The KNAW investigates the impact of recent policy changes by the Trump administration on Dutch scientists. We asked our members about their experiences, insights into potential consequences, and ideas for actions that the Netherlands should undertake. José van Dijck, professor of Media and Digital Society at Utrecht University and former president of the KNAW, discusses how Trump's policies expose vulnerabilities in Dutch science and why digital sovereignty deserves urgent attention.
1. What concrete effects of the new US science policy do you currently observe?
"What struck me personally was a recent warning from Utrecht University to all employees traveling to the United States for research. It concerned a request not to store data on our laptops that might be deleted in the US or cause legal trouble. I found this quite shocking. You might expect something like this when traveling to China, but to receive such a warning regarding travel to the US was unthinkable three months ago. I hear from colleagues that these are dilemmas people traveling to America are seriously considering."
2. What do you see as the biggest threat of US policy for the Netherlands?
"The digital society is my research area, focusing on core public values such as privacy, security, transparency, accuracy, democratic oversight, and equality. All these values are now at risk. I identify three major threats.
The first concerns our digital sovereignty. For years, I've been warning against dependence on Big Tech infrastructure, whether from the US or elsewhere. Fifteen years ago, fourteen Dutch universities each had their own computing centers; today, only one remains: the Snellius supercomputer in Amsterdam. Most university data is now stored in American cloud services. This change can be explained by our trust in these companies and the ease and efficiency of outsourcing data storage and services instead of maintaining our own centers. However, it's questionable whether it's truly cheaper. Expertise we outsourced won't easily return. It's very easy to place data in the cloud, but very difficult to retrieve. Typically, there's a significant exit fee, and you can't just export data between cloud services if they're not interoperable. Easy and cheap to enter, complicated and costly to exit.
The second issue is the rapid rise of AI. If not adequately protected by legislation—which often isn't the case, as the AI Act lags behind reality—all our cloud-stored data could be utilized for AI training by Big Tech companies. These companies create tools like ChatGPT and Microsoft CoPilot, train them on vast data sets, and embed these AI tools in their standard software, for which you then pay significantly. Moreover, these companies lack transparency about data handling, hindering democratic oversight. Both their business models and algorithmic processes remain trade secrets. As long as that's the case, we're giving away our data in the hope it's used appropriately, but we can't be certain.
Third, cybersecurity colleagues warn about the 'kill switch.' The American Cloud Act grants the US government access to all data stored in American cloud services, even if the servers are on European soil. We're mistaken if we assume our data is exclusively accessible to us. I wouldn't rule out the use of such a kill switch to deny Europeans access to their own data. Trump rejects regulation—he discarded all AI-related regulations previously implemented in the US and warned that countries enforcing such regulations with fines would face retaliatory import tariffs. These three threats highlight the significant vulnerability of Dutch and European scientific independence."
3. In your opinion, what immediate actions should the Netherlands take to prevent damage to science?
"We're already taking some steps—I notice increased awareness among administrators in recent months. Most university boards responded positively to an open letter distributed at all universities, urging support for alternative platforms and infrastructure. However, we must not merely call for European alternatives; we need to actively pursue them ourselves. For example, within our ALGOSOC research consortium, we've already started experimenting with European software solutions such as Nextcloud to reduce dependence on American cloud providers like Google and Microsoft. These are critical yet lengthy processes, requiring experimentation, privacy assessments, managing existing university contracts, and overcoming technical migration issues. No one can tackle this alone—we need intensive collaboration within existing structures such as SURF, Universities of the Netherlands (UNL), and the KNAW. Only organizations like these can promote the necessary investments and collaboration to safeguard our scientific independence and secure our data. These are pressing challenges amid this geopolitical shift, a tectonic shift happening right now."
José van Dijck (1960) has been a Distinguished University Professor of Media and Digital Society at Utrecht University since 2017. Her research covers media, media technologies, and digital society. From 2015 to 2018, she served as the first female president of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW). In 2021, she received the Spinoza Prize, the highest scientific honor from the Dutch Research Council (NWO), and the C. Edward Baker Award from the International Communication Association (ICA) for her academic contributions. She co-authored the book The Platform Society: Public Values in a Connective World, published by Oxford University Press in 2018.
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