Mike Rugnetta: Friends, hello, and welcome to Never Post, a
podcast for and about the Internet. I'm your host, Mike
Grigneta. This intro was written on Tuesday, 04/28/2026 at
09:01PM eastern, and we have an independent show for you this
week. In this episode, I chat with Alexander Smolianitsky, the
head of open source product and delivery at Germany's Federal
Center for Digital Sovereignty, aka Zendis, an organization
focused on divesting the German state from technology products
they cannot control, which means many American technology
products. Zandise and its aims are part of a larger movement
we've mentioned on the show before that's called digital
sovereignty.
But first, we're gonna take a quick break. You're gonna listen
to some ads unless you're on the member feed. And when we return,
we're gonna talk about a few of the things that have happened
since the last time you heard from us. Look at all these movie
stars. They're so beautiful and clean.
When the housemaids scrubbed the floors, they get the spaces in
between seven stories this week. Brazil has banned almost 30
prediction market platforms from operating within the country.
This includes such standouts as Kalshi, Polymarket, and
Robinhood's prediction market feature. The ban goes into
effect May 1 and fully prohibits the use of such markets tied to
quote, non economic events such as elections, sports, and
cultural outcomes according to crypto news website
Cryptopolitan. The Lula da Silva administration has characterized
the move as one aligned with an overall goal of reducing
indebtedness in the country, saying unregulated prediction
markets are indistinguishable from gambling and present too
great a risk to financial stability.
Dario Durrigan, the executive secretary of Brazil's finance
ministry, has said the move puts an end to the regulatory, quote,
anarchy of 2018 to 2022, roughly the period during which hospital
lover Jair Bolsonaro served as president. Meanwhile, Gannon Ken
Van Dyke, a US special forces soldier involved in the capture
of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro was charged with using
classified information to win $400,000 from polymarket bets
related to the capture of Venezuelan president Nicolas
Maduro. In doing so, Van Dyke has breached a number of non
disclosure agreements, prosecutors say. For their part,
the prediction market service that has been struggling with
rampant insider trading issues over the last year, especially
as it relates to the operations of the American government
released a statement saying, insider trading has no place on
polymarket. Okay.
Rednote, the Chinese social platform is looking to break
into The US. The service saw a surge in international
popularity during the so called TikTok ban of 2025 and has
started making moves to more earnestly expand into The
States, hiring domestic staff and staging events at colleges
throughout the country. RedNote has 300,000,000 monthly users in
China, and third quarter projections put its 2025 profits
at around $3,000,000,000. Analysts speaking to rest of
world say the platform will have trouble breaking into the
crowded calcified US market, and that a meaningful entree will
cost the company hundreds of millions, if not billions in
advertising. Maybe they should consider starting a prediction
market.
Okay. Apple violated the first amendment rights of Mark Hodges
when it illegally removed his ice tracking app, Eyes Up, from
the app store following a pressure from former US attorney
general and haunted Barbie doll, Pam Bondi, as was ruled by a
federal judge in Illinois. Court documents reviewed by Indiana CW
affiliate, Wish TV, revealed that Apple cleared the app for
review in August only to then pull it down for violating
guidelines against defamatory, discriminatory, or mean spirited
content after Bondi's public wails, moans, and chain
rattlings. Court documents read that Apple quote, had knowledge
of the purpose of Eyes Up of actual videos available on it
and how it worked before government intervention, yet no
violations were found. At time of writing, Eyes Up remains
unavailable on the App Store.
Oh, yeah. Okay. Autocomplete changes how you write according
to new research presented at the twenty twenty six conference on
human factors in computing systems. Researchers describe
how while writing, if the computer places a phrase after
the one you are currently writing in an attempt to
complete your thought, your mental mode changes from
generating to responding. Instead of thinking, Morneiman
writes on Blue Sky, you react to what AI is suggesting using it
as a starting point, end quote.
The research characterizes this as a shift to reactive writing.
Though writers may adapt suggestions, quote, the
underlying framing and concepts from the AI survived into the
final text. Researcher Ad Vaid Bhatt writes on Blue Sky,
continuing, even in passages writers composed themselves.
Alex Smolianitski: Okay.
