If you're getting tariffs anyway, why not just take the yoke of American business protection laws off your shoulders? Let French engineers sell jailbreaking hardware for iphones, or Romanian developers sell unlock keys for John Deere tractors.
Just look at the public opinion polls, EU citizens are ready to take on Americans and even the most pro-US countries are barely on the green in public opinion towards US. The problems is that the old guard, the establishment is fanatically pro-US and pro stability. Which means that the current politicians are in odds with what the public wants and eventually either the public will have to become pro-US again or the anti-US politicians will take stage. US Doing stuff like tariffs that can destabilize the stability folks can push things to much earlier.
Make the existence of their sovereignty a threat and all factions will stand united setting their differences aside (usually).
Like its one of the most effective ways to unite a complete nation against a cause, in this case its against America and its calling the wrath of not just the danish people but the whole EU as it feels not just a threat on Greeland but EU itself.
> The EU's ... Anti-Coercion Instrument, offers a range of punitive measures ... Among them are ... limits on intellectual property protections.
It is sold by Israeli engineers for at least a decade and mostly bought by law enforcement.
> Romanian developers sell unlock keys for John Deere tractors
That infrastructure exists since year 2000. Called chiptuning tools, but it is usually done by Italians or Swiss. And specifically for John Deere we had some Ukrainian company, I don't remember exact name.
Sure, but it's a crime to provide these tools to people or instruct them how to bypass controls, is it not?
Most regions do have these laws. Enforcement sometimes is lax, yes, but America and it's businesses do go after people internationally sort of at their pleasure.
Having a world where it's not illegal to understand & look at how the devices around us work is a bare minimum, imo, spiritually, for government to stop being in opposition to honor erectus, man, the tool maker. Letting us do things too lets us live up to our namesake of homo sapien, man the brain-ed one.
Furthermore one of HN users has this repo up https://github.com/bri3d/VW_Flash
It is doing what chip tunning companies are doing but in less polished package. If it is a crime, why is it still up?
Because that means we in the US may as well quasi-nationalize major European investments in the US like VW, Siemens, Saint-Gobains, OnSemi, NXP, Arm, and Nexperia and target European luxury cultural exports like Cognac (LVHM), Wine (LVMH), designer clothes (LVMH), designer purses (LVMH), and others like China did.
As a result, oligarchs like (eg.) Arnault (LVMH) would metaphorically slap Macron like they did on multiple occasions [0][1], and threaten to switch to supporting the RN. If they made Macron in 2017 [2], they can unmake him in 2026 [3].
It's the same story across Europe [4][5]. And any domestic capacity that could have remained within the EU is going to start leaving on January 27th [6].
Edit: can't reply
> how you get from IP law abrogation to 'quasi- nationalization'
IP Law protection is sacrosanct in any US trade deal, as we are a services exporter. If faced by actions like those mentioned above, we wouldn't be above retaliating.
This is why American tech companies successfully lobbied both the Biden and Trump administration to tamp down on any attempt on a Digital Services Tax by any country, such as with Canada [7] and the EU [8].
[0] - https://www.reuters.com/world/frances-richest-man-lvmhs-arna...
[1] - https://www.lemonde.fr/en/politics/article/2023/08/07/how-be...
[2] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-05/lvmh-s-ar...
[3] - https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/culture-et-idees/dossier/la...
[4] - https://www.ft.com/content/9b3d057c-16cc-4ab9-93bb-ed82c9ca5...
[5] - https://www.ft.com/content/cc06031c-f4a9-45db-ba3a-a3a23404b...
[6] - https://www.euractiv.com/news/exclusive-eu-india-trade-deal-...
[7] - https://www.canada.ca/en/department-finance/news/2025/06/can...
[8] - https://www.finance.senate.gov/chairmans-news/-wyden-and-cra...
I'm not quite sure how you get from IP law abrogation to 'quasi-nationalization', care to explain your reasoning here ?
I don't think americans quite understand how much the population has shifted from being pro-USA to anti-USA
in the space of a year, as the orange cretin has been throwing his wrecking ball around
we don't have the cancer that is fox news
some billionaire who makes fancy handbags saying he's going to support a different political party will have zero impact on election results
Arnault already has. He's the reason Élisabeth Borne is no longer the PM [0] and why the billionaire tax failed [1]. And his rival Bolloré is the reason why the RN is at the cusp of power [2]
> we don't have the cancer that is fox news
Instead you have Vivendi and Canal+ who are now owned by Bolloré [3], who has been using the Murdoch/Fox News strategy as well [4].
[0] - https://www.lemonde.fr/en/politics/article/2024/12/18/emmanu...
[1] - https://www.reuters.com/world/frances-richest-man-lvmhs-arna...
[2] - https://www.france24.com/en/france/20240627-how-the-french-m...
[3] - https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/culture-et-idees/dossier/la...
[4] - https://rsf.org/fr/derri%C3%A8re-la-campagne-de-d%C3%A9sinfo...
all before the US went completely off the rails
even the AfD are now distancing themselves from the US regime
Oligarchs like Bolloré continued to support, collaborate, and disseminate pro-Putin and pro-Russia media [0][1][2] despite Macron's avowed support for Ukraine and Putin going "full retard".
