undefined | Better HN

0 pointsmichaelt1mo ago0 comments

> Just as America would like to reduce its dependence on external production, so to do other countries want to reduce their own.

If anything, I'd say for other countries it's more urgent.

If China embargoes deliveries of light bulbs to Europe, all the light bulbs already in place keep working. The pain would grow over time - giving a grace period, to ramp up local production.

If America embargoes AWS, Google, Apple and Microsoft? The pain would be instant and severe.

0 comments

agubelu1mo ago

That would be as close to a declaration of war as you can get without firing a bullet.

The immediate and obvious response would be for the foreign branches of those companies to be declared "of national interest", nationalized and forced to keep operating.

FpUser1mo ago

>"nationalized and forced to keep operating."

Assuming there is no some kill switch which would render a whole infra including hardware inoperable.

gopher_space1mo ago

I'd imagine the government would be in talks with the highest ranking local Amazon employees long before, but I can't imagine a country trusting the hardware or wanting to manage the jank.

martijnvds1mo ago

It's called us-east-1?

1 more reply

hdgvhicv1mo ago

We saw the damage crowdstrike caused in a few hours

nixpulvis1mo ago

I'm absolutely not an expert, but critical things for power and food production not to mention medical supplies and emergency equipment are also tied up pretty deeply in international trade.

The world would break pretty quickly if we all just stopped trading with each other.

michaeltOP1mo ago

Sure, but many products can be sourced from a load of countries.

If you can't get natural gas from Russia you can get it shipped from America or Australia or Qatar - it's expensive as hell, and you might need to quickly build new regasification plants, but your economy keeps running. And there's no remote kill switch that disables the gas you already have in-country.

That's not the case for the services provided by AWS, Google, Apple and Microsoft though - the 'competition' is one US provider vs another.

GoblinSlayer1mo ago

Self hosted ms installations have no instant kill switch, only a slow one.

hilbert421mo ago

In case of war AWS, Google, Apple and Microsoft and others would be immediately directed by government to adopt its war strategy—like it or not—just as US manufacturing was forced to retool for war production during WWII.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse