The sophistication of the F-35 cannot be debated. But the rest of the world doesn’t trust the US anymore, so it doesn’t matter how good it is - people would gladly explore a worse product because they see it as lower risk.
That’s the reality of where America is at the moment. There are many Americans on Hacker News (if not the majority) and naturally the merits of the product that America produces are being discussed, and its superiority is front and center.
This viewpoint is not relevant to the rest of the world. We don’t want the US’ stuff anymore and the only thing that can save that relationship is full software control. If America wants to make sales it needs to adjust to that expectation, or buyers are going elsewhere.
The argument is missing the forest for the trees - the relationship is more important than the product itself. The sooner that is acknowledged the more likely a political course correction is possible. Otherwise, sure, you might see a few short term F-35 sales conclude. But the purchasing will stop as soon as it can.
The vast majority of the comments I am reading on this site are not stating this. The vast majority, even the Americans, are agreeing that this is a bad decision. Unsure where you got this from.
Sure "tech" is hard to avoid but all the rest is still a massive loss for US companies and I suppose we'll see Europe and Asia working even hard to avoid American tech dependency now.
If political change is going to happen swiftly back to something more sane, it's going to be because of poor economic policy, and right now, that's looking like a given.
I wonder why this sentiment is not reflected in stock prices. It seems like major defense companies are close to ATH and keep growing. Not trying to argue, just wonder what is the reason for it.
1. The sale of planes like the F-35 is not just about the plane. It’s about the ability to be a nation with nuclear power by “renting” the US nuclear missile it can launch. People bought it mainly for that. The pilot and YouTuber ATE Chuet did a video talking about this if you want to dive into it.
2. The plane in itself is not as capable as say the Rafale. They tried to do way too many things with it. The vertical takeoff capability in particular made the plane worst in every other aspect and its own design is very questionable. A Dassault engineer talks about it in this video [1]
One problem remains if politics decide to scrap the F-35 deal in Germany:
While the Eurofighter was an alternative to the F-35, it is not certified to carry tactical nuclear weapons. The phased-out Tornado was the go to platform for this particular scenario.
Source: German Luftwaffe personel
The Gripen has advantages for Ukraine. It's a more rugged aircraft, with lower maintenance demands and lower operating cost. It can operate from very basic airstrips and roads. Saab boasts about this.[3] Their pitch mentions that servicing an aircraft between missions requires just one trained tech assisted by five other workers. The USAF likes to operate from big, well-equipped, secure air bases, and US aircraft tend to be designed for that environment.
The US has, in the past, tried to discourage other countries from buying the Gripen, to protect US manufacturers. That sales advantage just disappeared.
[1] https://min.news/en/military/a409faa4bc530b328f75ed6ccff23b7...
[2] https://euromaidanpress.com/2025/03/04/saab-ceo-pushes-for-s...
You can flag here, but the mainstream press has picked up the issue:
"Can the US switch off Europe’s weapons?"
https://www.ft.com/content/1503a69e-13e4-4ee8-9d05-b9ce1f7cc...
"Such is the concern that debate has turned to whether the US maintains secret so-called kill switches that would immobilise aircraft and weapons systems. While never proven, Richard Aboulafia, managing director at consultancy AeroDynamic Advisory, said: “If you postulate the existence of something that can be done with a little bit of software code, it exists.”
In practice, it may not even matter because of how already reliant advanced combat aircraft and other sophisticated weapons — such as anti-missile systems, advanced drones and early warning aircraft — are on US spare parts and software updates."
There you go, finally mainstream press and politicians are mentioning the kill switch.
Jet Fighters need a lot of maintenance, they are not like cars.
So a kill switch in software is not needed. If the US stops shipping parts, then it is only a matter of time before the Jet Fighters is an expensive paper weight.
Also core routers, interxions, sealines, Level 3 et al.
But retracting support is the nuclear option.
Figuratively, because you can probably one do it once, so you better pick a good reason for doing it.
And literally, because small European countries do now have to consider nukes.
A more realistic outcome is that French nukes will be stationed in other European countries. But France is also not willing to give up exclusive control over those nukes, and the next French government could very well be far-right, and thus become as unreliable as the current US government. It’s a difficult situation.
It wouldn't be all that surprising to see Poland and Finland doing atmospheric tests in the next few months. Given that Ukraine gave up their weapons for a totally vacuous security guarantee it would make sense for them to build bombs too. 2025 could be the year of global nuclear proliferation.
"US support to maintain UK's nuclear arsenal is in doubt (theguardian.com)"
Shouldn't be to hard for Europe to make the required pylons for the planes who don't have the ECIPS and for those that do, some of them might already have CJS installed.