In other cases, oligarchs like Arnault have been personal friends with Trump since the 1980s [3] and have co-invested in his personal businesses for decades.
They'll continue to collaborate with Trump as well due to personal, ideological [4] and financial [5] ties.
> even the AfD are now distancing themselves from the US regime
Yet their backer Dröpfer, who has had a history of support Thiel projects like Vance [6] and continues to maintain capital relations with Thiel [7].
Even in Poland, Tusk came out against sending troops to Greenland [8] due to political pressure from the American funded Polish right [9].
The reality is, the US, China, Russia, and increasingly even India view European states as easily pliable [10]
[0] - https://www.lemonde.fr/politique/article/2025/03/08/les-medi...
[1] - https://www.lemonde.fr/politique/article/2025/03/11/attaque-...
[2] - https://www.streetpress.com/sujet/1741019147-bollore-embauch...
[3] - https://www.ilsole24ore.com/art/trump-e-arnault-antico-legam...
[4] - https://www.lemonde.fr/politique/article/2025/03/03/comment-...
[5] - https://www.lemonde.fr/planete/article/2025/03/14/l-administ...
[6] - https://www.ft.com/content/cb1cc264-84b9-40da-a484-ff897cd38...
[7] - https://www.sueddeutsche.de/projekte/artikel/politik/drohnen...
[8] - https://www.reuters.com/world/poland-will-not-send-soldiers-...
[9] - https://china-cee.eu/2026/01/15/poland-monthly-briefing-karo...
[10] - https://www.economist.com/china/2025/11/17/europe-sees-china...
As a Frenchman, I'm sure you are well aware of how in Vichy France, industry collaborated with the authoritarian regime via Comités d'organisation.
Humans are selfish and normal people cannot win against oligarchs. What else can we do.
> Do you have some script or something to format your sources
I do it by hand. It's fairly easy.
> I'm always too lazy to do it for mine
No worries. We've all been there.
Modern, expansive, DMCA-style anticircumvention regime that now dominates global law can be said to originate from the US.
(It was shaped and driven by US and other big business interests.)
Those kinds of laws are great for incumbent moats, much less for innovation. Compare eg. China. (or early USA or Japanese industrialization)
Try continuing this line of thought instead of stopping at one novel half-thought. Perhaps there is something to the western world order that's worth defending?
As an American I will argue against my government's unilateral global adventurism all day long. That certainly doesn't mean that expanding the behavior is progress.
I'm sure there are many Americans who would oppose this adventurism. I'm not sure whether that's because they believe its just a bad strategy to continue the status quo or because its just plainly a wrong way to treat other nations by force.
> That certainly doesn't mean that expanding the behavior is progress.
I don't mean it as progress. Its a regression but I hope there's a silver-lining at the end of all this for everyone.
You ascribed the label "fairest" as if the current state is closer to a desired ideal. This is a standard pattern of fascist propaganda - pointing out the longstanding normalized hypocrisy in the system in support of going backwards to where we didn't even try to live up to something better.
If you'd focused on what you see as the positive path forward, in spite of current events, then I wouldn't have written my comment.
Everyone is acknowledging the hypocrisy because it is hitting their bottom line this time.
I would like to see links to your opinions where you pointed to the "longstanding normalized hypocrisy in the systen" as a problem before the tariff nonsense.
Exactly this. One doesn't use the word "fair" to begin with. Being killed is decidedly not fair, period.
> I would like to see links to your opinions where you pointed to the "longstanding normalized hypocrisy in the systen" as a problem before the tariff nonsense.
Write a script go to back through my HN comments as far as you'd like? I don't have a blog or anything.
Off the top of my head - I was against the Iraq War, against Obama's drone assassinations, against intervention in Libya, against Israel's apartheid and genocide except for maybe two weeks after Oct 7 (they burned through their credibility that fast).
The main US international military action I've ever been in support of is helping Ukraine - it seems like a just defensive war of people who earnestly want liberalization and closer ties to the western sphere of influence. But even on that subject, the covert US meddling that set that stage for that conflict is still condemnable.
On a different but related topic, I've been against the surveillance industry ("big tech") from around when the term AJAX was coined.
Is there anything else you'd like my opinion on to show I'm not new to the subject?
That's a really convenient position to take.
Yes, that is maintaining the status quo. And yes, that is awfully convenient as an American. I'll admit those biases. But even as a critic of US foreign policy for basically my entire life, I do feel there is still something independently-valuable in the post-WWII international order where we at least tried to move beyond overt large-scale aggression.
Defining it as "west vs the rest" is too binary, even if you're coming from a place of being content to see the rest of the west get their comeuppance. Don't you think Gaza is worse off with this new more fair approach? Venezuela?
That's how I interpreted the original message anyway. I guess I still have hope, maybe foolishly, that people don't mean it literally.
So sure, maybe talking to friends I would find myself using the word "fair" that way as a punchline to a joke. But they'd know I'm not looking to normalize the new dynamic, rather than highlighting its perversity.
Then specifically here, OP doubled down on the argument rather than repudiating it. So I don't think it's really correct to call it sarcasm.
A tale as old as time, for those who have even the slightest education in history.
If anything, surely it's the Americans who are leeches, what with the fact that they're living off software exports and monopolies as opposed to production of actual useful goods?
