The following are the outputs of the captioning taken during an IGF intervention. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> JENNA FUNG: Testing. Can you guys hear me?
>> FLOOR: Yes.
>> JENNA FUNG: Awesome, everyone. Hello. Welcome to Day 0, Event 200, Everything in the Cloud? How to remain digital autonomous. I'm your onsite moderator today. My name is Jenna Fung, Program Director, NetMission Asia, Civil Society, Asia‑Pacific Group, a youth‑focused network in Asia‑Pacific, used to empower youth.
This is my first time in an open forum in this setting with the headset on. It's weird to hear your own voice when you moderate too. Please bear with me if I make a mistake.
Welcome.
You guys decided to join today's sessions, what I'm sure will be a dynamic and important conversation because this is a very interesting topic that interested me these days.
And I believe it's the same to all of you because you decided to attend this meeting and be with us today.
We encounter cloud computing without noticing it, from backing up your photos from our phones using Smart Home devices or video doorbells or you use docs or Zoom calls to prepare for your IGF workshop coordination too.
So we encounter cloud services these days even without realising it, but, as more and more of our infrastructure services and data move to the cloud, we also are starting to ask questions, especially about who controls these systems and what that means for national security, data protections, or even long‑term data resiliency.
So right now, much of the world relies heavily on a few handful of major cloud providers, like AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Clouds, obviously, major work has been done.
But in Europe and other regions are starting to have their different concerns about their strategic dependency on cloud usage.
In Asia, we are seeing a more mixed picture with some countries also turning to regional providers like Alibaba and others.
There's strong, domestic clouds and ecosystems to encounter the emerging and ever‑changing environment that we're in today.
So now, to set stage for today's discussions ‑‑ I don't know if you got a chance to read the titles again and again. To me, it is very complicated. And it's a concept that we have to unpack before we can, you know, construct a conversation that's meaningful for us where we can bring this topic back to our own country for further discussion.
So I would like to briefly surface a few concepts before I start introducing our speakers today that will help us get through all the questions that we have.
Terms like data residency where people talk about datastore or processes with the insurgence of national ‑‑ and people talking about data that's physical in a country and eligible for laws and regulations.
Ultimately, the aspirations in this domain is the topic today, digital autonomy.
We want to explore this bigger picture together. What does the concentration of cloud services and what role do they play in security and compliance, especially when it comes to sensitive data, whether it's personal or national.
Should countries be investing in sovereign cloud initiatives?
These questions I want you to plant in your head as we start this conversation later on.
We'll also have an open‑floor Q&A to the audience.
But for now, allow me to introduce our speakers.
To my right is Anke Sikkema, Deputy Director Digital Economy, Netherlands Ministry of Economic Affairs, WEOG. She later on returned to The Hague where she is a civil servant at the Ministry of Economic Affairs. Now, of course, works for the deputy of Ministry of Economic Affairs.
To my right is Jeff Bullwinkel. He's the deputy counselor in legal affairs at Microsoft. He's been actually working in many different regions before but now mainly focusing on their company's legal and corporate affairs across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.
So later on, we'll hear from Jeff who might be able to share some more insights from a broader regional perspective.
And online, we have Agustina. She has a master degree in public policy, currently pursuing MPA in Digital Technologies and Policy in London.
(Please stand by)
>> JENNA FUNG: We have many policy questions. I believe you can access them on the IGF website as well.
First question, actually, to start with. To what extent are the current concentrations of the cloud computing market amount of global providers are a problem for digital autonomy and security and/or innovation?
Very compact questions.
I am aware that in Euro, for instance, the Netherlands have started an initiative around a more sovereign cloud initiative.
I may now, perhaps, pass it over to Anke to share some experiences that you might have working in this area. Then we can unpack and try to answer that question together.
>> ANKE SIKKEMA: Can I take it off?
>> JENNA FUNG: It's easier.
>> ANKE SIKKEMA: I think this is a good opportunity to discuss this in the multistakeholder setting. There's a lot to say. I don't have the answers. That's why we're actually here, to discuss this altogether from different angles.
