It's not only "a machine in the EU" . It's a company in the EU totally separated from the main company in the US to be out of the reach of the US government and legal system. Maybe the EU company could license software and knowledge from the US one, to keep sending a steady flow of cash there. But it's going to have its own goals and it will want to go its way soon. A hard problem IMHO.

When I hear arguments like this I always think about what it would be if we were to replace 'user data' with 'financial data'.

"It would be so easy if companies could just pay their taxes in one country. Think of how much they could scale their finance department."

The same applies for start ups : "book keeping is such a hassle for start ups, why impose that on them? All these financial regulations are really anti business".

"I can imagine it would add at least 20% to their operating costs."

Why is everybody working on the assumption that all this data has to sit in the US?

Keep it in a country with the strict-est possible privacy laws, say Switzerland, and noone would complain.

Hah, it's a myth that Switzerland is so privacy oriented. They have laws saying that the Swiss intelligence services can access all data, so it wouldn't help.

And Switzerland is not part of the EU.

Both Swiss and German people seem completely deluded about the activities of their own governments and intelligence agencies.

You gonna have to be a bit more specific than that.

When I think "Swiss", "Germany" and "government intelligence agencies" then the things that come to my mind are Crypto AG [0], how the BND started out as a CIA OP [1] and how the very same BND seems to be more interested in pleasing American interests than protecting Germans [2].

Which is btw the same BND who cooperates with the NSA [3] to help them tap directly into one of the world's largest IXP De-CIX, completely legal in Germany [4].

The US made sure of that by pressuring the West German government into watering down the G-10 law [5] during the cold war.

So whatever "delusions" you are referring there to, you have to be a bit more concrete about them.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/feb/11/crypto-ag-ci...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gehlen_Organization

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON#Examples_of_industrial...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Eikonal

[4] https://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzpolitik/de-cix-betreiber...

[5] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/document/activities/cont/2014...

Why tho? Do you think German citizens have more privacy in Germany than in the US, where the US legislature clearly states that non US citizens have zero privacy rights whatsoever?

I don't think it's delusion, I think it is literally correct.

Right now, the data sits where it “loses” the least amount of money (I.e. where it is most efficiently spaced). If we start arbitrarily forcing companies to move their data elsewhere, then they’ll incur serious costs without any real benefit.

I’d almost rather just give a French company control over some section of the US warehouse if I’m Amazon.

Plenty of US organisations couldn't use a cloud service that loudly proclaimed to store the data outside the USA.

"I think a lot of the big tech companies are very reluctant to split their operations"

Yes but they are even more reluctant to lose all EU revenue.