Do you think we didn't invest in our defence? Here in Sweden we put in 5% of GDP until the Soviet Union dissolved. It was pro-US politicians like Carl Bildt, a man who associated with US intelligence, who reduced defence spending. We had nuclear weapons and refrained from assembling them on a US request in return for being under your nuclear umbrella.
The US has a very small value of total exports, and this lead me to assume that the goods it makes a lot of are not always competitive on the international market even though they sell for a great deal in the US.
Hegemony isn't charity. It's expensive. What the US gains is an invitation to exert power all over the world from bases and ports within countries playing a willing role in the US position. It gains the US dollar as the reserve currency and petro-currency of the world. In particular, without the world accepting the US dollar as the reserve currency, the US's ability to maintain a large budget deficit evaporates.
To gain this sort of power without invitation and strong alliances built on shared understanding and trust will cost the US much, much more in the longer term.
What has happened to the US...
They willed into existence the propaganda that had been bathing them since birth.
I understand that it was slowly normalized, and people don't realize this. But right now on an absolute scale, you have to be pure assholes. Similar thing happened in Hungary, but our government never went to this low as Fox News does.
Also looking at right wing pundits' Twitter, there are usually two types of tweets: non-whites making some illegal activities, or stupid; and whites are suppressed. It was funny when Charlie Kirk died and his Twitter account until that point for at least a month contained only, and seriously only these kind of tweets, and it was a question whether he was racist, or not... After his death, Musk definitely pushed the normalization, because my right wing account over there started to be really crazy with these kind of tweets.
Look up the pied piper "strategy" that Dems used to intentionally elevate Trump, exposed by wikileaks.
But even now, Fox News refused to sign on to the new Pentagon press pass requirements, and gave up their access.
Important things are going on. It's not good to mindlessly repeat tropes; we have to actually engage with the world as it is.
Refusing the Pentagon prrss requirements is a nothingburger when for the past 10-15 years it brainrotted a large cohort of the American population.
The first is the primary system. Most people inclined to see Trump as extra-bad were prohibited from voting in the Republican primaries, as they were voting in the Democratic primaries (or even worse, because they weren't registered Republicans in states without "open primaries").
The second is that everyone was basically bored and upset with mainstream status-quo politicians. The Republican party specifically had been growing and grooming the monster that would become Trumpism for decades on reactionary talk radio. They'd get people all riled up about immigration, globalism, racial tension, sellout politicians, etc. But then they'd cool them down enough to show up and vote for more status quo Republicans on a vague remnant feeling of Republicans being "better". If you want some discrete datapoints to see the progression of this monster manifesting in popular politics: Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul [0], the Tea Party.
Trump, the New York con artist Democrat, basically just channeled and took personal ownership of all of that reactionary tripe - "saying the quiet part out loud". So how could Rubio defend against that? Rubio was likely often a target of that reactionary talk radio for failing to take some hardline stance, in favor of the pragmatic American status quo.
And so here we are, an entire tribe of the country with no idea how the country actually functioned or what made us a world leader, frustrated and now overrunning the place as an angry mob hell bent on destroying anything they don't understand, which is everything.
[0] I myself was a Ron Paul supporter, but I have to be honest and admit that the energy behind him - rather than staying true to "right-Libertarianism" fundamentalism - transformed into the simplistic populist answers of the Tea Party.
Somebody should do a cost analysis of this and how it would impact S&P and the downstream effects of that as well and so on.
Social Media is a net negative for society, it being gone would save a lot on healthcare spending and productivity would shoot up
For LLMs there is also good enough available from Chinese and European Companies. But also here the value is questionable
all social media: Most have fediverse open source solutions available (mastodon/lemmy/pixelfed/loops.video & peertube)
Peertube's on the more expensive side because of the bandwidth which is why you don't see it deployed but using something like upcloud/ovh which provide unlimited egress/bandwidth (both European) is a good combo for peertube imo
every LLM: there are chinese open weights model which EU can host privately as well imo. Not every country should spend essentially trillions of dollars for which china's giving for free plus mistral models exist too if you think that any message contains china partiality (like c'mon if you are gonna ask tiannmen square, then go ask mistral instead of chinese models)
You really think the absence of social media would be a negative?
Don't think much of Europe is dependent on LLMs, yet.
https://blog.ecosia.org/launching-our-european-search-index/
But this is because of American dollar (formerly) being the de-facto currency which made the currency strong in value & this made investments especially within S&P and VC money(as more & more VC funded companies ended up on shelfs on S&P and nasdaq)
So the amount of money flowing in America was like a river and we went there and helped because I do feel like most Indian coders are more liberal (yes even if there have been times of racism)
But after ICE attacks & H1B hikes to a million $ and children of people not recieving citizenship, Indian Coders will prefer to stay in India and focus more on the startup culture within India (banagalore, gurgaon,ahmedabad etc.)
Indian Coding tests for colleges are hard and the premise of American dream was that Kids wouldn't have to study within the hyper competitive environment as well but at this point, we don't know if the kids would be able to stay safe in the first context as well. (I saw videos of ICE online where they targeted brown/black kids like wtf??)
I will be the first to admit that India's research programs are ass so much of our researchers in context of AI are in America or Europe but the ties between Europe are gonna get stronger & we might get ourselves better research programs in near future.
