The story of Denmark’s veterans raises a question that today resonates in the offices of CIOs across Europe: “Was it worth it?”
They answered the call of 9/11 out of loyalty to an alliance that Washington, in the era of tariffs and America First, has chosen to break.
In the IT world, Europe has made the same miscalculation. We believed the U.S. cloud was a benevolent ally, when in reality it has acted as a Trojan horse eroding our technological sovereignty.
Cloud as the New Afghanistan: An Investment with No Return
European companies have invested billions in migrating their infrastructures to U.S.-based cloud providers. They sought agility; they found a cost trap and a progressive loss of control.
Just as Danish veterans feel ridiculed after serving on the front line, many European organizations today are disarmed: their data resides on foreign servers, subject to laws such as the Cloud Act, which allows the U.S. government to access it without prior notice.
The so-called “betrayal” of tariffs is not an isolated episode. It is the symptom of a dangerous belief: entrusting our security — whether defensive or digital — to those who do not see us as allies, but as economic dependencies.
Lock-in Is the New Greenland
Claiming territories for their strategic value while ignoring the sovereignty of others is not just a geopolitical practice. In technology, it happens every day.
Major cloud providers impose ecosystems that are nearly impossible to leave. AI, business processes, and analytics are so deeply integrated into their platforms that Europe has lost real decision-making capacity.
The result is clear: data — the oil of the 21st century — and the processes that sustain our industries remain under the control of a power that does not hesitate to use technology as a political and economic weapon.
If your hospitals, factories, or essential services depend on that cloud, your sovereignty is an illusion.
Technological Sovereignty: The Only Dignified Way Out
The silent march of the veterans in Copenhagen was an act of dignity. Europe needs its own.
This is not about rejecting innovation, but about stopping the confusion between innovation and submission.
Against the dogma of captive cloud, the alternative is clear:
- Real control over data: deciding where it resides and who can access it.
- Vendor freedom: breaking free from license captivity and ever-changing terms.
- Innovation serving people: tools that users control, not systems that control them.
Do Not Hide the Medals in a Drawer
Søren Knudsen, a Danish officer, keeps his medals in a drawer out of shame. Europe should not wait for an embargo, an automatic update, or a unilateral price increase to bring down its critical systems before realizing it has also stored its independence in a drawer.
The surrender of data is already here. It manifests itself in technological dependency, loss of control, and the constant transfer of European value to Silicon Valley.
Monitoring, data, and infrastructure are not services to be outsourced. They are the containment wall of our operational freedom.
It is time to stop asking whether it was worth it and start rebuilding technological sovereignty with judgment and control.
Sancho is the one who created and founded Pandora FMS. Among his many hobbies, besides technology and the internet in general, is reading, playing the guitar and sports like fencing or boxing. In his personal blog he dares to write about business and technology issues when he has the time, which is almost never the case.
