I hear you, but that entire thread is really interesting reading.
I am very heavily product-pilled, and I feel the crazy vibe. Two days ago my co-founder mentioned a more focused product idea, and a much more clear distribution pipeline. I created the frontend MVP using our old backend in a few hours.
I then tried to sleep. I woke up after 2 to 3hrs mid-nightmare: I was chasing some active electronic device with a long cable tail across the floor. When I tried to grab the cable/tail, it started to bleed.
DID NOT GO BACK TO SLEEP.
Instead, discovered and refactored to Kontsa UI, then took a 3 hour nap, then woke up for the daily to learn that based off all that, we appear to have secured runway for the next year.
Dreams aside, life is great, but this is a crazy time. I have never seen the world move more quickly, and I ain't young.
It's the same reason you don't want Chinese equipment in your telecommunications infrastructure. You can't trust what the Chinese government will do to it or with it.
this is not a new issue: airbus has been the victim of corporate espionage supposedly by boeing with aid by the nsa in a well documented case in november 2011, and they are not the only victim of US government agency supported corporate espionage: investigations into the selector lists that ran in the cabinet noir at DE-CIX have shown that a large part of them were targeting european corporations. and that predates the cloud act of 2018, which made american infrastructure significantly less trustworthy.
The French DGSE was also exposed targeting dozens of american tech aerospace companies in the 90s (and probably still are). That type of state-assisted industrial espionage is pretty common, even between "friendly" nations.
I think what's different now is the US announcing its intent to meddle into internal EU politics and supporting political opposition.
Honest q, 3rd party crashing in: does it make a difference? My assumption is not for parsing for understanding and grammatically, its fine, if significantly less common than the “for” construct.
> It's the same reason you don't want Chinese equipment in your telecommunications infrastructure. You can't trust what the Chinese government will do to it or with it.
Doesn't Europe actually have a lot of Chinese equipment in their telecom infrastructure? Is this an effort just to try not to make that mistake again?
They're both very expensive and the carriers primarily care about cost and features. And huawei will take a dozen devs, give them a one way ticket and put them in a hotel room near a customer to grind our whatever feature needed to seal the deal.
I remember years ago talking to some EU telecom VP who was on the engineering side that said "id buy from North Korea if the price was right".
We live in new times anyways - most of the carriers have outsourced a lot of the tech stuff to the vendors anyways.
Yes. I worked for a Cambodian telco, when there was a range of Alcatel, Nokia, etc switching equipment across 10 carriers. Huawei swept the lot within 2 years, and Alcatel staff told me they were losing everywhere - they couldn't match the price or technology. This was before the US decided to sanction Huawei.
I moved to UK in late 2013 and to be fair, from my observation the cellular coverage in the country has always been more than just a bit shitty.
Incidentally, the voice call quality in the UK is also really crappy. Operators compress/downsample the audio stream to the very edge of recognisability, because investing in sufficient infrastructure to support higher bandwidths is expensive.
Europe will just end up doing whatever is cheapest. It's the same story as always. They'll say some stuff publicly but they'll quietly come back to American tech once they see the price tag difference. They're very cost sensitive and their investors are extremely risk-averse.
Would (gently) note that we’re commenting on an article re: American tech risk. :)
Not sure it’s really sunk in for my fellow Americans what’s going on, we’re not exactly used to consequences and it’s still considered, a best, impolite to treat a holistic evaluation of policies as something beyond debate.
But look at solar adoption across Europe since 2022. It’s going gang busters and now with sodium batteries coming online next year, cheap home energy storage is about to boom as well.
Europe doesn’t want to buy Russian gas, but there is also the very real political reality of what happens if your citizens freeze to death. I will be very surprised if any EU state is reliant on Russian gas by 2035.
When people start talking about battery technology that has not even reached scale as any kind of political solution, you know people have lost the plot.
Taking one look at just the cost required for the network, even outside of the cost of any generation at all, you realize this is an insane and slapping a few solar panels down is far from a solution.
And also lets not ignore that places that have done a lot of the 'lets just build renewable and hope for the best' have very high energy prices. And maybe possible maybe sodium batteries might show up will not solve these issues.
I calculated the costs of covering the needs of Germany for a 2 days low production event (as it happened between 6-9 december) and you would need about a trillion dollar.
That's for something that cannot even garantee you more than 48h of runtime for half the country's needs.
You would need at least 4 times that to be safe.
Even if batteries price are divided by 2 (very unlikely, there are large fixed costs) you would need trillions of dollar for a single country.
That's just not happening any time soon and even in 30 years time, I doubt it will be that prevalent of a solution.
I did a conservative calculation if you started around 2000 in Germany and went full nuclear like France did. Not using any fancy new nuclear or anything. Literally just mass production of standard nuclear plants. Plus all the updates of the grid, including domestic fuel enrichment and 'waste' storage. Plus all the investment necessary to great a fully modern grid to electrify the economy.
We are talking in the order of 500 billion Euro and this is very conservative assumption on nuclear construction cost. Much worse cost then what France actually achieved in their build-out. Also much of that is actually the grid, grids are really expensive it turns out. But building nuclear in central location next to places where there used to be coal plants, makes grid cost much cheaper because most of the grid is already there perfectly positioned to feed the population clusters. And that accounts for actually increasing overall production of energy, not decreasing as Germany is actually doing.
On the other-hand for the renewable path that Germany is going since 2000, just the grid alone is going to cost more then 500 billion euro, some estimation suggest that 2000-2045 total gird investment requirement is above significantly above that. Sadly today where everything is in this different private organization, this information is all over the place and 'semi'-private organization doing different parts of the infrastructure.
In total, between all the renewables, the grid and the storage, we are talking 1.5 trillion euro and that still includes gas peakers. If you want to go beyond and really go all in, it would be even more then that, as you suggest.
Turns out, if you plan includes trying to gather solar energy in Greece and Spain (or even Egypt), transporting it to Germany and then storing it into batteries there, well yeah, that's going to be expensive. And the solar panels you import from China aren't the expensive part.
France did the exact right think in the 70/80s build reliable long term energy generation, sadly since the 90s the newer generation of French politicians done literally anything they can to handle the situation as a badly and as incompetently as possible but that's a different story.
US says that Europe is their number one enemy. Using American tech is the most risky thing you can do since Trump declared that they are now a hostile enemy with intents of overthrowing European democracies.
Without getting hung up on the exact phrase “number 1”. It’s very literally one of the biggest things in official US national security strategy right now and some leaks of the non-public version talk about explicit plans to try and destroy the EU. So semantics aside, the overall point stands on solid ground.
That whole thing is just incoherent. There's lots about forming a trading alliance against China, and then loads about destroying the EU. You can't have both of those at the same time.
How was it a mistake? Europe got a lot of good telecom infrastructure for a low price. There's no evidence it was compromised.
It was actually the US that was pressuring Europe to get rid of Chinese telecom equipment, as part of the first Trump administration's broader strategy against China.
The US leadership and billionaires are literally trying to destroy my country by supporting far right parties here. I never want to have anything to do with the US again at least until they sort their own crap out.