On the other hand China's research programs are excellent so they are able to dominate AI space in this context.
But rest assured, I do feel like India can dominate/play catch up.
India EU deal is also being signed (in the process) & India recently slashed any tax on angel investing and Indian startups are tax free for 2-3 years and India is opening up cities specifically for technology hubs. India also doesn't tax foreign income & India's startup culture is robust.
So what was the issue? Lack of funding. For an idea which could garner 1 million $ in America, we might only be able to get 100_000$ but as more and more countries and institutional investments move further from America (See you are thinking only Europe will move but the world is seeing not just Europe seeing America make aggressions towards another sovereign country)
I do like to dunk on my indian govt. but I do feel like they are very much understandable within this context and chill.
Now some people might think we might still use AWS,GCP etc. but rest be assured any new startups will probably evaluate Hetzner,OVH,scaleway (which in many cases are cheaper than these cloud providers as well in the first place) plus it gives easier EU connection in the future with laws like GDPR.
I predict India Estonia relations are gonna rise and we are gonna see a witness in EU companies built in Estonia (which supports e-residents and company formation without travelling/living there for around 200-300$) in the near future as well.
India has UPI which I will have to admit is such a beauty to use & transact and even street vendors got UPI which could've been unthinkable a decade ago. My brother was actually on a team in his college to try to create diplomatic relations between India and London to create UPI test pilots there and I do feel like UPI and SEPA integration could deeply financially involve the two alliances together.
Best of all is that India's much more neutral and non alignment policy than America & We have a policy (both at a national/state to even a more household idea) of peace and welcoming neighbours.
Did you know that USSR and China had bicker (two countries which were aligned together) and USA then decided to connect with China (effecitvely establishing free trade zones setting up factories) which has now made China grow into (I must admit even though its scary for the borders, a key global play)
You would be surprised by how quickly America and China integrated.
Now US and EU have a falling out and you see Indian tech with all factors just saying hello and winking at EU which has good capital funding. The subtext is probably clear but the fact of the matter is that India has some great potential (largest population which is unemployed, if you spin up enough colleges with good degrees and teach effectively and filter out the people interested in tech than those who aren't) Our tests aren't built in such a way tho but I do hope that India pivots in this context but overall, Its still pretty optimistic and India has been one of the fastest growing countries.
I don't think Europe will just survive without American tech, it might actually thrive given that I think Indian tech companies will focus on the home brand in home and with PPP, we will probably pricen things out less (comparatively to America) even for the American customers.
It's just not even about India. Of course I am biased here but I can try to provide as much facts on the details if you want because I have detailed extensively about this as its literally the intersection of every interest I have (geopolitics & tech)
Funny thing is that AI might actually help Indians more than people think too. We are more likely to be able to just record our speech in whatever we want and there are tools which are literally live which can understand context and just modify the accent to be better understood if accent struggles + we might see closed captions and other contexts as well & my brother works in Coding industry and AI agents are used extensively & America went from giving 100_000$ salaries to 200$ coding models (talking about the best of best CC here for dev context, we are also gonna witness China catch up in here and provide things for cheaper but great quality too, For context GLM's z ai is head to head with claude in many things and costs 10x less)
Once again I have my bias and feel free to discredit it if it inconveniences ya.
But atleast the philosophy I am moving with (and I hope india does too) is to keep a sharp focus on being the best & price effective too & get external funding within the country. We are non aligned and we don't want to fall into many controversies that much & we are just doing our own thing and I must admit, we are getting pretty good at it.
I presume, it's the lack of opposition and outrage. Americans letting it happen. It's evident, there is no waiting this out. Today it's Trump, tomorrow it's Vance or whatever lunatic. 38 trillion debt, but nothing to show for it, foreign assets abandoned, power projection crumbling and spread thin. Things are expected to get unstable. The US will never be trusted or even respected again, not any time soon.
not until the US fundamentally changes its political system such that this type of capture can't happen again
which short of a civil war, I can't see happening
Quite frankly, considering the wide diplomatic damage and collapsing influence, paired with its deep social, cultural and economic internal issues... I can totally see the US failing. They depend so much on power projection and economic influence, I don't see how they could possibly manage on their own. What will happen to the dollar if the US isn't guaranteeing stability anymore? The debt will explode and former allies may call on their stake. Due to the AI bubble, the American economy is worse than it looks. It may all come down together.
Is California going to hold the bag for Florida? What's being American other than an international embarrassment and a bully, at this point? How strong is the shared identity when it comes to it? With ICE and all, can they get over the differences in "opinion" about who's deserving human rights and who doesn't?
A similar instance of this is happening currently in the talks between EU/UK — The EU is demanding a „Farage“ clause. They want a guarantee that the damages are paid for in case Farage becomes prime minister and will roll back all treaties and trade deals and what not.
Which, to be fair, makes total sense.
"Quite frankly, considering the wide diplomatic damage and collapsing influence, paired with its deep social, cultural and economic internal issues... I can totally see the US failing"
The only thing that a new democrat president or any new president even the most extremely fixable can do is risk mitigation. Its like the breaking point of a rubber band, they have streched it far enough and now it wont go back no matter how much amounts of sorry
I don't know, I was highly pessimistic about Trump from the start but even I didn't expect this much, at this point, its game over. I used to chalk up some things to stupidity due to Occam's razor but when you combine all of these things together (especially with Epstein files), to me it doesn't feel like stupidity but malicious behaviour.