It's a problem for sure, but it's a manageable one.
> But the Russian air force could sidestep the jamming by reprogramming their radars to operate at slightly different frequencies. Under Biden, the USAF team might’ve kept pace with Russian adaptation by constantly adjusting the AN/ALQ-131s own frequencies. Under Trump, Ukrainian airmen are stuck with pods whose programming may soon be out of date.
Some people were asked why this got flagged, by I think there's some justification for that given the fact that it's a misleading headline for an article editorializing another article, and that most people here used it as a jumping off point to talk about politics and not what was actually being discussed.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2025/03/07/france-to-t...
> U.S. President Donald Trump has halted U.S. aid to Ukraine, including vital support for the F-16s’ radar jammers.
> That could deprive the Ukrainian air force of its most important aerial countermeasures at a critical moment
That does sound really bad, I think.
Can’t the Ukrainees (?) reverse engineer the update format and make their own on the down-low?
Yes, I'm talking about the totalitarian governments of China and Russia.
https://news.liga.net/en/politics/news/china-appalled-by-tru...
The statement of the named Chinese official is either a psyop, or he is, in the parlance of intelligence agencies, "going native". I'm leaning towards the former hypothesis.
More reality - the Muslim world is organized and very wealthy in spots. By confrontational and arrogant (see above) posturing and actions by Westerns, it drives power alliances to the Muslim world. So then there is one third of the actual population of the entire world, embracing the Muslim world economically and politically.
Secondly and perhaps more importantly, the backdrop economically for all parties is substantially about Oil and Gas. In the USA, the Oil and Gas interests have gained the upper hand, and they know very well how to apply it. Oil and Gas industry has all the capital and all the ambition to expand, fortify and entrench for the next multiple decades. It is rarely mentioned in the provocative and divisive social "news" that fills the media in the West each day.
I'm only discussing Trump's behaviour and its effect on totalitarian governments, I don't have enough knowledge to discuss the rest of what you wrote.
I think the recent series of Trump's actions against Ukraine have failed to send a message to totalitarian governments that matches his own words. This has nothing to do with how much of the population Trump rules.
It could be framed as "cancel culture overruled the courts". The second Putin became the "literally Hitler" of the moment well anything could be done - even things they didn't do when actual Hitler was around.
This meant extra-judicial seizures including "preventive" seizures. No law was broken or sanction placed yet, but they're going to seize your assets now and figure out how to make it "legal" later on.
Even the Swiss - neutral during WW2 - abandoned over two centuries of neutrality and went along with the EU in this.
The message these countries sent was clear: if you ever oppose us, rule of law will not protect you.
Personally I think the reason the US got strong, especially economically, is because of stability, rule of law, global trade and economy of scale due to large enough population. Not because of specific incidents of screwing someone.
The biggest empire in the world paid for the US to re-tool its economy to produce arms for them. Later on the USA provided loans to continue that expansion.
Then Japan entered the war and it got personal.
Sure bretton-woods was a humiliation, but the Marshall plan was there to stop those humiliated allies from going communist.
Lots of critical things for the US is made exclusively in Europe.
Lots of medicin that people rely on daily would be unavailable if EU/US trade broke down completely.
About half of the US companies over a certain size run on ERP software from an European vendor. And it is not trivial at all to change that, even if they wanted to.
In the very Forbes article the OP's article cites it links to info about this F-16 reprogramming effort[1], showing it was collaboration between the US/Norway/Denmark and that the US electronic warfare team wasn't familiar with the system, yet within two weeks they say they managed to reprogram them to meet the initial deadline.
> The 68th EWS assembled a dedicated team comprised of a mixture of seasoned experts and bright, young engineers to approach the reprograming challenge. Their first task was to understand the unfamiliar EW system and how to reprogram it.
> Relying on data provided by Denmark and Norway, then adapting new processes and approaches to the usual process, the team was able to understand the system and start their work.
> After understanding the system, the 68th EWS deviated again from normal methods and sent its members overseas to a partner-nation lab to collaboratively develop and test the system alongside coalition teammates.
[1] https://www.dvidshub.net/news/479401/dominate-spectrum-350th...
Is this changed?
I am really amazed there are still almost half of the people able to twist reality to defend what is a direct attack against their own personal interests (they have proven already that other's interests do not matter for them). This sounds like self-flagellation seen from the outside.
Especially now that the U.S. government is also talking about not living up to its NATO obligations.
This is not gonna hurt the rest of the world. Defense is where the U.S. exports a lot. So cutting back on U.S. weaponry will only help other nations.
