Hacker News Reader

Comment by bhouston | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft has to follow US sanctions, even if they are misplaced. This isn't a choice on Microsoft's part here.

The ICC was applauded in the US in the when it went after Russia but when it goes after Israel it is sanctioned. It unfortunately hard to be impartial, like the ICC is, when it comes to international war crimes. The big players want you to play towards their favourites and only hold their enemies accountable.

The US is also sanctioning Palestinian human rights groups, and kicking them off of US platforms like YouTube, because they make Israel look bad: https://theintercept.com/2025/11/04/youtube-google-israel-pa...

View on HN

> Microsoft has to follow US sanctions

Microsoft has to follow US law. If it believes an order has been issued unlawfully, it—and everyone who works there who follows the order—has a civic duty to oppose the order in court.

Quite a few of the things that European authorities have been getting worried about the US Government being able to force Microsoft to do are explicitly enshrined in US law. See, for example, the CLOUD Act: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act

>Microsoft has to follow US law.

while operating in the US

> while operating in the US

While having anything to do with America or the U.S. dollar.

No, anywhere as far as data goes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act

Exactly what the big German corporations (as well as Ford by the way) did in the 1930s.

And IBM...

Microsoft employees in the EU are committing a crime if they do participate in the sanctions though.

There's an EU law, 'blocking statue' which also means that contracts can't be broken with reference sanctions even if the contracts themselves say they can be, and the services must be provided anyway.

This isn't GDPR type stuff. This is a path to infinite fines. Ending up jail for years is also a distinct possibility if you help people access their data, since spying on these institutions is actually treated as espionage. We recently passed a law here in Sweden forbidding espionage against international organizations in which Sweden is part.

MS could always refocus themselves as a global company (in the legal rather than marketing-only sense), and move their HQ out of the US, then there could be no Trump tantrums affecting other countries, the worse that could happen would be some sanctions on what would then be their in-country US affiliate, with no ability to affect their other global operations whatsoever. Why haven't they followed this approach? Haven't lost enough customers yet?

> the worse that could happen would be some sanctions on what would then be their in-country US affiliate

So what you are saying is the worst that could happen is they lose the entire US market, us based datacenters, and us based employees?

I think the question answers itself.

No. It would be run by a US affiliate using the Microsoft brand, paying royalties to a global company in some other jurisdiction.

That's not how laws work

That approach is also insane.

You’re always going to be vulnerable somewhere and there isn’t a better country to be if you’re in software, cloud services or AI.

Not to mention it’s not like Microsoft Execs want to pickup and leave the States either.

Don't need to. Would it be a big deal to hop on a plane to e.g. Switzerland once a year?

Doing that little is effectively the same as doing nothing at all, and they wouldn’t actually be insulated.

MS lives by corporate contracts and there are a lot of very powerful US companies that will roll over if Trump barks - if MS had already fled the US in a legal sense they'd definitely be in a better place but trying to leave during this administration would cause Trump's ire to focus on them and likely cost them an immense amount of money. I don't particularly like MS and both office and windows are declining in quality quickly so I wouldn't be opposed to the move but... nothing would sink that ship faster than losing a bunch of large US contracts as Trump toadies demonstrate their loyalty by bravely switching to alternatives.

Nobody has to do anything, least of all massive corporations with country-sized revenues. It's /always/ a choice to comply or to put up a fight and deal with the consequences.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com