Digital sovereignty or digital colony? A wake-up call for Europe

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An interview with Prof. Harald Wehnes: Introduction & summary

“Without radical measures to reduce dependency on digital monopolies, the digital future of Germany & Europe is lost.” – Prof. Harald Wehnes

In this alarming & thought provoking episode of Open Matters, host Richard Brock speaks with Prof. Harald Wehnes, Chair of Computer Science at the University of Würzburg & spokesperson for the German Informatics Society’s Working Group on Digital Sovereignty. The discussion confronts a critical question for policymakers & technologists alike: Has Europe become a digital colony?

Prof. Wehnes defines digital sovereignty as the capacity of nations, organisations, & individuals to govern their digital infrastructure & data independently. He argues that Europe’s growing reliance on US based hyperscalers, e.g. Google, Amazon, & Microsoft, has created a profound imbalance of power, one that threatens economic stability, political autonomy, & democratic resilience. Citing recent examples, he describes how US Big Tech’s dominance has enabled extraterritorial control over data, the manipulation of national policies, as seen in the withdrawal of Canada’s digital tax under US pressure, & even interference in judicial processes, such as Microsoft’s refusal to cooperate with Dutch courts & the International Criminal Court.

These, Wehnes warns, are not isolated incidents but symptoms of a broader structural dependency that leaves European institutions & businesses vulnerable to both economic exploitation & political coercion. The consequences are already measurable: A €109 billion annual deficit in digital services between the EU & the US & widespread dependency on proprietary US systems.

Yet, amid these warnings, Wehnes points to emerging models of resistance. Denmark’s Ministry of Digitalisation, the French city of Lyon, & the German state of Schleswig-Holstein have all begun transitioning thousands of workplaces to open-source solutions, reclaiming control over data & infrastructure.

Not mentioned in the podcast are many more EU governments & institutions that are already transitioning from dependency on US Big Tech to free & open source alternatives, for example:

  • French National Gendarmerie / GendBuntu (France): One of the largest and longest-running public-sector migrations to Linux and OpenOffice/LibreOffice (GendBuntu), with millions in licencing savings and documented large-scale desktop roll-outs over many years.
  • Municipality of Schwäbisch Hall (Germany): Documented municipal migration to Linux desktops and open source servers (case study documented in EU interoperable/OSOR materials).
  • European Commission (EU institution): Public commitment and concrete steps to publish and reuse internally developed software as open source, and to make open source tools a policy priority within Commission services. (Policy-level shift and repo releases are documented).
  • City of Barcelona (Spain): Strong institutional open source stance (OSPO/open projects, endorsement of open source principles, reuse of open source in municipal services and open-data tooling).
  • City of Munich (Germany): LiMux (historical & continuing commitments): Large, well-documented LiMux migration to Linux and LibreOffice (significant desktop deployment). The project later attracted political debate and partial reversal decisions, but Munich remains a landmark case and has re-committed to open standards and renewed open source plans in recent years. (Good example for both successful migration scale and political lessons.)
  • French municipal / regional projects (multiple cities): Beyond Lyon and the Gendarmerie, a number of French municipalities and departments have publicly reported active migrations to FOSS (examples covered in OSOR and national press).
  • Various Danish government agencies / digitalization bodies: National-level moves and agency pilots to reduce dependence on US cloud providers and favour open source or European cloud alternatives have been reported (policy measures and pilot projects).
  • Numerous local EU open source initiatives / Linux/FOSS foundations: Institutional ecosystem entries helping deployment and transition (e.g. Linux Foundation Europe, local Open Source Program Offices) that underpin transitions in public bodies and companies. These are not migrations per se but are a structural part of the transition landscape.
  • Other municipal case studies documented by EU OSOR / Interoperable Europe: Multiple smaller towns and municipal administrations across EU member states have published case studies of migrating particular services (email, document collaboration, CMS, open data portals) to open source stacks: OSOR and interoperable-Europe collect these examples.

This episode discusses the geopolitics of digital dependency, highlighting the need for European institutions to act before technological convenience results in a new form of (digital) colonialism.

Audio:

Transcript

Chapter 1: Intro

0:00: The term digital colony describes the situation with frightening accuracy.

0:06: Without radical measures to reduce dependency on digital monopolies, the digital future of Germany and Europe is lost.

0:15: Hello and welcome to Open Matters, the podcast where Open Source matters and so do the big digital questions of our time.

0:23: I’m Richard Brock and today I’m joined by Professor Dr. Harold Wehnes Chair of Computer Sciences at the University of Würzburg and spokesman for the

0:33: German Informatics Society’s Executive Working Group on Digital Sovereignty. He’s been working at the University of Würzburg for over 25 years and today he’s here to convince me, and maybe you,

0:44: that digital sovereignty isn’t just nice to have but absolutely essential.

