In this episode, Andreas introduces his long-time friend Thorsten Höger, with whom he shares a history going back to school and later working together on an AWS-powered online banking platform. Thorsten has spent over 10 years helping SMB customers in regulated industries build compliant AWS infrastructures, specializing in networking, security, Serverless, and CDK. He talks about his current consulting work and his upcoming product Deploymon. A major topic is the AWS European Sovereign Cloud (EUSC), where Andreas shares a field report and the hosts debate whether EUSC is genuine sovereignty or just "sovereign washing" given concerns around the US Cloud Act. They also discuss how small businesses can benefit from AI tools. Andreas uses AI to review blog posts, find bugs, and update dependencies, while Thorsten relies on it for customer offers, software development, planning, and research.