Regardless of how ridiculous it seems this is a result of the isolationist policies of the US government and there will be traction to invest in such things in EU, Asia and beyond even if the whole thing becomes a complete non-event.

> What's the benefit here (other than the usual nebulous 'because data protection and politics', that is)?

One of the few working privacy guarantees Transatlantic Data Privacy Framework (TDPF), relied on a U.S. watchdog called the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB). And Donald Trump defunded the PCLOB on January 28.

But even fully functioning TDPF was not without legal troubles.

> Where do you want to move previously cloud-based applications to?

A vast majority of migrations to the cloud that I am aware of were life-and-shift migrations. Putting software back in the locally hosted data centres is often quite feasible, as nothing gets rewritten, really.

> Who is going to maintain that non-cloud infrastructure?

It's the EU, mind you. People stick to jobs much longer than in US. From what I can see, there are still bright engineers inside organizations.

Also... it does not have to be non-cloud. Just non-US.

> How do you address and mitigate the risks involved (e.g., security, resilience)?

I guess that's very project-specific.

> That said, there are companies such as VMware that sell "local cloud" setups. Their customers seem like your likely customers

There is a whole "off Broadcom" movement since well over a year, and the winners are often EU companies.