Discussion
Seems Merz doesn't understand the difference between data-residency and data-sovereignty. Nor does he understand the scope of Trump's 2017 CLOUD act, which expressly states any data in any datacenter that is the property of a US corporation, regardless of where it physically resides in the world, can ultimately be accessed by US statecraft, on demand.
There is no 'data sovereignty' with GAFAM. Ever.
1/2
The French gov learned that lesson in July last year, when the director of public and legal affairs for Microsoft France, Anton Carniaux, was asked to testify before the French Senate whether he could guarantee that the data of French citizens stored in Microsoft's Azure servers, **in France**, is safe from access by US statecraft.
He replied that he cannot.
2/2
I'll break my n/n to add that we need to understand & remember the US would never, ever accept having its public/edu/mil/gov sectors hosted on foreign owned infra, lest of all abroad. Even that of a close ally.
Meanwhile, most of us, in some way, are taxed peasantry in the infrastructural equivalent of the Roman Empire, where the US gets to have its sovereignty and eat it too (at least the corporate Maxim of it), while the rest of the world does not.
This is an abject 'normal'.
@JulianOliver
This reminds me of the Galileo satellite initiative that ended up being absorbed by the US GPS array in return for some intel crumbs from the empire. EU have a serf mentality.
@zvinj Yes, a good reference and example!
@JulianOliver Merz sell Germans out.