Merz: Google Cloud is sovereign enough for intelligence agencies | Hacker News Reader

Merz: Google Cloud is sovereign enough for intelligence agencies

heise.de

27 pointskakoni18 comments

If I understand this correctly, he’s not talking about a public cloud, but rather about Google-developed solutions for an air-gapped internal platform. Google have had several public job listings for “sovereign cloud” teams.

There are a few other companies that offer something similar in the enterprise space (e.g. VMware/Broadcom for the platform part), and a lot of them are from the US as well.

Would it be better to buy European? Certainly from an autonomy point of view. But that’s not the only factor in purchasing decisions and Google probably still have better access to talent.

> Would it be better to buy European? Certainly from an autonomy point of view. But that’s not the only factor in purchasing decisions and Google probably still have better access to talent.

I also think there was no European solution available with the same feature set. You can't buy something that doesn't exist.

It's arguable that the feature-set is obtuse and overrated. After all, no single country's government needs to scale as much as Google, and serve as many customers nearly as much. There are nice things about Google's infra on the networking side, but a lot of it like fancy encapsulations and optically reconfigurable switching only matters for public clouds. For private clouds, the workloads simply do not require elasticity like that. When it comes to applications, like distributed filesystems, object stores, and databases, all of it is pretty much open source commodity these days.

Don't forget, Google is now selling TPU's, for one, to third-party operators.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-24690055

What Merz is proposing would make the above child's play.

Still useless. If it updates its Google-provided software or is serviced by Google employees, they must comply and do whatever it takes to get the data when the US government asks.

You cannot trust the fox to stay out of coop, you cannot trust the dog to keep out of bowl, and you cannot trust the Americans to leave out clandestine signals collection.

In the US you will see a lot of TS/SCI jobs posted for big tech, mainly around DC/Maryland/NOVA, building these clouds for the gov. They are essentially separate business units for federal work, these clouds might use the same tech as the larger ones but are totally separate. It would make total sense that the equivalent could exist in Europe, where their defense sector employees build "Google Cloud" with cleared workers in Europe and have controls to keep data there.

On the same day as this dropped:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50429426

That’s not for business customers, let alone with sovereign cloud tier which this article might be referring to as per a sibling HN comment.

“I have a high level of trust in our agencies that the data we have there is safe and protected, ..."

And why wouldn't he?!

German spy scandal threatens national security <https://www.dw.com/en/german-spy-scandal-threatens-national-...>

Cyberattack in Berlin: 1.4 million files on the dark web <https://www.dw.com/en/cyberattack-in-berlin-14-million-files...>

Ccc talk in German on the latter: MRMCD2026 - Warum Berlin gehackt wurde und wie desolat gehandelt wird

<https://youtube.com/watch?v=2hx7FrF31S0>

All of this is such a big clusterfuck. German officials... I just can't take it anymore.

Obligatory reminder: Merz once worked for BlackRock as a lobbyist, in charge of expanding its influence within Germany

excellent, still on the payroll, different mission

And I thought no chancellor could be worse than Scholz...

After clicking on the link, there is a pop-up:

"Data processing by advertising providers including personalised advertising with profiling

Consent required for free use"

Yeah, no thanks.

https://archive.ph/On36E

I'm sure many websites you regularly visit do this as well. They just don't give you the option to opt-out and do not inform you.

Yeah that's the classic "Pay or OK" that many German news websites use which was ruled illegal.

Sounds very German government, I must say.

(Merz, the German chancellor is an ex-Blackrock lobbyist)

BlackRock lobbyist: We MUST have sovereign suppliers! We simply can't do without! NOT possible. NO compromises will be made under any circumstances. It is simply intolerable! NO interference!

(2 months later)

BlackRock lobbyist: At this point it would be an absolute betrayal of German industry, employees and even people in general to change the rules! We would never do that. We know the German people depend on us to make the right choice.

Journalist: So that'll mean you have to spend 100 euro ...

BlackRock lobbyist: We hereby declare that shady CIA-dress-style guy with the golden "I love Putin" badge offical public-sector supplier.

Journalist: Chancellor, why is there a stack of 100 dollar bills with Trump's face on them sticking out of your back pocket? Looks like a lot of money. (Look up "Gerhard Schroder", and specifically his current employer, Vladimir Putin). Actually, come to think of it, it looks like fake money.

BlackRock lobbyist: I call upon the right to be forgotten! (nervously calls his actual employer asking how fake the money is)

In case anyone failed to notice: France and Germany both have governments led by people who were effectively management at huge US banks.

Germany is an Atlantist country, in exchange of military protection.

Buy American First!

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