I was feeling when trump flipped off an american citizen to be weird and now this.
At this point, just give me a break from world politics as a non American, the news cycle is so fast and depressing, like moving the world a century back depressing
This is a good point and I don't know what the answer is. To be American is to be a citizen of Eternal Trumpistan. Trump is America and America is Trump at this point. They have no soft power on the world stage at all any more, they're largely detested, even by their own friends.
The USA had an important role to play in the rest of the 21st century and China could have been contained. But it's over now. Good job Americans. Good job you fucking morons.
A deal which was being on hold for atleast a decade.
It's just not the EU which is more willing to make deals but the rest of world (India got hit with 50% tarrifs) as well.
When Carlin asks about the last white people America bombed, he answers his own question: the Germans, and specifically notes they're "the only ones." But here's the key part of his argument: America didn't bomb Germany for moral reasons or because they were evil - we bombed them because "they were trying to cut in on our action. They wanted to dominate the world." His punchline: "Fuck that, that's our fucking job."
WTF Americans. We will do anything to just be chill with this crap. I don't know about you, but in school when I was lazy and waited for the last minute and did my work purely out of pressure I did not, in fact, do better work, and got worse outcomes (a worse grade than I normally got).
> "Things are going to be so much better when we needlessly make them shittier."
I don’t think Europe becoming more competitive would make things shittier at all. Why do you think that?
It might be good for Europe/the world, but it is not 'America first' or good for America.
Why would we want to inflict MORE competition on ourselves? We can easily create competition within our own country if that is a desirable outcome. To beat my analogy to death if a class is graded on a curve, I'm not recruiting the smartest people I know into it just because 'that will make me try/work harder'.
Also Europe houses the company that builds the worlds most complex machines, which depends on innovations made by hunderds of other companies. I worked at one of those companies.
If you think that this wouldn't happen, check out Germany's exports to Kazakstan and other neighbors of Russia after EU started sanctioning Russia. It's not just possible, it's commonplace.
Ah, that would indeed be entirely different. Not as quick to get going through.
The EU is being careful because the US are more powerful.
https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-us-trade-deal-on-hold-aft...
This effectively means the end of the 0 percent tariff on US products. There are also already calls in the EP to activate the Anti-Coercion Instrument:
The USA is in the process of systematically demolishing it's soft power around the world.
The EU is like a super tanker that takes a long time turning and, make no mistake, it is turning away from the USA.
The push back will be felt for years and decades.
The war in Ukraine illustrates very well the difference between perception and reality. Perception counts for deterrence.
It's already quite clear the US has virtually left NATO, at this point they wouldn't assist at all with a landgrab in the Baltics so I'm glad the EU defence treaty is more forceful about the level of aid/assistance than Article 5.
NATO at this point is virtually dead, there's no trust in the USA and the rhetoric about Greenland has cemented it. Hope the Canucks can join a defence pact with the EU, the Trump admin and its Project 2025 achieved what they wanted.
Currently that entails "large drone attacks" that kill two and injure dozens.
That's a little short of the full scale war Russia could wield in WWI and WWII.
This seems like quite the assumption.
It is generally a mistake to attempt telepathy/IP.
Russia not doing nearly as well as one might expect for an aging out core of a former superpower is not an equivilance with their target is kicking their arse.
The grind Russia is having to go through against Ukraine is an indicator of how it might fare against a full NATO (sans the US).
I am sorry to say that we (Europeans) increasingly do not believe that the US would help us.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_international_order
That's why they can kidnap Maduro, have the BBC censor the word "kidnapped" in their reporting on it. Have every European politician applaud it, point to Maduros case against him at the ICC and have Netanyahu fly over France. You can't do anything about Greenland, the same way you can't do anything when he comes for Norways state-owned extraction industry next. Liberals can scream hypocrisy tears all they want, this is the world they built. The empire is coming home.
Having Biden running at the start was the real issue.
What I cannot agree with, what I find completely unacceptable, is the idea that any dispute over candidate quality can justify splintering the anti-Trump coalition. If Bernie were the 2024 candidate, I assure you I would have even harsher words for any business types who ran around complaining about him.
It is a system that by it's design is more or less doomed to iterate into a Hotelling's law quagmire of two nose to nose opposing sides neither of which represents any kind of majority or popular view.
The US electoral system is well past due for a revamp, as recommended by it's founders who judged it "good enough" for a while ... until a despot appeared.
I see people so entrenched in American politics who cant believe that there can be independents atleast in how the current voting works
They probably need better voting mechanisms... but for which they are gonna have to vote and no republican or democrat is gonna propose this ( i really don't think so) and the people can probably only vote for republican or democrat (independents very few) in the current system...
So its doomed and this is the reason why. A lot of American politics in the end feels like this or that, not knowing the nuances and polarization (in some sense) from both parties while still bieng the same (corruption stemming from lobbyists)
It's just really sad to see because to me its like not just Trump being a hostile takeover (which he is) but rather that both parties and the system failed the people so that someone like trump could spin up in the first place and now this is even happening.