The same is true of Tech. Currently the tech industry is global, but expect it to become increasingly national. Considering this is one of the biggest and fastest growing industries in the U.S. and one of its biggest exports, again, this is only gonna hurt thenUS economy.
And the US’s dominance in this space is so high the rest of the world will simply push for open source at no loss to their own economies, since it’s only the US’s profit making will be hurt.
Nope, turns out that the American Empire is being dismantled by something else entirely. A subset of the populace that feels jealous of those with more and scared of social change, reacting to try to hurt their fellow country men? A megalomaniac leader who is somehow completely controlled by Russia? It's hard to get the full picture.
The two sort-of examples in Western history I can think of are Spain after Franco, and the UK in the 1930s. In Spain a monarch's left-shift was perhaps the deciding and surprising variable, and in the UK it was a powerful civil rights movement.
The US has neither, so I don't know what to expect. The two-party system also makes it very hard to bootstrap meaningful change, since both parties tend to try and chase the Overton window, but only one is really pushing to move it right now.
Most leftist political parties in Scandinavia and the Baltics manages to be be both pro-Palestine, pro-NATO, and pro-Ukraine. They don't seen any contradiction because there aren't any.
Why do some American leftists follow this 3rd worldist neo-Maoist thinking that Western civilization needs to burn down before you can get free healthcare and free college?
This is precisely how half of the US media characterized Barack Obama, who pioneered an even more impersonal style of American imperialism with drone warfare in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen and Syria.
You are saying this as a hypothetical that never happened, right?
The combined nominal GDP of California, Oregon, and Washington is approximately $4.1 trillion. If these three states were considered a single entity, their combined GDP would rank as the world’s fifth-largest economy.
To me it seems to be a bit like what the Böckenförde-Diktum points to, which is: "The liberal secularized state lives by prerequisites which it cannot guarantee itself."
Basically the modern capitalist secularized society is so void of deep human values and only emphasizing legality and profitability that it brings out a certain kind of elite. An elite which is decoupled from all real human connection and value leading to a thinking like this: https://edition.cnn.com/2025/03/05/politics/elon-musk-rogan-...
Well and now we have to cope with this. But until we understand that these elites are no accident but logical results of the system we foster, nothing will really change. Or better: until we accept that the reductionist approach to human society and value that this system is based on is flawed and act accordingly everything we do is basically just flex-taping it and waiting for the next escalation.
What you're saying here is "we're better than everyone else and everyone else disagrees with my positions because they envy how awesome we are".
I knew that democracy was fragile and that losing it could happen to all of us - except the US. somehow I believed their separation of powers would always work, that the pretence of freedoms would always be in the interest of Western oligarchs.
it's been a tough 6 weeks for me.
It's part honest desire to do something good with the position history has afforded the empire, and part self-serving rationalization, depending on who is doing the talking.
Yeah, about that... Analysis by Grok says "75-85% likelihood Trump is a Putin-compromised asset"
https://x.com/i/grok/share/WQepvCpIJl2EJ0F7tHNbLAhm6
Can you imagine if this were true?
Playing nice with foreign empires, economic protectionism, domestic military action, an "all or nothing" attitude towards foreign wars, taking chunks of our neighbors back yards, etc.
This isn't new at all. It's exactly what FDR had to overcome to build the American Empire.
At the end of the day, the problem isn't really Trump. The American Empire isn't going to end because its only exporting $300B of military might to the world instead of $600B, when no one else on the planet is scratching $50B (I made these numbers up as an illustration).
It might end because it seems like the media landscape has entirely striated the US population into two groups: One group who genuinely and deeply believes that these actions are necessary for the continuity of the US way of life, and another group who genuinely and deeply believes that these actions will destroy the US way of life. No one makes any good faith effort to understand the other side; even my suggestion that this division is the real threat will get downvoted by HackerNews' overwhelmingly leftist bubble. American political discourse is now dominated by people who cannot allow even a single imperfection in their coat of armor, Trump cannot possibly be wrong about anything, his supporters cannot admit they might not have known the implications of what they voted for, the left cannot possibly be wrong about any of their criticism of him, we're screaming past each other.
Interrogate your inner thought process right now; were you thinking "What side is this person on?"
Its so difficult to get the full picture of understanding of the other side. Trump is rich, egotistical, and doesn't listen to the counsel of others; but Russia is controlling him? Trump wants to reduce the federal debt levels of the United States; but is hellbent on spending anything to deport economically productive illegal immigrants? Trump is silencing the media and kicking them out of the white house; while streaming more than Pokimane, direct from the Oval Office, just rambling for hours a day? Trump supporters were hoodwinked and lied to; yet more than any President america has had for decades, Trump is doing exactly, to the letter, what he said he'd do on the campaign trail; its just that the left didn't believe him back then, because we're so used to Presidents that do nothing. America's children have the worst test scores in the G20, and cost the most to educate; we should continue what we're currently doing? America's healthcare outcomes are among the worst in the G20, and most expensive; we should continue the path we're currently walking?
