Mitigating geopolitical risks with local-first software and atproto

Slides from a keynote given on 17 March 2026 at QCon London.
https://martin.kleppmann.com/2026/03/17/qcon-keynote-geopolitical-risk.html
https://qconlondon.com/keynote/mar2026/mitigating-geopolitical-risks-local-first-software-and-atproto

Abstract:

Europe is highly dependent on US cloud services. Until recently that was not a problem, but geopolitical shifts have made it risky. Technological sovereignty sounds nice, but how do we achieve it? Being able to easily move from one provider to another is an important part of the story. In this keynote Martin Kleppmann will talk about two technological trends that he has helped kick off, and that both aim to enable easy provider switching for different domains: local-first software (for collaborative tools) and the atproto ecosystem around Bluesky (for social media).

Transcript

2. Photo by Quintin Soloviev, CC BY-SA via Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tuapannguit_buildings,_ Nuuk,_Greenland_(Quintin_Soloviev).png
3. https://www.srgresearch.com/articles/european-cloud-providers-local-market-share-now-holds-steady-at-15 AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud together have 70% cloud market share in Europe. The largest European cloud providers (SAP, Deutsche Telekom) have 2% market share each
6. “A year ago, it would have been absurd to worry about European access to American technology. As [Donald Trump] recklessly exploits the transatlantic alliance over Greenland, an executive order limiting American AI firms’ business in Europe no longer seems unthinkable. Some European restrictions on American technology, including the computing clouds where AIs reside, are also plausible.” – The Economist, 22 January 2026 https://www.economist.com/leaders/2026/01/22/chinese-ai-is-a-risk-for-europe-so-is-shunning-it
7. https://apnews.com/article/trump-icc-sanctions-israel- order-01beee050ae84d0d9eae66d00bc8ead9 February 2025
8. May 2025 https://apnews.com/article/icc-trump-sanctions-karim- khan-court-a4b4c02751ab84c09718b1b95cbd5db3
9. June 2025 https://www.politico.eu/article/microsoft-did-not-cut- services-international-criminal-court-president- american-sanctions-trump-tech-icc-amazon-google/
11. July 2025 https://www.cyberincontext.ca/p/microsoft-admits-us-law-supersedes
12. 7 March 2026 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/07/it- means-missile-defence-on-data-centres-drone-strikes- raises-doubts-over-gulf-as-ai-superpower
14. 13 March 2026 https://www.wired.me/story/war-on-big-tech-iran-names- israeli-linked-us-firms-as-potential-targets
15. https://www.theregister.com/2022 /05/02/ukrainian_tractors_deere/ May 2022
31. Standardisation of screw threads by Joseph Whitworth, 1841 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Screw_making_machine,_1871.png https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Joseph_Whitworth.jpg
98. https://www.inkandswitch.com/essay/local-first/ April 2019
102. SyncKit
103. https://www.localfirstconf.com/
104. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10d8HxS4y_g
115. Just released! Book signing today 2.25pm, ground floor (by registration desks) First come, first served
116. Resources • AT Protocol https://atproto.com/ • Local-first essay https://www.inkandswitch.com/essay/local-first/ • Local-first documentary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10d8HxS4y_g • Local-first conference https://www.localfirstconf.com/ • Automerge https://automerge.org/ • My work https://martin.kleppmann.com/ • Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/martin.kleppmann.com • Email martin@kleppmann.com