Despite the supposed “air gapped” setup, I find it highly questionable to throw money at a US company for such a critical infrastructure, which will then be used behind the scenes by the US government to finance campaigns against Europe’s integrity. In addition, they are making themselves dependent on support from an American company.
Meanwhile, Sweden is supporting open source and all government computers work on Linux.
Is it? What do you mean by that?
Kommun workers use Windows or iOS. University workers use mainly Windows or iOS, though computer labs usually have Linux PCs. Still, the unis usually have their email service managed via Outlook or Gmail services. We have our own data storage, though, e.g., KTH still buys OneDrive. Similarly, we have our own computing clusters, and here, luckily, I have never heard of any Swedish researcher using AWS or anything like that.
Germany is a huge supporter of Open Source development with https://www.sovereign.tech/. Ministries are quite autonomous and in this case the defence ministry made a dumb decision. Doesn’t surprise me that this ministry in particular is not led by the brightest people.
We’re ruled by late stage capitalists. Of course we throw money at google.