0:49: Harald welcome to the podcast. Yeah, thank you for the invitation. Before we launch into this topic, I thought it would be helpful to define some terms. What do we mean when we are talking about ‘digital sovereignty’?

Chapter 2: What is digital sovereignty?

1:01: Well, digital sovereignty refers to a nation’s ability, the ability of a company of an individual

1:10: to independently control and govern its digital infrastructure and data

1:17: without external interferences. That’s really helpful. So you’re based in Germany, I’m in the UK

Chapter 3: Where do Germany and the UK stand?

1:24: Where do you think our countries are standing on this matter today? Sorry, but I can’t compare the situation of these two countries.

1:34: But I get the impression that people in the UK are somewhat

1:39: more aware of the dangers posed by tech giants. In 2021, Sir Richard Moore, your head of the British

1:49: Secret Service, MI6, described the dangers of digital dependencies in a BBC interview. He explained

1:58: the data trap as follows: “If you give another country access to really critical data about your

2:05: society, over time, that will undermine your sovereignty because you no longer have control

2:13: over that data.” And you have a professor at London School of Economics, Nick Coltrie,

2:21: and a colleague of him have published the book, The Cost of Connection, How Data is Colonising

2:28: Human Life and Appropriating it for Capitalism. And there’s also a BBC video I saw, ‘What is Data Colonialism?’

Chapter 4: Germany as a digital colony?

2:40: I suppose that leads us into the main topic we’re talking about. I read one of your articles recently, ‘Germany as a Digital Colony’. And you had some strong phrases in there. You

2:50: were saying, “Without digital sovereignty, there’s no future for our society”, or things like,

2:55: “Compared to the dependence on Russian energy supplies, the digital dependence on hyperscalers is more critical,

3:02: the degree of dependence is significantly higher, and the digital dependence is virtually irreversible.”

3:08: Those are very stark warnings. Isn’t this a little bit alarmist? We’re not that at risk, are we?

3:15: Well, the term digital colony describes the situation with frightening accuracy.

3:23: Administration, the economy, education, depend on digital monopolies such as Microsoft, Oracle,

3:29: Google, Apple, & Co, which dominates data flows and rules in particular. We are already

3:37: experiencing a growing loss of control of our own data. And external control undermines sovereignty.

3:48: Big tech dictates the rules of the game, maximises its profits at the expense of the German and

3:55: European economy and society. We pay tribute. We are in a colony in the form of license fees

4:04: and surrender our data sovereignty to US tech monopolies. Without radical measures to reduce

4:13: dependency on digital monopolies, the digital future of Germany and Europe is lost.

Chapter 5: What are the consequences of this dependency?

4:21: Help us to understand that a little bit more. What do you think are the really big consequences of this digital dependency?

4:28: Well, there are a lot of consequences. First one, you feel it today,

4:35: the powerlessness and vulnerability to blackmail. Trump and his big tech billionaires

4:43: are a powerful alliance that knows no limits, no state, no company, and no individual is safe.

4:50: We have a lot of examples of the weekend, Canada. Trump has managed to get Canada to withdraw

5:00: the digital tax that was introduced a year ago. In the past, there have been several attempts by

5:09: big tech companies to influence foreign laws that restrict their business. And maybe if you heard of

5:16: the Dutch bank, Amsterdam Trade Bank, Microsoft followed US orders and withdraw services from this bank

5:25: The bank went bust, but then Microsoft would also not cooperate with the bankruptcy proceedings,

5:32: they tried to hide from Dutch courts also. And Microsoft has blocked the chief prosecutor of the International Court of Justice, Den Haag, from accessing his email account.

5:44: The clear message, anyone who uses big tech’s clouds risk the existence of their state company or organisation

5:54: On the one hand, big tech is playing something like a deputy sheriff for Trump.

6:01: And Trump is showing his gratitude by removing business obstacles. In Canada, Trump even kills a Canadian law that hindering big tech’s business.

6:14: Second argument, the unlimited outflow,

6:18: the cash outflow to big tech. With some figures, the EU’s European deficit on services,

6:26: which means licenses, IT services, compared to the US already amounted to 109 billion euro in 2023.

6:40: This deficit has quadrupled in the last four years. It’s 242 per US citizen. And for

6:52: family of four, this corresponds to around 1000 euro per year. If this trend continues,

7:03: it will be 4000 euros for a family of four in four years. It means Europe debt, big tech rich.

7:13: And the third one, for me, it’s the most critical development. Big tech is using its monopoly power to expand into other economic sectors. It’s attempting to become dominant there as well.

