Blog
Bert Hubert: 'Head in the cloud suddenly isn't so hot anymore'
In 2025, TrueFullstaq organized C-level sessions during Edgecase for the first time. These are designed for CTOs, CIOs, and other executives. On September 23, Bert Hubert, leading expert in digital sovereignty, kicked off the event. He addressed the question: digital sovereignty or cloud acceleration?
His message is clear: Hubert criticizes our dependence on America when it comes to cloud servers. How do we deal with this? There are three options: choosing the edge, rented capacity with Kubernetes and containers, or 'head in the cloud'. We need to move away from that last option.
Voting with a pencil is safer
Bert Hubert worked at PowerDNS, Fox-IT, various universities, the AIVD and the Electoral Council, among others. He investigated, for example, the deployment of spyware and the security of electronic voting in elections. He advocates voting with pencil, because counting all those papers happens in thousands of places and is, therefore, difficult to influence. This principle actually also applies in the digital world. Here's why he's against the cloud.
World map of cloud providers
For his main argument, he shows a world map. "Pay attention. This is not a happy picture," he tells the audience. The cloud providers are drawn on the map; they all come from America and Asia. With two thick arrows pointing to Europe, because there's nothing there at all. Bert Hubert: "At best, there's some small-scale activity here. So we depend on the US. Until now, people have realized that you shouldn't run your government or other important processes on Alibaba Cloud, but that's probably not because people think about sovereignty."
Hubert has addressed the Dutch government about the risks of this choice. With zero results. Subsequently, he spoke with various European Commissions. Also no results. "My words only got some impact when Arjen Lubach covered the topic."
Play video
The entire government depends on Microsoft
Hubert continues: "This is what we're heading towards rapidly: the entire government communicates with each other via Microsoft computers. The point is that every single communication first goes to a Microsoft server. The email is stored there until someone at another ministry wants to read the email. All email remains permanently on Microsoft servers. There are no own mail servers anymore. If Microsoft has an outage - or a quarrel with us - then nothing works anymore and we can't repair anything either." And then he shows a photo of Donald Trump...
Sovereign Air-Gapped Edge-computer
Hubert recalls memories of the first IBMs, floppy disks, and WordPerfect. "If it didn't work, everything around you just continued. Moreover, your data was your own data. Only with disks did they go somewhere. The computer was robust and you had control yourself. Nowadays, we have a name for that: Sovereign Air-Gapped Edge-computer!"
Control given away too easily
We handed over that control way too easily, Hubert explains. He shows that even KPN has gone through steps from the robust telephone to MS Teams. "The risks might still be manageable if you have a shoe store, but that's different for hospitals, the Tax Authority, or other government services. The Americans can read our data, and they do. They've declared that under oath. Legally, it makes no difference that the data is on European servers. And encryption doesn't help, so there's no solution to use American clouds safely."
Four layers of digital sovereignty
According to Bert Hubert, there are four layers of sovereignty within automation and IT strategy. The 'higher' we get in the schema, the less secure we become. But also the less expertise we have in the EU. Hubert starts at the bottom. "The layer 'server, storage, network capacity, Kubernetes, and containers' is our expertise. With the layer above - databases, basic services, rest 'on request' - we can still manage something. 'Fully automated, advanced & sticky services' is the expertise of Microsoft, Google, and AWS. And the highest layer 'complete desktop environment' is Microsoft's monopoly."
Life at the edge
As if the audience wasn't concerned enough, Hubert then shows images of CrowdStrike that brought down airports, outages at the coast guard, and in the defense network, and Dutch ministers shrugging their shoulders about it: 'Get used to it', according to Minister David van Weel of Justice. "But there is life at the edge!" Hubert responds. He refers to edge nodes and shows the open source alternative for the government system to search parliamentary documents that he developed himself. "This is made on a small home server with 64 MB RAM memory," he laughs proudly. "It costs me 500 euros per year. For comparison: renting a cloud application costs 1000 euros per month."
Hot or not?
Bert Hubert concludes that global political developments force us to think about our strategy. "Do you choose edge and a server nearby that you can replace or repair yourself? Do you go for rented capacity, Kubernetes, and containers? That's a pretty hot idea with many possibilities. Or do you choose 'head in the cloud' via Google, AWS, or Microsoft? Then you go for the advanced but very sticky possibilities of such hyperscalers. That option suddenly doesn't seem so hot anymore in 2025."
