While i strongly disagree with the usa's sanctions on the ICC, i'm very surprised that the ICC has to rely on american cloud providers.<p>It seems like a court, especially one dealing with international crimes where international esponage seems quite likely, should have in-house tech. It seems like being fully independent would be really important. Sort of in the same way i would expect e.g. the eu gov not to be dependent on a foreign cloud provider either (have no idea if they are or not)
Software and cloud services have entered the infrastructure stage.<p>I don't think it matters who writes the software. Governments should mandate the infrastructure be hosted and operated locally by people accountable to the host nation (the operators would pay for the software, perhaps a subsiduary or whatever). It should require a Netherlands court to deprive an institute located in the Hague of its infrastructure.<p>This means bringing "big regulation" like we have for the electrical network (and the physical internet!) to the cloud. It would be tricky to draft since we'd still want to support the millions of small providers who, unlike Microsoft, you wouldn't describe as infrastructure.
To me, the real question is in the last sentence of the post: "the question is, however, whether they are enterprise-ready, secure, and fully sovereign"<p>The ICC is incredibly important, incredibly young and <i>global</i>. Shifting this to europe would not solve the problem.<p>If the ICC was able to have a contract with a fully sovereign supplier, that would be a whole new can of worms. It would be a matter of time (hours? days?) until a fully sovereign corporation put its profits above its negative impact on people.<p>More than that, how does an organization funded by a group of nations avoid the budget becoming politicized?<p>The issue is complex and the silver bullet is hard to find.
Just goes to show how short-sighted these political decisions have been. Politics shouldn't be wrapping itself around tech, the US is shrugging off a huge market and ally.
Basically you need to sovereign-balance your services over different regions. Also have a high available pool of people to replace arrestees.<p><i>One reason the the court has been hamstrung is that it relies heavily on contractors and non-governmental organizations. Those businesses and groups have curtailed work on behalf of the court because they were concerned about being targeted by U.S. authorities, according to current and former ICC staffers.</i><p><i>Microsoft, for example, cancelled Khan’s email address, forcing the prosecutor to move to Proton Mail, a Swiss email provider, ICC staffers said. His bank accounts in his home country of the U.K. have been blocked.</i><p><a href="https://apnews.com/article/icc-trump-sanctions-karim-khan-court-a4b4c02751ab84c09718b1b95cbd5db3" rel="nofollow">https://apnews.com/article/icc-trump-sanctions-karim-khan-co...</a>
I had a conversation about 15 years ago where he told me about a book he was reading about the risk of anti-intellectualism in the US. I laughed it off. I think about this at least once a week now.<p>What we've seen over the last 10 years in tech and politics is the rise of people who have absolutely no idea what they're doing and they wear their ignorance like a badge of honor.<p>I've had so many conversations with crypto bros about how crypto doesn't really solve anything and NFTs are BS and DeFi is pushed by people who have no idea of why finance is the way it is or they're simply trying yet another rug pull. This is a fundamentally anti-intellectual position.<p>What we've seen since January 20 is the absolute dumbest, most ignorant sycophants destroy things they simply don't understand and don't want to understand. Destroy USAID (as one example)? Foreign aid is a tool of US soft power, a key part of US foreign policy. That's not money for nothing. We're buying influence. Don't even get me started on tariffs. Again, it's fundamentally anti-intellectual.<p>Part of me is glad to see how many people are waking up to the myth of meritocracy.<p>By taking punitive yet performative action against the ICC for hurting Israel's feelings by saying true things does nothing but weaken US tech influence over Europe. it tells Europe that the US cannot be relied upon and an alternative needs to be found.<p>Fun fact: the US has passed a law colloquially known as the Hage Invasion Act [1]. This not authorizes but <i>requires</i> the US to <i>invade</i> the Hague if the ICC ever detains and prosecutes any US service member or official or those of any ally.<p>By itself it doesn't really matter but it's death by a thousand paper cuts and there are a thousand other small things that are pushing Europe to distance itself from the US.<p>[1]: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Protection_Act" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Pr...</a>
If your critical infrastructure lives under someone else's legal and political umbrella, then you're basically renting stability. And when politics shift, so can access.
ICC should also issue an arrest warrant for Trump/Biden. Who do you think supplies Israel with all the money and weapons they use against the Palestinians?