We're in a crisis of understanding right now. We need more moderates. We need people who understand both sides of the coin, and can have a reasonable conversation about why the past 20 years hasn't worked for most Americans, and also why Trump's policies also won't fix things. My fear, however, is that we won't get that in 2028; instead we're just going to move into our camps further, with a leftist version of Trump v JD Vance, and we'll dig further down the hole of two sides that need each other to solve the problems we face, but refuse to work with one-another.
They even say this - Rubio said that we do not live in a unipolar world any more - a comment which attracted weirdly little notice.
Biden's approach assumed a unipolar world which did not exist. That's why the Ukraine war, from the American imperialist perspective, backfired.
The achilles heel of the American empire was, ironically, always profit and greed. If there is one thing that could be used to persuade America to let its industry rot it is profit and its industrial malaise is largely responsible for the ever-more-obvious decline in hard military power.
The good news - form my perspective - is that the GROWTH in the percentage of the workforce living off pensions is slowing dramatically and is now under REAL growth, which means working folks might feel like life is getting better again.
The reason people have complained that life hasn't gotten better for workers over the last 20 years is because nearly all growth has gone to more people being retired and the 0.1%.
If you keep the same growth, but the number of people retiring slows, there's a little more wiggle room with the pie.
I've seen these "people in party x categorically do y" comments a whole lot more recently, and it really feels like a net negative to political discourse. Based on the source I pointed to earlier, there seems to be a plurality of support for at least continuing aid to Ukraine, with only 30% believing we're sending too much. Us vs them mentality won't help people recognize and voice disapproval of decisions within their own party that they don't agree with; we need to concede that people may vote a candidate for a narrow set of reasons (thanks to the two-party system) and have political discourse that encourages disagreeing with certain of your own party's views.
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/02/14/americans...
if it was only half of the US population they want to hurt, it's also the rest of world, even the environment.
They're almost certainly wrong about the medicine, but their diagnosis isn't far off: globalization has not helped them as much as it's hurt them. Cheaper goods don't make up for dying towns.
Edit: Downvoting people who actually understand Trump voters and try to vocalize their needs and perspectives just silences the voices that could be used to shape a better platform for the Democrats next time. You won't win elections by fighting a straw man invented by your echo chamber.
Briefly, the parts of the map that voted for Trump are largely known as flyover country. To oversimplify things, the people in this area have been neglected and talked down to by some portion of the political apparatus as far back as they can remember.
In some cases, the vote for Trump wasn't meant to be anything more than punitive. To get a rise out of the politically aligned groups that can afford to fly over and - literally - look down on.
Pulling the cord with such little respect will not be forgotten. The USD will be lucky to still be the reserve currency in 5-10 years time. The rest of the world is likely to sanction the US at this rate. It is violating all of its agreements in bad faith.
What Ukrainians need most are the low-cost drones made of commercial parts from Asia which have made it hard for the Russians to fire artillery and supply the front. To produce these drones, they need cash. The Europeans have mastered the art of sending cash to Ukrainian vendors that serve actual battlefront needs, and doing so under strict supervision to prevent fraud. Europe can fill the gap the Us is leaving in military aid if they spend their cash right.
For the last two years, I have supported a US non-profit sending non-lethal aid to Ukraine, my CB if it used for drone defense and EW.
https://ukrainedefensefund.org/
Cheap is a technological frontier. If you operate on that frontier, you are able to trade less expensive pieces for more expensive pieces, pawns for queens. This is the cost-exchange ratio. All other things being equal, the country that best lowers the cost basis of its materiel will win a war of attrition; ie the other side exhausts its resources first. The US does not operate on the frontier of cheap because of bad incentives, namely cost-plus procurement.
Sounds like another reality distortion field.
Sometimes people are more interested in inflicting pain to others than to improve their own situation.
The actual Taiwanese people are breathing a sigh of relief that they are increasingly avoiding the "primrose path" of Ukraine: Catastrophic death and destruction based on lies, marginally enriching foreign countries and a corrupt domestic elite.
I'd rather not engage a hot war with China over it.
We're going to have enough on our plate keeping China out of the Caribbean and our half of the Pacific.
Buckle up.
https://www.independants-senat.fr/post/claude-malhuret-situa...
This is just HNers being late to the party.
