I agree that some of the hard parts were glanced over. Besides that, everyone seems to talk about the cloud and nobody about the other big, if not bigger, dependency. Our use of Windows and macOS (and Google Android and iOS if you will) on the vast majority of client devices.
If
Time and time again, data-sharing agreements between the EU and the US get busted, showing there's just no legal compatibility between EU privacy rights and US spying laws. [...] With the current political situation in the US, it's also starting to become clear that our entire digital infrastructure is at the mercy of US policies. It is no longer safe to rely on US clouds for our governments and societies, as the US government can shut it down at will.
are your worries, rolling out government-required backdoors, lockouts, etc. in operating systems is going to be a huge issue. To shut down a large portion of Europe's infrastructure, the US government only has to order three companies to do so.
I think there were (and are) attempts of replacing at least the desktop systems with some variant of Linux but I think the dependency on Office remains the main problem in doing so - Windows lets you integrate all that pretty seamlessly with how the system works and is administered.
China is probably much more aggressive in this than Europe as for them the US has been a rival (or even enemy) for a long time.
If
Time and time again, data-sharing agreements between the EU and the US get busted, showing there's just no legal compatibility between EU privacy rights and US spying laws. [...] With the current political situation in the US, it's also starting to become clear that our entire digital infrastructure is at the mercy of US policies. It is no longer safe to rely on US clouds for our governments and societies, as the US government can shut it down at will.
are your worries, rolling out government-required backdoors, lockouts, etc. in operating systems is going to be a huge issue. To shut down a large portion of Europe's infrastructure, the US government only has to order three companies to do so.