If I were to tell you even 2 years ago all the things happening in America, you would believe we are in a black mirror episode or Its a bad dream but its reality now & we (non Americans) just gotta deal with America impeaching on other countries sovereignity trying to buy things outright and all escalations and the final one remaining is war and they haven't put it off the table as well
Like, I just want to take a moment here man
Like what the fuck is happening.
Trump’s triumphant narrative is not working at home, either. A new CNN poll released Friday shows that fifty-eight percent of Americans believe that Trump’s first year in office has been a failure. Americans worry most about the economy, but concerns about democracy come in second. The numbers beyond that continue to be bad for Trump. Sixty-six percent of Americans think Trump doesn’t care about people like them. Fifty-three percent think he doesn’t have the stamina and sharpness to serve effectively as president.
Sixty-five percent of Americans say Trump is not someone they are proud to have as president.
See also: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-16-2026 etc.
A stronger China does mean more micro-agressions towards Asean countries in general (japan,south korea,India) and QUAD members (minus the united states) so it would be beneficial if the EU block could align itself with the members of Asean who still align with democratic ideals and similar.
This is probably why most countries officials (or people interested in geopolitics) are on the edge of their seats
It's unlikely (but possible) to see it flex as a global military powerhouse in the same manner as other great empires have done in the past - but it is probable that china will continue to extract "water resources" as food from Africa and elsewhere as it, the Saudi's, and others already do .. in China's case with the backing of its own mercanaries and with US mercanaries (they were hiring Erik Prince and Blackwater not so long ago).
This is a pattern the world has seen before - great powers come and go, meridans and global financial centres have moved before and will move again.
Yes, there has been an uneasy peace of sorts for 75 years or so, do be aware of and prepared for transitions.
So they are playing gentle with the US because it's the least bad choice right now.
No country in the world can do that. That's not a consequence of 'they let their own defenses and industry rot for decades'.
The EU still has a large military industrial base getting revitalised as we speak, it didn't rot, it simply didn't need to pump out massive amounts of gear until this point.
Poland, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Finland, Czechia, etc. all have different kinds of weapons manufacturers. You can even include the UK, and Norway in the mix even though they aren't in the EU.
If the EU had taken their responsibilities seriously given the MASSIVE THREAT next door, Ukraine would have had massive ordinance dumped on it in March 2022 and been free of Russians by Christmas.
The USA also has had it share of preventing the EU from getting involved.
They also have a long history of being able to ramp it up quickly if necessary.
Somehow when the US went to war with Russia, it ended up completing the conquest of Europe. Europe used to just be stagnant. Now it is stagnant and isolated from everywhere except the US, and the US treats it accordingly.
- ASML
- Nukes
- Large proportion of US bonds
- One of the wealthiest and most profitable markets in the world
- The world's largest trade network - currently aggressively expanding into LatAm with the Mercosur deal despite Trump's Monroe 2.0 ambitions.
Just a few off the the top of my head. There's plenty leverage there.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/techland/asml-gives-europe...
Although the articles also claims that "ASML has already started to reduce its dependence on American technology".
---
I don't follow, how exactly does the investment into a French AI startup reduce ASML's "dependence on American technology"? Is it a supply-chain dependence, or a revenue-making dependence?
Also FATCA compliance.
That being said, it's quite weird that these tariffs are imposed only on some EU countries (plus UK). How could that possibly work? EU companies can just export goods via other EU countries.
how I believe the tripwire would legally work: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46634146
Edit: see also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affair_of_Epidamnus#The_Atheni...
> The UK was in 1900, and remains today, a prosperous country where almost all citizens can live happy and fulfilling lives.
I would not at all categorize the UK like that. But I do agree that what makes a country "great" is not territorial claims.
He's dousing the US with gasoline, and fumbling around with matches. The people around him, knee deep in gas, are too afraid to take the matches from him.
In so many other countries, Trump would face a no confidence vote. Snap elections.
It was not easy.
> In so many other countries, Trump would face a no confidence vote. Snap elections.
US Congress could do many things. But Trump's party support him. Or fear his supporters would not vote for them in the next elections. Or fear worse.
Trump, like any politician, will sooner or later pass. How many institutional reforms will the United States have to undertake, and how long will it take before the world trusts them again?
We will now move to some form of "pure" EU-hosted K8s. No more AWS. I bet we will end up saving lots of money too.
Kubernetes was always the next step. We just didn't know the trigger would be the US going _this_ hostile.
Our marketing director chipped in and thinks it will be worth quite a lot if we can show/say that our service is completely independent of the US - but she wants to say it more diplomatically - exactly how is tbd. I disagree. We should just write it out loud and be proud about it. We'll see.
Perhaps: "We work and live in X land. We run all of services in X land, in facilities owned by people living in X land.
I would still like to understand why previous poster said the EU defense agreement was more robust, I am genuinely curious about what that agreement contains and how well it was respected in the past.
Easy enough to find[1]. Here[2] is a nice article which digs a bit deeper into how it might play out.
[1]: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/EN/legal-content/glossary/mutual-d... (links to the treaty section if you want the text verbatim)
[2]: https://www.politico.eu/article/5-things-to-know-about-the-e...
You started nitpicking...