7:26: Example, the banks, the payment transactions are already in the hands of big techs, Apple Pay,

7:35: Microsoft Pay, Meta Pay, Google Pay, Amazon Pay. And now they’re also offering loans and financial

7:40: advice. That’s a classical work of the normal banks. And we are already seeing a massive

7:48: faith of bank closures here in Germany. Some banks are so foolish that they use big tech

7:55: products and services and thereby strengthening their direct competitors. Also Europe debt, big tech rich.

8:05: The way you present it there is quite dramatic. And it seems very obvious in

Chapter 6: How have we gotten to this point?

8:10: some ways. So how have we gotten to this point, then, where we have such a large dependency on

8:17: something that appears to be this problematic? That’s the question. How could this happen?

8:22: This situation? I think the marketing departments of big tech are extremely inventive with narratives.

8:31: I would say, I would describe them as lies. And false promises are used to lure customers,

8:40: companies, states, individuals into dependency traps and rip them off. The market dominating

8:48: providers have, for example, recognised that it’s opportune to adorn their products with an attribute

8:56: “digitally sovereign” due to the administration and companies’ increased interest in digital

9:02: sovereignty. This brazen sovereignty washing. The absolute opposite is the case because the use of

9:12: monopoly services weakens digital serenity, not strengthens it.

Chapter 7: Why isn’t using German data centres good enough?

9:18: So you’re talking about examples like Microsoft running Microsoft Azure data centres that are physically located in Germany.

9:27: They’re under German jurisdiction. Is that not sufficient sovereignty? Why is that not good enough?

9:33: I think that’s bullshit. Big tech companies are subject to US law. This also applies to

9:40: all data centres outside the US. The Cloud Act oversees data. That’s the content of this law

9:49: Legitimises access by US authorities to all data centres in Europe, in the world, outside the US.

9:57: And those affected do not have to be informed. This opens a door to manipulation in

10:05: industrial espionage, as more and more examples show. Access to one’s own data can be shut down

10:14: at any time. So it’s a very dangerous, very dangerous to store data in these computer centres.

Chapter 8: Is there any good news?!

10:23: Well, you’re painting a very dark picture there and it sounds quite gloomy and worrying.

10:29: Do you have any good news? Are there any good examples? Is there any positive news in this area?

10:37: Yeah, I think they are very good news. And we are reaching a tipping point. More and more people become aware of the situation. Denmark has learned its lesson because of Greenland.

10:51: Both the Danish Ministry of Digitalisation and the two largest Danish cities, Copenhagen,

10:59: Arhoof, have shown the red card to Microsoft to leave the Microsoft products. And almost every

11:06: day there’s a report in the press at an organisation, a company, a city, switching to alternatives. Today, the French city of Lyon is getting rid of windows and office.

11:20: And even the European Commission is now reviewing offers from European cloud providers to replace

11:29: Microsoft Azure. In Germany, maybe a third of it, the Federal State of Schlesi-Kolstein

11:35: is currently converting 30,000 workplaces to open source alternatives. And already by the end of

11:44: October, 70% of these workplaces means more than 20,000 should have been converted.

11:52: Well, that does sound like some really good news. It’s interesting the example you gave of Schleswig-Holstein.

11:59: I think our company is involved in that one as well. And it’s exciting to see that there is some

12:06: positive movement in this industry. There’s a real positive movement. I think it’s beginning

12:14: with a positive wave. And it’s important that everyone participates. The state, companies,

12:21: and every individual. This is the only way we can prevent digital colonisation. We have to do it.

12:31: Thank you. Well, that’s a really helpful discussion. Perhaps I could ask you just one last question. Supposing you were in an elevator with a government official and you had

Chapter 9: How would you outline your message in 30 seconds?

12:42: 30 to encourage them to move away from closed system to take back control of their data.

12:50: How might you encourage them in just 30 or a minute? Yeah, I think the examples are encouraging.

12:58: So I would show them these examples. And also, as I showed to you, the consequences of

13:07: digital dependency. I don’t have the right words in the moment for this. But I will prepare for this moment. Thank you for this question!

13:20: Sorry for putting you on the spot. No, no, it’s fine.

13:23: It’s fine. I think you have to make a pitch for this question. I was already invited by ministries

13:30: It’s fine. I think you have to make a pitch for this question. I was already invited by ministries of digitalisation in Germany.

13:38: I will meet other people in the nearest future. So I need this pitch, thank you!

13:46: Well, I’m pleased we’ve had a mutually beneficial discussion!

13:52: Dr. Harold Werners, it’s been a really interesting talking to you. I’ve learned a lot. I’m sure our listeners well have also. Thank you so much for joining us on the podcast. Yeah, thank you.

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