What I can tell, in response to the first question, is about more about the situation in the Netherlands.
Before I start, I would like to stress ‑‑ because we all talk about concerns mainly, I would like to stress the benefits of the cloud for economy and for society, as a whole. It's an efficient way to storage data. It's user‑friendly. We can't think of a world without it, but, however, we had some quite extensive debates lately about strategic autonomy in general and, more specifically, dependencies in the cloud market back home.
And I would like to take you to 2023, when our government published a so‑called DOSA. Digital Open Strategic Autonomy.
In this acronym, the word "open" is deliberately in this agenda because we think it's important to act globally as open as possible. On the other hand, it aims to address strategic dependencies in the digital sector, and cloud is one of the priorities in this agenda.
So the idea is to see where these dependencies are, in which technologies.
What happened is that research agencies in the Netherlands indicated that the market position of European players is relatively weak. I don't think it's a surprise to say this anymore in the cloud market.
Another thing is the use of cloud entails certain risks when it comes to maintaining control and access to sensitive and protected data.
So it's extra important when we talk about government data.
What we see a bit broader is in the EU, of course, we are part of the EU, and the EU has taken important legislative steps to protect and to mitigate those risks. So you can think about the European Data Act, the Data Governance Act, and the Digital Markets Act. It also started more to promote and invest in projects in cloud and data infrastructure.
So these two parts happened.
And then, in 2024, we had two interesting things. I talk about it from the political perspective and the government world I work in. First of all, our country code, top‑level domain announced it wanted to move its domain registration system to Amazon web services because its current system was backing outdated and needed to renew.
This started a wide national debate because people thought technically advanced organisations are not able to run certain systems in a European cloud party.
So our minister was asked to investigate this case. That's actually what we did.
Secondly, two members of the Dutch Parliament presented a bill with Clouds on the Horizon as the title. It was a catchy title.
It was concern about the Dutch society and Dutch government and big U.S. cloud providers.
So this bill was drafted. I think it's good to mention here, as well, that it was also kind of a multistakeholder way of organising this because it was a group of stakeholders who drafted this together with those members of Parliament, from the technical community, civil society, academia, business, community, and we see that the change of the geopolitical landscape led to revised cloud policy when it comes specifically to use of government data in the cloud.
So what we would like to say is when I come back to the first agenda I mentioned ‑‑ so this DOSA agenda, the Digital Open Strategic Autonomy, we say open to the outside world when possible and protected.
That's how we look at it right now.
>> JENNA FUNG: Thank you, Anke, for sharing.
Better to talk it off. Yeah.
Thank you, Anke, for sharing.
Now, I would actually like to turn the same questions over to Jeff.
Slightly different because, like I said, this is really a compact situation. As, as Anke mentioned earlier, it is concern and risk many of the time about how to control the data.
I saw you took a lot of notes, and you probably have some insights.
But I want to add a little bit of context on top of the questions.
You know, these days, especially with AI being so proliferating, it's growing every single day without us being able to, like, predict exactly how it is going.
Many see that as amplifying many concerns around this topic.
I wonder if you can speak to how such a big cloud service provider like Microsoft ‑‑ you know, in the situation, what are the roles and responsibilities of someone ‑‑ not only businesses but some of the governments, also, rely on your system.
One of the examples is Canadian government uses your systems.
So I would like to turn it over to you.
>> JEFF BULLWINKEL: Well, thank you, Jenna, for the introduction and for the chance to be here as well.
Thanks to people in the room and those joining online for what I think is really a timely consideration, a very important conversation. I'm grateful to be sharing the platform here with Anke and Agustina online.
I say that, building a bit on what Anke said as well. It's first to acknowledge very clearly that the concerns we are hearing about today are very natural and understandable and appropriate, Frankly.
I think these concerns have been with us for a long time. You can think back to over 10 years ago, when Snowden first fled the U.S. with four laptops and went to Hong Kong, fled to Hong Kong and then Russia.
