Why I’m reducing my dependence on US tech

This site examines what happens when digital dependency meets power.

For years, my digital life sat comfortably inside one legal sphere. Different companies. Different products. One jurisdiction.

That concentration felt normal. Efficient. Invisible.

I no longer treat it as neutral.

Two wake-up calls

In 2025, the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court lost access to his Microsoft email account after U.S. sanctions were imposed. A European judicial institution found itself digitally constrained through a corporate platform governed by foreign law.

The message was quiet but unmistakable: infrastructure follows jurisdiction.

The second was political.

Recently, the United States again floated the idea of acquiring Greenland. Not as satire. As strategy. A U.S. president openly signalled willingness to pursue control over territory within the European sphere.

Not because of Greenland itself, but because of what it revealed about assumed permanence in alliances.

For many, this was geopolitical theatre.

For me, it was a trigger.

If territorial ambition can be expressed so casually between allies, assumptions about permanent alignment deserve scrutiny.

Digital infrastructure does not float above geopolitics. It sits downstream from it.

What changed in my thinking

My risk model shifted.

The probability of my personal services being disrupted by sanctions or foreign policy remains low. I am not planning for imminent shutdown.

What concerns me is correlation.

When email, storage, authentication, developer tools, publishing, devices and payment rails all operate under the same legal regime, exposure concentrates.

Disruption does not need to be frequent to be consequential. A single coordinated constraint can propagate across layers.

Resilience begins by reducing that propagation.

What I mean by resilience

Resilience is practical.

• Substitution remains possible.
• Failure is contained.
• Exit costs are understood before they are urgent.

While convenience optimises for integration, resilience optimises for manoeuvre.

That requires uncomfortable questions:

• If jurisdictional pressure is applied, how much of my stack moves at once?
• If a provider changes terms unilaterally, how difficult is departure?
• Are my dependencies independent, or merely diversified in branding?
• Does diversification increase operational fragility?

These questions apply at national scale and at household scale. This site investigates both.

How locked-in I actually was

The issue was not individual tools. It was layer concentration.

When I mapped my setup honestly, five layers emerged:

• Devices & operating systems
• Identity & authentication
• Storage & sync
• Apps & workflows
• Sharing & distribution

Across those layers, dependency clustered within a single jurisdiction.

Changing one layer affects others in a cascade.

• Authentication depended on identity.
• Identity depended on recovery mechanisms.
• Storage tied data to ecosystem rules.
• Devices locked formats and services into place.

Lock-in was not emotional. It was architectural.

I documented this in a full dependency map of my personal tech stack, making structural exposure visible rather than abstract. –> Dependency map: understanding digital lock-in in a personal tech stack

Why I’m documenting this publicly

Writing imposes discipline.

If I claim reduced exposure, I must demonstrate it. If diversification introduces fragility, that must be visible too.

This is an experiment in lowering correlated dependency while keeping everyday systems functional.

Some adjustments will succeed. Some will prove unnecessary. Some risks will remain theoretical.

The challenge ahead

This blog documents a deliberate attempt to bring dependency and control back into closer alignment. In practice, that means reducing reliance on US platforms where credible alternatives exist, particularly within different legal jurisdictions.

Some changes will be straightforward. Others will reveal deeper structural ties. A few may prove unjustifiable.

• Passwords depend on cloud storage.
• Cloud storage depends on devices.
• Devices depend on ecosystems.
• Ecosystems depend on law.

Dependencies stack. Leverage travels through layers. Reducing exposure in one place often exposes attachment in another. Mapping those connections, and testing where they can realistically be loosened, is the work ahead.

What to expect

I intend to write roughly weekly about this journey:

• tools I replace, and tools I cannot
• trade‑offs I didn’t expect
• things that work surprisingly well
• things that very clearly do not
• thoughts and observations on this topic in general

Final note

This blog is an attempt to think clearly, in public, about technological dependency and what it takes to unwind it responsibly.

It’s about building resilience, preserving room to manoeuvre, and not assuming that yesterday’s stability will automatically exist tomorrow.

What comes next is practical: mapping dependencies, testing alternatives, documenting failures, and sharing what holds up under real use.

If nothing else, this is a way to regain agency by making choices visible.

The results will determine whether the hypothesis holds.