Column Ot van Daalen: ‘Who owns today’s printing presses?’

Every year on February 5, the Democracy and Media Foundation (SDM) commemorates the people who worked for *Het Parool* and were executed, imprisoned, or sent to concentration camps by the Germans. This year, during the commemoration, SDM presented a book about *Het Parool* during World War II. Not only was the book itself special, but so was its first page. It was printed using an original printing press from the same print shop where the underground edition of *Het Parool* was also printed.

It got me thinking. Those printing presses were located in the Netherlands and operated by Dutch people. That meant the Germans couldn’t remotely monitor what those presses were producing. That’s how the staff at *Het Parool* were able to distribute their resistance newspaper undetected. Of course, things did go terribly wrong from time to time, and that is why we commemorate February 5. But *Het Parool* continued to exist and, by the end of the war, had grown to a circulation of 100,000 copies.

How different that is from today’s printing presses. Our modern “printing presses” are located in what we call the “cloud”: large data centers full of computers situated somewhere in a field or on an industrial site. These computers are primarily managed by American tech giants such as Microsoft, Amazon, and Google. And the dissemination of information occurs via internet connections over which we have no control: network cables are managed by commercial entities, and data flows can be monitored by governments.

For years, that didn’t seem to be a problem. We thought it didn’t matter much that *De Volkskrant*, *De Telegraaf*, or even our government websites, hospital systems, and police databases ran on computers controlled by American companies. In recent years, we have therefore outsourced our digital infrastructure—the beating heart of our society—on a massive scale to foreign companies. We trusted that everything would just keep working as long as we paid the bill.

But now that geopolitical dynamics are shifting, it’s important to consider the implications for our digital autonomy—not just for the media, but for our entire society. We have already seen that the owner of a major technology company, Jeff Bezos, does not shy away from exerting influence over editorial decisions at The Washington Post. This kind of interference undermines the independence of journalism.

What happens if tech company owners use their influence to put pressure on the Dutch media? Or worse still: what if foreign governments gain access to our critical infrastructure through these tech companies? This includes not only government agencies, hospitals, energy companies, and the police, but also journalism—a critical infrastructure for our democracy. It is naïve to think that journalistic interests will always prevail over geopolitical pressure.

We need to stay one step ahead of these developments. Dutch organizations—not just the media, but all vital sectors—should rely as much as possible on Dutch or European infrastructure, preferably managed by us. That way, we can limit external pressure as much as possible and ensure our freedom to chart our own course. The only problem is that it’s currently quite difficult to find that kind of infrastructure. There are simply few cloud services that are European-owned and offer a range of services comparable to that of American tech giants.

One of the reasons those European cloud services don’t exist is a lack of European investment. That’s why my advice to all organizations—not just media companies—is this: the next time your server contract expires, check to see if there’s a Dutch or European option. And choose that option, even if it’s slightly more expensive or less user-friendly. Digital sovereignty comes at a price, but the price of dependence could ultimately be much higher.

If there’s one lesson we can learn from the history of *Het Parool*, it’s that independence starts with owning your own printing press.