Mike Rugnetta: Archive.org hosts the steadily growing Adam Jacobs
collection. Jacobs began attending and taping live
concerts in the Chicago area in 1984, and in the following years
recorded over 10,000 shows. Volunteers are digitizing the
archive including various ephemera and uploading it for
your listening pleasure. And this collection is incredible.
Matmos in 2006, Faith No More in 1987, Nico Case in 2001,
Minutemen and New Order in 1985, Kim Deal in 2012.
It is wild. I cannot recommend highly enough giving it a look
and a listen. It is an unbelievable cultural document
and what the internet is for. Link in the show notes.
Alex Smolianitski: Okay.
Mike Rugnetta: And finally, Europeans want digital
sovereignty. ZDNet reports that at this year's SUSECON, 98% of
people surveyed want to move away from centralized,
proprietary, and US based technology solutions. SUSE is a
Luxembourg based provider of enterprise IT solutions based in
Linux, and at their annual trade show, they learned the vast
majority of, quote, IT leaders worldwide are looking to divest
from hyperscalers and hyperclouds, and that over half
have already started the process. This is at a time when
the American government has ordered diplomats to combat
various digital sovereignty initiatives around the world,
claiming that the shift will disrupt global data flows and
act counter to the goals of product development in
artificial intelligence, an industry currently propping up
the national economy. We've mentioned digital sovereignty a
few times on Never Post, but what does doing that work
actually look like?
What are governments and other enterprise IT consumers really
worried about if they engage in an ongoing relationship with
proprietary US technology? Given the American technological
hegemony, is it really even possible to fully divest? After
a short break, I discussed this and more with Alexander
Smolianitsky of Germany's Federal Center for Digital
Sovereignty. In the last couple years, for reasons which will be
obvious if you listen to this show, many groups and European
governments chief amongst them have began to despair of their
overreliance on US tech products. Not just Slack and
Zoom and Microsoft Office, but Google Cloud, AWS, and other
offerings which represent more deeply embedded digital and
network infrastructure.
This concern has only grown under the shadow of AI, the
fundamental premise of which contravenes many of the EU's
strict regulations around moderation, data sharing, and
deletion. As such, a growing coalition of politicians, policy
groups, organizations, and governments are seeking to
diminish or outright remove their reliance on foreign,
meaning American, technology. They seek what's called digital
sovereignty or sometimes technological sovereignty.
French president Emmanuel Macron famously said in 2020, if we
don't build our own champions in all areas, digital, artificial
intelligence, our choices will be dictated by others. These
efforts appear increasingly essential given an increasingly
erratic American administration and its trade policy.
Critics of the various efforts to divest from foreign tech
products may point, say, to China or Russia, both of whom
famously practice a strict form of technological sovereignty,
exercising authoritarian control over their citizens' access. Is
this what Europe wants? A restrictive draconian tech
policy? And furthermore, aren't American tech products simply
the best in the world? Why settle for anything less in the
operation of something as significant as a government?
And I mean, how does one even stop using AWS? Is that even
possible? To find out the answers to these questions, I
reached out to Germany's Federal Center for Digital Sovereignty,
who put me in touch with their head of open source product and
delivery. Joining me is Alex Smolianitski, a digital
strategist currently serving as the head of open
source product and delivery at the Federal Center for Digital
Sovereignty. Could you tell me a little bit about what Zendesk
is?
Alex Smolianitski: So we are some sort of a unicorn in
Germany, but also maybe globally. We are a private
company which is owned by the federal government of Germany,
and we are basically the ones who are responsible for
analyzing and figuring out solutions whenever it comes to
critical digital dependencies. There was a study a few years
ago in which the public administration, the federal one,
analyzed and and figured out that there is actually a lot of
that within the software ecosystem, which we are using on
a day to day basis. And, basically, legislation as well
figured out that we should have some sort of an answer on that
regard on a German, but also on a European level, and that's
what we are doing every day. We we try to provide solutions or
platforms for these solutions to get rid of critical
dependencies.
Mike Rugnetta: And so what do those look like? Like, what is a
critical technological dependency that needs to be
ameliorated or addressed?