Yeah I don't want to deal with a country that's trying to pretend to be our friend and then literally giving encouraging speeches to groups trying to destroy our continent.
Even if the democrats make it back to power, a lot of trust and goodwill has been lost. There can always be another trump.
I don’t think Democrats would really jump to our aide either. The rhetoric is different but I think the vast majority of Americans think that they can let Europe burn without it affecting them much.
> You can't trust what the Chinese government will do to it or with it.
It's not clear that europe even trusts europe anymore. Especially with french and german economic dominance looking shakier than ever, debt financing an unpopular war in the east piling up, mounting deficits, industry collapse, youth unemployment... european countries (or greenland for that matter) could do a whole lot worse than turning to china.
Agreed, though, that reliance on US is foolhardy. I can't make any sense of why we're trying to saw the feet off our own economy.
Yea, in 29 Germany, France and UK will have elections, and far-right parties with anti-EU and partially pro-Russian attitudes are leading the polls. If they win, there will be hardly any unified "Europe" left. Why would I then trust Germany ruled by AfD over MAGA-America?
At least with China there's some consistency. I can reliably trust them not to give a shit about me or my privacy, and to further their geopolitical interests. Meanwhile populists in the West aren't really even acting rationally from geopolitical perspective, they're more unpredictable.
Are you talking about the same China which has repeatedly performed industrial espionage, embedded surveillance into products, and supported the Russian invasion of Ukraine?
I'm sorry, did we already forget about the NSA literally running the biggest dragnet the world has ever known and the US CLOUD Act that allows them to spy into absolutely any US company anywhere in the world ?
>supported the Russian invasion of Ukraine?
As regrettable as it is, China's "support" of the invasion is mostly a matter of them both not giving a shit about the situation, and it helping them geopolitically with regards to Taiwan. They sold weapons. Just like France sold weapons to north african regimes when they were brutally repressing their protesters. The vast majority of Europe is doing the bare minimum for ukraine to keep the fight away without being actually involved.
Countries are not moral, and will do what benefits them. Some of them are more ruthless than others, but as it stands the vast majority of Europeans are considering the US as a greater threat to democracy and general life quality than China.
China is just not compatible with us ideologically. Freedom of speech, surveillance, state control. That stuff won't work here. It works in China because they've been under it for thousands of years.
It's incredible how quickly such obvious hostility as plans to incite what amounts to secession in a putatively friendly, allied sovereign entity has become normalized and ho-hum.
Was that when Obama capitulated to Putin and permitted him to annex Crimea? Perhaps that was the "more flexibility" that he secretly promised Putin he would have after his election. I wonder what he got in return for it.
In the real world, NATO is a highly exclusive club, which is very reluctant to accept new members and extend its mutual defence clause to them. Ukraine and Georgia sought to join NATO after Russia had already begun violating their sovereign territory, but NATO allies caved to Russian pressure and denied membership to both Georgia and Ukraine. Russia then used this opportunity to invade them without triggering the full arsenal of NATO.
Russia is not a cornered cat, but a nuclear-armed colonial empire that has expanded through war and conquest for centuries, growing from a small city-state into the largest country in the world, exterminating countless native ethnicities in the process:
Yes it is, and Russia is increasingly being recognized by scholars as such.
This is especially visible in the war against Ukraine, which is colonial in nature. Russia has invaded another country on imperialistic justifications ("reunification of Russian lands" etc), is using domestic minorities as cannon fodder to alter the ethnic composition of Russia in favor of Russians, is committing genocide against Ukrainians to destroy them as an ethnicity, and is resettling ethnic Russians into occupied territories to permanently alter Ukraine's ethnic composition.
The whole "NATO expansion" narrative is complete bullshit when the initiative to join NATO has come from Russia's neighbors, who want to gain the protection of its mutual defense clause in the hope that this would deter Russia from invading them.
Russia has been the aggressor in this part of the world for centuries, and the rest is a reaction to that. Russia is the sole reason why Northern and Eastern Europe have militaries at all; if it weren't for Russia, they could be disbanded overnight.
Europe should be building domestic digital capacity regardless (and not just servers) but saying it needs to treat the US like China is a bit melodramatic given the economic and physical threat to Europe is 10X greater in the east.
The US is not anti-Europe. The US has just begun to start evaluating its relationship with Europe rationally and wants it to grow up beyond the post-WW2 training wheels.
The overreaction to this kind of gives vibes of slamming the door and screaming “you don’t love me!” because dad won’t buy a new toy.
The difference is, Europeans used to trust their US partners, and built a lot of infrastructure on US services. This trust has been betrayed, so things now need to change.
It never existed to begin with with China, so no change is necessary.
There never was a relationship of mutual trust, it was always a relationship of Europe being under the wing of the US as a buffer against the USSR.
The US now wants to push Europe out of the nest, but most Europeans have only ever known life "living in their parents house".
Building an independent Europe is not compatible with the current European ethos of work/life/life/life balance, and will likely result in Europe either coming back to the US, falling into economic chaos, or moving into daddy Xi's house. They are a socialist country after all...
How much do you guys suffer about this work life balance, I can't wrap my head around the level of brainwash you guys have been through to use concepts as socialised wealth and wellness as a bad thing
these evil europeans wanting to have a break from work! how dare them!
Neither the European welfare state nor China's authoritarian leftism are socialist. They are, respectively, welfare-state capitalism and nationalist "socialism" (aka Naziism).
On the European side, socialism is a question of who owns businesses. If the majority of businesses are owned by the people who are working at those businesses, you have a socialist economy. Welfare states, regulatory regimes, and high tax rates do not change the ownership of businesses, they are about who provides the infrastructure around those businesses. If you have an economy where infrastructure is owned by a liberal nation-state, and businesses are owned by whoever gambled capital on the venture, then you get a capitalist economy. If your infrastructure is privately owned by individuals, then those owners become feudal lords and you get feudalism.
On the Chinese side, you might point out that there are laws that require CCP ownership of all businesses, eat the party line that says the CCP is the representative of the working class, and say, "hey that's a socialism". But this ownership and representation is purely nominal. The average Chinese worker has more or less zero political agency; speaking out gets you censored and harassed. How is that worker ownership? If, say, America started punishing individual shareholders who voted against Trump-aligned board members, we'd correctly recognize that the shareholders do not meaningfully own their businesses anymore.
"Moving into Daddy Xi's house" would be stupid. The EU and China are not aligned on basically any core value; it'd basically be a surrender of one to the other. Actually, to be clear, the EU isn't even aligned on basically any core value with itself[0]. In fact, I would argue that's a way bigger headwind than European workers being used to a top-heavy welfare state. The EU has the resources to build a sovereign cloud, or run its own military, or source its own energy. But for each one there are challenges posed by the uniquely decentralized structure of Europe:
- Europe could build a sovereign cloud, but probably not one for each member state. So they're going to have to agree what country holds the data, and agree that that country can and will spy on all the others.
- Europe could fund its own military, tell NATO to pound sand, and re-colonize America for the trouble. But who runs that military? Given the history of EU politics, it would be France and Germany, and every other country in the EU has a history of being colonized by France or Germany. They are not trustworthy.
