OPINION Sick of relying on proprietary programs and American software giants and hyperclouds? Join the digital sovereignty revolution.

It really is the smart thing to do. Honestly, with Donald Trump calling the shots, who knows what he'll do next? Demand that American companies stop providing services to European companies unless Denmark surrenders Greenland? Order Microsoft to disable Windows 11 unless the International Criminal Court is dismantled? Force Anthropic to lock down Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models for international users? Oh, wait. They already did the last one.

Wake up, sheeple! You can't trust American tech, and I speak as a US citizen whose ancestors first arrived in the States in the 1770s. Finnish MEP Aura Salla put it well at February's Open Source Policy Summit: "The EU runs on Microsoft. The US could turn us off inside one hour."

The same is true for the UK and pretty much every country in the world. If that doesn't scare you, it should.

Some people get it. When I was at the United Nations Open Source Week recently, it wasn't just European Union countries beating the drum for digital sovereignty. Speakers from Tanzania, Vietnam, Morocco, and elsewhere argued for greater control over their technology futures.

Many of them aren't just talking a good game. They are actually doing something now. Finally!

For example, the German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern is dumping Microsoft SharePoint for Nextcloud and OpenProject. Bavaria is also moving toward digital sovereignty. Neither state is jumping from Windows to desktop Linux yet, but, hey, baby steps.

Ireland was preparing to pull the trigger on a Microsoft procurement potentially worth €1 billion when the government called a halt. Opposition politicians then asked why open source alternatives had never made it onto the shopping list.

Ireland's Minister for Public Expenditure, Infrastructure, Public Service Reform and Digitalization, Frankie Feighan, said the agreement for Microsoft software and services had been canceled after "matters of concern were raised by an interested party."

At the UN Open Source Week, Ireland's Government CIO, Louise McKeever, said that as far as she was concerned, digital sovereignty is "the ability of a government to maintain control over its digital infrastructure, data, and technologies" in a world of cross‑border data flows, AI, and geopolitical risk – and that makes it "a national security concern" as much as a tech one.

Cian O'Callaghan, deputy leader of Ireland's opposition Social Democrats, would agree. He said that, for value-for-money reasons and to avoid US technology dependency, Ireland should at least consider alternatives including "LibreOffice, Linux, Thunderbird, and Open-Xchange."

It's not just governments getting into the sovereignty act. Airbus is migrating its most critical applications from AWS to French cloud provider Scaleway. Why? For much the same reason as governments. Scaleway made a competitive commercial offer, and, as Catherine Jestin, Airbus's executive vice president of digital, said: "I need a sovereign cloud because part of the information is extremely sensitive from a national and European perspective. We want to ensure this information remains under European control."

Makes sense to me!

In the United Kingdom, however, it's a different story. A House of Commons Library briefing published in March put it plainly: "The UK Government does not have an overarching policy on digital sovereignty. It has set out its approach to building 'sovereign capability' in key technologies."

The closest thing Britain has is the UK Compute Roadmap. It states that the government wants "sovereign, secure, and sustainable capability," and directs the UK Sovereign AI Unit to treat compute as a priority area. Back in 2025, which is prehistory by AI standards, Labour wanted to pour £2 billion into sovereign AI. Now? Who knows? Stay tuned.

I might add that, in AI business terms, £2 billion is less than the American companies throw at AI in a week. Believe it or not, the biggest US tech companies are projected to spend about $700 billion on capex this year – roughly $13.5 billion a week.

Yes, I agree. Those are insane numbers. Welcome to the wild, wonderful world of AI bubble spending.

Leaving aside the crazy AI numbers, some people in the UK get that digital sovereignty must be a priority. The Open Rights Group has a petition: Demand UK Digital Sovereignty. I suggest you sign.

As Trump has shown time and time again, "his" US has no "special relationship" with anyone. Just ask Israel or Canada. If the new PM, Andy Burnham, so much as sneezes at Trump, the President could take offense and apply pressure for the UK to lose its access to American tech resources.

To me, there's no longer any question about it. Everyone, including companies and people in the States, must reduce their reliance on American software and services. Linux and open source alternatives that are not beholden to Washington offer the clearest way forward. ®