In the unlikely event of an emergency, back-up copies of our code will be stored in Switzerland. This is part of the strap-in advice Microsoft offers to European partners operating a “sovereign cloud.” As on flights, the actual disaster would probably follow more panicky exchanges about sticking heads between legs and praying for survival. But the pilot of a passenger plane doesn’t usually parachute out mid-flight, which is effectively what Microsoft would be doing.
The sovereign cloud is the latest fudge from Europeans worried that all their IT services rest on infrastructure supplied by Americans, now governed by a tariff-mad and hostile-sounding president. Europe previously thought it could address the concerns by requiring companies to store and process data within national borders.
As Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president, was keen to remind Europeans in a blog, that’s all very well until your country’s infrastructure is being flattened by Russian airstrikes. It’s precisely why Ukraine has done the opposite and evacuated its data and technology services to other European countries – like parents sending their children outside London during the blitz – with, of course, the admirable help of Microsoft.
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