- Europe could fix its energy dependence, but Germany thinks nuclear power is Satan and wants to backstop renewables with the dirtiest-burning coal you can mine.
You'll notice a recurring theme here. The problem with Europe is not its fiscal deficit, the perceived laziness of its workers, or what have you. It's the lack of trust. The most trustworthy member state of the European Union was the United States of America, and so that's why everyone put their data on American servers, and let America dominate NATO, and so on. This is not Europe getting kicked out of the nest, it's the kids realizing their parent is a gaslighting asshole and that all their siblings, including themselves, are cut from the same cloth.
[0] Trump's current tariff actions and threats of territory annexation have galvanized the European public against America's government. However, prior to Trump coming back, Europe was full of far-right nutjobs that were just as cringe. Actually, a lot of them are still in power in Europe, and they're way more competent and cunning than Cheeto Mussolini.
It is US themselves that have decleared they are a hostile enemy to Europe now. China had made zero claims to annex parts of Europe. USA makes claims to annex parts of Denmark. China officially does not say their goal is to overthrow European democracies but US says their goal is to change the democratic govts of Europe.
They control Europe's digital infrastructure and are able to increase rent to usurous levels (tarrifs!) because Europe is dependent on their digital services. Without digital sovereignty, Europe has no sovereignty and will quickly become a modern colony from which wealth will be extracted.
The reason the US is able to raise rents (tariffs) has nothing to do with Europe buying US digital services.
The tariffs are on European exports. The problem is Europe has a weak domestic consumer market and is dependent on selling stuff to the US, not buying from them.
The EU has a services deficit compared to the US, the US has a goods deficit compared to Europe. Together, they are almost in balance, the difference is just 3% of total trade [1]. Put differently, the US and the EU need each other. This is why Trump is using footguns.
The problem is really that Europe has a few dozen weak consumer markets. If there really was a proper single market, I suspect the EU would be much more competitive in digital services.
Unfortunately despite their best efforts this isn't something Eurocrats can simply will into existence. The most important prerequisite is a common language, and there is zero political will to do the only sensible thing and establish English as the official common language of the EU.
Nonsense. Unilaterial tarrifs are not how trade agreements work. This is pure extractive rent.
The reason the US is not able to extract the same rents from China is that they have digital sovereignty and the US cannot just pull the cloud plug from them.
> Nonsense. Unilaterial tarrifs are not how trade agreements work. This is pure extractive rent.
What do you mean by "unilateral tariffs"?
> The reason the US is not able to extract the same rents from China is that they have digital sovereignty and the US cannot just pull the cloud plug from them.
The US has higher tariffs against Chinese imports than European imports.
Sure. They are not anti-Europe. They just announced that they want to topple democracy in our countries, destroy the European Union, want to annex a European territory and are best buddies with Vladimir Putin. But beside of that they are really good friends ... not!
Greenland is not in europe. It may be a danish colony but that doesn't make it "european territory" any more than french guiana is. EU territory? Sure. But europe is a penninsula on the western flank of eurasia.
> Greenland is not in europe. It may be a danish colony but that doesn't make it "european territory" any more than french guiana is. EU territory? Sure. But europe is a penninsula on the western flank of eurasia.
You are right that Greenland is not in Europe (it sits on the Nort American tectonic plate).
It is also not an EU territory, however, it is linked to Europea through Denmark. European influence exists through governance, education, and trade.
Most Greenlanders identify primarily as Kalaallit (Inuit) and Greenlandic, not European.
How do Hawaiians feel about this? Just in case: what would you consider a valid qualification for Hawaiians, for their opinion on this matter to be material? And how many of them support an independent Hawaii?
I looked online but didn’t find any hard numbers, only vague movements. Scottish independence for example seems to have substantial , if minority , support. If the same cannot be said for Hawaii, then this comment feels… like a cop out.
As is the case when it comes to indigenous populations being displaced and slowly replaced over time: they don't get to have a choice. Hawaii was mostly Japanese in the early 1900s having already displaced previous arrivals, and today less than 15% of the population considers themselves native hawaiians. The remaining 85% are there _because_ Hawaii is not independent, why would they ever hold a vote for it ?
See similar cases in New Caledonia, the Falklands, and more.
US foreign policy is nearly as dimwitted as european foreign policy is. Of course puerto rico is a colony.
But also, actually, if China did annex puerto rico? Snap snap snap. Good for them. They really made it out the hood. May god look upon the rest of us so positively
> And Hawaii is not in America. Certainly neither is Guam etc.
Sure, no argument here.
> What kind of argument are you even trying to make?
Mostly that characterizing Greenland as European is just as insane as characterizing French Guiana that way. Or the falknlands, New Caledonia, Polynesia, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Aruba, Curaçao, Anguilla, Bermuda, the Virgin Islands, etc etc. These are colonies—not part of europe, and should have been made whole decades ago with the resolution of WWII, and their continued presence as "rightfully" part of European nations destabilizes our globe.
Europe is welcome to extend its economic privileges to all nations of earth, and I for one will continue to argue for kicking us out of Hawaii and Guam while ensuring we don't further engage in predatory trade agreements.
Of course, I don't expect any of this predation to cease anytime soon.
Greenland has been inching towards independence since the seventies, because that's the common ambition of greenlandic peoples and it's slow because there are rather deep ties between Denmark and Greenland. These ties are to some extent very negative for the greenlanders, they're generally discriminated against and have been viciously mistreated at times, but a quick clean cut would also be quite painful for them.
In the seventies Greenland joined the EU predecessor EEC with Denmark, quickly realised that europeans were emptying their fishing waters and in the early eighties left the union. It's the only entity to have done so. Then the independence process trudged on, they self-manage in many areas now, even more since a 2008 referendum where some 75% or so voted in favour of independence. Since 2009 there is a law that says that Greenland can become independent whenever they want, as long as it's approved by greenlander referendum and the danish parliament.
To the extent they're a colony international law also clearly gives them the right to unilaterally declare independence. A majority of greenlanders are likely still in favour, but a majority also would prefer to postpone it if it would result in worse living conditions, since that's what polls usually conclude.
Ignoring half a century of rather delicate politics and independence ambitions the US shat all over it and said that they wanted to buy it, and then several years later said that they might just annex instead. This is quite belligerent and nasty behaviour, which in my opinion should have caused european countries to start dumping US bonds and stop answering calls from the White House.
Well nobody is forcing Denmark to be a dick about decolonization, nor a dick to all the people it never colonized. That's a choice.
> This is quite belligerent and nasty behaviour
So was colonizing, well, anywhere. Europe still hasn't been appropriately punished for this. And yes, the US deserves to be punished severely for its own brutal conquests.
Denmark isn't "being a dick about decolonization", it's just that they happen to be very kindly subsidising half of Greenland's budget, which causes even many enthusiastic about the idea of an independent Greenland cause to think that leaving might be a mistake.