Alex Smolianitski: One of them is, for example, or or the way
that you can analyze or or feel that you have a dependency is
whenever you wanna switch to a different product, but you feel
that you are super accustomed with whatever you have and you
have some sort of inner or an outer sign that you don't wanna
switch. And and this is where you feel that you have a
dependency. In in the German administration, it's, for
example, whenever it comes to workspaces or the operating
systems, we do use a lot of Microsoft products, for example,
or databases which are based on on other big providers. And
Sure. People understood that it's not really useful to rely
on just one provider for for these types of solutions.
Mike Rugnetta: And is that just because you get you get locked
in, and then you you can't change, and there's, you know or
the change is extremely difficult or expensive?
Alex Smolianitski: It's many things. One of them is that you
cannot really rely on having some sort of a dependent or or
independence in regards to the financial models. Everything
right now is moving into the cloud, and you have, like, some
sort of a cost explosion which everybody is feeling. That's one
part. The other one is obviously that whenever you are using
software, and that's where the the change from offline
bureaucracy to online bureaucracy comes into hand
maybe, is that you have to have the ability to change the
processes and maybe change software.
And it's really difficult if you have a big player to actually
ask them for some sort of a change request within their
software. And so what comes out is that very often, the process
is being adapted according to the tool and not the tool
according to the process.
Mike Rugnetta: Sure. Yeah. So I wanna just read something that
is stated on the Zendesk website, and then maybe go,
like, just like section by section a little bit to try to
understand some of these things. Mhmm. So on the Zendesk website
it says, our state is highly dependent on a few large tech
companies, resulting in a serious loss of control over
state IT, With a comprehensive sovereignty package consisting
of a platform, products, and consulting, the Center for
Digital Sovereignty and Public Administration supports federal,
state, and local authorities in freeing themselves from critical
dependencies and securing their ability to act.
So who are the large tech companies upon which the state
is highly dependent? You mentioned Microsoft. So is it
sort of like all of the usual suspects that you might think
are at a similar level as Microsoft?
Alex Smolianitski: Yeah. It's it's everybody who who runs IT
knows that there are a few providers which are, on
everybody's mind. It's obviously Microsoft. It's, whenever you
come to databases, it's, something like Oracle. And if
you go on a more infrastructural level, it's, VMware.
Mike Rugnetta: Mhmm.
Alex Smolianitski: And these are just a few. These are the the
really big ones who are super deep within the infrastructure
right now.
Mike Rugnetta: And so are you talking about trying to remove
dependency on, like, a few large pervasive providers, or is it
many companies, big and small?
Alex Smolianitski: It's less targeting a company and trying
to replace it, but more providing an alternative to the
processes which which are being used on a day to day basis.
Mike Rugnetta: Yeah. That actually gets to my next
question, which is what is state IT? Like, what sorts of products
and services are we talking about?
Alex Smolianitski: So everybody has some sort of a digital
workspace right now. Email, you do need to edit some texts,
phone calls, video calls, need to chat. But then there's
obviously also some sort of a software when it comes to, for
example, storing files, doing some sort of a service for for
citizens when it comes to forms, databases, and and, like,
workflow tools.
Mike Rugnetta: So, I mean, is this at every level of
government? Like, we talking about taxes and population and
demographics checking and transit, and it's just a totally
pervasive problem?
Alex Smolianitski: It is a totally pervasive problem. It
was actually a decision which was based, and there was a
unanimous vote on that regard by all the states and also the
federal government to start getting this sort of technical
independence on all levels of government. There are different
decision makers and also different types of IT
infrastructures and also people who are responsible for that.
Zendesk is something that is primarily focused on the federal
government, but we do work a lot with the different states
Because people understood that we should not focus on some sort
of a random tool which is being used by parts of the
administration, but we should focus on basically the heart of
of the everyday workspace, and that's the main application that
people are using.
Mike Rugnetta: It just feels like such a it feels like such a
massive undertaking.
Alex Smolianitski: It is super massive, and it's really
interesting because, obviously, this is also the the most
emotional part of an of a public servant or so if you you
basically touch what they are they've been using, I guess,
since school or or for some people of of the younger
generation or or since they joined the workforce. We all do
that. We do know where where a button is located. Sure. And we
do know what kinda I don't know, where there is a buggy situation
or something like that, and suddenly you just come strip
everything that they knew and replace it with a new piece of
software.
