Some time in the next few weeks or months, something really stupid may happen.

Should the US declare war on a European ally, it is hard to predict the full ramifications, given the sheer improbability of such a situation just a year ago.

I cannot tell you what will happen, other than the fact that a Quixotic venture into the ice will unleash global chaos and economic uncertainty. (Today, President Donald Trump said: “I don’t want to use force" to take Greenland, but in recent weeks has repeatedly raised the possibility. Greenland's prime minister has said that the nation must be "prepared for everything.")

For the data center industry, which is fundamentally a transcontinental project, life will get much harder.

US-backed data center projects - already deemed ‘critical national infrastructure’ - will face extreme scrutiny from governments wary of where their loyalties lie. Few in power have forgotten tech giants’ complicity during the NSA spying scandal, but the cost of transitioning away was deemed too high at the time to prompt a wholesale departure from Silicon Valley’s loving embrace.

One notable flashpoint in Denmark - the sovereign state Trump is proposing to go to war with - is a multi-billion-dollar data center project currently underway from Microsoft.

Microsoft’s dual loyalties

In 2025, Microsoft notably talked about "recent geopolitical volatility" that may leave European nations cautious of US operators, even if company president Brad Smith was unable to bring himself to say what that volatility was.

Smith said: "Going forward, our European data center operations and their boards will be overseen by a European board of directors that consists exclusively of European nationals and operates under European law.

"In the unlikely event we are ever ordered by any government anywhere in the world to suspend or cease cloud operations in Europe, we are committing that Microsoft will promptly and vigorously contest such a measure using all legal avenues available, including by pursuing litigation in court. By including a new European Digital Resilience Commitment in all of our contracts with European national governments and the European Commission, we will make this commitment legally binding on Microsoft Corporation and all its subsidiaries."

Further, back-up copies of the company's code are stored in a secure repository in Switzerland, with the company promising to provide European partners with the legal rights needed to access and use this code if needed.

These statements, bizarre as they would be to a time traveller from 2024, should be commended. Microsoft has been the most vocal and proactive US giant in the face of mounting instability. This month, AWS also announced a sovereign European service, with similar safeguards.

But that does not mean that the measures will be enough.

As the 11th Airborne Division draws up plans to invade a US ally, they will do so through the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability, making use of Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services, and Oracle.

Should the rapid deployment force the XVIII Airborne Corps to be dragged in, they will rely on Dragon Cloud, built with Microsoft, featuring Azure Edge appliances.

As signal communication struggles in the harsh and remote climes, perhaps conquering forces will rely on Microsoft Stormcloud, built just for that problem.

When submarines and sub-surface UAVs circle the island, they may do so with the support of a subsection of Microsoft Defense cloud services custom-developed for subs, from a team that includes former nuclear submarine veterans.

Concurrently, a broader military ramp-up aimed at cowing European retaliation may begin to be gamed out on secret and top-secret Azure services, now featuring Nvidia's H200 GPUs. Perhaps some will discuss the task with the Azure Secret-hosted GPT-5.2 chatbot, launched just last week.

Months later, as the US looks to justify its expansionism by claiming it is about defense and building a 'golden dome,' the Missile Defense Agency will be brought in. Ignoring the fact that they already have the ability to protect the US through the Pituffik Space Base, the MDA will announce new systems on newly taken land.

They will do so supported by Microsoft Azure, Edge, and AI, thanks to a contract awarded just this December.

How Europe responds

This will not be Microsoft’s fault, nor the fault of the plethora of other cloud and IT providers whose systems will be dragged into a conflict. While military contracts are ethically murky at any time, it would be unfair to expect Microsoft to predict that its tools could be used to kill Danish troops.

But, however ultimately unwilling and regretful, the company will be seen as complicit in the invasion - be it a bloody one or a rapid takeover.

Microsoft’s promises to use legal avenues to protect data will mean little to a continent facing the brunt of a force unwilling to follow international laws, norms, or common sense.

The Danish Ministry of Defense is likely already desperately trying to solve the problem that many of its own IT services are also hosted on Microsoft Azure.

Command and control systems are still operated by a Danish firm, Systematic - although it's not clear when the military's instance of it is hosted, as the company partners with most cloud providers, including Microsoft, Google, and Amazon.