Conversely, the leader of the present day United States threatens to colonising Greenland by force to show off how powerful he is. Ergo Europeans, particularly Greenlanders, have little reason to trust the US
> Denmark isn't "being a dick about decolonization", it's just that they happen to be very kindly subsidising half of Greenland's budget, which causes even many enthusiastic about the idea of an independent Greenland cause to think that leaving might be a mistake.
Brother, spread this pro-colonization propaganda elsewhere.
> Conversely, the leader of the present day United States threatens to colonising Greenland by force to show off how powerful he is. Ergo Europeans, particularly Greenlanders, have little reason to trust the US
You know nothing about this, so stop spreading your made up lies. A roadmap for Greenlandic independence is in place. The Greenlandic parliament is controlling the speed of this process.
That's what the possessive descriptor "European" means, yes. Which is why it's weird you're so against it. I'm not really sure what you're arguing at this point.
"European" is a geographic adjective. It does not apply to domination of other places. No amount of willpower will make the places that europe chooses to rape "european".
Currently Denmark participates in financing Greenland, pulling the rug on it would likely not be pleasant for the greenlanders and if they did I'd count that as rather dickish unless the greenlanders had a near consensus on the issue and asked the danish parliament to do it.
Well, some justice have been sought and won, but a lot remains. To me it seems like an attempt at distraction to clump together the treatment of the Mau Mau and the nuking of Algeria with Denmark's relation with Greenland.
Besides economic relations, independence for Greenland would also mean that they would need to seek justice to a larger extent through international courts and in at least some cases it's likely easier for greenlanders to find justice in danish courts.
And yet denmark hasn't burned. How do you remediate this contradiction?
> To me it seems like an attempt at distraction to clump together the treatment of the Mau Mau and the nuking of Algeria with Denmark's relation with Greenland.
Believe me, britain deserves far worse than just being burned down. But denmark still must face justice
You make it sound that the brits were the bad guys, when it was an elite top % pulling the strings and the rest were mostly trying to make ends meet.
But yes agree, the elite extracting wealth from the colonies back in the days, and still are extracting wealth from your average Joe, deserves far worse.
Colonies can only address this at the granularity of the nationalism with which they were presented. If every-day brits don't want to be blamed, they need to make their own rebellion to show they aren't party to the evil done in their name.
I think this is true of my own country (the US), and it's hopeless. I think most americans are ok with the evil done in their name. I wish I had better advice or insight.
But pretending like two imperial powers arguing over greenland is some great injustice just spits in the face of humanity. Have some fucking dignity. Greenland deserves better than to be treated like a piece of property
> It was supposed to be something akin to United States of Europe
No, it never was.
> but instead in devolved into a bureaucracy
No it hasn't:
"There are two striking aspects of this rejection of EU bureaucracy. First, in comparison with other, comparable entities, such as the US federal bureaucracy, the EU’s administrative apparatus has a marginal size. Specifically, the EU, which is responsible for more than 440 million citizens, employs only around 60,000 people, while the US federal bureaucracy has more than two million employees that govern a territory with about 330 million inhabitants. Accordingly, the EU bureaucracy is comparatively small and far from being the “bureaucratic monster” which it is frequently portrayed as."
I'm thankful for that. That is why our food is way better and way healthier than the shit the US makes it's citizens eat.
> is incredibly socialist and the EC thinks it is above everyone else.
LOL. No it's not "socialist" and the European Commission is the executive branch of the European Union. If you really think the Commission behaves as if they are above everything else (they do not!), I pull an American president.
> That is why our food is way better and way healthier than the shit the US makes it's citizens eat.
The US optimized for convenience, affordability, and variety.
You can eat very healthily in the US, but it requires more intentional choices.
In many (not all) EU countries, the default option is closer to healthy.
> You can eat very healthily in the US, but it requires more intentional choices.
It requires money too. If you are poor your choices are naturally limited and in the end you are dependent on government regulations to eat at least somewhat healthy.
What's interesting is JFK Jr. (our Secratary of Health and Human Services) has a stance that Americans eat too many ultra-processed foods. He wants people to eat more whole foods and fewer additives. He questions conventional warnings about saturated fat and supports dietary changes than include more full-fat dairy and meats. He prefers education over bans or mandates.
And that is not working for the poor of which the US seems to have plenty for a developed country.
The poor have no choice, even if they are educated, and the food industry is fine with selling them garbage. It's legal to do so after all. AFAIK food is generally even cheaper in Europe than in the USA. Even with those regulations.
Regulation is about setting minimum standards for acceptance, not specifying exactly how.
This means that if I walk into a random croissant shop and buy a croissant, I don't subsequently have 2 days of food poisoning.
Arguably, healthier being the default is also good. The less I personally need to think about this, the more I can think about other more useful things.
> There are two striking aspects of this rejection of EU bureaucracy. First, in comparison with other, comparable entities, such as the US federal bureaucracy, the EU’s administrative apparatus has a marginal size. Specifically, the EU, which is responsible for more than 440 million citizens, employs only around 60,000 people, while the US federal bureaucracy has more than two million employees that govern a territory with about 330 million inhabitants.
that's because the EU co-opted existing member state agencies instead of creating its own
e.g. the german federal department of agriculture effectively is controlled by the EU (almost all of its duties are an EU competence), but 100% of its costs are attributed to germany
this makes the EU look much more efficient than it is
The EU in its current form is mostly about markets. It routinely pushes for the sacrifice of government monopolies to the altar of the free market (see for a recent example the french train network). Most of its regulations are to ensure a level field for a balanced market.
Hell it pushes for free markets even when it makes very little sense (the eu electricity market and its weird idiosyncrasies are an artifact of that)
It basically bans member governments from printing money and imposes very strict limits of 3% GDP on government deficits. For reference the US deficit was 5.9% gdp this year, Almost twice as much. this greatly limits government control over the economy.
> imposes very strict limits of 3% GDP on government deficits.
You might want to check that information. This very strict limit is only enforced on selective EU countries like Greece for example.
France has had routinely yearly deficits above 3% in the last 10 years and has never been worried one bit about it.
For the record the French deficit was around 5.4% this year and it is set to increase again next year as the parliament is completely blocked and a budget compromise cannot be reached.
Even the so called debt ceiling defined in the pact of stability is mostly ignored. Italy and France are both well above the 100% debt to GDP ratio when the treaty says that every country within the EU should be at or below 60%.
> It basically bans member governments from printing money
It only bans the ones that have adopted the Euro. The countries that have declined to adopt the euro are free to do as they please more or less.
The euro countries though may not be able to print money, but they just get the ECB to do it for them via quantitative easing which has been used since 2008 and only recently stopped when the interests rates started climbing after the pandemic.
> Even Zelenskyy acknowledged that the US provides more aid than the EU. And this is despite the fact that Europe has twice the population and doesn't have a vast ocean between it and Russia.
Why does the population matter at all? The US GDP is $30T and the EU GDP is $21T.
> Isn't it exactly the opposite, and it was the EU that attempted to overthrow democracy in the US (and failed)?
What are you talking about? According to US intelligence agencies, bipartisan Senate reports, and federal prosecutions, Russia, China, and Iran have been singled out at running disinformation campaigns. The EU has never been accused by the US of trying to topple democracy in the US.
