Dumping American Software, Plus Putin's European Poodles

Hard on the heels of concerns about a killswitch in F-35s, Europeans are now worried about digital sovereignty.

Denmark's Minister of Digitalization, Caroline Stage, has announced that the Danish government will start moving away from Microsoft Office to LibreOffice. Why? It's not because open-source is better, although I would argue that it is, but because Denmark wants to claim "digital sovereignty." In the States, you probably haven't heard that phrase, but in the European Union, digital sovereignty is a big deal and getting bigger.

They didn't worry much about it before. But with Brain-Rotting Mangolini as our president, the U.S. has become an unreliable ally, if not an adversarial state, to European countries. It makes eminent sense for them to reduce reliance on American technological services. The article didn't mention Amazon's cloud service, but you can bet heavily that's also being eyed to be replaced.

Pissing off a bloc of about 350 million people in mostly-wealthy nations isn't smart business. But that's what this Administration, helmed by a dementia case with the impulse control of a toddler, is doing.

Also, some of Putin's useful idiots are squawking about being affected by the war:

Russian oil supplies to Hungary and Slovakia could be suspended for at least five days after a Ukrainian strike on a facility in Russia, Hungarian and Slovakian officials said on Aug 22, in a widening of the fallout of Russia’s war in Ukraine.
...
EU members Slovakia and Hungary have maintained relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin and opposed sanctions against Russia that Ukraine says are vital to make Moscow drop unacceptable war demands. They also oppose the phase-out of Russian energy supplies via the Druzhba pipeline.

Awww, the Quisling Caucus in the EU isn't happy. Cue the violins.