Edit: I meant to write Austria but am so used to writing "German invasion of Poland" that that's what came out of the thumbs
It was clear very early on that Germany was being led by a violent bully, so past a certain point appeasement wasn't a blank check, but was instead intended to buy time to spin up war industries.
I expect Europe to distance itself from US. Let's see.
And now with huge hard right turn in europe all those “nationalists” will just bend over even more to get US lobby money and consulting contracts. They are already tied to national oligarchs so they welcome Trump and will likely sell off Ukraine to get “peace” and slowely dismantle EU. The aim is that every country will follow hungary and slovakia - corrupted, weak and undemocratic.
And the US are now being hated by Europeans. Supporting Donnie's latest lunacy is not a winning political move in EU. For example, France, Germany, and Sweden sent troops in Greenland to protect against US, all those US boosters in their governments be damned.
So I think what I wrote makes sense: EU will distance itself from US and will be able to protect itself against Russia. It helps EU that today's Russian military is not the one from 1943/44/45 - but it is the one from 1918 (corrupt and ineptly led).
Germany, UK, and France have continuously asked for all territory to be given back to the Ukraine-which is the opposite of wanting to carve up Ukraine. Another one of your posts that is contradicted by reality.
I guess as the situation will get more dire, western europe will have turn around but its been going on for what 4 years? They better do stuff. Because if hard right - likes of AfD gets into power there is high chance they will just leave Ukraine to Russia.
Their disapproval of Trump is simply calculation. They would have been hurt too much otherwise. Once most of europe will go their way (europe has huge hard right turn incoming) the rhetoric will change. It will be normalized, they will sell europe in name of anti-regulation, lack of innovation and “incompetence” of other eu states.
Venezuela was already a target, Panama was already conquered, and I'm sure Greenland was in plans already.
America is threatening Greenland for one reason: Trump wants to brag that he added Greenland to America.
Neither can the US. Imagine Europe supporting China in exchange for China backstabbing Russia - entire Ukraine and Belarus and maybe even Kaliningrad suddenly are up for grabs for EU while China gets Russian territories that it has historical claims to. Then China gets access to European technology (ASML and Airbus) which means that the US stops having massive technological advantage and suddenly the conquest of Taiwan starts being more realistic. China and Europe are too far away physically to come in direct conflict, especially as EU doesn't care about being a superpower.
This is unimaginable right now, but the more EU decouples from the US because of its unreliability, the more it might actually work out.
I'm surprised by this, but my general opposition to ethnic cleansing has been weakened by understanding how Russia uses Russian migration to subvert nations from within. Transnistria, an independent Russian dominated portion of Moldava, exists entirely because Russians moved there in large numbers with the support of the Russian government to give them an ethnic wedge. Were I in charge in Ukraine, Moldova, Romania, Poland or the Baltics, I would seriously consider expelling all ethnic Russians.
Think about it - in case shit hits the fan, would you rather cede some territory like Alaska or Guam, or would you start nuclear war which results in complete annihilation of all major US cities?
Well, Europe effectively has enemies on both sides right now.
The thing that makes me viscerally angry in my soul though is reading about Greenlanders who are now stocking up on food and/or making plans to leave their country if the worst case happens.
What the actual fuck. I can’t believe this is the reality we’re living in.
So, tariff away. As someone else said, it’s a badge of honour at this point.
Would you say the US government is acting with “caution” regarding a country (not their country) of 57,000 “stressed-out” people who don’t want to be acquired?
China as a country of course, what else?
"The U.S. has such a free hand in Greenland that it can pretty much do what it wants," said Mikkel Runge Olesen, a researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies in Copenhagen.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/07/world/europe/trump-greenl...
So what's the point? The guy in charge just can't ask nicely?
EDIT: I think the treaty is this one from 1951 https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/den001.asp
Security is not an actual concern (or we would, you know, station people there to provide security). Trump wants to be remembered, and adding a bunch of land is traditionally the way people he admires (like Putin) try to do that. It's all ego.
Therefore, the administration can simply re-classify any existing tariffs that are not justified for national security reasons and fall within this product mix.
Nevermind, I hope he changes his mind and set a 1000% instead 10 so we can broke relations with such a stupid government. USA is following steps that Germany already took and its citizens are responsible of its crimes.
* 'end' being anything from nature's course, to losing the support of his own inner core as they jostle for succession, upcoming midterms leading to impeachment...
David E. Sanger:
Why is ownership important here?
President Trump:
Because that’s what I feel is psychologically needed for success. I think that ownership gives you a thing that you can’t do, whether you’re talking about a lease or a treaty. Ownership gives you things and elements that you can’t get from just signing a document, that you can have a base.
Katie Rogers
Psychologically important to you or to the United States?
President Trump
Psychologically important for me. Now, maybe another president would feel differently, but so far I’ve been right about everything.
When we look back in a few years and ask the question: who actually got to pay for the Epstein crimes and coverups, we come to the surprising answer it is the Greenlandes and other innocent societies that got ripped apart by this maniac and his supporters.
This is about more oil mining, about Trump appeasing to his oil friends, considering Greenland very likely has a substantial quantity of it.
Rather these invasions appear to be the pet projects of neo-imperialist advisors in the government who see national growth as a zero sum game, a Starcraft-esque race for a finite set of resources where powerful countries can generate wealth only by using their power to steal from others. In Steven Miller's own words: "[The world] is governed by force, [is] governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time."