They are not "giving" money. They are exchanging them for resources. Russia gets the money but loses resources which it could've sold to other countries instead.
Ah, you're totally right. Europe is getting the better end of the deal Russia is practically getting scammed, exchanging goods for profits they can redistribute to fund their war.
The EU is not Europe. I never see any pro-EU sentiment anywhere besides on HN and Reddit. Talk to Europeans and they hate the EU and see it as an oppressive foreign power. Except for the Germans.
> Talk to Europeans and they hate the EU and see it as an oppressive foreign power.
Your framing is off, I'm afraid.
Across Europe, most people see the EU as more good than bad, especially compared to the alternative of countries acting alone. At the same time, support is often cautious rather than enthusiastic.
I've never seen any pro-EU attitude in the European countries I've lived in. Except for among the political and media class. But those aren't representatives of the general population.
But I haven't lived in central Europe, like Germany, Belgium, etc. Where the attitudes seem to be quite pro-EU.
The original statement still stands. Europe is not the EU. The EU is not Europe.
Voter turn out is extremely low in certain central and eastern Europe for EU elections. I think it was down to under 20% in some places a few years ago.
I had hoped that the UK would vote to remain and Europe would move away from a centralist, authoritarian model, but it's got worse especially since 2020. The EU is its own worst enemy.
No, I haven't. Both the UK and EU are doing many of the same things. You can argue that the EU is bureaucratic without supporting bureaucracy within the UK. These are not contradictory positions.
You claimed that the UK leaving was bad as they were more liberal, and then noted that they were also doing lots of anti privacy stuff. Seems a little contradictory to me.
It insists on things like "corruption is bad", "human rights are for everyone including gays" so naturally certain conservative groups find that authoritarian.
Human rights are for everyone, not just people you agree with. If you bring in censorship, surveillance and smother protest for people you disagree with, you will find it getting used against you yourself at some point. Europe has imported this false binary from the USA, and it is not benefitting it either.
The EU has its fair share of corruption, but it is is better at hiding it than developing countries. Its current president Ursula Von Der Leyen is a fraud who appears to have cheated at university, and only got to where she did due to wealth and aristocratic family connections.
also things such as chat control and surveilling the entire populace, but I'm sure you must be right that the problem people have with it is that they say "corruption is bad"
Chat control is a Swedish proposal that has consistently lost in the Parliament. We should of course keep fighting it but at least as a Swede I know things would have been much worse without the EU.
It was pushed by Sweden but also by many other countries including France (which loves to give lessons of democracy to the world by the way and is very much at the forefront of human rights or so they say) and Hungary amongst others.
> has consistently lost in the Parliament.
It has consistently lost so far. Secondly the reason it has lost is because people like me took the time to actually reach out to any MEP who would take my call to tell them to oppose this law. If we had waited for the EU to react and put a stop to this madness, we would still be waiting.
This law should never have been proposed in the first place anyway. The fact that it was proposed and debated is a shameful action in itself.
> I know things would have been much worse without the EU.
How can you know for sure? You can't. Since it originated from the EU commission, it stands to reason that without the EU commission it would not have happened.
You believe that the EU is good because that is your belief. The European countries existed for 100s of years before the EU. There is no reason to think that they can't go back to this state in the future.
One definition of authoritarian is "enforcing strict obedience to authority at the expense of personal freedom".
It would seem to me that the recent spate of sanctioning individuals - e.g. for 'disseminating misinformation' without a legal definition of what that actually is would be an example of authoritarianism. A direct attack on freedom of speech and thought.
Which Europeans have you "talked" to? Discord and twitter don't count. People moan about the EU like they moan about their own national government.
Opinion polls on actually leaving the EU show a minority in favour. Most Europeans saw Brexit play out and realise sticking the finger up at your neighbours is not a winning strategy.
Brexit was ironically mostly an anti immigration vote. It has thoroughly demolished the involved parties that the one thing promised has not come to pass.
I guess real life doesn't count either? Good that we can rely on HN and Reddit, where the pro-EU sentiment is strong. I just haven't seen that in real life, which is why I suggest maybe it might be particular to Germans and probably Belgians and Dutch.
Unfortunately you live in the wrong time and age. You'd like to report to your local commissar when somebody expresses opinions and ideas against the cherished government - "he's a right wing propagandist who seeks to destroy us!". But it's not the 20th century anymore, and all you can do is scream into the cyber void.
Accusing anybody who doesn't love the government of "spreading propaganda" is not a sign of knowledge. It's a sign of an obsolete 20th century mindset and perspective on life.
Next perhaps you're going to accuse me of "Staatsfeindlichkeit", which the German leadership was screaming in their denouncements, before the people tore down their walls.
"Verunglimpfung des Staates" - "Insulting the State", this awful, awful crime, is something I'm going to continue doing however I fancy. Millions of people were killed for that right, so it's not something I'm ever giving up.
Not loving the government is OK. Heck, hating the government might also be OK.
Insisting that we European citizens hate the EU when it is not true, and then doubling down with accusations of censorship when the whole thread points out your mistake, is downright stupid. But hey, if that makes you happy as some kind of freedom fighter, go for it.
When you start talking about "right wing propaganda that will destroy us", then I only hear echoes of the government worship of the 20th century. As I said, the EU is not Europe, nor the other way around. And that's mainly what's upsetting hackers. They live in a fantasy that the EU is in some way like the USA. I know that quite a lot of Germans, Dutch and Belgians consider themselves "EU citizens". And maybe Spaniards as well. Nobody in Northern Europe considers themself an "EU citizen" or gives any value to the EU. They consider themselves people of their own nations only, and the EU as a foreign influence.
I have met plenty of people from Finland, Sweden and Denmark who were all pretty happy with the EU. I guess it helps that we all work in big international projects, so we get to talk to lots of different nationalities on a daily basis.
The EU has better healthcare and welfare overall, but fewer individual rights in other areas. Less gun crime (although this depends on region). Poverty levels vary a lot across the EU.
Americans take homeschooling for granted, for better or worse, but it is banned in some European countries like Germany.
Also the USA allows groups such as the Amish their liberty, which would be extremely unlikely in much of the EU where state interference would either force them out or destroy them.
The US has umpteen issues but is much better for freedom of expression frankly, although it is being steered away from that.
The EU is not more "free". There are a lot of things you can't say or will get shut down for. Most of the EU does not have the same freedom of expression or religion that the USA guarantees in its founding documents. The collective cannot have freedom if the individual does not. That includes the right to disagree.
The EU and USA are going down the same road. Social media is a part of this censorship of open discussion and is usually American based, but works hand in hand with the European governments. Both European and American governments seem happy to deceive citizens into a surveillance state.
It is unacceptable to ban homeschooling. Some children need to be homeschooled, because of disabilities, or even high intelligence. Given the fact that Germany has suffered from both far right and far left dictatorships within living memory, anything that does not promote blind obedience to the state should be encouraged.
Many parts of Europe retain a feudal mentality, which includes constant deference to authority.
> There are a lot of things you can't say or will get shut down for.
