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Comment by guiriduro | Hacker News Reader

By using another US hyperscaler for your backup platform you're still unhedged against US governance failure/breakdown.

An increasing risk for sure.

You have no choice really if you’re a UK business, there is no UK (or French, or German, or Japanese for that matter) cloud that can do what AWS or GCP does

Really? None other than Airbus chose Scaleway (a personal favourite) for their migration of core services off AWS. There's also Hetzner, OVH, NetCUPs etc. I'd agree they're not AWS/GCP scale (yet) but as more big names move for reasons of EU sovereignty that multiplies available capital and soon they become hyperscale themselves. And sovereign.

My understanding is OVH and Hetzner were traditionally more bare metal/VPS orientated (though maybe that's changed)?

Fair though, I hadn't even heard of Scaleway, and that does look a lot more like a direct AWS/GCP alternative. Maybe because I'm UK based that's why I never hear of the EU clouds

Surely by being a bank, you are already exposed to that.

Exposed yes, but not fatally if you're working with alternative de-dollarised banking systems in the eurozone, for example.

Won't help if they sanction you and cut you off from SWIFT (or the card networks) so it just depends on the degree of the governance issues here.

Ah.. SWIFT is an international cooperative, originated in Europe and based in Brussels..

Most european banking entities already have and use SEPA.

Any alternative non US, Europe wide card network? I suppose you could use Mir, or UnionPay.

This is an issue, but one Europe is acutely aware of and working on. WERO is one strand of that.

https://www.reneweuropegroup.eu/news/2026-06-23/independence...

https://europeanbusinessmagazine.com/eu-payments-sovereignty...

https://stripe.com/en-fr/resources/more/wero-how-europes-uni...

Monzo are a UK bank that briefly but afaik no longer operate in the US

They are partially Chinese owned, so you can imagine Trump having a fit could be ordering AWS and GCP to stop servicing this bank.

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