Microsoft’s outage comes at a time when Europe is pushing for greater technological sovereignty, with the aim of running its own servers and reducing its dependence on foreign suppliers.
Europe does not have the type of mega tech companies that abound in the United States, making it dependent on American companies for its digital services, but Europe believes it should become less dependent on the United States for its technology needs.
That sentiment grew stronger during U.S. President Donald Trump’s second term, when he hit the continent with huge tariffs and threatened to seize the Danish territory of Greenland.
Earlier this year, French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said government officials would abandon Zoom and other U.S.-owned videoconferencing tools and start using French-owned software. The decision aims in part to reduce “dependencies on non-European actors,” Lecornu said.
“The Internet in Europe is essentially an American construct, an American system. And Europe doesn’t really have a competitor for any of that,” Neil Shearing, chief economist at Capital Economics, told CNN earlier this year.
On Friday, that question resurfaced as the Microsoft outage lasted more than 12 hours, disrupting countries around the world.
“This conversation about tech sovereignty, even though it’s been mostly political, I bet it’s really lively today,” technology journalist and founder of The Rip Current podcast Jacob Ward told CNN.
“I think it’s probably, for everyone, a wake-up call about how vulnerable we are, even though we appreciate the convenience of these cloud systems.”
Anna Cooban contributed reporting.
Gn headline
