If China can survive — and even start to thrive without ASML and TMSC, then have no doubt that should push come to shove Europe will be able to run a mail server and some office tools.
They’re just hedging that American politics will stop licking the car battery.
EU politicians are just too dependent on keeping the status quo of the last decade. The status quo is how they got to their position so they have no incentive to change anything (Starmer, Merz, Marcon, Von der Lyen. Yuck). By the time they finally get the shove they need to rapidly decouple, e.g. when America invades The Hague* to rescue Netanyahu from war crimes charges, it will be when they're already on the edge of the proverbial cliff.
Reddit level argument ignoring the fact that the US's goal there wasn't to win anything since there's nothing of value there, it was to funnel taxpayer money to the military industrial complex for 15 years.
Pretty sure the US could have glassed Afghanistan off the map if they really wanted but probably wouldn't have been very popular decision.
> US's goal there wasn't to win anything since there's nothing of value there
War is only a tool, dominating a country or region militarily is not the same as winning a war if you have not achieved its political goals. In Afghanistan, those goals were not achieved, which means the war was lost.
Destroying Al Quaida and their host, the Taliban.
Al Quaida might be gone, but I believe Taliban are in power today and the US left in a not so glorious way after giving up fighting them.
Not just "giving up fighting them": when the US decided to leave, the taliban were in a stronger position than they were before the US invaded (eg they controlled a bigger part of the country and had much less opposition inside afghanistan). The war was already lost long before the US decided to leave.
Most European countries barely have a standing military to defend themselves, they're completely dependent on the USA for defense through NATO. And their leadership is so docile and complacent that I can't see them being able to muster up a strong resistance to any incursion, most likely if there was an actual invasion of The Hague they would let America do what they need to and try to return back to business as usual as quickly as possible. Again, they're not the types to think beyond the status quo.
"Most European countries … are completely dependent on the USA for defense"
Only if invaded by Russia and possibly China. And even then only the little peripheral ones. UK, Germany, and France could handle Russia - up to and including nukes.
For any conceivable military or paramilitary invasion from the rest of world, Europe will do just fine.
And sadly (an a bit off topic) , Europe — well Denmark at least — is most likely to face an military invasion from the USA.
In fairness, the US has a pretty good record when it comes to invading continental Europe. They already have troops and nukes on the ground in the Netherlands...
And they didn't exactly struggle with the invasion parts of Afghanistan and Iraq, nor in the getting of high status targets in those theaters.
Arguably, the ICJ in the Hague is actually a result of one of those successful deployments of US forces on the continent.
Still not sure what can be done about the car battery ingestion challenges, though.
>And they didn't exactly struggle with the invasion parts of Afghanistan and Iraq, nor in the getting of high status targets in those theaters.
That was post 9/11. The mentality and motivation was different back then. Im not saying the US Military is anything less than a top tier orderly organization, its just that morale is generally low now among not only ranks but the entire country that supports them. You can't just throw out events occurring 23 years ago under a completely different context and assume things are the same.
I'd argue an initial moves against Europe, Canada, etc. would be a bigger mess initially than Afghanistan/Iraq were.
My comment was in fun. I hoped that the reference to licking car batteries would signal that.
No one is sending in the troops to rescue Bibi from the Hague for a variety of reasons. Chief among them is that he is not currently under arrest, and the chances of him being arrested are effectively nil. Also, Mossad.
I don't understand the Mossad comment - unless its just "ooh they're so scary" fanboy stuff.
Let's suppose Netanyahu is somehow arrested and held in a highly secure government prison in The Netherlands awaiting his chance to clear his name at the ICC.
What exactly do you suppose Mossad is going to do?
- break him out? how?
- openly assassinate politicians/judges until someone gives in?
This is - again, I can't emphasize enough - all a joke about a hypothetical situation.
Bibi has not been arrested, he won't be arrested anytime soon, and the US is not at the point where they are willing to invade Europe to save him.
What do I think Mossad would do in the made up, improbable, alternate universe where we are debating the US invading their European allies?
I think that Mossad/Israeli security would never be caught flatfooted enough to allow Israeli leaders to visit a country that was planning to arrest them. I thoroughly believe that it would be nigh impossible to maneuver an Israeli head of state into a position where they were arrested. If things change and he is no longer protected by Israeli security, that is different.
