🗞 Weekly Backlog – Week 45/2025

Europe discovers that digital independence is not an ideal but a maintenance issue.

Editorial

This week, digital sovereignty took center stage in multiple arenas—from administration to research and justice. While Microsoft’s DNS issues knocked out half the infrastructure, the Federal Ministry for Digital Affairs celebrated its TYPO3 success as a symbol of state emancipation. The DFG is pulling data from US clouds, the International Criminal Court is replacing Microsoft with OpenDesk, and the industry is calling ‘Stop the clock’ to buy time on the AI Act.

It’s as if Europe is trying to free itself from three decades of convenience—using tools it still has to build.

The Tech News of the Week

Government Site Builder 11

When government agencies suddenly celebrate open source, it’s worth checking if you’re dreaming. But the Government Site Builder 11 (GSB 11) shows that something is moving within the apparatus. At the Smart Country Convention, the system developed by BMDS and ITZBund won twice—and rightly so.

The GSB is based on TYPO3, is modular, documented, and above all: reusable. It sounds trivial but is revolutionary in an environment where each municipality pays for its own CMS because the old solution was “not compatible.”

That Schleswig-Holstein was simultaneously recognized for its consistent open-source strategy fits seamlessly: It is the first federal state that no longer talks about sovereignty but configures it.

Impressive!

🔗 Linux-Magazin on the award

Microsoft’s DNS Debacle

A configuration error in Microsoft’s CDN “Front Door” is enough to bring Outlook, Office 365, Azure, and Xbox to a standstill worldwide. The company calls it a “misconfiguration,” I call it dependency.

The idea that an American provider could cripple European businesses, administrations, and educational institutions with a DNS error would have been considered science fiction ten years ago. Today, it’s a bitter reality.

Microsoft’s response is symptomatic: vague status updates, technical workarounds that undermine security concepts. The problem is not the error itself but the architecture behind it.

🔗 heise.de on the outage

DFG Pulls Research Data from US Cloud

The Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) is beginning to pull research data from US clouds—a decision driven more by geopolitics than IT.

The US Cloud Act allows American authorities access to data held by US companies, regardless of whether it’s stored in Germany or elsewhere. This turns research into a legal risk. The DFG wants to change that and is funding the move to European infrastructures like the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC).

This is a paradigm shift: For the first time, it’s not about data security in the technical sense but about sovereignty as a condition for research.

The realization that knowledge is only free when under one’s own control comes late—but at least it comes.

🔗 heise online on the DFG initiative

“Stop the Clock”

The European industry is discovering its love for slowness. Under the motto “Stop the clock,” IBM, Siemens, and the BDI are calling for the AI Act’s implementation to be delayed by up to two years, allegedly because standards are missing.

In reality, it’s about something else: buying time to circumvent compliance.

The AI Act demands transparency, traceability, and documentation. These are all things that are difficult in the industry not for technical reasons but cultural ones.

That IBM itself is working on the standards whose absence is now cited as the reason for the delay is almost poetic.

🔗 netzpolitik.org on the AI Act dispute

International Criminal Court Replaces Microsoft

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has had enough: After US sanctions against staff that led to the chief prosecutor’s email access being blocked, the institution is replacing Microsoft software with OpenDesk—an open-source solution developed by the federal government.

What sounds like a minor administrative change is politically a bombshell: If even international courts no longer trust US providers with their communication, it shows how deep the dependency already runs.

OpenDesk comes from the Zentrum für Digitale Souveränität (ZenDiS), which is increasingly becoming one of the most important players in European IT policy.

🔗 heise.de on the ICC switch

Munich Gets an AI Factory

The Deutsche Telekom is building one of Europe’s largest AI data centers in Munich together with Nvidia. In a refurbished building in Munich’s Tucherpark, around 10,000 Nvidia GPUs will work on industrial AI applications starting early 2026. The investment volume is about one billion euros.

On board: SAP as a software partner and first customers like Siemens, Agile Robots, and Perplexity. Even drone manufacturer Quantum Systems wants to use the new infrastructure to train AI models for military and industrial purposes. Telekom CEO Tim Höttges speaks of “binding commitments”—demand seems secured even before the facility goes online.

The AI factory is expected to increase Germany’s computing capacity by about 50 percent and is part of a larger European strategy: The EU plans several so-called AI-Gigafactories with at least 100,000 GPUs to reduce the technological gap with the US and China. The Munich project is considered a precursor—technically dependent on Nvidia, politically charged as an attempt to reclaim European computing power.

🔗 tagesschau.de: Telekom and Nvidia plan huge AI data center

in-Post of the Week

As reported by the Zentrum für Digitale Souveränität (ZenDiS) on LinkedIn, there will be a dual leadership under the joint direction of Pamela Krosta-Hartl and Alexander Pockrandt. Krosta-Hartl, previously head of strategy and communication, brings years of experience from the federal DigitalService and the private sector.

ZenDiS is increasingly becoming the institutional backbone of state open-source strategies—and that’s exactly where leadership is needed that brings together political pragmatism and technical reality.

I wish Ms. Krosta-Hartl much success.

🔗 ZenDiS on LinkedIn

Recommendation:

The Digital Tsunami

Arte’s “The Digital Tsunami” shows how deeply digital infrastructure changes our perception—from social media dopamine to autonomous weapons. With Sherry Turkle, Yoshua Bengio, and a reunion with McLuhan: “The medium is the message”—this time algorithmically amplified.

Worth watching because the documentary doesn’t explain but shows how normality shifts when machines decide what we see.

🔗 YouTube Link

Event Tip:

Cyber Security Innovation Day 2025

November 6 | Innovation Center, Saarland University, Saarbrücken Panels on trustworthy AI, startup pitches, keynotes from CISPA to BSI—and Heiko Maas with an outlook on cybersecurity as industrial policy. I will be on site. Report to follow next week.

🔗 Register here

Stock Market News:

OpenAI Aims for the Trillion

According to Reuters, OpenAI is preparing for an IPO with a valuation of up to 1 trillion US dollars. The company continues to incur losses but plans to invest in infrastructure and acquisitions and is restructuring as a Public Benefit Corporation (PBC) to balance profit and public good.

Microsoft remains involved with a 27% stake and collects 20% of the revenues—which raises the question of how independent “independent” really is.

🔗 n-tv on the planned IPO

Meme of the Week

Thanks for the inspiration Harald Wehnes

This week shows how the balance of power in the digital realm is shifting: States and institutions are beginning to recognize the dependencies they have created themselves. What was sold as technical modernization turns out to be a political risk, and open source suddenly becomes a security concept.