Such as? I honestly can't think of anything.
> It is unacceptable to ban homeschooling. Some children need to be homeschooled, because of disabilities, or even high intelligence.
European education laws prioritize the child's right to education and social development over parental autonomy as an absolute. Mandatory schooling laws have been adopted to ensure minimum educational standards and to safeguard against neglect and abuse, which is especially important when it comes to disabilities. Someone with proper training and decades of experience will educate a disabled child far more effectively than a parent whose only guaranteed qualification may be knowing how to have sex.
I've seen what a complete crapshoot state education is first hand. My god daughter came out of school recently and can barely read and write. I had to suffer through it myself...
I find it amusing that homeschooling is so vilified and stereotyped. All the homeschooled children I know are BETTER educated not worse. Contrary to the stereotype. Schools have massive bullying issues and are often bad environments for neurodiverse people. Schools are very Lord of the Flies.
Home schooling is of course only as good as the people teaching but the same is true of schools. Most state curricula prioritise the state and adoration of the state... funnily enough
Not all European countries have banned home schooling. Not even all members of the EU.
As for neglect and abuse of children, the public schools is where you will most readily find it. Including bullying until children commit suicide. And school shootings. Which is a lesser risk at home. No matter which continent.
No one said all EU countries have banned homeschooling. That is just one issue.
Schools are a haven for bullying, both by students and teachers. I did have some good teachers but some of them were also the most cruel and abusive people I've ever met.
He is not an EU citizen and, as a foreigner, acts as a mouthpiece for a hostile dictatorship. The US has sanctioned similar people too, most notably Margarita Simonyan, the editor-in-chief of Russia Today: https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy2559
I've read somewhere that Americans understand freedom as "freedom TO", shiny Europeans understand freedom as "freedom FROM". This is extremely visible in this thread and probably a cause of many misunderstandings.
There's philosophical terms for this: America emphasizes negative liberty ("freedom from interference by other people. Negative liberty is primarily concerned with freedom from external restraint") , while Europe emphasizes positive liberty ("the possession of the power and resources to act in the context of the structural limitations of the broader society which impacts a person's ability to act")
I don't give very much for statistics and opinion polls. People tend to give the answer they think they're "supposed to give" in those. I base my assessment on my experience from talking to people in real life.
> Maybe you should get out of your right-wing bubble.
Your comment is nasty, but I don't think you're this nasty in real life. Probably you're just blowing off some steam online.
Likewise, I've never met a person who has said they are for the EU or even strongly pro-EU. So it must be a question of which of the EU member countries you are in or other kind of bubbles.
> Get out of yours.
I suggested in my original post that Germans seem to be pro-EU. And probably neighbouring countries too. Here in this thread also appeared a fanatically pro-EU Spaniard. In Nordic countries, I've never met a person who would admit they were pro-EU. Of course they must exist, since presumably half the people voted yes to join, a few decades ago.
In the end it seems to be no more complicated than people who benefit financially from EU redistribution of money are pro-EU and the people who have to pay the bill for it are against the EU.
As I said, I don't give much for opinion polls. And comparing two sides as you do now, doesn't mean that people are fond of either side.
You can prove anything with statistics. The last opinion poll I saw for my country of birth was both the EU and the national government at a less than 50% approval rate.
Ok so you trust your gut and lived experiences more that population statistics. That's a totally valid approach but it's very easy to misread the popular opinion as your friends are not a random sample.
I have an idea of what I'm talking about. I say that the EU is not Europe. Nor is Europe the EU. People in these conversations need to understand the difference, because it is significant. Norway, Great Britain, Iceland and Switzerland aren't in the EU.
Yes, but those are only trade and border agreements, and don't give the EU influence on internal political matters. Compare similar trade agreements between other nations, such as between the United States and their neighbours.
> Yes, but those are only trade and border agreements
Honestly goods and service regulations are probably the biggest infringement of sovereignty as it signs all of your companies up to arbitrary standards. That may be a good idea, but to pretend that it's somehow less important than other pooling of sovereignty seems strange to me.
> The US literally wrote a national security strategy describing that it wants to dismantle the EU.
The official 2025 NSS document does not explicitly state a US goal to dismantle the European Union.
The strategy is highly critical of the EU's direction and Europe's trajectory in ways that critics could say could indirectly undermine EU cohesion, but there's no formal language saying the US wants to dismantle the EU.
Critics interpret the tone and strategic shift as potentially indirectly weakening EU cohesion if taken as encouragement to nationalist or Eurosceptic political forces.
Every year the percentage of European GDP driven by government spending rises by roughly 1%. We just hit over 50% on average in the Eurozone.
So they have over 50% control, and this will only rise as the population further ages, eating all productive activity in the economy.
It doesn't matter who 'owns' the means of production if the government is post-facto seizing a controlling stake in all economic activity via taxation and deficit spending (phantom taxation via inflation). Europe is quite literally eating its private sector like saturn devouring his son.
This article is about FAFO for MAGA loyalists in the USA. Well, MAGA has FA'd with US-European relations. Now they get to FO where it takes us (i.e. over the waterfall, isolating the USA from everything good in the world.)
I mean, we still borderline run the world, so there's that. In this very OP it's major news that Europe is trying to move off of US technology, because we're just so dominant.
> trump pissing away a century of hard-won soft power handed the century to China
Right, it's all Trump's fault, not the fault of the boomers that sold our country's manufacturing base out to China in the 60's onward which gave them their start, and that we've never recovered from.
But no, I'm sure it's the orange man who still hasn't done 1/3rd of the things we voted him in to do, that is the problem. Average deportation rates are still below Obama's terms, "Mr. President, there's too much winning!!". What a joke, I wish he did half the things you all claim he does, we'd be much better off.
Americans really need to consider stuff outside their little bubble sometimes and think about how their country is just a gear in a much larger system.
Of course American power is being pissed away by the guy hurting the transatlantic alliance American power was built on in the first place.
Your internal generational squabbles don't concern us. How you present yourself externally does, and that's worse than it's been in a long time.
> Your internal generational squabbles don't concern us.
Of course it doesn't, like how European's view of Americans doesn't matter to the vast majority of us. Every country has some sort of 'bubble', or a set of concerns and shared history only relevant to the in-group. I couldn't give a rats ass about the generational history of Europe either, for instance.
> How you present yourself externally does, and that's worse than it's been in a long time.
Well, of course, I'm sure the potential of not recieving massive military aid anymore, and no longer having the ability to run the country dry, would be very noticeable. If that was the cost of maintaining Europe as an ally, then being viewed in a more negative light is simply a necessary expense.
> Well, of course, I'm sure the potential of not recieving massive military aid anymore, and no longer having the ability to run the country dry, would be very noticeable. If that was the cost of maintaining Europe as an ally, then being viewed in a more negative light is simply a necessary expense.
See, this is exactly what I mean with my above post.
The US is a rich and powerful country, but it's actively sabotaging the foundation of said wealth and power.
The "massive military aid" was free power projection for you guys, giving your military access to another third of the globe. It was also a massive subsidy program for US industry, with us buying your stuff.