So in answer to your question, no Mossad is not going to be breaking him out of a maximum security prison. They are going to use their intelligence network to say "Hey Benji, stay out Canada. They are going to arrest you, and have you tried if you set foot on their soil". Or "Hey Bibs, this state visit is mildly risky, we have an extraction plan in place if shit goes sideways."
Of course not, haven't you seen any movies? They break him out during transport, either by hijacking a plane, or through a complicated series of car and bus chase scenes! Maybe a helicopter and submarine, too.
"In fairness, the US has a pretty good record when it comes to invading continental Europe."
Only by using the UK as a staging post - and then invading a country that wanted to be liberated with an active partisan network.
So, if China can't take Taiwan over a 150km stretch of littoral waters, a naval in invasion from over the Atlantic is impossible.
There is also no way such a fleet would get past Gibraltar or the Suez canal, so the US would they'd have to stage in Morocco or possibly take Scandinavia then cross into Denmark.
> Only by using the UK as a staging post - and then invading a country that wanted to be liberated with an active partisan network.
Normandy wasn't even the first invasion of mainland Europe by Americans of that war, let alone the first cross Atlantic invasion that the US has undertaken. The US had full armies on the ground in Europe almost a full year before Normandy, without staging in the Kingdom, and in a fascist, hostile country.
Aside from the above point, the US actually has a long, long tradition of successful invasions across oceans, including across the Atlantic. Hell, the first time the US raised their flag on foreign soil was a cross-Atlantic war in 1801. They're astoundingly good at it. They sent floating ice cream factories for troop morale in WWII in the Pacific, three of them actually. Can you imagine fighting total war and your enemy from 10k KM away shows up towing an ice cream factory for the boys?
> So, if China can't take Taiwan over a 150km stretch of littoral waters, a naval in invasion from over the Atlantic is impossible.
China hasn't tried. You have NO clue if this is accurate, and neither does anyone else. Aside from that, China is just getting into the force projection at sea game. Comparing them to the US expeditionary capabilities is daft.
> There is also no way such a fleet would get past Gibraltar or the Suez canal, so the US would they'd have to stage in Morocco or possibly take Scandinavia then cross into Denmark.
Yes, there is no way that is happening because the route from Virginia, where they keep all the Atlantic invasion stuff, to Denmark does not go anywhere near the Suez or Gib. You can just steam from Virginia to Denmark.
i think it's one of those things where how/if they will do it doesn't matter, it's a "we make the rules" thing
if the situation is such that a US -> Netherlands land invasion (with somehow independent armed forces?) is imaginable, you're past the point of the US-ICC legal relations mattering (i'd go so far as to say there's no sovereignty to speak of here :p)
> Threat of invasion from Russia doesn't seem to be doing it.
There’s no actual threat of Western Europe invasion from Russia.
Russia is a gas station operated by racketeers, they’ll bite off as much as they can and threaten with guns and nukes, they don’t have capability to meaningfully invade Western Europe.
Not western Europe, no. Not yet at least. But Russia does threaten eastern Europe. The Baltics in particular are high on Putin's wish list. And if he invades there, and the EU and NATO is slow to respond, that could easily be the end of NATO.
Of course Russia can't attack western Europe right away, but he can weaken it by taking a bit at a time from eastern Europe. And Ukraine is part of that. Europe should really be stepping up there, but they keep telling themselves that Russia can't invade western Europe, so it's not that urgent.
> Threat of invasion from Russia doesn't seem to be doing it.
Yes, it does. Sentiment in politics and the population seems to have shifted significantly. And Trump being Trump seems to be helping Europe realize the necessity of this. I'll count that as one useful thing he has accomplished.
Yes, but they're still not actually doing all that much. I mean, sure long term military investment, and some support for Poland, but it's too little, too divided, and they're standing at the sidelines while Trump proposes to sell Ukraine to Russia.
Well, at least in the Netherlands, that's not true. Our elected representatives have been rather.. volatile over the past decade. I liked the boomers better.
The Netherlands just elected the youngest prime minister ever. He and his hot Argentinian husbando is going to make Trump look very old and disgusting if he ever comes visiting again.
Europe is not a political entity or an organisation. Who exactly will do it? The EU, some EU country, Russia, the UK, Switzerland, some cooperative agreement...?