I think things are more pronounced, in terms of how they come up in conversations after given what is a volatile geopolitical environment.
That causes us, as a company, to think hard about what we need to do regarding trust.
By the way, Anke, I had the privilege of living in your great country for years.
People don't use technology they don't trust. I would say we have a high degree of responsibility to think about these issues in the right way.
In relation to AI, as you say, Jenna, this is the era of AI. It's having a profound aspect on society in very exciting ways, but, again, the trust issue looms large.
It was eight years ago that Microsoft, as a company, decided to set out a set of AI principles that were, at that time, govern our own conduct and make sure that, as we develop and deploy AI systems, that we did so in a way that reflects privacy and security, safety and reliability, fairness, inclusiveness, ultimately transparency and accountability.
But, equally, we're one company and one rules. We don't make all the rules. It's up to us to follow the rules that are made.
Geopolitically, we've taken some steps as well to get to some of the questions that Anke effectively articulated.
This is a global audience in the room and a global audience, to be sure, online. But since we are here in Europe, I would emphasise, as a reference point, that we, a month and a half ago, have a set of commitments that are top of mind.
One element of that is really making sure that we have a cloud and AI ecosystem that is broad and diverse.
We have our own infrastructure investments we make across Europe, quite a lot of investment in the Netherlands but Europe and we've planned to increase 40%. Over a five‑year period, between 2023 and 2027, we'll double our capacity for hyperscale services and AI services across Europe with over 200 data centres in 16 different countries.
These are investments that, for us, reflect an appreciation of the interdependence of what we're doing with our European partners and allies.
These are data centres that are not built on wheels. They're governed by the laws in the country in which we operate, just like the infrastructure we operate in other parts of the world.
With the new digital European commitments, it's the importance of maintaining digital resiliency in the realm of political volatility.
We're pushing back on litigation if there's an order from any government to cease or suspend cloud services. We think that's important in today's current environment.
A third development we have in the commitments is making sure we're doing everything we can do to continue protecting and defending the privacy of European data.
And in that connection, we have actually invested in some years now in an EU cloud ‑‑ allows us to ensure that the data is processed. And we've taken measures to make sure we're being responsive to the sorts of things we're hearing from partners and government stakeholders as well.
So we're doing things in this area that we hope are responsive is to the concerns that are out there.
I would also conclude by echoing the comment that Anke made. It is natural to focus on the problems, but, also, opportunity is so immense with AI.
I hope we can talk about that because it's pretty exciting what's happening.
>> JENNA FUNG: Thank you. So far right now, we can hear keywords coming up. The current concentrations of cloud‑competing markets. We can hear there's legitimate concerns around data and the trust in the services and the service providers.
Before I turn it over to Agustina.
We talk a lot about dependencies with the cloud providers and the topics around trust and legitimate concerns around controls of sensitive data. I wonder if Agustina can shed light on how conditions are in the Global South.
It's probable that some other regions are using providers ‑‑ perhaps Agustina can speak to the situation.
The second part of my transition right here is earlier Jeff mentioned about transparencies and accountabilities. That's also something that comes up a lot when different stakeholders bring up this very topic.
And so leading us to question two.
If we have to explore some shared approach that government, private sectors, civil society to manage strategic and regulatory and operational risks like some of the ones that we just mentioned and to hold service provider now very prominent cloud services like the U.S.‑based companies, but there's other chances that different kinds of organisations or initiatives will emerge.
This shared approach is what we want to take so we're not losing this kind of cloud service providing us. With the structure we have nowadays, we're enjoying the cloud efficiency, essentially. Also, scaling globally, this is also something we're enjoying.
But if we want to hold them accountable, what are some shared approaches that different stakeholders can take?
So now I would like to turn it over to Agustina. And I'm so sorry if I make it overly complicated by putting the two questions together, but I hope that you can give us some context from the perspective of the Global South. That would be very interesting to our audience today.
Agustina, over to you.
>> AGUSTINA BRIZIO: Yeah. Thank you so much, Jenna.
