Ask HN: How can I prepare my digital life for geopolitical disruptions?

I'm from Germany and currently rely on macOS and iOS, with all my personal data stored in iCloud. Recent political tensions have made me question what might happen in the event of a military conflict between the US and Europe. Could Apple be forced to shut down its services in Europe? What would happen to my devices, operating systems, and stored data in such a scenario?

Are there steps I can take now to prepare for this possibility? Alternatives like Windows and Android are also American-based, and even Linux has strong ties to the US. What options do I have to ensure access to my devices and data during such an event?

I’d appreciate any advice or strategies for preparing for this kind of situation.

I don't believe we are facing a military conflict soon, but it is clear that something fundamental has changed, and even if suddenly the US government does a 180, it's a whooole lot of toothpaste to put back in the tube.

Essentially, start freezing US dependencies out of your tech stack and take control:

- Run Linux on your machines

- Run GrapheneOS on your mobile

- Select services from this list: https://european-alternatives.eu/

- Keep local and off-line copies of your important data, and maintain frequent backups

- Block companies that comply willingly with unfair practices at your network edge (e.g. with a Pi-hole for DNS-based blocking, and you get ad blocking in addition)

1 day agoby yeyeyeyeyeyeyee

I doubt there will be a direct military conflict between US and EU. I don't see how either side gains from it. I think what the current US government really wants is to extract enough $$ from the European countries by forcing them to increase military expenditures and deployments.

But in case it does happen, I think Apple is the least of your trouble. I would just stock everything into a hard-disk and store it somewhere underground.

Linux foundation is based in US but I'm sure Europe has enough talented developers to maintain their own branches.

1 day agoby markus_zhang

Having local copies of your data may be a sane thing to do even without a geopolitical disruption. If you can't afford to lose something, have it backed up.

But your digital life is more than just photos. If there is hostility to everything that is US based, then everything made or hosted by US based companies may be compromised in ways that you may not predict now. Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, etc may have to comply with government orders, whatever they are.

Linux may be safer from that, you have Suse Linux if you want something supported locally.

1 day agoby gmuslera

Alternative solution: move to the US. They will need emigrants anyway when their people will be busy in the Greenland-, Canadian-, Panaman- and EU-wars :)

1 day agoby not_your_vase

Keep local copies of your data as well. I use USB drives.

So far every service I use has a way to download my data. I have been backing them up 4 times a year for several years now. Obviously big stuff which won't change needs to be handled differently to active stuff.

1 day agoby beardyw

If you’re in Europe when a war kicks off between what used to be the USA and will soon not be Europe, you (and humanity) have bigger problems than what happened to your digital corpse.

http://collapseos.org/ https://duskos.org/

1 day agoby yawpitch

How about going for an independent cloud storage like Dropbox, they are not affiliated to any OS or Windows platforms

1 day agoby prophoto