayern FC.