If you want to see how far American sanctions can reach, ask Kimberly Prost's Alexa. In an interview with NPR's *Morning Edition* aired October 1, the Canadian judge at the International Criminal Court described living under U.S. sanctions for more than a year. The effects hit almost immediately: credit cards she held in the Netherlands and Canada were canceled outright. Then came the services of American companies — Amazon, Google, potentially Apple. "Completely randomly, though, you don't know when something's going to happen," she told host Steve Inskeep. One day she came home and her smart speaker had gone dumb: "I went home and Alexa wouldn't talk to me." She has managed to keep some bank accounts, but her banking is severely limited and even small transfers can be blocked.
The Trump administration has publicly threatened a "whole of government" campaign to "systematically dismantle" the ICC over its investigations of Americans or Israelis, and over the summer it threatened tougher sanctions still. The government is now deciding whether to follow through. Washington's position is that the United States helped create the court but never joined it, and that it violates American sovereignty and targets Israel. Prost pointed to the other half of the story — "this massive overcompliance by companies." The sanctions are American, but any business with U.S. ties tends to comply anyway.
The trigger dates to 2020, when Prost authorized an investigation into the war in Afghanistan covering alleged crimes by all sides — ISIS, the Taliban, and a small component related to the United States. Prosecutors never investigated Americans, but they could have. Last year, the U.S. cut her off from the global financial system. She is not alone. French judge Nicolas Guillou was sanctioned on August 20, 2025, for authorizing the arrest warrants against Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant. Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan was hit earlier still — the first court official sanctioned by Trump, after the ICC issued war-crimes arrest warrants in November 2024 for Netanyahu and then-defense minister Gallant. Secretary of State Marco Rubio put it bluntly at the time: "The United States will not tolerate politicised attacks by the ICC on our allies… Target Israel and we will target you."
The sharpest cut may be her health insurance. AXA, the French company that insures the court, has refused to pay her claims — even though it is not legally required to follow U.S. sanctions. "It's a business decision," Prost said. Her phone still works, "so far," but some email, cloud and other technology services are limited. Guillou's account, reported by Euronews, shows the pattern is systemic: with Visa and Mastercard dominating the market, credit cards are effectively dead; most digital services are off-limits; even an online order can be blocked if an American intermediary such as UPS is involved. "We are going 30 years back in time," he said. Some of his colleagues have had transfers refused outright by the bank on the other side of the transaction — collateral damage from overcompliance.
The key question, as NPR's companion reporting notes, is whether Washington follows through on this summer's threat of escalated sanctions. Prost's daily life already previews what an escalated version looks like. For the court, the real test is not one judge's Alexa but whether sanctions expand from individuals to the institution — whether "systematically dismantle" stays a threat or becomes a plan. Prost is still working in The Hague. She just has to guess, before using any service, whether it will suddenly stop talking to her.