The world should wake up from tech dependence. Let the EU massively invest in FOSS.
Edit: as raised by comments, my title is not incorrect but does omit that it’s actually the US that imposed sanctions, to which MS just complies.
The world should wake up from tech dependence. Let the EU massively invest in FOSS.
Edit: as raised by comments, my title is not incorrect but does omit that it’s actually the US that imposed sanctions, to which MS just complies.
Lol, what? Where you getting all this propaganda from?
I mean that the SWIFT is a crucial infrastructure to the banking system all over the world because it allow banks to wire money from country A to country B. SWIFT itself is controlled by the US & EU but even then it was very rare that a country would be disconnected from the system. Until 2023, the only country that did get banned from SWIFT was Iran and it was allowed to come back under the 2016 agreement. In 2023, in the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russia was banned from SWIFT and this prompted many countries that do no have automatic alignment with the US & EU to develop an alternative infrastructure that would allow their banking systems to continue wire money internationally without depending on the SWIFT system. For example, Russia has the SPFS(System for the Transfer of Financial Messages), China has the CIPS(Cross-border Inter-bank Payment System) and the BRICS are developing the BRICS Pay which is to be an decentralized and independent payment messaging mechanism system.
The Microsoft situation is very similar in the sense of that the can do this once and after that many public institutions will change back to non-proprietary office suites. It might take a while but some of these institutions will do it.
The only one of those that both exists and competes with SWIFT as an international banking infrastructure is CIPS, and that already existed prior to the Russian sanctions. The entire world didn’t do anything in response to Russian sanctions, China saw an opportunity and used it to promote the alternative it already had and already wanted to expand.
On top of that SWIFT doesn’t even do payments. That is, it doesn’t transfer money, it provides a communication interface that banks use to talk about payments, the actual money transfer takes place separately via T2 (in Europe) or elsewhere via correspondent accounts.
If they tried to handle actual money they would not have the market share that they have. Iran is semi-sanctioned right now, that is, select banks are cut off. It’s illegal under EU law to comply with US sanctions against US or Cuba so you can be sure that the commission came up with the precise list of what to block and what not so they’d hit the revolutionary guard but not random carpet or saffron traders.