I will try to comprise everything. I will start with some key points, basically, some common threads, some of which were covered by both Anke and Jeff. I think they light up the main discussions we have regarding the service providers.
When we think about Global South services, there's concern about a digital system and how we have a few dominant providers, mainly U.S.‑based companies that are, in some point, basically, defining and shaping how the digital landscape is going to be with some interventions from states regarding policy in some specific aspects.
But we see, especially from the Global South, that many of this has a lot of challenges, mainly because of the transnational layout regarding both the cloud and the Internet and also the power imbalances usually these companies have when they face governments.
In cloud services ‑‑ and since both Jeff and Anke talked about how relevant they are and how key they are to the future of technology, this is not about a matter of market shares or how it should be distributed among providers. It's basically how we're seeing who is making decisions.
Here, in Latin America, in general, we have a big dependency on these hyperscalers we usually use, mainly U.S. providers. That's not only for the administrative platforms that we use in governments, but it's also where we host data, where a lot of public policies are based on, and we cannot just take outside the picture the fact that many of the hyperscalers are not even with expressions in the region. It adds a more complex layer and how to basically be able to regulatory or somehow exercise in an active way to translate into the digital world.
Since many of these things are basically relying on the United States frameworks ‑‑ because the companies are there ‑‑ this poses a different layer of problem regarding the democratic oversight. General society may execute to governments over this territory.
Latin America, it's not only eroding our democratic construction, but it also diminishes the ability governments have to respond to crisis ‑‑ data, or even assign their own digital policies.
We've seen, especially in Europe, that several approaches have been led within a policy like GDPR and others. There has to be a lot of action from the state towards working in collaboration with these companies that are trying to put digital rights framework within the development of this technology.
But, still, when we're taking it from the Global South, there's a really big imbalance, and we have a massive regulatory gap towards how to work with this hyperscale because we want to have cloud services and develop better technology and landscapes, but there hasn't been a concrete tool to basically reclaim some kind of tools regarding this so we can foster progress.
Am I going to get into depth? I think a lot of people in the audience are quite aware with what is the problem with these big tech companies in general and how they affect not only markets but political sovereign decisions from government.
But when we think about what to do with knowledge, it's probably the thing that we should all be trying to address more than the problems, there are different actions that can be carried out in order to balance this power imbalance and this inequality situation.
There's really a way from technical fixes because it requires for governments, stakeholders, to rethink the concept of serenity because when we usually talk about sovereign technologies, we need to have things in our territory, developed by us, and we have seen that's not sustainable at a large scale. It requires too many investment and a lot of human talent that's not available, at least in the Global South country. So we're required to basically recognise and think, as focused on the cloud, about a strategic layer. It's not something that just comes out and is provided by a company for the government to be able to develop some services in a specific way.
We require for governments to think about different strategies in how to address this ultra concentrated market.
There's also the solution to adopt a multicloud architecture to not have all the services laid out on one provider with a situation.
When you think about the providers and local cloud providers, you're thinking of a guarantee and interpretability from the regulatory framework. This is a way to basically ask governments ‑‑ we can seize all the power that the cloud has but with avoiding falling into the ‑‑ which is probably the most critical situation, not in terms of a technology problem of interpretability.
The problem relies on the fact that the government is not taking an autonomous position. We're moving things. Being able to take a position about how data is provided or sold ‑‑ we don't have to sacrifice performance while retaining autonomy in making decisions.
I think to encompass this strategy, there's a lot of investment required for national and regional capacity.
In Argentina, we did a little bit of this. We have a telecom provider that basically provides Internet services, satellite services, and there's a data centre, and able to provide at least some type of cloud services. We wanted it to grow a little bit. So we tried with this approach to basically foster innovation, target investment with companies working with these big providers.
Our main goal with this kind of situation was to see that it is possible to think about different cloud models that are not only entirely public or entirely private. They can actually have a blend and still maintain a little of public decision of frameworks that actually foster transparency and are thinking about the country's long‑term sovereignty. Having a steady strategy that's rooted in local actors also backs up into the educational system. You're able to target services to our local companies. So it's like a fuel to the general economy market.
