When the U.S. government imposed sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC) in early 2025, the consequences were far-reaching yet quickly enforced.
The restrictions cut off the ICC chief prosecutor’s access to Microsoft services, including email, followed by a freezing of his personal and institutional bank accounts in affected jurisdictions.
While this was happening, the Dutch government was watching, coming to the bitter realization that access to essential services depended on decisions made in the U.S.
Hence, their response to this is DAWO, short for Digitaal Autonome Werkomgeving Overheid, or Digital Autonomous Work Environment for Government in English.
It is a framework that looks to tackle the government’s digital stack, covering the OS, an office suite, collaboration apps, cloud services, IT management tools, and AI, with all of it being built around a NixOS foundation.
Many experts in the US have said that US votes are reliable though, right? Trump kept casting doubt on US votes, saying that Biden could only have won in 2020 due to manipulation, and experts were saying that actually the US voting system is reliable.
I definitely believe that many Americans want to be friends with Europe, yes. I also think there are quite a few Americans who love Trump and dislike Europe for whatever reasons. I hope America will elect somebody more sensible than Trump in 2028, but I don’t think it’s yet clear what will happen.
It’s already been established that it’s definitely possible, but we haven’t had any vote audits, so if it did happen, we wouldn’t necessarily even know. Alao, with all the crap that Elon was pulling in the last election, I find it really difficult to believe that there was no manipulation, and at this point going forward, it’s out in the open entirely.
We have cases of Republicans stealing voting machine, hard drives prior to the presidential election too.
https://electiontruthalliance.org/ has enough convincing content for me.
Am I cynical? Sure, but the nationwide and widespread efforts at voter disenfranchisement are enough for me to be satisfied that my doubt is valid. If this is what they’re doing right in front of their faces, then why wouldn’t they also be taking actions that we don’t know about?
I definitely think Musk wants to rig elections as much as he can, but he probably tries to do it just about within the law, so he can sell himself as a moral fighter for whatever crap he thinks he’s fighting for (enriching himself, of course).
I guess my general point was that lots of Americans did seem to vote for Trump in 2024, even if many of those now seem to regret their vote, given Trump’s current approval ratings. I hope that a better US president will be elected in 2028. But I think Europe should aim for as much autonomy as possible, regardless of how 2028 turns out, so that friendship with the US becomes a choice rather than an obligation.