Post
Today, another mad dictator is threatening the world's infrastructure. For the rest of the world to escape dictators' demands, they will have to accelerate their independence from American tech - not just Russian gas. A post-American internet starts with abandoning the laws that give US companies - and therefore Trump - a veto over how your technology works.
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No National Cloud should be hosted outside that nation.
No national Cloud should be designed or maintained by companies with ties to foreign governments-that way lies espionage and kill-switch-fuelled blackmail.
@pluralistic thanks! I thought you might enjoy this paper we recently authored on related issues…
https://www.orangecyberdefense.com/fileadmin/general/pdf/WP_Europe_Cyber_Dilemma.pdf
First toot makes a lot more sense when you don't misread Huawei as Hawaii.
In other, unrelated news, earlier this month, Trump's DoJ ordered Apple and Google to remove apps that allowed users to report ICE's roving gangs of masked thugs, who have kidnapped thousands of our neighbors and sent them to black sites:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/10/06/rogue-capitalism/#orphaned-syrian-refugees-need-not-apply
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Apple and Google capitulated. Apple also capitulated to Trump by removing apps that collect hand-verified, double-checked videos of ICE violence. Apple declared ICE's thugs to be a "protected class" that may not be disparaged in apps available to Apple's customers:
Of course, iPhones can (technically) run apps that Apple doesn't want you to run. All you have to do is "jailbreak" your phone and install an independent app store.
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Just one problem: the US Trade Rep bullied every country in the world into banning jailbreaking, meaning that if Trump (a man who never met a grievance that was too petty to pursue) orders Tim Cook (a man who never found a boot he wouldn't lick) to remove apps from your country's app store, you won't be able to get those apps from anyone else:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/10/15/freedom-of-movement/#data-dieselgate
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The mechanisms by which citizens are remade into subjects & serfs, it often begins with being made into a captive consumer.
Reminder of who funds Apple: #PrinceBonesaw
https://www.businessinsider.com/saudi-arabia-crown-prince-visits-apple-google-2018-4
The fossil fuel industry is deeply invested in choicelessness.
Now, you *could* get your government to order Apple to open up its platform to third-party app stores, but they will not comply - instead, they'll drown your country in spurious legal threats:
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:62025TN0354
And they'll threaten to pull out of your country altogether:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/26/empty-threats/#500-million-affluent-consumers
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Of course, Google's no better. Not only do they capitulate to every demand from Trump, but they're also locking down Android so that you'll no longer be allowed to install apps unless Google approves of them (meaning that Trump now has a *de facto* veto over your Android apps):
https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/01/fulu/#i-am-altering-the-deal
For decades, China hawks have accused Chinese tech giants of being puppeteered by the Chinese state, vehicles for projecting Chinese state power around the world.
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Of course, Google's no better. Not only do they capitulate to every demand from Trump, but they're also locking down Android so that you'll no longer be allowed to install apps unless Google approves of them (meaning that Trump now has a *de facto* veto over your Android apps):
https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/01/fulu/#i-am-altering-the-deal
For decades, China hawks have accused Chinese tech giants of being puppeteered by the Chinese state, vehicles for projecting Chinese state power around the world.
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Meanwhile, the Chinese state has declared war on its tech companies, treating them as competitors, not instruments:
https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/03/ambulatory-wallets/#sectoral-balances
When it comes to US foreign policy, every accusation is a confession. Snowden showed us how the US tech giants were being used to wiretap virtually every person alive for the US government.
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