Where they can, European militaries and governments will do their best to de-Americanize their IT infrastructure. Similar to efforts to remove Chinese firms from telco networks, expect such projects to be painful, slow, costly, and ultimately incomplete.

New contracts will be paused, or canceled altogether.

Facing growing calls for digital sovereignty from the primary opposition party, last June, the Danish Ministry of Digitization announced that it would stop using Microsoft Windows and Office 365, in favor of Linux and LibreOffice.

No matter what individual firms pledge, local communities across Europe and the wider world will increasingly ask, 'do we really want this American company building here?' Pushback will expand from just worries about power and water to that of sovereignty and independence.

The slow-moving EU will increase spending on diversifying its supply chain, software ecosystem, cloud, and data center infrastructure away from the US.

In a moment of desperation, it may be forced to open its arms to China. Just as Canada, tariffed and threatened by its neighbor, this year signed an expansive deal to import Chinese cars, expect European concessions to China that will stretch beyond cars to compute.

While the most likely outcome of a Greenland invasion is a slow-moving disaster, where letters of condemnation are followed by trade wars and an economic decoupling, nothing is off the table during this moment.

Conflicts can spiral rapidly, inexoribly sucking in other nations and leading all down pathways they regret. Depending on how bad things get, Europe may look to wield its own control over the semiconductor industry - just as Trump has used tariffs and controls to limit the export of GPUs to China and elsewhere.

The pre-eminent lithography firm ASML is based in the Netherlands. Lithography optics pioneer Carl Zeiss operates out of Germany. The designer of the world’s most used chip architecture, Arm, is headquartered in the UK. Thousands of other firms operate across the space.

Each company needs to be viewed as individual tools in a protracted conflict, some better designed for enacting damage via controls or full cessation of trade. Others will be too complex and have too many US interests to fully untangle. But all may be relied on in an increasingly dark moment.

The impact beyond the West

The combined calamity of a diminished America and a global community unlikely to share its vision for the world is also a terrifying prospect for an independent Taiwan.

An America seemingly bent on a monomaniacal hemisphere-based strategy and a European continent facing economic and territorial war on two fronts are unlikely to rally together to aid a small island nation a world away, just as the non-US economy pivots to trading with an ever-growing China.

Again, it is hard to predict the impact of the fall of Taiwan, and much depends on how devastating such a takeover would be.

The US military has suggested destroying the semiconductor fabs operated by TSMC and others rather than letting them fall into China's hands, but it is not clear if that would actually be an effective strategy.

China has already been mostly deprived of Taiwan's advanced semiconductor exports due to sanctions, forcing it to build a parallel infrastructure. The destruction of TSMC's crown jewels does not change that equation; it will still rely on its inferior - but operational - semiconductor supply chains.

The rest of the world, meanwhile, will lose its primary chip supplier. Efforts to reshore chips are woefully behind both in Europe and the US, and much-hyped fabs are only a part of a much wider global supply chain that requires workers from Taiwan and packaging across Asia.

China could weather a global semiconductor crisis. Few others could - and it is unclear where Japan and South Korea's loyalties will lie in a world where China controls the South China Sea, and all they get from America are arbitrary tariffs devoid of sense.

Such a scenario would be true economic devastation; the output of Intel and GlobalFoundries' fabs would be unable to surge to meet the moment.

Of course, Taiwan could be taken without as much destruction. If so, after a period of uncertainty and local resistance, shipments would resume. The West, ruptured and reduced, would have little recourse but to accept the new reality - and any strings that come attached.

No guarantees

For now, all of this remains a fiction.

Sanity may prevail, and a Greenland invasion may yet be averted. Taiwan may continue to exist in strategic ambiguity, and the West’s semiconductor sector may improve its resilience. Or, each of these disasters may occur, but the resulting damage could prove less extreme.

However, even if threats of conquest amount to bluster and tensions subside, it would be naive to assume that the world will forget that we even got this close. Those in the US have gotten used to much of the fury emanating from Washington and may not put too much weight into the bellicose threats. For those in Greenland, Denmark, and Europe, they are viewed far more seriously.

Many of the efforts to decouple will begin irrespective of actual invasion. Life for US businesses is set to get harder abroad as distrust becomes standard.

In an interview with Berlingske, Microsoft's head of Denmark last year bemoaned the worsening situation. "There are a lot of people who come and give me a hug," Mette Kaagaard said. "It has gotten harder."