Back in the 1990s, the US blocked sale of F-16s to Indonesia due to human rights concerns (eventually worked out).[0] Thailand has F-16s but more recently switched procurement to Swedish Gripens, partly to avoid reliance on a single combat aircraft supplier. Thailand also does bilateral training with PLAAF (Chinese Air Force), and their F-16s are apparently barred from participating. [1] There are rumors Egypt is switching from F-16s to Chinese J-10s, largely because the US refuses to sell Egypt modernizations and air-to-air missiles that would make them competitive against the Israeli Air Force.[2] The move away from the US as a combat aircraft supplier has been building steam for decades now. In the past there simply weren't many options competitive with the F-16 (both affordable and capable), but that's not the case in 2025.
> This is going to have a massive effect on the US economy, internal consumption will not save it.
I guess this really is the question: what is the expected overall quality of life for the average American when our continent-sized economy is largely functioning under conditions of autarky? The US's imports and exports are lower in 2023 than they were in 1913. Even in 1913 the US had the world's largest GDP (but not GDP/capita, was still much lower than the UK's at the time).
[0] https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA441694.pdf
[1] https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3279377/why-t...
[2] https://fmso.tradoc.army.mil/2024/egypt-is-rumored-to-have-s...
In normal peace-time procurement, there is usually significant locally made content required, plus much deeper training. I'd suspect that countries who acquire arms in that way are much more able to continue without US support.
When Iran was still in the US good graces, they bought a bunch of F14s. After their 1979 revolution, they kept operating their F14s. The US actually retired and destroyed all their F14s during the retirement to prevent spares from finding their way to Iran.
Or think about Boeing and Airbus stopping servicing the planes they sold to Russia. Other countries are still buying from them as if nothing happened.
[0] https://www.foxnews.com/story/venezuela-threatens-to-sell-f-...
At this very moment, Apple and Google have the ability to disable communications for billions of people. They can make computers and phones totally unusable. Not just some features but everything.
EU was trying to legislate around this risk by forcing companies to bring data on EU soil and open their platform to alternative providers. They always tried to be gentle with it as companies will claim that they are taken advantage of but as the things unfold at this pace I'm pretty sure that it EU and probably the rest of the world will be very heavy handed the moment there's an instance of US president or US tech oligarch decides to shut down group of people from their devices to teach them a lesson or to compel them into something like they did with military systems in Ukraine. I was afraid for years that people will be insulated into groups and the global community will be destroyed and now I feel like its happening.
Empires are not good.
> I am really amazed there are still almost half of the people able to twist reality to defend what is a direct attack against their own personal interests
Self-interest is a middle-class religion. I think that a lot of Americans think that what we are doing is morally wrong. I also think that the idea that everybody else is going to shun our military exports over ditching Ukraine is absolutely hilarious. Ukraine isn't paying for any of this, they don't even count as a customer. Everybody has been free at all times to buy from the UK, France, and Germany, and if they don't see the difference between themselves and Ukraine, they should make decisions about their futures accordingly.
I might remind them in passing that borrowing money from Germany to buy weapons from Germany was what brought Greece's economy down. Also I'd remind them, for what it's worth, that again they're partnering with Germany or France or the UK to invade Russia for unintelligible reasons.
I think we have passed the Rubicon for quite some time. There's no turning back now. The equilibrium will be found in another configuration.
The United States is still being taken for granted. And I have to laugh at the implication that the American economy will be ruined by the effect on the American arms industry when almost every American ally was neglecting their own military, instead taking American security guarantees for granted.
Sure there’s plenty about US policy and actions that have been normalized, but that doesn’t mean they should have been adopted. It doesn’t mean those things should persist without thought or challenge. Even going about that the wrong way is more productive
Yes, The System is fragile (as opposed to antifragile). But then let’s discuss that, not insist on the persistence of fragile-ness.
Is this really the case or only a long term problem? The F-35 is a totally different story.
Most people everywhere generally believe what their social reference group tells them to believe. Human nature, I guess.
Yes, but any country selling military hardware would do the same if it turned coats in a conflict.
They aren't thinking, really. If you look at the online comments from people who support these actions, you'll notice these characteristics: they are usually listing the same talking points, using the exact same collection of key words or "facts" (even in different languages, across different cultures) often strung together like chants, have a conspiratorial notion of a hidden puppeteer directing events or people they disapprove of, conversely they often have a messianic belief in their chosen prophet, and they are usually inexplicably very angry.
You will also notice that the vast majority of them very rapidly, and across cultural boundaries, start parroting the latest talking points. Talking points that didn't exist days before and weren't on anyone's minds.
It's a form of mass hysteria.
I disagree. Their interests matter greatly to them, they are just totally unequipped to understand who, and what, they are voting for.
