AWS Switches On European Sovereign Cloud, Pledges €7.8 B EU Build-Out

Big tech has played this sovereignty cat-and-mouse before: in the 1920s, AT&T created foreign operating companies to dodge U.S. monopoly rules, and in 2014 Microsoft opened a German-trusteeed cloud to calm post-Snowden nerves—both sought to placate local regulators without surrendering corporate control. Today’s launch fits a decades-long arc in which data localisation, from France’s Minitel (1982) to the EU’s GDPR (2018), has steadily collided with the borderless architecture of the Internet. By erecting a legally and operationally ring-fenced cloud, AWS is conceding that Washington’s extraterritorial statutes (CLOUD Act, 2018) now threaten its access to the world’s second-largest economy. Whether this is genuine autonomy or “sovereignty-washing,” it signals the maturation of a multipolar digital order: in the next century, compute capacity may fragment much like oil concessions did after World War II—still run by multinationals, but on terms scripted by host governments.