Mike Rugnetta: How much of the work that you're doing is, like,
software development versus, say, procurement versus, say,
you know, purchasing? Is it all of the above?
Alex Smolianitski: I would love to say that we are focusing on
one of them, but it's actually all of the above. We do need
development. We do need procurement. We do need,
basically, also some sort of convincing people to join the
the movement. And I think it's really important to understand
that we are not just some sort of a young fresh start up within
the government which which tries to rebuild out their existing
software components, but we are working with the market and with
different tool providers either in Germany or somewhere within
Europe who are building software for years or sometimes even
decades and are some sort of a market leader in their niche in
regards to what product they are building.
The Tendus part or the Tendus magic which we are integrating
into these products is, getting all these different partners to
actually work together and to provide some sort of a suite
which feels like it's one tool rather than you have a, like, a
list of eight or 10 different companies, who are providing you
tools. So you do log in through one window, and everything
within the suite, looks the similar. It's the same colors.
It's the same navigation. It's the same place where the data is
being stored.
Mike Rugnetta: I noticed in the suite of tools that is listed on
the website, and in, you know, some of the other things that
I've read that it's it's all open source. And is that because
you're able to, make these changes? Is that a sort of
philosophical standpoint that inspires that relationship?
Alex Smolianitski: I wouldn't call it philosophy. I would call
it, pragmatism. First of all, if you work with open source, you
are able to read all the lines which which are being produced.
So it's really interesting for us out of a security aspect
Mhmm. Because we we are able to harden the software.
We are able to find out if there is some sort of a security
breach, and and we can fix it much faster than just rely on
some report which we cannot verify. That's one thing. The
other one is that you can adapt. That's what you also said. And
we are able to customize basically according to our
needs.
Whenever we are investing into these products, we do have some
sort of a commitment that if we are building something, it's
actually sustainable because it can be reused either by other
users or by completely strangers who are also using these tools.
So it's actually, if the state is investing into this product,
it's not license fees, which which we are losing but not
owning anything, but but actually it's some sort of an
investment into a product to make it better.
Mike Rugnetta: And, like, you're through this, you're able to
ameliorate the threat of future dependency.
Alex Smolianitski: Yes. Even with open source software, you
are able to be in some sort of a dependency. And and that's
where, actually, the community and the the aspect that you have
to have some sort of a a vital open source market or an IT
market out there is super crucial because, we all know
that, companies can change their minds or stuff like that. And
with open source software, we do know that if we invest into
these tools and they are out there and we do have the source
code, either we or someone else, can pick it up if we lose a
partner along the way and continue working on that. It's
super cool to know that you are not just investing into a tool
for the usage, but actually for, like, some sort of a wider range
of benefits which you can can have by having that code
actually readable and installable or pluggable into
different environments.
Mike Rugnetta: Open source plagued by maybe a slightly
different problem of, like, you know, the individual person who
maintains some tool changing their mind or abandoning it, but
there's a much there's a safety net there in that, it's all
available. I'm curious, how hard has this been?
Alex Smolianitski: We are still laughing. I think convincing
that it's a reasonable solution is easy, but then it's just as a
writer like some sort of a writer's blockade whenever you
have an empty page and you need to start writing. I think the
same applies to change processes. So, actually, during
the launch keynote, we did receive the first few 100 and
then the next thousands of inquiries from from different
public bodies who are eager to try it out, and I think it's
really important. And the first step is actually to convince
them, and then them getting them on the track of moving.
You do not just switch a software, but you have to
explain, you have to convince people actually to start rolling
it out within their different public agencies, and that's
something that that is out there. And I think even the
feedback that we receive is, giving us enough energy to to
continue moving. And we do see that there is some sort of
energy which is out there in the public, sector, but there is
also the same sort of energy or or, the same topics which are
out there not only for the public administration, but also
obviously for the private sector. You just have different
names for the same thoughts or worries which they have. They
they don't say it's maybe digital sovereignty or so, but
they talk about espionage of their products or something like
that or or obviously all sorts of regulations which which are
out there, for example, on the financial sector, which keep
them somewhere within close proximity to the conversations
and the topics which we have.
Mike Rugnetta: Yeah. And like the idea of any bureaucracy,
really, looking at fundamentally the way some things are run, and
then saying, like, oh, we should change this. It feels like such
a remote possibility, but I guess the willingness speaks to
just the risks and the frustration with being locked
into a bunch of these tools Yeah. Or, you know, locked into
their feature sets.
