Microsoft is responding to mounting “geopolitical and trade volatility” between the US administration and governments in Europe by pledging privacy safeguards for customers worried about using American hyperscalers, and vowing to fight the US government in court to protect Euro customers’ data if needed.
Under Trump 2.0, some Europeans fear that storing their data in the bit barns of Microsoft, Google and AWS is no longer safe, a concern voiced to The Register in late February by Bert Hubert, a part time technical advisor to the Dutch Electoral Council.
I’ve actually heard Newt Gingrich in the 90’s mentioned as the originator of the new, obstructionist kind of Republican politics. The cultural phenomenon that propelled Trump to victory has a life of it’s own, though.