Prediction: If USA ends up attacking EU, EU will freeze all the US tech company money and compel them to open their platforms and move all the backend services to EU soil in exchange of unfreezing it and continue operating in a free but regulated market.

For example locked communication devices are huge national security risk, so Apple will have their money frozen and given two options:

1) Open up iOS etc, bring all the servers to EU. Continue business as usual, EU financial institutions may choose to use Apple services as Apple pay but they may choose to bypass it. EU developers may choose to use Apple App Store services and pay the Apple's fees or they may choose to bypass it. Apple may chose to make Xcode a paid software, developers may choose not to purchase Xcode and use other non-Apple tools and pay nothing to Apple.

2) Use credit against the frozen money to refund your users if they bring their devices to you. All the Apple devices will be locked out from EU mobile providers(technically very easy for iPhone, simply by blocking devices with Apple IMEI on EU networks) and any remaining devices of the users will be refunded with the Apple's money. After some grace period, any money remaining in Apple's account will be transferred to Apple and if Apple wants to do business in EU again will have to do the option 1.

I'm bit on the doomer side of things, so I think that if Trump keeps his current course and power, at the end of the term American software industry will shrink by %90 as it will be expelled from most of the world and will be serving to 350M people instead of 8B people. Its amazing how US is screwing up its dominant position in this incredibly lucrative industry that lets them serve a market of 8B people and accumulate huge wealth in the process.

Open up iOS etc, bring all the servers to EU.

How is that going to work? Apple will still be under the CLOUD Act, so Europe would still be vulnerable. The only solution would be for Apple to fork into two completely separate companies, which is unlikely to happen.

Most likely there will initially just be a lot of chaos, because nobody is prepared for this scenario. There will be huge supply issues, COVID will look like nothing (both in terms of groceries, etc. and getting replacement hardware). Then Europe will on the short term rebase to Chinese/Korean/Taiwanese hardware, with probably an AOSP fork on the mobile side and Linux on the desktop/server side.

But it will be terribly messy. Nobody seems to prepare, because everyone thinks this scenario is unthinkable or they just don't want to put in the effort. Even all the people that I know that are talking about digital sovereignty are still using their iPhones, MacBooks, or GMS Android phones.

I am trying to tell tech people that the time to start switching is to alternatives is now, since tech people are usually early adopters and can help other people. But most switch from GMail to Proton Mail and proclaim victory. January 2026 (remember the good ol' days when the US wanted to take Greenland with force if necessary?) was already forgotten after 4 weeks or so.