Instead he will soon be remembered as the worst US president ever - even after his first term he was already third-worst in most rankings and his second term is orders of magnitude worse.
He will be remembered as the president that destroyed the constitution, destroyed America's formidable power projection, the president that destroyed 60 year long alliances, the president that was unimaginably corrupt. I just hope that American school books will also contain the verdict.
Few months later he will throw a fit about something else and threaten tariffs…
I'm not sure I have the stomach to know how deep it really goes.
<Cuba has entered the chat...>
Not surprising given how Trump and the fascist MAGA crowd acts.
The UK are in a precarious spot though due to not being inside the EU single market and are forced to find their own way out with a much weaker hand.
Brexit forever and ever coming back to haunt the UK.
No. If Biden had attempted even a tenth (or Obama a hundredth) of what Trump has done, he’d be facing Nixon-level approbation and possibly real jail time.
They mention that its self evidence but there is genuine evidence for this as well (which report do you want?) and its a fact and not deeply personal swipes.
Your comment on the other hand feels like not addressing the main points of what the GP said and much more like a smokescreen to this.
If users, particularly green accounts, have opinions then they are encouraged to express them without snark directed toward the person they are replying to.
My comment addresses following the guidelines.
I do understand what you are trying to say but their point still stands in my opinion and if you want me to provide facts from real studies indicating what they mention as self evidence. I am more than happy to do so to have a more nuanced but still civil discussion.
but also the fact is that most of such rules kind of (soft break) during times of chaos as such and I do know that you understand it as well.
You could've also done a better job trying to explain why you feel its snarky as I had assumed that you are trying to show the rules in case any uncomfortable facts comes up (which I hope you aren't doing as my civil response might go to waste in that case)
> sounds like the conspiratorial ramblings of someone who desperately wants to seem in the know.
> But just ends up looking like a moron.
are tangentially directed towards ?
Do you believe that these are aligned with the HN guidelines?
I agree with you and want to say that we shouldn't call people morons for voting for trump (unless they are voting because of their biases towards a particular race in which we can agree that that's bad) but rather the fact to align them towards and pointing them to real facts and showing the facts that politics can change and its not as core identity and they should look at the facts (as evidenced by many surveys one of which you showed in another tangential post as a comment and I agree with that) and try to do something about it (this is the core part I believe so where the people should try to do something when they are impacted against)
I agree we shouldn't use uncivil comments to people we don't align with partially because that still raises the us vs them dynamic which should be stopped in the first place and comments blanket calling morons does feel like increasing that tension
They should've done a better job giving more facts and being more civil so yeah I can agree with that but that being said, I still believe that what they are saying has true merit and can and should be rephrased in better words for the masses to capture to liberate themselves from echo-chamber related noises
That frees me from having to choose between [flagging] and [dead]'ing your comments or reminding you of the guidelines.
If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
Since then, I reliably cannot find it coming from the frontpage (or 15 pages in). It's not flagged/dead, got quite a lot of upvotes, obviously, the topic is popular and highly relevant across industries as major inflection point for US-EU relations. Never noticed anything like that on HN.
However, the weird thing is, I somehow still observe new human participants finding their way in (through votes and comments).
So, HN is presumably heavily interfering with traffic and visibility on this one.
(Including ones one flagged submissions)
This post is ranked 7th in /active, now. Quickly cross-checking /active and /news, I've found no other post in /active not visible in /news. It went from 100 to 200 points, since I noticed the delisting. /active is an obscure list, I doubt, that's how many people find this post.
Whatever HN is doing, it seems to be completely intransparent and selective. Some A/B-ing, or geofencing. In any case, questionable and manipulative. Like they are trying to hide interference and engineer popularity/engagement to whatever end.
And you have to wonder, if this has anything to do with the fact this particular political move seems to have greatly backfired on every possible axis, apparently even within the conservative and MAGA base. May turn out as exceptionally stupid, especially before midterms. I've seen impeachment calls in /r/conservative (lol), and they are usually an extension of Trumps digestive system. Diplomacy with Europe is basically dead, France wants to trigger the EU's extortion clause and it's a sunday.
Maaaybe there is active damage control going on.
See, the weird thing is how quite many people found their way here after it got delisted.
This blog post has some information: https://drewdevault.com/2017/09/13/Analyzing-HN.html
It is? Dude, just check yourself, instead of sealioning?!
It's in /active, not frontpage or 15 pages in as stated above. It's not marked anything, which would also show next to the title of the post itself. So what's your fucking offense? If all of this is of no concern to you, why bother commenting? Yeah, thanks for pointing out I can write mails somewhere. I should also write my representative and call the embassy. And sorry, I haven't read every thread ever to know what Dang said at some point in the past. Well, what did he say about opaque visibility manipulation? How about leaving a message in respective threads?
I was just pointing out there is intransparent, weird censorship for this post. I don't care as much about the alleged reasons. People should be aware this is a covertly distorted discussion.
That means at the end of the day they will bitch and moan but eventually they will do what US tells them to do. Otherwise they'll get the same medicine that Libya, Iraq, etc etc has received for disobedience.
It's unlikely the US will do a Libya on Europe. I think we'll probably just wait for Krasnov to pass.