That would be illegal. They are offering this service to EU governments (and government contractors) under contractual terms which promise EU management. Replacing the EU management with a US manager would at a minimum be a breach of contract - and since some of these contracts are for sensitive / national security use cases, possibly much more serious legal consequences than just garden variety breach of contract

> Replacing the EU management with a US manager would at a minimum be a breach of contract - and since some of these contracts are for sensitive / national security use cases, possibly much more serious legal consequences than just garden variety breach of contract

and the EU has no leverage to do anything about it

if they did they wouldn't have selected AWS "Sovereign" cloud in the first place

The EU has no leverage?

This is located within the EU. They can walk in and arrest the US manager or deport them immediately, and throw any direct reports in jail if they obey the US manager.

The EU has all the leverage here. Sovereignty over a geographical area does actually mean something.

> They can walk in and arrest the US manager or deport them immediately,

how? they'd be in the US (hence "US manager")

> The EU has all the leverage here.

it has one threat: to shut it all down, at which point the EU re-enters the dark ages

threatening to blow off your own leg is not leverage

> and the EU has no leverage to do anything about it

Absolutely they do have leverage – maximum they could possibly do would be confiscate Amazon's EU assets (physical, financial, corporate and intellectual)

> maximum they could possibly do would be confiscate Amazon's EU assets

so they can turn off their own critical services?

threatening to shoot yourself in the foot with a tactical nuke is not leverage

Confiscating a subsidiary doesn't shut down its computer systems.

That would require humans to do additional – and very likely criminal – acts of retaliation.

At the point someone has seized an Amazon subsidiary, of course ACLs will change, equipment will get shutdown, etc.

And no one will care about whatever claims of ‘criminal retaliation’ there are, because it’s already crossed that line eh?

It’s not like the domestic employees will be doing it anyway - or would need to be involved.