Imagine a world where your credit card no longer works, your Amazon account is shut down, and using U.S. tech companies is no longer an option. It’s almost impossible to shop online, wire bank transfers to an overseas family member, or rely on anything that involves the United States, including the U.S. dollar.
For one Canadian, this is now her reality.
Last year, the Trump administration added Kimberly Prost, a judge on the International Criminal Court, to its economic sanctions list, after she served on an appeals chamber that in 2020 unanimously authorized the ICC’s prosecutor to investigate alleged war crimes in Afghanistan since 2003, including U.S. service personnel. The United States is not a member of the ICC and does not recognize its authority. Several other ICC judges and prosecutors have also been sanctioned by the Trump administration.
Prost, whose name now shares the same list as some of the world’s most dangerous people, from terrorists to North Korean hackers and Iranian spies, described the effect of sanctions on her life as “paralyzing” in an interview by The Irish Times.
This high-profile case provides a glimpse into the disruption that being cut off from the U.S. can have on a person’s everyday life; lawmakers and government leaders across Europe are growing more aware of the looming threat facing them at home, and their over-reliance on U.S. technology.
Trump’s diplomatic escalations and the upending of international norms, including the capture a foreign leader and threatening to invade a NATO and European ally, have caused some EU countries to consider moving away from U.S. tech and reclaim their digital sovereignty. This shift in thinking comes as the Trump administration has become increasingly unpredictable and vindictive.
In Belgium, the country’s cybersecurity chief Miguel De Bruycker conceded in a recent interview that Europe has “lost the internet” to the United States, which has hoarded much of the world’s tech and financial systems. De Bruycker said it is “currently impossible” to store data fully in Europe as a result of U.S. dominating digital infrastructure, and urged the European Union to strengthen its tech across the b …