We're talking about running a few mail server, network shares, and an office suite (LibreOffice if you want). Any university's in-house IT department should be able to pull that off, and it's exactly what many did for a very long time.
If Universities are anything like other large public/public-adjacent organizations, the bulk of the in-house IT department was long since replaced by Microsoft resellers posing as IT. It’s insidious.
Not all universities in Europe are like this, but some are 100% like this. But if there was a larger political directive towards a more autonomous solution, it would eventually work, I think.
Can universities be given political directives like that in most European countries? In the UK they are usually (entirely?) independent, are non-profits and registered charities.
They get government funding for both (British resident) students and research so the government has leverage but would have to use that to incentivise them. I imagine at least some other European countries are much the same.
An even trickier question if you are interested in digital sovereignty is how to get the private sector to do the same. Running everything on AWS and requiring a mobile app to do anything seems to be almost instinctive for many organisations.
In most europeans countries afaik most (known) universities are public ie state-owned, with few exceptions. Big part or most of the funding is public too. Regardless of whether they are state-owned, the states usually set up the framework the universities operate in. How loose or tight is the state control varies from country to country. But there is always some way to meddle into university affairs and very often they do, in the context of public policy. Eg in the recent years universities tend to get very specific directives about from which countries they can freely form collaborations with academics and from which not, depending on the foreign policy of a country. A lot of stuff eg if and how a university can own property is also regulated depending on the country. It varies a lot, but I see no reason to set up some stricter framework wrt data sovereignty. Ime the supposed autonomy of the universities here is only on paper.
The trap of Microsoft is long contracts and setting up dependency. In many cases it was a big undertaking to get the current setup, now try convincing anyone to tear it out.
This. Not long ago, every organization had their own email server. It's only in the last 10-15 years or so that gullible IT managers drank the cloud kool-aid.
When I started doing cloud there were two options at my old company: AWS or Azure. I went for Azure.
Now I do m365 consulting and some Azure and I feel terrible. First of all those are terrible products, they lock you in heavily, they are overly complex. I would love if we started selling sovereign cloud solutions, open desk etc and I think our customers would be interested too. But we don't.
I'm actually thinking about starting my own business.
It's not as much about complacency as it is about the lack of funding and resources. We're talking about countries with government budgets as low as 20 billion USD. Looking at common election promises, people here would rather see that money spent on non-profit housing, healthcare, infrastructure, than some ambitious AI or tech project that they likely wouldn't directly benefit from - at least compared to the things mentioned before - so there's little money left for "developing our own MS Office / LLM / Google".
Whereas China not only has a much bigger budget than individual EU countries, but also central planning on a large scale, so they can just "force" things be done, no matter whether people like it or not. China giving 0.01% for such projects is way more money than a small EU country giving the same %. And it's not like they'll vote the party out for a failed project (which happens in EU countries quite often).
Does China actually "force" things to be done? As far as I can tell, in the realm of technology at least, the government mostly just sets direction and then lets private capital do its thing, albeit without letting power concentrate in a way that subverts government.
When they want something to be done, it just gets done. I guess that is the point; I was working in China when one year there were 0 electric scooters; the next year, only. Gas scooters were forbidden overnight basically and that was that. Try doing that over here...
I loved it (still go on holiday), but the sentiment changed (during/after HK + Covid) and clients started to demand non-china produced electronics so we had to leave.
Yes, see Great Chinese Firewall. Providing a VPN access to civilians is a criminal offense in PRC.
This is not the same as forcing companies to use domestic software, but to illustrate the ability of Chinese government to implement draconian limitations in general.
The problem is , there are very few Europeans or EUans. There are French and Germans and Spanish etc; they all want their country first and sure open markets but their country first. That is how they vote (certainly these days). Most people do not feel EU unfortunately. Language is one thing: it is getting better but having language not unified (English, Spanish, Mandarin; pick one) is a massive and real issue keeping people's minds and efforts local instead of, at least EU wide. It is slowly getting better but the EU should made easier accessible and far higher funds for pan EU projects. Currently it is a serious pain to get access to EU funds and many just get eaten by the few massive consultancy corps who have dedicated teams going for any funding and tender in any locality and language.
As a EU citizen that moved to a different EU country: Yes please!
I constantly need a VPN as some services from my old country are geo-blocked. And when I forget to disable the VPN to my old country I can't visit certain sites from my current country. I need two phone numbers as some services require a phone number from the country they operate out of. I'm talking banking, classifieds, insurance, municipal. I can't use certain apps from my current country because I have to switch my account country but that disables apps from my old country.
