It sure looks like the Trump administration is weaponizing sanctions to silence its critics

Imagine that you wake up one day and your Amazon account is shut down, your credit card won't work, and your Microsoft-hosted email doesn't load.

That's what happened to Kimberly Prost, a Canadian judge who serves on the International Criminal Court, the global judicial body that investigates and prosecutes war crimes, crimes against humanity, and acts of genocide. Last year, Prost found her online life shut down after the Trump administration placed her on the U.S. government's sanctions list, citing Prost's role years ago in investigating alleged abuses by U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

Sanctions are a powerful weapon in the U.S. government's arsenal of financial deterrents, aimed at cutting off criminal individuals and companies from the broader American economic system. With a single designation, U.S. citizens and businesses are forbidden from transacting with that sanctioned entity. The end goal is to starve them of American revenue that would otherwise be used for bad things like crime, ransomware, terrorism, and drugs — or, in the case of the ICC, investigating war crimes.

The Trump administration has now sanctioned more than dozen members of the ICC over the past year after the court brought charges against Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu for his role in suspected war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. Trump is friendly with Netanyahu, both of whom have atrocious records on human rights. The ICC in 2023 also brought charges against Russian president Vladimir Putin, with whom Trump also seems to have a good relationship.

Among those targeted with U.S. sanctions, Prost has been one of the most vocal and outspoken about her experience. As a result, Prost and the other judges, along with several ICC prosecutors, have been physically, digitally, and financially cut off from the United States. They are unable to pay for services, access their messages, or use anything that relies on the U.S., and would face likely immediate denial of entry to the country if they ever set foot at the U.S. border.

Given that much of the global technology industry and most payments flow through the United States, the effects of sanctions are designed to be deliberately devastating. The consequence of being cut off from the U.S. is that you're also cut off from much of the rest of the world.

Now, the Trump administration's sanctions are starting to spread further afield following the recent targeting of an Italian internet provider, which knocked it offline and forced it to shut down.

Autistici/Inventati was until recently an Italian-based web and email host, which was popular among activists, social movements, and broadly left-leaning folks from around the world. Security researcher and journalist Micah Lee likened the service akin to Riseup, a web provider in the United States that offers tech and infrastructure to activists seeking democratic alternatives to Big Tech.

In September, U.S. sanctions designated Autistici/Inventati a "terrorist organization" for supporting the anti-fascist movement known as "antifa," which the Trump administration had weeks earlier broadly deemed a "terrorist threat." Over a few days, Autistici/Inventati had its donations frozen and had its .org domain name withdrawn. The web provider's bank in Italy was forced to freeze the provider's account, saying that refusing would have put the bank's own survival at risk, while simultaneously condemning the decision to impose sanctions "for political reasons" tantamount to blackmail.

Autistici/Inventati announced its shut down on September 6, a quarter of a century after the provider first went online, permanently taking down thousands of websites, blog posts, and communities of people that have been around in some cases for years. There was no police raid, any arrests made, or judicial order; instead, a unilateral bureaucratic decision effectively killed a company almost overnight. U.S. authorities have reportedly sought access to the provider's servers hosted in the Netherlands, putting Dutch authorities in a tough spot over whether handing over the data harms the trust in the country's ability to securely host data without it being subject to political interference.

The State Department's rationale in its justification to sanction was to call Autistici/Inventati as a "cadre of radical hackers and tech developers provide a full spectrum of services — including encrypted chats and email, web hosting, secure video conferencing and streaming, anonymity shields, and a suite of other technological tools — to Marxist, anarchist, and other left-wing extremist groups in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere." A generous reading of State's rationale could also apply to other major web hosts, email providers, and makers of security tools, like VPNs and messaging apps.

By now it's becoming clearer that the Trump administration is weaponizing the government's long-standing sanctions capabilities to target its critics and political opponents. The government can't easily do this in the U.S. without it being a huge violation of the First Amendment, but the government can still issue sanctions effectively banning anyone overseas from operating on its turf. With an increasingly unpredictable Trump administration, it's difficult to guess who will be targeted next or for what reason.

The U.S. hit the ICC with a fresh round of sanctions earlier this month, prompting a strongly worded letter from Canada, Japan, and European leaders, expressing how they "disagree" with U.S. sanctions and reaffirmed their "continued and unwavering support" for the ICC.

Meanwhile, fears of the Trump administration imposing arbitrary sanctions against others have actively prompted some countries, including in Europe, to diversify their infrastructure to ensure that their most sensitive information is out of U.S. reach, fearing Trump's ire. The Dutch government is going all-in on alternatives to Microsoft's Windows and Office, as part of its efforts to reduce its reliance on U.S. technology in an age where it could get cut off at any moment. France has similarly dropped some U.S. tech, like Zoom, in favor of domestic-made alternatives; while several regions in Germany have moved to adopt open source alternatives to Microsoft's proprietary software.

With growing uncertainty and unease towards the U.S. tech industry following their donations and capitulations to Trump, some are looking towards the growing alternative tech ecosystem outside of the U.S. as a way to free themselves from the clutches of American tech giants.

To name a few, Paris Marx has a great guide on how to disconnect from U.S. technology; William Oliveira looks at some practical alternatives to U.S. tech that are hosted in Europe; and, there are a variety of other services that include file sharing and money transfer to consider, while European Alternatives and EuroAlternative have whole databases of services available from email to navigation and domain registrars. I also appreciate Cory Dransfeldt's blog for also focusing on the desktop stack of technology, such as browsers, messaging, and social media; while Cate Lawrence picks out some developer platforms and AI models hosted in Europe. Also, self-hosting is a lot of fun and definitely a route to consider, but hosting your own photo library and home movie catalog is certainly easier than running your own email server.

One thing's clear: There's never been a better time (or a better reason) to rely less on American tech.

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