When the U.S. government imposed sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC) in early 2025, the consequences were far-reaching yet quickly enforced.
The restrictions cut off the ICC chief prosecutor’s access to Microsoft services, including email, followed by a freezing of his personal and institutional bank accounts in affected jurisdictions.
While this was happening, the Dutch government was watching, coming to the bitter realization that access to essential services depended on decisions made in the U.S.
Hence, their response to this is DAWO, short for Digitaal Autonome Werkomgeving Overheid, or Digital Autonomous Work Environment for Government in English.
It is a framework that looks to tackle the government’s digital stack, covering the OS, an office suite, collaboration apps, cloud services, IT management tools, and AI, with all of it being built around a NixOS foundation.
Hardware sovereignty is another whole chapter that takes a lot more time and preparation to tackle. Modern semiconductor production capabilities cannot be created by a bunch of coders like adapting NixOS - you need to plan and construct high-tech facilities, and those are dependent on an actual nightmare of logistic problems that have only been solved a number of times all over the world - for the latest silicon using EUV that number is one.
There is a push to create the capability for Europe to be sovereign in this space too, but this will probably take decades to finish regardless of how many ressources you throw at it.
But making sure that the US cannot turn off your administration by remote switch is a lot easier to accomplish, and very much needed.