Alex Smolianitski: Yeah. And it's super important also out of
the perspective of a state or of a government. You do need to
have a functioning state Sure. All the time. You cannot say
that there is some sort of an outage, and you cannot, you
know, provide social welfare or something like that.
Mhmm. So it's really interesting to change or or to have this
sort of mindset, but also technical change within a fully
functioning and working body.
Mike Rugnetta: Yeah. And to know that the risks if it doesn't
work are quite high.
Alex Smolianitski: Yes. Yes. That's something that I learned
during the time when I was CDO at in the city that I used to
live in. It was always I think it was actually like the the
social welfare department which explained to me that I do have
one shot, and if it's not working, you you are you are
going to be responsible for child support or so not being
able to be paid.
Mike Rugnetta: No pressure.
Alex Smolianitski: Or if there's the fire department, they need
to pick up the phone within, like, I don't know, like, three
seconds or so, and you cannot provide a tool which might be
ideologically better but but not working.
Mike Rugnetta: Mhmm. What does the next five years look like
for you?
Alex Smolianitski: Sometimes I do not know what the next week
is going to look like.
Mike Rugnetta: We can start at the next week or month if that's
easier.
Alex Smolianitski: I do not know what the next week is going to
look like. I think I think it's really interesting to see. I do
not know about the numbers within the US public
administration, but in Germany, we do have a big chunk of
workforce which is going to go into their retirement. And we
need to pick up the work that they are doing maybe in
different ways. And I think it's something that, obviously, in
regards to AI and what we are seeing right now on a day to day
basis where AI is changing the way that we are working, is
going to take also over certain typical processes of of
governments and most certainly of the workspace that we are
working in.
Mike Rugnetta: Mhmm.
Alex Smolianitski: That maybe is even not the five year plan, but
maybe really something between the week and the five years
because the speed is amazing. I feel like that. And I and I
really hope that we continue to grow and to scale. And we see
that also. We do have also this platform on which public
administration is able to develop.
And we see that since we took that platform over, there is a
larger amount of actually new projects which are being started
there and being deployed from there. And that makes me at
least some sort of hopeful that we are not the only crazy ones
out there, but actually many others are also going to
continue on this journey in regards to, open source tools.
Mike Rugnetta: Yeah. I'm curious what you know, when you think
about the challenges that you're about to face and, you know,
having had interactions with folks doing similar work in
France and maybe other parts of Europe, like, is this how many
of these problems and their solutions are distributed
across, say, like, the European Union or the world? Like, how do
you see this playing out in other places? Or is this problem
the same across the board, or is it different?
Alex Smolianitski: If you call digital dependency a problem,
then I guess it's something that is out there basically
throughout the entire world. I would say the question is how
you are, whether it's bothering you and how you are working
against that feeling, not against the dependency itself. I
am we see that, that that serenity is something that is,
not ending at the state's borders, but it's a common issue
that some countries face more than others. We did pick up
slack, obviously, within the European Union with with all the
neighboring countries right now because out of all the,
criticism which you can always hear about Germany and their
maybe, speed in regards to digitalizing, like, everyday
life. Actually, the idea to found, some sort of a center for
digital sovereignty is something very progressive, And that's
something that many countries are looking into or are
fantasizing of having something like that.
Usually, whenever we have colleagues also in other
countries, it's some sort of maybe, like, a team within a
department, which is working on that. And here, we we have an
entire institution for that. So that's really cool. We started
first with France, and then we also had the colleagues from
Netherlands joining us. And then throughout, I think, or or over
the course of six months, each public administration had to
face reelection, some of them multiple times.
Mike Rugnetta: Oh,
Alex Smolianitski: wow. And and we had to keep it all going, and
it was really interesting because we always thought that
we do need to have some sort of an international partner to have
some sort of continuity and stability, But we all kept
going, we all, survived and got sometimes even stronger, out of,
out of these elections, with with more political backing, I
guess, because this is not only just some sort of a
hallucination, but it's actually some sort of a dependency which
is being taken very seriously.