And the best part, I can't vote for the national elections in my current country. Only for those in my old country. And it will be like that for the rest of my life. An example: I had to enable VPN to see the election results of my old country, the one I am eligible to vote in.
Please unify the EU so I don't have to deal with all of this.
Why should countries allow foreign influence - the voting in the most important elections in the country, by foreign citizens who didn't integrate enough to even get their citizenship?
Participating in local elections is often allowed.
In the case of these two countries dual citizenship is not allowed. So for the rest of my life I will not be able to vote here. This isn’t about “not integrating enough”.
If someone has been living and working in a country for a long time that should be enough to let them vote in national elections, regardless of what citizenship they have.
Not willing to change your citizenship is a sign of not integrating fully, in not being completely loyal to the country and to its citizens.
Imagine that both countries start a war between each other - who are you going to support? Whoever you choose does not matter, the fact remains that you would have to choose, legally speaking. Why should your current living country give the strongest possible leverage to an untegrated potential agent/supporter of the foreign country?
Highest privileges should be given to people who decided to be fully in, in both good and bad. You can't be allowed to only cherrypick the good stuff: "I want to vote, but I don't want to be drafted to be killed in a war".
Having people vote who don't live in the country has always struck me as weird. If you are some place else for say a year or even 10 years it seems a reasonable topic for debate but longer?? Never pay taxes either???
Often the rule is that one gets the vote in local elections after living for some time, but only citizens can vote in national elections (Parlament, President). This makes sense. If you want to fully participate in a society, you should integrate and become a citizen.
> Well written. I hope one day the united states of Europe is a real political entity, burying the stupidity that is fragmented national interests.
And I personally hope it won't. Seeing how things are going, I have no interest for my country to become a small province of the EU to be managed by some bureaucrats in Brussels who have never set foot in it.
Sharing intel and and resources why not? Becoming a vassal state of an EU federation no thanks.
The world is going back to zones of influence, and little fish will be eaten by big fishes. I'd rather that the big fish be the EU than Russia, even if it means giving up some national rights.
> The world is going back to zones of influence, and little fish will be eaten by big fishes
That has always been the case. I don't see how that would justify giving up our independence to become a province of a super state.
Secondly, using Russia a bogeyman to justify giving up our national rights is not a really convincing argument.
Russia hasn't been able to conquer a third of Ukraine in the last 3 years and it's economy is in shambles, yet we are supposed to believe that only a European super state can save us from it? That makes no sense.
But each to their own, those who want to give up their national rights, identities and shared cultural heritage should go ahead and integrate this super state and those who do not should be able to stay out of it.
I guess fundamentally we have a different view of what Europe should be.
It's more a risk management issue. A country that wants to do everything by itself (from food, to shovels, to cars, to computers) will not be the most efficient and will loose a lot. Before '90s communist countries were "proud" that everything was produced locally - except many things were breaking or bad quality or unavailable (not all, but many).
I would claim that today is a much better moment to switch than it was 20 years ago - much more open source options, so less overall costs.
I knew plenty of office workers managing just fine using OpenOffice 10-15 years ago.
Today people are much more reliant on real-time collaboration, polished cloud and mobile experiences. Fractionalized open source software has a harder time competing with this than file based boxed software workflows of the past.
Agree, Personally I consider these newer systems a curse as far as productivity goes, using a simple email/open-office combination never caused any issues with clients or suppliers in the last 20 years.
Coming from ex-USSR, I can assure you that shortages and shitty quality was not because of closed garden. But because of politics (and corruption) first. And lack of meritocratic natural selection.
Many factories were building crap or wrong stuff just because somebody high up in the Party found it convenient for some reason.
Yugoslavia didn't have centralized planning for products, one could even argue it had a meritocratic natural selection (sort of) and there still were shortages.
Maybe the EU as a whole could pull off being 'fully independent' but it would require way more collaboration between countries than what we currently have.
And, compared to USSR, Yugos production was much higher quality and shortages were much smaller.
EU could become fully independent by simply taxing imports. Designated collaboration between countries would just lead to inefficient central planning style stuff. Which is how many trans-Europe projects died
They’re just hedging that American politics will stop licking the car battery.