Remember how they disabled all the online services for the judge from the International Criminal Court because Trump didn’t like her and put her on the sanctions list like a terrorist? Email, gone. Google account, gone. Credit cards, gone. (https://www.theguardian.com/law/2026/feb/18/international-criminal-court-icc-judges-trump-sanctions)
No thanks. We as individual Europeans should depend as little as possible on US services. And our society as a whole should also try to minimize its dependency on US tech. The US government is openly committing war crimes against its enemies already. Why would they hesitate to make use of their tech kill switch if it ever seemed benefitial to them? Trump doesn’t care about promises or contracts, he’ll fuck you over the moment he can benefit from it.
the world’s richest man also cut off Ukrainian access to starlink when Ukraine initiated a counter offensive against Russia. the oligarchs that form the US military industrial complex can, will, and have used their positions of leverage to influence geo-politics
That means we should talk about it more
The »kill switch« debate exists because the US proved it could flip one: Even if the restriction was temporary, it reminded governments and businesses that access to critical AI can depend on political decisions made in Washington. That’s exactly why digital sovereignty, OWAI for AI sovereignty in particular, has gone from a niche concern to a strategic priority.
It’s so fun to see USA shooting itself in the leg turning AIs off for the rest of the world when open source rivals their top closed source models.
Everything has a killswitch: If a software uses DRM with a regular server connection, it can be switched off. If it uses a cloud component, it can be switched off. If the company can push an update without user interaction, it can be switched off. And yes, every software has a killswitch and even Linux can get borderline ugly when the US ties.
The new would-be dictatorship in the West mirrors its role model in the East. Chinese propaganda has been telling that remote control isn’t an issue already for a long time.
Yeah, whenever there’s a practical choice, I’m picking non-American. I’m also bringing up relying on US tech at work, but moving people away from AWS/Azure/GCP is a Herculian task.
Right, we will then migrate to calling it the ‘Us nuclear tech option’