Mike Rugnetta: Yeah. It's incredible. It really speaks to,
I think, the commitment that Yep. Everybody feels to the
process. Do you foresee Zentis being an sort of increasing hub
for this kind of work in Europe?
Alex Smolianitski: First of all, obviously, our main client is
the German
Mike Rugnetta: Germany. Yeah.
Alex Smolianitski: German administration, but we do work
with other countries, together. And actually, one of the
outcomes of this cooperation, which we started with France and
Netherlands and then many other countries within Europe, was
some sort of a consortium, which is also backed by the European
Union in which there is a public body which cares about digital
commons and is able to connect, these sorts of initiatives
between, or among different European states, but also with
the private sector.
Mike Rugnetta: I'm curious what what you have to say to folks
who might hear about this work and hear about, you know,
digital sovereignty generally, and say that this is like, this
is the opposite of what we should be doing. You know,
people should be we should be sharing more technology. We
should be pushing the bigger companies to be more open, and
more transparent as opposed to just switching to different
tools. And like, you know, maybe the state is, the best to be
able to push those companies to do that, and that what you're
doing by going open source and going, you know, like trying to
move things closer to closer to home or within the border, that
this is like, you know, isolationist or protectionist,
or you're just sort of like retreating from a larger
problem, and just focusing on your own thing. Okay.
Alex Smolianitski: I think it's super important to understand
that digital sovereignty doesn't mean that you are building a
wall, but actually are providing maybe some sort of a I always
try to explain that it's some sort of a market stand or so
where you have different products which are out there.
And by that, you do not try to get isolated from the world, but
actually just try to have some sort of stable and sovereign
standing among partners. At the same time, everybody is still
super sovereign and has their own opinion and actually the
abilities to change the products. So even though that
the product might be used also in a different country, it could
look completely different, and that's, I think, the benefits
which are out there.
Mike Rugnetta: Alex, this has been fascinating. I really
appreciate you taking the time to chat with us. Thanks for
coming on.
Alex Smolianitski: Thank you, Mike, and thanks to the team for
having me.
Mike Rugnetta: If our listeners want to learn more about Zendesk
or Digital Sovereignty or any of these things, where are the
places that you would send them online?
Alex Smolianitski: Go to our websites. They are all also
available in English. So Zendesk DE and OpenDesk EU, actually.
Check out our websites.
Mike Rugnetta: Great. Perfect. I'll put those links in the show
notes too. Thanks. Thanks again to Alex and to Lutz Nehemiah at
Zendis.
You can find out more about the organization and the work they
do in the show notes. That is the show we have for you this
week. We're gonna be back here in the main feed on or around
Thursday, May 7. As of this week, at the April 2026, we are
currently offering a deal, a promo as they call it. We have
teamed up with three of our favorite indie outlets, Rascal,
Rogue, and Aftermath to offer you, our listeners, a discount
subscription bundle.
That's right. You can subscribe to all four outlets at once for
half price for thirty days. If you're already a member of one
or more, it's even cheaper. You can find a link in the show
notes to the worker owned collective subscription bundle
and get thirty day discount membership. And when that's
over, you can renew whatever you like.
There's no commitment to stay subscribed to all four outlets.
This is just the first of a bunch of collaborative efforts
that we're getting underway with these folks and others, and I'm
just I'm really excited about it. We've been working on a lot
of stuff, kinda like behind the scenes trying to figure out, you
know, as a collective of websites, what can we even
actually do together? I And feel like this is a really fun,
exciting first step. So get in on this while it's still
available and see what all of these sites have to offer their
members.
Never Post's producers are Audrey Evans, Georgia Hampton,
and the mysterious doctor first name last name. Our senior
producer is Hans Buto, our executive producer is Jason
Oberholzer, and the show's host, that's me, is Mike Rignetta. The
body falls from the eastern sky into history and breaks apart.
Lost on earth headless teeth biting toes and doesn't stop
falling, falls through. In hell, a pile of limbs waiting to be
fed.
Here, the furnace set that points the passage through tents
the only place it ever meant and makes a descant of the eyes
turning on the boundary of speech. A round thing on the
poverty of wish that cannot love to die and sets in fear behind
the new factory. Excerpt of Excavations by Peter Reilly.
Never Post is a production of Charts and Leisure and is
distributed by Radiotopia.