US wealth is built on access to our market, yet you were convinced you were the ones doing us a favour.
Truth is, the US has been the wealthiest and most powerful country, not by accident or by divine providence, but by our grace.
Nero is burning Rome and the plebeians are cheering him on.
It can be both. The document is massive, very contradictory and incoherent, and most of the people hysterical over it haven't even read it. Look I'm no fan of the trump administration but people should have concrete concerns, not waving around "project 2025" like some symbol of the country's imminent collapse. Unfortunately, our country is nowhere near collapse and this administration is not going to be the thing to bring it down. Though they're trying their hardest, i will admit.
Talk of how it might be interpreted is rather beside the point when the administration appears to be implementing a particular interpretation and SCOTUS appears to be fine with that, whether or not it is a selective one. Those are the concrete concerns of which you speak.
It is helpful to have the document publicly available, but only if enough people heed its implicit warning.
I would argue the concrete concerns we should have is the fact that we seem to be committing economic suicide, which will have decades of economic and sociopolitical fallout. If you think people have an appetite for fascism today, wait until you see what decades of deflating economies will do.
If the #2 or #1 most popular political party in Germany are "literal Neonazis", I think Germany and likely Europe as a whole has a much bigger problem than whatever America is doing.
Well, foreign intervention and propaganda in democracies is nothing new. It is well documented all the way back to the time of ancient Greece.
So your contention is that in Germany and perhaps other countries (France?) some of the most popular political parties are popular only because their partisans are uneducated dupes or worse, in thrall to foreign powers. Perhaps you would be better off ideologically not supporting democracy - it sounds like it is not for you. Of course democracy has its problems - and people voting for dumb ideas is one of them!
You can either accept that it's your duty to convince your citizens you are right to win their votes, or you can insist that everyone else is wrong and democracy means they should shut up and vote only the "right" way in accordance with establishment approved opinions and go about what Europe has been doing, which is to continue to pursue unpopular policies and blame Russiia/nazis/America/the Internet/free speech for their problems.
European center and left parties could suck all the oxygen out of the room and starve the far-right overnight if they simply introduced and enforced major immigration restrictions - but it's precisely this which is not a Establishment Approved Idea and deemed Unthinkable Hate. Democracy, as long as your opinions are allowed.
> So your contention is that in Germany and perhaps other countries (France?) some of the most popular political parties are popular only because their partisans are uneducated dupes or worse, in thrall to foreign powers. Perhaps you would be better off ideologically not supporting democracy - it sounds like it is not for you. Of course democracy has its problems - and people voting for dumb ideas is one of them!
I don't! I think authoritarian leftism is the way to go as most people are too stupid for their own good tbh.
> European center and left parties could suck all the oxygen out of the room and starve the far-right overnight if they simply introduced and enforced major immigration restrictions
Economic suicide. Why would anyone argue for this? Europe might as well just nuke itself.
Granted, if I were a conservative European, I would also be pro nuking myself.
Heavens to Betsy, someone online just disagreed with the Correct Political Views! Better ban their account and send an officer to their door to arrest them now, before they can further poison our beautiful free democracies with their right-wing propaganda.
The Trump administration really does have a point about anti-democratic restrictions on core liberties in Europe. You'd be very surprised because you're used to European censorship regimes reaching beyond the continent and limiting free speech online.
You can't comment like this on Hacker News, no matter who or what you're replying to. You've taken a flamewar 15 comments deep. That's exactly what we're trying to avoid here.
The American public schooling system in action yet again here. 3rd grade reading comprehension in no way stops them from loudly proclaiming some of the dumbest shit possible.
> It's the same reason you don't want Chinese equipment in your telecommunications infrastructure. You can't trust what the Chinese government will do to it or with it.
Using this logic, every country should develop its own critical equipment from scratch, in terms of both hardware and software.
My belief is that there is no problem with the Chinese equipment, just scare-mongering from the US because it has no manufacturer of 5G equipment. And Europe jumped on the bandwagon just because.
For decades trusting the US was no problem at all. The relationship was mutually beneficial. Cooperation and trust among nations is possible and Juche (completely self-reliance) is not a worthwhile goal at all. So, sure, cooperation is great and should always be a goal – it also secures peace (people who are economically intertwined are less likely to go to war with each other).
The issue is the US burning up that earned mutual trust. And at some point you have to sadly abandon ship. Cooperation is great, trade is great, but not under all circumstances and all the time.
The issue has less to do with intelligence silliness, and more to do with the fact that the overall geopolitical objectives of the US can not be trusted, and that rift has grown to a point where self-reliance on critical infrastructure may be in Europe’s best interest.
US started to eavesdrop on Turkey and Greece first. Germany pulled out of the project by citing this is going too far for them. Some citations from news:
The Germans were taken aback by the Americans’ willingness to spy on all but their closest allies, with targets including NATO members Spain, Greece, Turkey and Italy [0].
Operation Rubicon [1] has a map of spied countries, incl. NATO allies and "friends".
I failed to find that great long-read article. If I can find, I will attach it here, too.
See, this is a clear example why hypercynicism (everything has always been maximally evil all the time already) is not at all helpful. You lose your ability to differentiate in your cynical zeal to cast everyone as maximally (undifferentiably) evil all the time.
>> It's the same reason you don't want Chinese equipment in your telecommunications infrastructure. You can't trust what the Chinese government will do to it or with it.
> Using this logic, every country should develop its own critical equipment from scratch, in terms of both hardware and software.
The logic is don't use infrastructure of people you don't trust. If Europeans don't trust Chinese, then don't use Chinese infra; if the Europeans don't trust the US (anymore), then don't use US infra. The Europeans could trust the Canadians, and use Canadian infra for example.
> Europeans don't trust Chinese, then don't use Chinese infra; if the Europeans don't trust the US (anymore), then don't use US infra.
I'm seeing the EU being singled out as unreasonable for avoiding the risk represented by buying their whole infrastructure from companies with deep and blatant ties to CCP's armed forces.
Somehow these critics are omitting the fact that most of the world, specially asian countries, have also banned them.
Yes, there is a lot of affinity towards Canada in Europa, I feel. Last Bastion of Democracy on the North-American continent, and not part of the whacky Trump-Atlantian Hemisphere.
China is decidedly anti democratic and authoritarian. They're also preparing for military activities to expand their territory.
It's not that each country needs to develop their own, but it is prudent to not depend on those who have a fundamentally different and incompatible world view.
> it is prudent to not depend on those who have a fundamentally different and incompatible world view.
Like Saudi Arabia and formerly the Saddam regime (when he sold oil in USD)?
While compatible world view is used as an argument against diplomatic and economic relations, in reality it’s just a bonus, not a requirement. What’s important is plain old cost benefit and national interests. The US is still a better ally for EU than China, but it’s gotten drastically worse fast. And while China has territorial ambitions, they are nowhere near EU. The US is the good old status quo ”devil you know”, but it’s abundantly evident now that nobody really knew them, including many of their own political elites domestically.