This model is required, basically, to have stable policy and basically a public mandate which was basically the thing we have a little more difficult in Latin America in general because we have a not‑very‑steady political landscape. We're seeing that the EU is more able to do so.
And this is also very important because when we think about how we can shape cloud services or technology, in general, this is not something that can be achieved by the state itself. This requires to rethink how public and private sectors interact among each other. How academia and civil society is in a local framework, not only gathering stakeholders at the table, we need to think about how we govern especially now that the geopolitical aspect of tech is being like so political critical. We need to think more in a systemic way, and being able to develop not only spaces to have different voices heard, we need to have real enforcement mechanisms.
And to finish on this, about what actions can actually be taken, I think the public procurement is a major lever here.
So the decisions are taking by government that should take these problems and aspects into consideration.
So we should be including in every contract things like data ‑‑ because those are the key aspects. Government can have some kind of impact in a landscape that is so big they are not able to cover.
There's things that we can do and are achievable. In an indirect way, we can help to target technical independence because I think the key thing with cloud services, as the Internet was at one point, you have a layer of every aspect of the digital ecosystem. We need to be able to permeate into that ecosystem values of justice and inclusion and having a collective control of what's happening there. It's not just about thinking how proficient they are and making them more resilient and secure, these are, in some way, becoming a public good. This is one of the conditions on how we understand the cloud. What are the names we're going to put on them to get everybody engaged.
Otherwise, this is a discussion that seems to be reliant on engineers and the technical community. Cloud is being the spine of the digital ecosystems. That's why we need to have a more sociotechnical approach to start thinking about how we want to govern it.
>> JENNA FUNG: Agustina, this is perfect timing. You bring up some key, important topics into the conversation because you bring up about the conversation of democracy as well.
But coming back to the original questions, we start with ‑‑ I think some of the key principles that we try to think of effective policies to deal with situations or share approach to counter our dependency on this very concentrated cloud services that we're relying on these days is some of the things countries have been doing in Latin America, for instance, is to diversify their ecosystems and interoperabilities, also something that's important.
Perhaps the audience has their own view, depending on what you subscribe to.
I'm excited to hear what you think is a shared approach as you bring back the insights from the panel today back to your own world, whether you're a policy maker or someone working with an NGO or whether you're a student or not.
This is a situation where we need more stakeholders but not only the government having control or the companies providing the services.
That's one thing, later on, as we open the queue, we can continue to further the conversation right there.
But one thing for us to continue and dive deeper is about the part about more diverse and, perhaps, secure, as well as locally accountable cloud ecosystem as well because based on examples Agustina shared with us, it looks like these are some of the ‑‑ not only the proposals but some of the actions done by some countries or communities out there.
So I wonder, as we are moving on with our conversations, what are some of the mix of, you know, perhaps market‑driven innovations, regulatory oversights? What public interest will be most supported in this development and make the cloud ecosystem more diverse, secure, and locally accountable?
Of course, we have people from the private sector and government with us. We may have very different views. Maybe we can merge it a little bit with our last question as well because now with the development of a conversation right here, I think I will speak right here also. I took some notes which we can consolidate so we can open the queue faster and answer those questions.
I want to explore the mix of different strategies, market‑driven innovations, oversights, and public investment could be effective in supporting the development of more diverse, secure, and locally accountable cloud ecosystem. What are the roles of industry and stakeholders in the room, what do they play in fostering domestic cloud innovation through whichever methodologies. I don't want to make suggestions here to limit your thoughts.
And so maybe I will pass it over to you, Anke and later on to Jeff to see what insight you guys can put out there before we go into Q&A.
>> ANKE SIKKEMA: Yes. Thank you very much. Those are a lot of questions at the same time. I think we can talk about this for days, maybe, but I'm trying to keep it short because I think it's more important to hear from you, for the people to have time for Q&A in this hour as well.
