Introduction: Waking Up to the Obvious, Years Too Late#
Right, so the suits in The Hague finally coughed up some words about maybe, just maybe, doing something about our pathetic groveling before US Big Tech. State Secretary Szabo apparently mumbled about getting ‘frameworks’ ready before summer. About fucking time. We – the ’nerds,’ the ‘weirdos,’ the ones who actually get Linux, FOSS, and why privacy isn’t a dirty word – have been yelling about this dead end for years. But no, it takes the existential threat of that orange buffoon Trump potentially pulling the plug on geopolitical stability, or whatever incoherent rambling scared them this week, to finally jolt them into pretending to act on digital dependency. Pathetic. The motivation reeks of panic, not principle.
The Grand Plan: Buzzwords and Bullshit#
Their solution? A cocktail of vague promises: some bullshit ‘derisking strategy’ – pass the buzzword bingo card – and the star of the show, a ’national, sovereign cloud’. Oh, lovely. On the surface, it sounds like a step away from the digital shithole where we own nothing, pay through the nose, and Big Tech tracks our every fart. A glimmer of hope that maybe, just maybe, we could claw back some control over our own digital infrastructure and data. But let’s not pop the champagne just yet.
Sovereignty Lite: The Problem with the “European Ecosystem”#
Here’s where the bullshit detector starts screaming. Szabo immediately starts dribbling about a “stronger Dutch and European ecosystem.” Are you fucking kidding me? Europe? Shove it. While collaboration isn’t inherently bad, framing Dutch sovereignty primarily within an EU context is a classic political deflection. We need Dutch sovereignty, not swapping one set of masters (US Big Tech) for another potential layer of bureaucracy and control dictated by Brussels, Paris, or Berlin. What happens when French or German interests inevitably clash with ours? Whose “sovereignty” wins then? This smells less like independence and more like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic under a different flag.
The Only Real Path: Mandate FOSS and Decentralization#
Let’s cut the crap. There’s only one goddamn way out of this vendor lock-in hell, whether the overlords are American corporations or EU committees: mandating decentralization and Free, Open Source Software (FOSS). Period.
- FOSS is Non-Negotiable: Why? Because it means transparency. We can see the code. We can audit it. We can modify it. It prevents vendor lock-in by design. It fosters local expertise and innovation instead of just feeding foreign giants. Anything less than a hard FOSS mandate, especially for that joke of a SaaS layer they admit is lagging, is just lipstick on a pig.
- Decentralization is Key: Shoving everything into one “national” cloud, even if built on FOSS, just creates a new single point of failure and control. True resilience and sovereignty come from decentralized systems. Think distributed networks, federated services – architectures that are inherently harder to control, censor, or knock offline.
Anything less than these two pillars is just rearranging the chains, not breaking them.
Why We’re Here: The Cancer of Big Tech Dependency#
Let’s not forget how we got into this mess. Years, decades even, of pissing away billions of taxpayer euros on Microsoft’s spyware-laden ecosystem, Google’s insatiable data vacuum, and Amazon’s everything-store-turned-cloud-monopoly. They sold us “convenience” and “efficiency” and locked us into contracts designed to bleed us dry while offering zero real control or transparency. This Big Tech dependency isn’t just a technical problem; it’s a metastasized cancer on our national autonomy, security, and economy. Pretending to have a change of heart now, after enabling this disaster for so long, requires more than just vague “frameworks.”
History Lesson: Why Skepticism is Mandatory#
Need proof that this is likely political theatre? Szabo practically admits the difficulty, pointing to Luxembourg’s ‘sovereign’ cloud initiative. And what’s the punchline? Surprise! It still runs on US tech underneath. How wonderfully sovereign. Laughable. It’s the perfect example of putting a “sovereign” sticker on the same old dependency. Given our own government’s track record (remember the Toeslagenaffaire? Data breaches galore?), trusting them to suddenly get digital sovereignty right without being forced is naive at best.
Conclusion: Paper Tiger or Actual Teeth? Don’t Hold Your Breath.#
So, we wait. Let’s see if these ‘frameworks’ due “before summer” have any actual fucking teeth or if they’re just more paper tigers born from geopolitical panic, not genuine strategic vision. The checklist is simple:
- Mandatory FOSS: Is it enshrined in policy for government IT?
- Decentralization Focus: Is the architecture genuinely distributed?
- Genuine Dutch Control: Is the governance structure free from undue EU or corporate influence?
If the answer to any of these is “no,” then they’re just polishing the brass on the Titanic while pretending to steer away from the iceberg. Big Tech will keep laughing, collecting their billions, and those of us who saw this coming will just shake our heads and say ’told you so.’ Again. Prove us wrong, The Hague. I dare you.