Imperialism is not good, so this is welcome.
This means that no country will buy any US-supplied military equipment.
Trump has destroyed the trust in the US defense sector for years to come.
Absolutely irresponsible action.
Oh no! We lost our "shine" because we aren't the premier weapons dealer on the planet anymore!
> a massive effect on the US economy
You see the problem. You just ignore it. You pretend it's a secret virtue.
> end of an empire
Good. I'm absolutely tired of being a citizen of an "empire." Take your dusty imperialism and go away; please, your warmongering ways absolutely disgust me.
> a direct attack against their own personal interests
It's not. You want it to be for propaganda purposes. See what I mean about living in an empire? This is completely churlish and gross.
The U.S. has long leveraged this strategy to control governments. Do you think Saudi Arabia could use its American-made jets to attack Israel?
Now, Trump is pressuring Ukraine to start negotiation under these terms:
1. Allowing parts of Ukraine to be annexed,
2. Permanently blocking NATO membership, and
3. Signing a “mineral deal” to sell resources to the U.S. at cut-rate prices.
China will laugh all the way to the bank.
US needs to diversify and have an industrial policy. It also needs to rethink capitalism. Maybe new capitalism with US characteristics and more humanism thrown in. As to the defense industry it needs to shrink and be part of the industrial policy, not depend on warmongering to exist. You can have peace and a defiance industry without wars.
There's a lot of bloviating from the chattering class about cozying up to Russia, but I've yet to hear a cogent alternative. And no, I don't think "endlessly funding Ukraine to a forever stalemate" qualifies.
Project is so far along that Denmark is probably stuck with them.
"The weak are meat the strong do eat."
"Britain’s BAE Systems rose by 15% on Monday, Germany’s Rheinmetall gained 14%, France’s Thales increased 16% and Italy’s Leonardo was also up 16%. In London the surge in defence related shares helped to push the FTSE 100 to a new record high"
[0]: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/mar/03/european-de...
Spoiler alert: it did not end well for them.
Putin is setting another trap.
This is a tragedy for the free world, but it’s first and foremost a tragedy for the United States. [President Donald] Trump’s message is that being his ally serves no purpose, because he will not defend you, he will impose more tariffs on you than on his enemies, and he will threaten to seize your territories, while supporting the dictators who invade you.
I think there’s a fatal misconception among many Americans about where their prosperity comes from. They’re not special or exceptionally capable by any means. It comes from wielding tremendous economic and military power gently, preferring cooperation over conquest.
My concern is that the consequences of the current strategy are too far into the future to act as a sufficient deterrent. It’ll feel like it actually works for a time. But then eventually everyone hates you and adapts to exclude you.
I don’t understand the causality. Trump reaches a new low and the slogans about the benevolent past reaches a new, even more naive high.
> I think there’s a fatal misconception among many Americans about where their prosperity comes from. They’re not special or exceptionally capable by any means. It comes from wielding tremendous economic and military power gently, preferring cooperation over conquest.
For how many years has the US been not-at-war?
Don't kid yourself for one second into thinking that your safety and security are tied to some "Kumbaya good feeling" that random strangers have towards you. The stick may be silent most of the time, but everyone knows it's there.
The stick being silent only works if people believe you won't randomly start swinging it if they cooperate, and people trusting you not to swing wouldn't matter if you didn't have a stick.
Same with China. Get rich first then buy guns.
Except it might backfire if Europe understandably decides it must buy European.
"U.S. President Donald Trump complained Thursday that his country's decades-old security treaty with Japan is nonreciprocal, as he steps up pressure on allies to increase defense spending and buy more American products." [2]
It's about buying more American weapons.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-02-13/trump-tel...
[2] https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2025/03/fd3521d51353-upda...
E.g. he might be solely responsible for getting the Liberals reelected in Canada, something that a year ago you would have thought was absolutely impossible. But Trump is so deeply hated in Canada now that every time he mocks Trudeau it makes the Liberals more popular. Liberal support, which before Trump was elected was so low as to make a Conservative election win seem inevitable, has skyrocketed since Trump took office. It's now pretty much a dead heat, and that's before the Liberals have elected their new leader.
So I don't know, maybe he just really, really wanted the Liberals to get reelected and he pulled off the only way to make it happen. Maybe he felt sorry that Canadians seemed so internally divided, so he threatened to annex Canada to unite us.
Or maybe he's a moron that can't even understand cause and effect.
Is this really what the US wants?
Guess where our network gear vendors are? (Currently using mostly Arista, but also some Juniper core routers, used to have Cisco gear too).
Guess where our OS is being sold from? (Even when use Linux, much of it is RHEL).
