digital ash

It seems more and more plausible. One Nobel snub too far. One performative soldier in Greenland too many. Macron makes a joke with Merz at Davos and looks in Donny's direction afterward, laughing cruelly. It's caught on camera and published on TikTokStaBook by end of day. By midnight it’s had 40 million views. It boils over, and before we can say joint security initiative, America chooses the nuclear option and announces that American companies may no longer sell digital services in Europe until Greenland is theirs. The clock starts running. We have 30 days to escape the American cloud or give up Greenland.

In the first week, digital panic sets in. AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud announce their exit. Software as a service companies inform their customers that they are exploring all options but that unless the USA changes course, they will not be able to continue delivering services. Salesforce sends an awkward email. Github repos are set to read only and a countdown clock no one asked for is displayed prominently on every page. American payment services, Visa, Mastercard, ApplePay, and GPay, all announce they are monitoring the situation closely. The run on ATM machines ends in riots. Who would have thought that cashless would come bite us in the ass so fast? Governments and companies go into triage mode. They all knew the situation was dire and they knew how dependent they were, but they never thought it would go this far.

In week two, the great digital egress begins, but our networks can't go any faster. Physics doesn't care about a geopolitical crisis. Even worse, we do not have sufficient resources at European cloud providers to cover the need. They currently cover 15% of our cloud services. They can't make up the difference without divine intervention. While the Euro plummets, the cost of a TB at OVHCloud becomes 10x as expensive. Sales reps at Scaleway stop taking calls. European cloud TBs become more valuable than Bitcoin, making them literal bit coins. Citizens queue outside electronics stores to buy hard drives and save their precious family photos. An elderly man is filmed clutching a 2TB hard drive. “My wife died last year and my only memories of our last year together are on iCloud.”

National governments step in and begin rationing cloud services based on criticality. Healthcare, security, and financial systems take precedence. Small companies and startups can no longer deliver services without American cloud products and begin to collapse. The layoffs start when people realize that without services to deliver, they won't make payroll within a month.

By week three, European leaders are saying the unimaginable behind closed doors. How can we give up Greenland and still save face? In public they talk tough about sovereignty and de-escalation, but the whispers are getting louder and the word “capitulate” can be picked out of the noise. In backrooms, calls are being made to Denmark and to the United States.

By week four, von der Leyen, Mark Rutte, and Mette Frederiksen announce a joint statement. The words “lease” and “temporary” are thrown around in conjunction with North Atlantic security. A new exclusion zone called the Danish-Originated North Atlantic Leased Domain is created. Fox News calls it Donland. It will be under full American control. The servers start spinning again, but the damage is done. The trust is eroded, and the whole world knows that Europe has no cards left to play.