Geopolitical Cloud

The Internet played a huge role during the COVID pandemic, to keep us globally connected. Despite the lockdowns we were globally connected and thanks to webcams and teleconferencing software applications we could continue being together.

Now the war that Russia started in Ukraine changed all that. The Cloud is no longer global. The location of servers and who operates them has become fundamental. Russia (and in consequence the Russian citizens) have been cut off from the services they had been using so happily. Thousands are stuck and stranded in Thailand and many other holiday destinations. Cashless and flightless - without access to their banks and with no (easy) means to return home. The government cannot transact either and considers switching to Bitcoin. But even if Russia accumulates Bitcoins, it is not that easy to spend the cryptocurrency - at some point they will need to convert. 

The cuts have so far been virtual, the West simply switched off the services. But one can also imagine physical attacks on the intercontinental Internet cables. Disconnecting Europe from Americas would probably be one of the hardest hits to both economies. Laying new fiber cables would take months and satellites have too limited bandwidth to serve as a general backup. It seems like this is the time now to think where your servers are located and have them at least on both sides of the Atlantic, as a precautionary move. I know this scenario sounds improbable but so did a 2-year global pandemic in 2019 and a war in Europe in 2021.