We use VMWare products (yep, US), and Openshift (RHEL, also US).
We use F5 and A10 load balancers. Both US.
There's sooo much off-the-shelf hardware, software and firmware from the US; replacing one of them would be a big to huge integration project; replacing them all would be an endless nightmare, especially if the only alternative is from China. If there even is a practical alternative.
It is so shameful and disgusting.
I'm curious: Where can I read more about this? Which parties (and how many) are saying this? Is there any pushback from Merz?
Of course Europe always had some ability to defend itself, but I think it's clear that some of that ability was outsourced to the US(with reciprocal benefits for the US, but still). Yes, this introduces some redundancy into the Western sphere, but that's a good thing.
Is increasing traditional military spending the way to go in the 21st century? If the decision is left to military leaders,they might spend massive amounts of money preparing to fight yesterday's war.
If you set aside alarmist positions, it may very well possible that Russia has no interests in military conflict with rest of Europe beyond Ukraine.
In that case what is the best thing Europeans could do?
There is danger and risk in military over spending at this juncture, and Europe needs to be level headed about it.
So, no.
Calling anything "alarmist positions" now is just uninformed; Putin has said Russia wants the USSR territory back, their entire industry is now turned to produce weapons, their schools are "Putin-Jugend", they are currently invested in the first "great war" since WW2.
And the US isn't just getting out of Europe - they have gone full turncoat.
This is an unmitigated disaster for both US (citizens) and EU, and the EU is trying to manage what they can.
I think it’s much easier to just hunker down and appease the United States for four years and hope the next administrations are more merciful.
But I'm not surprised that our prime minister recently did not leave out the possiblity of hosting nukes on Danish territory.
Given the theatre in the US one could even say we'll need nukes to defend Greenland.
Hmm, the US welcome to liberate us from sour tax burden. I suspect the invading force will surrender when they see the liabilities :)
On a map, it looks to be bigger than all of North America, although in reality its only about 1/5th of the size of the US.
(although granted that's still a very large area that they probably see as 'up for grabs' since Denmark is small and far away and the US already have airbases there)
A new world order is being established and the US wouldn't be a leader in that world.
In country if 40 Million desperate people as educated as the Ukrainians there should be quite the talent pool to try to hack this.
https://bsky.app/profile/tatarigami.bsky.social/post/3ljxhgc... https://bsky.app/profile/tendar.bsky.social/post/3ljx3esi74k...
I can’t imagine what the internal struggles look like right now, but it definitely hasn’t dawned on most of the Trump people that whatever budgetary gains they make by randomly firing people will be offset - to put it mildly - by the effect fucking up the arms export market will have on the federal budget.
This happens all the time. "Russia did X." "The UK just did stupid thing Y." "Why are Germans suddenly authoritarian again?"
There are always lots of people who disagree with the actions of their government. Some governments -- the US government increasingly so -- punish dissent. Russians, for one, have almost no say over what their government does. Americans in general are not making these terrible decisions. Some cabal is, but even the Republicans, who have all the power at the moment, are mostly just knuckling under to decisions they know are terrible.
I know it's tempting to blame and hate people as nations, but I don't think it helps. In fact, it's how we got here in the first place: firebrands telling nitwits that everyone in Europe or New York City or wherever hates them.
This is just the language that is used to refer to the governments as well as the people/culture. It may help to presume that, in most cases, they’re referring to just the governments.
he did win the popular vote this time, unlike last.
True, but if Americans do not stop it, they own it.
Nobody cares much if you meant to make an accident, you should have been more careful - especially if you run away from the scene.
Every article I've seen parrots the same language and they all point back to this same article[1] as the source of the information, but the article itself provides no proof whatsoever or explanation.
This smells like propaganda. And it seems to be quite effective here. Before going for each other's throats on this maybe it would be better if we verified the facts.
[1]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2025/03/07/france-to-t...
Both sides have a lot to say about F-16s and it's both sides' interest to flog various angles to death.
I suspect you won't see real appraisals of the impact for a while yet, and maybe only after the war ends.
For additional context, here's an article from August about how the USAF helped to upgrade the F-16 electronic warfare capabilities: https://www.airandspaceforces.com/ukraine-f-16-electronic-wa...
The words "lose support" is carrying a lot of weight in this reporting.
I don't think US arms manufacturers should expect many future orders from the EU.
What Trump and MAGA people don't realize is that 11 carrier groups sailing around the seas alone are not that big a threat. Defence Cooperation Agreement (DCA) and Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) provide unsinkable airfields, supply depots for the US all over the world. They are massive power multiplier for the US military.
Surely my smartphone OEM would fight the entire American government before handing over my data.
