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.
As a European (British) I hope Europe can become as autonomous as possible.
We can trade with foreign entities when they’re being reasonable, but at the moment a few of them are being unreasonable.
Still feels weird seeing that sentence.
In a way maybe it is weird. Anyway, whether the UK rejoins the EU in the coming years or not, I hope the UK cooperates with the EU where it makes sense. The UK and the EU both have an interest in a prosperous Europe which doesn’t need to rely on unreliable or unfriendly states (US, China, Russia).
It’s also weird that those three countries, Russia, China and USA, are becoming so frequently talked about in the same light. The speed that the US has joined the other two in being referred to as both unreliable and unfriendly is incredible, and kinda scary really. I know it will take time to repair the damage but I hope they turn it around soon.
Always was thought of in those terms, particularly the Cold War, but a superpower was nice to have on side at least on paper. The difference is in the inability to depend even short term on some sort of framework. He changes his mind several times a day.
I guess the American people need to decide whether they want to be friends with Europe again. Trump got 49.8% of the popular vote in 2024, so not a majority, but still a lot of people. So they need to choose between continuing isolation in 2028 (e.g. Vance) or a leader who is a bit more sensible (e.g. Gavin Newsom).
In all likelihood, the vote was compromised. And anyway, the majority of the people of the U.S. do want to be friends with Europe. The problem is, once a fascist gets into power with a vote, it is very unlikely for them to leave power until they are dead. History shows us this much.
Many experts in the US have said that US votes are reliable though, right? Trump kept casting doubt on US votes, saying that Biden could only have won in 2020 due to manipulation, and experts were saying that actually the US voting system is reliable.
I definitely believe that many Americans want to be friends with Europe, yes. I also think there are quite a few Americans who love Trump and dislike Europe for whatever reasons. I hope America will elect somebody more sensible than Trump in 2028, but I don’t think it’s yet clear what will happen.
I just wish there was a snowman’s chance in hell of the UK getting rid of Microsoft. They’re a strategic risk and their software makes me welcome the merciful geomagnetic storm or nuclear EMP that’ll erase it all.
I could take the end of the world as long as Redmond got nuked a few minutes before me and I could enjoy a few glorious Microsoft-free moments.
I would argue that Microsoft are better than they used to be (I quite like TypeScript, and WSL) but perhaps only marginally. I’m lucky that I don’t have to use Windows. I just use Linux these days.
In terms of sovereignty, I think Europe should try to find alternatives to Microsoft for critical things, even if the only reason for that is because Microsoft is American. As the OP article shows, the US government can make it painful for Europe to rely on American companies like Microsoft, regardless of what Microsoft themselves choose to do.