It’s an illusion to think you can completely break free from big tech. But like in finance, don’t put all your data assets into one bucket.

Everybody uses Microsoft 365, WhatsApp, iPhones, and ChatGPT. Everybody shops at Amazon and hosts their cloud applications either in AWS or Azure. And everybody uses TikTok and DeepSeek, and drives BYD cars.

What do all those technologies have in common? They are either American-built or Chinese-made.

Now enter geopolitics. The rivalry between America and China is a reality, and so is their quest for political influence over other countries. Tariffs, Taiwan, oil, and rare earths dominate the agenda.

Middle Powers such as Canada, the United Kingdom, France, or Switzerland, my home country, are trapped between the Great Powers.

And so are entrepreneurs. We all use Microsoft 365, WhatsApp, iPhones, ChatGPT, and Amazon Web Services to build our businesses. If Middle Powers struggle to find a way to deal with the rise of Great Power politics, what can entrepreneurs do?

The Spoiler: You Can’t Break Free Completely

For 99.9% of businesses, it’s an illusion to think you can completely break free from American and Chinese big tech. Sorry to be direct.

The best example is WhatsApp. Over the years, WhatsApp grew into some kind of social infrastructure: Whatever people want to coordinate with other people, the first step is to create a WhatsApp group. Everybody does this — parents, politicians, entrepreneurs. At Yonder, the B2B SaaS company I co-founded, many sales conversations rely on WhatsApp. Of course, there are alternative messaging apps, but which sales rep would want to use Signal or Threema when their prospective clients don’t use these apps?

Another example is Microsoft 365. Everybody uses Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and Teams. Would you like to explain to your prospective customers that you want to e-meet using Jitsi, a self-hosted video calling solution, rather than through Microsoft Teams? If you’re dealing with enterprise customers, most probably all video calling solutions other than Microsoft Teams and maybe Zoom are blocked anyway. Therefore, if you want to do business with them, you’ll have to use big tech solutions.

The problem with American big tech solutions is the so-called Cloud Act (Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act). It allows American authorities to request data from American tech firms even when hosted outside the U.S. This means that even if I host my SharePoint files on a Microsoft data center in Switzerland or Sweden, theoretically, American authorities might request and receive access to those files.

That’s not a problem per se, but it can become a problem in a geopolitical context. Imagine you’re a supplier for the defense industry, and the country of origin of your collaboration tool is suddenly at war with your most important customer’s home country. Imagine you’re working for the International Criminal Court and you’re sanctioning an American or Chinese individual, and the next day, access to Microsoft Outlook or TikTok is blocked for you and your team.

Where has it all gone off track? The root cause is the move from on-premise software to Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). In the old days, software was a product you purchased on a CD-ROM and then installed on a computer or server in your premises. Today, people don’t buy software anymore. They buy access to platforms they don’t own or control. Therefore, we all depend on the promise that our access to those platforms is not interrupted, and that our data on those platforms isn’t copied, manipulated, or spied upon. That’s why global SaaS platforms wield enormous power and influence. In this light, it wasn’t a coincidence to see the bosses of big tech companies like Apple, Google, Microsoft, or Facebook in the front row at President Trump’s inauguration in January 2025. The message was clear: Technology will be a centerpiece of American power projection in the years to come.

The Silverlight: You Still Have Options

What can entrepreneurs do? Act, don’t whine. There are many possibilities for entrepreneurs to diversify away from American and Chinese technologies.

In Europe, governments are starting to shift from cloud solutions to open source software: LibreOffice instead of Microsoft 365, NextCloud instead of SharePoint. Linux instead of Apple OS or Microsoft Windows. Entrepreneurs can do the same.

In Switzerland, my home country, we have a vibrant tech sector and great technical universities. As a consequence of geopolitics, lots of sovereign IT solutions have emerged: Proton Mail to replace Microsoft Outlook and Gmail. Apertus and Lumo to replace ChatGPT. Data centers from Green or Infomaniak instead of Amazon Web Services. All made in Switzerland, and hosted in Switzerland. Entrepreneurs, what are you waiting for?

Now look at all those options, and this list is barely exhaustive. So here is my suggestion: Diversify your IT tools like you diversify your financial assets. Don’t put all your data into one single basket.

What’s the price you pay for such a move? You pay with inconvenience, at least in the short term. Finding alternatives and migrating your data takes time and effort. If you go step-by-step and get started today, you will be much less vulnerable to geopolitical whims than if you just accept that you cannot change big tech or geopolitics.

Do you think I’m oversimplifying things? I actually demigrated LinkedIn, a platform many entrepreneurs deem indispensable. And that’s not the last tool in my tech stack that will be demigrated in the near future.

Yes, it will take time and effort. Yes, some people will laugh at me. But it will make me more independent and sovereign, both as an entrepreneur and as a private person. And independence and sovereignty are what we need in our troubled times.