When we talk about the role of government, what are three keywords that I would like to express here, those are protect, promote, and partnership. These three words are also at the core of the DOSA agenda I talked about before. Protect is about the legislation. It's not only about protecting users but also to protect market parties to create a level playing field. To promote is to stimulation innovation and the industry of new cloud providers and to create ‑‑ which is only possible through partnership.
As said, it's not only governments, of course. It's a partnership of businesses and governments and also academia, who can work together.
The cooperation is very important, I think, and, in Europe, we have this example of GAIA‑X, which are 100 companies that work together.
What we also see now is a new initiate, which is called the Euro stack. It's a need for a European industrial initiative bringing together tech and ‑‑ to develop a suite of digital infrastructures. So it's on the old layers of the stack from connectivity to cloud computing AI, and digital platforms.
I think it's good to be realistic in what is feasible, but it's an interesting idea.
What we see is the concerns we have in the Dutch cloud market are not unique. So they're in more member states of the European Union.
So it's important to work together.
I think maybe to address ‑‑ to the point Jeff is making ‑‑ and maybe over to you, Lynn, I think it's also good to look at the chances not only at the concerns but to look at all the possibilities there are for the digital sector and what it brings to the economy and what it brings to society as a whole as well.
So let's find a balance in the discussion to find both sides that reinforce each other.
Thank you.
>> JENNA FUNG: Jeff, do you have any responses?
>> JEFF BULLWINKEL: I'm happy to pick up off Anke's responses and look at things Agustina said in her intervention.
Focusing on the positive of what can be achieved through hyperscale cloud services, say from Microsoft, in relation to important things around cybersecurity, for one thing, as well as innovation, I think, for another.
Thinking about cybersecurity, which is, indeed, top of mind, or needs to be for all of us, we do have the ability to invest at scale in a way that does exceed what not just other companies might do but even governments in some cases.
For instance, every day, we have the ability to aggregate about 77 trillion different signals from our cloud services in a way that allows us how the threat environment is evolving and, therefore, guard against cyberattacks and threats before they eventuate. We want to make sure we do this through sharing threat intelligence and that sort of thing.
I also want to talk about data residency as it relates to sovereignty and having the right level of control.
I think people do think and talk about sovereignty in different ways. One thing to illustrate this point is I would offer Ukraine because all of us remember when the war began in Ukraine three years ago, February 24th of 2022. The first shots were fired online. In fact, they were cyberattacks from Russia targeting Ukraine's digital infrastructure, as well as critical infrastructure controlled by private companies that Microsoft detected, in working with Volodymyr Zelenskyy's office.
Ukraine had on its books a law that data had to be stored within the borders of Ukraine. They suspended that law, and that allowed Microsoft and other companies to migrate their data to their own infrastructure in the European Union. They had data sovereignty by dispersing their data.
The first buildings to be hit were data centres.
It's an important topic, in terms of talking about ‑‑
I think this conversation today often tends to focus undue attention on the infrastructure layer at the expense of everything else. Of course, it's critical. The infrastructure is absolutely critical. We, as a company, have built immense infrastructure cross the world to make sure we can be, as we've always been, an open‑platform company so others can innovate and grow.
Others across Europe and the world, Latin America, perhaps, decide to invest public resources in their own infrastructure, that is, of course, their own prerogative. We may have a point of view, given what is built, but we don't have a vote. That's quite clear.
But I think if you focus so wholly on the infrastructure layer, you overlook the innovation that's happening at the model layer and the application layer, and that's what is really so exciting today because there's so much that is happening around the creation of models, large or small, that can run on hyperscale services infrastructure of that provided by Microsoft.
Here we are in Europe ‑‑ just taking two companies, Hugging Face and ‑‑ are two champions doing exciting things at the model layer, at the benefit of communities across Europe, across France, around the world.
Applications, also, are proliferating at immense speed because the opportunity for people, individual entrepreneurs, small companies, large enterprises is absolutely immense.
I had the benefit of spending time in Africa over the last year. I was visiting Kenya and Egypt and Nigeria, Tanzania and Rwanda, and in all of these markets, I had the ability to meet amazing people.
