risk continuity
Written: Jan-2026
It's all so Un-American - American de-risking availability and continuity
As America seems to have decided to demonstrate that you cannot trust anyone - even those who claimed they were your friends, you need to consider if tariffs are added with no reason, or worse - systems are restricted or turned off in your region. Can you or your company ride through any of these risks, or is it time to put in contingency plans.
For this reason - you need to reconsider all your infrastructure, from cars to computing, from services to manufacturing to utilities. Talking ChatGPT (oh the irony), here's a starting point list to give you thoughts on what you use, where they are from, and options to replace those should an unexpected "Truth"Social or "Twit" (X) be posted.
Note, this a de-risking availability and continuity list, not a boycott list.
| US Owner | Item | Revenue Band | Dependency Risk | Replacement Difficulty | Non-US Alternatives (with country codes) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apple | iPhone hardware | $100B+ | High | High | Samsung (KR), Huawei (CN), Fairphone (NL), Sony (JP) |
| Apple | iPad hardware | $50–100B | Medium | Medium | Samsung (KR), Huawei (CN), Lenovo (CN) |
| Apple | MacBooks | $50–100B | High | Medium | Lenovo (CN), Asus (TW), Framework (EU), Linux PCs (EU |
| Apple | Apple Watch | $10–50B | Medium | Medium | Garmin (US), Huawei (CN), Xiaomi (CN) |
| Apple | AirPods | $10–50B | Low | Low | Sony (JP), Bose (US), Sennheiser (DE) |
| Apple | macOS | $10–50B | High | Medium | Linux (EU), FreeBSD (EU) |
| Apple | iOS | $100B+ | Critical | High | /e |
| Apple | iCloud | $10–50B | High | Medium | Nextcloud (EU), Proton Drive (CH) |
| Microsoft | Windows OS | $100B+ | Critical | Medium | Linux (EU), FreeBSD (EU) |
| Microsoft | Office | $50–100B | Critical | Medium | LibreOffice (EU), OnlyOffice (EU) |
| Microsoft | Azure Cloud | $50–100B | Critical | High | OVHcloud (FR), Hetzner (DE), Alibaba Cloud (CN) |
| Microsoft | Exchange | $10–50B | High | Medium | Proton Mail (CH), self-hosted mail (EU) |
| Microsoft | GitHub | $1–10B | High | Low | GitLab (EU), Gitea (EU) |
| Android OS | $100B+ | Critical | Medium | /e | |
| Gmail | $50–100B | Critical | Medium | Proton Mail (CH), Tutanota (DE) | |
| Google Maps | $50–100B | High | Medium | Here WeGo (EU), Petal Maps (CN), OSM (EU) | |
| Google Cloud | $10–50B | High | High | OVHcloud (FR), Alibaba Cloud (CN), Tencent Cloud (CN) | |
| YouTube | $10–50B | Medium | Low | PeerTube (EU), Bilibili (CN)* | |
| Amazon | AWS | $100B+ | Critical | High | OVHcloud (FR), Hetzner (DE), Alibaba Cloud (CN) |
| Amazon | Kindle ecosystem | $1–10B | Medium | Low | Kobo (JP), PocketBook (EU) |
| Amazon | Alexa | $1–10B | High | Medium | Home Assistant (EU), Xiaomi (CN) |
| Meta | $100B+ | Medium | Low | Mastodon (EU) | |
| Meta | $50–100B | Medium | Low | Pixelfed (EU) | |
| Meta | $10–50B | High | Medium | Matrix | |
| OpenAI | ChatGPT | $1–10B | Medium | Low | Mistral AI (FR), Qwen (CN), local LLMs |
| Dell | Laptops & desktops | $50–100B | Medium | Low | Lenovo (CN), Asus (TW), Acer (TW) |
| HP | PCs & printers | $50–100B | Medium | Low | Brother (JP), Epson (JP), Lenovo (CN) |
| Intel | x86 CPUs | $10–50B | High | High | ARM SoCs (UK |
| AMD | CPUs | $10–50B | High | High | ARM SoCs (UK |
| NVIDIA | GPUs | $50–100B | High | High | Huawei Ascend (CN), Moore Threads (CN), ARM GPUs (UK) |
| Qualcomm | Mobile SoCs | $10–50B | High | Medium | MediaTek (TW), HiSilicon (CN) |
| Oracle | Oracle Database | $10–50B | High | High | PostgreSQL (EU), MariaDB (EU) |
| Adobe | Creative Cloud | $10–50B | Medium | Medium | Affinity (UK), GIMP (EU) |
| Shopify | Ecommerce platform | $5–10B | Critical | High | PrestaShop (FR), Shopware (DE), Magento OSS (EU) |
| Stripe | Payments | $10–50B | Critical | Medium | Adyen (NL), Mollie (NL), Worldline (FR) |
| PayPal | Payments | $10–50B | High | Low | Wise (UK), Revolut (EU) |
| Cloudflare | DNS | $1–10B | High | Medium | Bunny.net (EU), self-hosted DNS (EU) |
| UPS | Shipping | $10–50B | High | Low | DHL (DE), DPD (EU) |
| FedEx | Shipping | $10–50B | High | Low | GLS (EU), DPD (EU) |
| Atlassian | Bitbucket | $500M–$1B | Medium | Low | GitLab (EU), Gitea (EU) |
| GreenGeeks | Hosting | $50–100M | Medium | Medium | OVHcloud (FR), Hetzner (DE), Scaleway (FR), ANS (UK) |
Other things to consider:
- Is your DNS is US-controlled
- Is your website uses US CDN
- Is your email is US-hosted
- Is your payments rely on US processors
- Is your cloud hosting is US-based