The announcement of the appointment of Jean-Noël Barrot (French-American Fundation) is a priori bad news for the sovereign digital community. This one comes on top of the announcements of Orange-Capgemini and Thales for their creation of a trusted cloud, while in France we have sovereign cloud players. These two announcements only confirm the demolition of the tools necessary for our technological independence and the de facto subservience to American interests. From an elected president who, together with his prime minister, appoints a government that is supposed to defend the interests of our nation, it is hard to imagine a worse symbol !

French-American Foundation’s “Young Leader” award winner, Minister Delegate for Digital Affairs

Do you think I’m being a bit excessive in my remarks? But what about the appointment of Jean-Noël Barrot as Minister Delegate for Digital Affairs, who is a laureate of the French-American Foundation’s “Young Leaders” program, class of 2020 (Wikipedia). He comes from the Parisian grandes écoles Science Po and HEC, which are completely committed to the American liberal economy and have a particular inclination to use the solutions of the American digital giants. To temper my words, which are as much as my disappointment, considering the possibilities that existed to have a minister delegated to digital who is aware of and accepted by our rich and innovative ecosystem, we must give him the benefit of the doubt, which should be lifted very quickly after his first measures…

Trusted cloud, that smoky name

In 2021, the government announced its intention to create a trusted cloud, which is surprising when you have a minimum of knowledge of the French digital ecosystem… What does this vague name mean? It is about making industrialists who have to use cloud services believe that French players (Orange-Capgemini and Thales) can operate American clouds (Microsoft for the first and Google for the second) by limiting and removing the danger of the extraterritoriality of American laws…

First of all, the problem of independence of the Cloud is not limited to the problem of legal protection of hosted data. Google and Microsoft with their French partners want us to believe that their offers would become “sovereign”. This statement is at least misleading, but more a lie and has also caused strong reactions (L’Usine Digitale – 30 juin 22) ! Indeed, whether it is for Microsoft or Google, these are proprietary software with probable “back doors” allowing American spy services to do their shopping without being seen or known. Moreover, these software programs that allow the cloud to be operated are American products and can therefore be subject to embargo in the event of geostrategic disagreement and/or conflict. There is also the question of how this “sovereign cloud” will be operated, especially on the maintenance of the different software layers by the French actors…