On diplomacy timescales, ignoring China because of human rights concerns is exceptionally short-sighted, both for EU if US continues current path, and for global stability in case conflicts escalate between China and US. There is no choice that guarantees EU will have a strong ”human rights” ally in 10 years.
> China is decidedly anti democratic and authoritarian
Let's also say that democracy is very important internally. But as a EU citizen (or even better as a middle east citizen) whether they're democratic or authoritarian makes very little difference to me- I don't get a say in what they do. And in the case of the ME, it wasn't China or its allies that reduced several countries to rubble, it was the democratic US.
> it is prudent to not depend on those who have a fundamentally different and incompatible world view
There are no such things as "incompatible world view" but certainly closer or more distant ones. And I think the fundamental values of the US are pretty far away from those of the EU.
I'm not sure I understand what it means to be "compatible". We are talking about different countries with different regimes of course: in what sense two countries are or aren't compatible?
Huawei became very competitive to Apple. Outsold Apple in it's home market. Huawei got banned.
DJI has a near monopoly on drones. No US company could compete and players like GoPro shut down their consumer drone projects. DJI got/is about to get banned.
Tiktok was dangerous to Meta. TikTok got almost banned/forced-sold.
Chinese EVs are better than almost any US offering. Chinese EVs got banned (by 100%+ tarrifs on them).
Sale of AI and Chips to China got banned. No ChatGPT or Claude offered to us here in Hong Kong.
This is all the US Tech sector can do now. Short term this will go very well but long term this leads to the US falling behind and behind because American companies have artificially created barriers where they aren't forced to comepete anymore, meanwhile the world moves on and has a competitive environment. Innovation will move faster Ex-USA
I fly a DJI Mini 5 Pro, use a Huawei Freeclip 2 earphone, a Huawei GT6 watch, a Xiaomi Silicon Carbon powerbank, an Oppo Find N5 foldable. Most are better/unique compared to what you can even get in America. And that's only the beginning. That's only 2025.
> Huawei became very competitive to Apple. Huawei got banned.
How would you explain Samsung, LG, Sony, etc.?
> DJI got banned.
Untrue.
Supply is constrained and future of new product availability is uncertain because of FY2025 National Defesnse Authorization ACt, which requires a security audit by late Dec 2025. If that doesn't happen, DJI could automatically be added to the FCC's restricted list, which could block new products from being certified and sold in the US.
Your argument is that US tech companies do not have the ability to compete, but this example doesn't support your claim; in fact it does the opposite.
But even so, your information is out of date. Nvidia is now allowed to sell its advanced H200 AI chips to China. The whiplash is dumb, but the move is aimed at maintaining US AI leadership, support American jobs, while addressing concerns about China's military AI development.
As a former Huawei phone owner, and a present Honor phone owner, Samsung LG and Sony does not hold a candle to the quality on offer from Honor and Huawei.
And this is coming from someone who has owned multiple Samsungs over the years.
I agree generally that protectionism is bad, but the examples you present are just the US (finally!) doing to China what China has done to the world for decades. They rely on relatively unencumbered trade in Western markets, while locking their own markets up from outside competition.
And yet you can buy a Tesla in China or an iPhone or any luxury bag or or or. Plenty of brands. It's not quite as black and white as people think.
What you're talking about is social networks/messengers/news which are limited not so much for competitive reasons but national security reasons. They like to control what people see which is something a Google, Meta or X cannot guarantee.
Not sure how that statement squares against the fact that a lot of major US stores (Amazon, Target, Costco, Walmart, B&H Photo, Microcenter, etc.) have DJI products available for purchase, as well as that there is literally a physical retail DJI store[0] within a ~20min subway ride away from my apartment in the US.
According to the "Huawei cyber security evaluation centre" (HCSEC) oversight boards annual report to the national security adviser of the United Kingdom (note: HCSEC was a joint lab between NSCS, GCHQ and Huawei with a lot of access to internal documentation and firmware source code and so on to check if they are telling the truth when they promised there is no backdoor for the chinese ministry of national security in the 5G equipment) their quality and basic security processes are so bad, that it is believable that all the vulnerabilities are unintentional. However they did improve in the years prior to being kicked out, so you are not wrong that it was somewhat of a bandwagon move following the us sanctions.
> just scare-mongering from the US because it has no manufacturer of 5G equipment.
Even if that were accurate, which it isn’t, what exactly do you think the US stands to gain by Europe buying 5g from someone other than China (like the European providers Ericsson and nokia)?
As the US government becomes more erratic and untrustworthy it will encourage large organisations to look for alternatives to American software and services.
The stated intent of the US National Security Strategy is to destabilise and undermine Europe. That is a big incentive for European organisations to replace Windows, Office, and any other Microsoft service.
Linux and LibreOffice usage will grow as a direct consequence of the US government's new antipathy to Europe.
Maybe, but imagine you are some EU commissioner, your choices look like this:
1. Fund a home grown alternative. Spend millions of Euros all the while fighting off a barrage of complaints that EUWord doesnt do things, costs too much, is burning taxes and productivity, etc.
2. Spend a nominal sum, but kick the project into the long grass, and hope that the US retreats from its stance back to the norm. "Maybe Word will be ok in 2027 after midterms, right? or 2029? Maybe I stick my fingers in my ears and tough it out"
2. is realistically what most politicians would do. Making tough, really difficult decisions is not something they like to do.
> Spend millions of Euros all the while fighting off a barrage of complaints that EUWord doesnt do things, costs too much, is burning taxes and productivity, etc.
The leaked US National Security Strategy docs outline a plan to break up the EU:
> However, a longer, unpublished draft of the document was circulated prior to the official, public strategy. It reportedly goes into more detail about the plans the US has in store for Europe. According to the Washington-based digital media platform Defense One, which claims to have seen the draft, it lists Italy, Austria, Poland and Hungary as countries that the US should "work more with … with the goal of pulling them away" from the European Union.The White House has denied the existence of any such draft.
> • Reestablishing conditions of stability within Europe and strategic stability with Russia;
> • Enabling Europe to stand on its own feet and operate as a group of aligned sovereign nations, including by taking primary responsibility for its own defense, without being dominated by any adversarial power;
> • Cultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations;
> • Opening European markets to U.S. goods and services and ensuring fair treatment of U.S. workers and businesses;
> • Building up the healthy nations of Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe through commercial ties, weapons sales, political collaboration, and cultural and educational exchanges;
> • Ending the perception, and preventing the reality, of NATO as a perpetually expanding alliance; and
> • Encouraging Europe to take action to combat mercantilist overcapacity, technological theft, cyber espionage, and other hostile economic practices
This is aligned with what Russia wants. Russia has cultivated Trump as an ally and it appears to be working.
The US is explicit in its intention to meddle with and undermine Europe by "cultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations" and celebrates "the growing influence of patriotic European parties" (i.e. authoritarian, right-wing parties like AfD).
The US is explicitly attempting to annex European territory. Trump says the US will take Greenland "one way or the other". The US has been caught running an influence campaign in Greenland trying to promote its secession from Denmark: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0j9l08902eo
Given American's new direction, de-Americanising your infrastructure and supply chains makes sense. It's sensible risk reduction.
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