Ask HN: Doomsday Prep – But for Tech?

by dhabon 2/1/2025, 3:52 PMwith 1 comments

Imagine an even more extreme version of (geo)politics - where in let's say US Govt enforces all US companies to be barred from providing their services to many parts of the world, unless those nations agree to meet certain demands.

Imagine then US states revolt, and revolting states are also barred from consuming these services in some fashion.

For the world population or the affected US states: what are some ways to maintain your access to such services and data? Assuming this (hypothetically) entails events such as: * Major hardware/software investments: Amazon/GCP.. DCs to be power-down, exports of hardwares (GPUs, Broadcom chips etc) to be halted * Data access stopped immediately * Useful commodities export halted: electronics, packaged food, farm-output * ... all across the board

And assume each nation or state will continue to have: * local manufacturing tech (e.g. phone or local pc fabrication plants) * resources (e.g. electricity grid etc) * infra (e.g. existing datacentres)

However, if we only focused on tech and data services such as:

* Github/Gitlab for hosting * GCP/AWS/Azure * Gmail/Outlook/iCloud * Laptops, Monitors, HDDs, cables, routers, accessories etc (macbooks, surface, HPs, Dells)

What technology choices can one make today that enables minimal disruption at lowest incovenience and cost possible?

Considering that one obvious solution of using open-source systems self-hosted would be hindered by lack of access to repos like Github/Gitlab where they are housed.

by toomuchtodoon 2/1/2025, 6:07 PM

I assume I’ll still have access to storage and compute in Europe or Canada. If the situation degrades to the point even that isn’t an option (and the US government tilts towards China level control of electronic communications at nation state boundaries), I leave the country.