> The results would be indistinguishable from a massive cyber attack and would take decades to recover from.
It would be painful, yes, but it wouldn't "take decades to recover from", not even years. These services, technically, aren't so difficult to recreate, if you have a big enough market.
Very naive. The services are potentially replaceable, the data is not.
That's not even considering the political backlash. How do you explain to your population that their digital lives have been permanently deleted because of a trans-national legal spat they don't care about?
It would be painful, yes, but it wouldn't "take decades to recover from", not even years. These services, technically, aren't so difficult to recreate, if you have a big enough market.