US cloud infrastructure monopolies undermine European digital sovereignty and security: systemic analysis of 23 EU states

Indigenous epistemologies view data as sacred collective knowledge requiring stewardship, not commodification—directly contradicting the extractive logic of US cloud monopolies. The lack of consultation with Indigenous data sovereignty advocates in EU security debates reflects a broader pattern of epistemic violence. Traditional knowledge systems emphasize relational data governance, where consent and reciprocity are central, unlike the extractive surveillance capitalism underpinning cloud infrastructure.

The US cloud dominance traces back to post-WWII techno-hegemony, where military-industrial complexes like DARPA seeded the infrastructure for today's monopolies. The 1990s deregulation under Clinton enabled Silicon Valley's global expansion, while EU's neoliberal turn in the 2000s dismantled public alternatives. Historical parallels include the British East India Company's data extraction in colonial India, where local knowledge systems were repurposed for imperial control—echoing today's cloud-based data colonialism.

In China, state-backed cloud providers like Alibaba and Huawei emerged as sovereign alternatives to US dominance, though with their own surveillance implications. African Union's 2020 Data Policy mandates local data centers and strict localization, framing cloud dependency as a neo-colonial threat. Pacific Island nations, facing climate-induced displacement, resist cloud data storage due to vulnerability to foreign legal jurisdiction and cultural erasure of indigenous knowledge systems.

Peer-reviewed studies demonstrate that cloud monopolies create single points of failure for critical infrastructure, amplifying cybersecurity risks rather than mitigating them. Research on data colonialism shows how US cloud providers extract value from Global South data while externalizing costs like energy consumption and labor exploitation. The lack of interoperable, sovereign cloud alternatives is a documented market failure, exacerbated by network effects and vendor lock-in.

Artistic movements like the Data Poetics collective in Berlin visualize cloud infrastructure as a 'digital cloud forest'—a fragile ecosystem exploited by tech giants. Indigenous artists in the Amazon use data sonification to protest the extraction of forest knowledge by Silicon Valley firms. Spiritual traditions from Sufism to Zen critique the commodification of attention and memory, which cloud monopolies monetize as 'user data'.

Scenario modeling by the EU's Joint Research Centre predicts that by 2035, 80% of EU critical infrastructure could be dependent on non-EU cloud providers if current trends continue. Alternative futures include federated sovereign clouds, community-owned data cooperatives, and degrowth-based digital infrastructures that prioritize resilience over scalability. The risk is not just security breaches but the erosion of democratic governance in digital spaces.

Marginalized tech workers in US cloud data centers face racialized labor hierarchies, with Black and Latino workers concentrated in low-wage maintenance roles. EU migrant communities are disproportionately surveilled via cloud-based facial recognition systems, reflecting structural biases in tech deployment. Grassroots movements like #NoTechForICE and European digital rights groups like Chaos Computer Club highlight how cloud dominance enables state violence against refugees and activists.