Why a gradual move away from US tech is a good idea

For a small business in Cork or a family in Galway, digital sovereignty means not waking up one day to find that your email, documents, or photos are suddenly inaccessible because a foreign leader threatened tariffs or a sanctions list changed overnight, writes Brian Honan

Elon Musk at the inauguration of US President Donald Trump on January 20, 2025, in Washington, DC. By gradually reducing total dependence on a handful of American tech platforms, diversifying providers, and supporting European and opensource alternatives, we can reclaim more control over our own digital future and make sure the next geopolitical row or cloud outage does not take our emails, documents or memories down with it. File photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

While many of us, when thinking about sovereignty, tend to think in terms of national borders, flags, and border crossings, we should also consider sovereignty in relation to our digital lives. 

So much of our personal and business lives depends on technology, that we need to ensure this dependency does not introduce unnecessary risks and that we can regain control over our digital lives. Over the past year, major outages on some of the large tech platforms such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Cloudflare have shown just how fragile that dependence can be.