Sovereign Cloud

You need to create a delay between a foreign government ordering your cloud provider to cut you off and the actual cutoff. The longer you can make this period, the better. The new AWS European Sovereign Cloud (ESC) is Amazon’s way of offering this. That is a cloud solution running on hardware in Europe, staffed by Europeans, organized under a European daughter company.

That does not protect you against Amazon being compelled by the U.S. government to hand over your data, but all important data should be protected with keys you hold, outside your cloud provider, anyway. But it does make it likely that AWS Europe would contest an order to shut down the service, and that AWS Europe employees would not cut you off at the whim of a foreign dictator.

Because the probability of this happening is still “Rare” (edging towards “Unlikely”), you do not need to act on this risk now. But it is prudent to ensure you have time to react if it should happen.