It's incumbent on a company like Microsoft to make sure that on this infrastructure that we built, it needs to be open and accessible.
One of the commitments builds upon an announcement we made about a year and a half ago around the AI Access Principles. We're making sure, as a company, again, making sure that people can use infrastructure in a way that benefits people more broadly.
>> JENNA FUNG: It's interesting, Jeff. I'm hearing all the remarks from our speakers, and I realised how the recent geopolitical atmosphere brings us back to the conversations and discusses how we deal with infrastructure. The Internet today is very different from what the tech people imagined the Internet could have been decades ago. I wasn't born yet, so I don't know exactly what it is.
We only have four minutes left. So it is really time for you guys to talk about what matters to you. Speak for yourself and what makes sense for stakeholders, government sectors, yourself, civil society, to do because this is a critical moment where exactly we bring us back to the conversation around market concentrations, and we talked about infrastructure exactly, and how do you guys see it?
Do we have any online questions?
We have one on‑site. Amazing.
>> FLOOR: Can you guys hear me? It's so confusing when you can't hear yourself.
Thank you so much for the wide‑ranging conversation. I'm the head of Team Digital and Article XIX and a recovering postdoc that wrote on the economy of cloud.
And the question that I had, especially for Jeff Bullwinkel was around the notion of the sovereign cloud. I was part of the group of people who vocally pushed back and saw real dangers, especially with the Dutch government moving to a cloud that we don't fully control, and I was wondering if you could give your assessment of where the debate stands right now. Obviously, there's European commitments, but it's still unclear to me how that would preclude Microsoft from being beholden to the Cloud Act. I was wondering what you have to say about that.
>> JEFF BULLWINKEL: Sovereign autonomy is not new but coming up more pronounced in a certain way, given some of the geopolitics of it.
We have, for a long time, been focused on trying to build a public cloud that is sovereign by design, effectively. And we actually enhanced that recently with an announcement that was made just last week, in your home country of origin.
When our CEO gave a talk where he introduced ‑‑ digital commitments I mentioned earlier. He described different approaches. One is a plowed that has elements of control to it.
The Dutch government could be a client with specific needs. You want autonomy, disconnectedness, separate and apart from the global Internet. That's something we can provide as well and have announced around this broader effort of sovereignty.
We understand the challenge.
In this announcement that ‑‑
(Please stand by)
>> JEFF BULLWINKEL: There are various companies we work with quite closely and we'll work with more with a focus on sovereignty.
In connection to the cloud act, regarding access to data, this is nothing new. It goes back to Edward Snowden 12 years ago. There's things we've done to guard against the risk of intrusive access to data that really is our ‑‑ it belongings to our European customers, first and foremost. So Microsoft's view is and always has been it's our customer's data, not our data.
We committed some years ago to defend against that access request all the way up to the Supreme Court. We have a track record of doing just that.
The lasting point I would make as well is in the context of cloud services today, you know, most European companies in this space also themselves have global aspirations, and, therefore, much like Microsoft or another U.S. company would be susceptible to jurisdiction in the same sort of way.
The question for all of us is: What kinds of steps can a company with global aspirations take that will be effective?
But make no mistake, we are very mindful of the fact that, as a company, we are investing in Europe for Europe with our European customers and partners and government stakeholders in mind in a way that will protect their data with proper access.
That goes for services around the world, I would say.
>> JENNA FUNG: Awesome. Since we are over time, I will not allow our speaker to give remarks.
In digital autonomy, it's a topic we should ask to every single one of you who are in there. You can see today, on this panel, we have prominent voices from the government, from the private sectors, but, at the end of the day, it's also related to the people. And each and every one of us are the ones who should answer those questions.
It is a slippery slope sometimes.
So how should we approach it? What makes sense to you? What should we do?
Perhaps that's something in a question that you can bring home and continue the conversation elsewhere.
I think that concludes our conversation here today.
Thank you so much for being with us.
(Applause)
