As the global climate grows more uncertain under a second Trump administration, many in the UK increasingly view their dependence on American tech giants not just as a philosophical concern but as a strategic liability.. A new survey of 1,000 IT decision-makers reveals growing discomfort with storing data under jurisdictions vulnerable to foreign influence.
According to the survey, conducted by UK-based cloud provider Civo, 84 percent of IT leaders say geopolitical instability could affect their access to and control over data. For 61 percent of respondents, data sovereignty is now a core strategic concern, not just a compliance checkbox.
More than a third of respondents fear that U.S. laws like the CLOUD Act will allow the government to access their data—even when they host it on foreign soil. The anxiety isn’t abstract: nearly half of those surveyed are actively exploring repatriation from American hyperscalers like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud.
It’s not only private companies that are rethinking things here. About 60% of those surveyed believe the UK government should stop relying on US cloud providers, especially in light of the recent tariff spikes. The push for moving away from American cloud infrastructure is clearly building, but honestly, shifting over to local solutions? That’s a complicated process—definitely not plug-and-play. There are a lot of technical and logistical hurdles in the way.
Gartner and other industry voices caution that European cloud platforms often fall short of their American counterparts when it comes to features, infrastructure, and global scale. Migration itself remains complex—some providers, like Oracle, rank lowest in flexibility for clients trying to exit.
Still, the pressure is mounting. Sovereignty isn’t just a buzzword anymore—it’s a battle line in a reshaping cloud landscape.