Seriously, America, this is like Brexit but 1000x. A voluntary decision, taken with gusto, to chop off arms and legs and ears and fingers and whatnot, cut off the deadwood, be light and free, a lone vessel on the ocean of prosperity, free of the burden of the stupid foreigners who are the sole reason why everything was going wrong.
Hey, at least Ukraine can use their S-300 systems and Sukhois against their maker.
This was predictable though. The markets have already rewarded those who saw this coming.
“On 27 May 2006, President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair announced that "Both governments agree that the UK will have the ability to successfully operate, upgrade, employ, and maintain the Joint Strike Fighter such that the UK retains operational sovereignty over the aircraft." In December 2006, an agreement was signed which met the UK's demands for further participation, i.e., access to software source code and operational sovereignty. The agreement allows "an unbroken British chain of command" for operation of the aircraft.”
Again, not ideal, but the first F-35 have been delivered an need to be serviced and maintained until they can be replaced,... or maybe just until the next US election.
They are really busy right now.
This sums up what I've been thinking too - it looks like the USA is sick of being the center of the world and is stepping down from the position right now.
I guess this means it's China's moment. :/
So much winning, eh?
This kind of happened to the US.
"Body integrity identity disorder (BIID), or body integrity dysphoria, is a mental health condition where you feel that a limb or healthy body part shouldn’t be part of your body."
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/body-integrit...
I work in IT. We already have several customers projects (various profiles) that paused all their ongoing projects to _start_ migrating their servers and hosted services away from US-based/owned ones towards EU-based ones.
But that's going up in smoke rather quickly.
That's how the rest of the world has been doing business with America, Europe will get used to this too.
What would a president who was beholden to Russians do once elected? I mean -- what's the point of provoking Canada, of all countries? Canada as the 51st US state would be the new most populous state and would cause a huge change in US politics. Not to mention it could only arrive through conquest. So why even propose it if not merely to cause a rift?
That's like asking whether a child wants the sugar crash that will come after eating the candy bar. They're not able to see that far ahead. They'll only "get it" when their lives have been made significantly harder, and even then it's not likely they'll be able to attribute their misery to the administration's policies--they could very easily be convinced to blame some minority group or foreign nation.
After many long discussions, I can only conclude it less about the values of the supporters and more about their psychology.
His supporters want whatever he wants, as long as it means that the right people get bullied. There's not much deeper thought than that.
It's very sad to see people that I respected debase their own principles so that they can remain proud Trump supporters. Their identity appears tied to the decision, and I know only one person who had the principles to to respond to any of Trump's actions with "OK these people actually have no clue what they are doing." (Which was in response to their treatment of Zelensky in the Oval Office).
The point of all of this is the chaos and destruction of trust in the system. A concept in the early stages of the Russian revolution was that the stage had to be set for a “spark” to light the tinder of the proletariat. Here the Russians had RT, probably fed talking points and material to talk radio and podcast people. Had honeypots seducing strategic politicans and special interests (See Maria Butina and the NRA). Obviously wields influence over Trump.
Once that tinder has been set, the sparks some in the chaos. You have the religious weirdos who think dinosaurs are fake, Elon who believes he’s the protagonist in a sci-fi fantasy, some war-hawks pushing the Artic Dominance thing, and whatever fuckery the gang of oligarchs like Theil, etc have in mind.
I don't know anything about fighter jets but for a lot of other things, Trump could not have done a nicer thing for China. Whatever issues many countries had with China, they are not actively beating most of them in the face. Probably the best years for Xi these are going to be.
Bob.
they are doing what they should've been doing this whole time?
Extend this to other areas of commerce. If the US is no longer a reliable trade partner and its allies lessen their economic ties, is that a positive outcome for the US?
Yeah. What you said has zero relevance. It's not like US is taking away the jets. They are just reducing proactive support because it's a democracy and the people don't want the country to be on the leash of anyone.
It's time for Europe to do its own work on this. As a Finnish guy I know plenty of that, and don't view other European nations as acting very responsible having had their self defense capabilities and believability wither.
It doesn’t matter who owns these planes, the US have shown that they have the power to make them useless and that they cannot be trusted, and that is a dealbreaker when it comes to expensive & important equipment.
PS: I'm from and in Europe. I don't get why it is a good or logical thing that the US should be responsible for the majority of "Western" defense on our territory.
I see this as analogous. US is maybe reaping some short term benefits from flipping on its allies, but burning the bridges it very much relies on.
It also wants to forcibly grow competing defense contractors in Europe.
Group A and Group B build an economic partnership under consensual terms generally favourable to both over a long period of time.
At one point, Group A decides to withdraw due to real or perceived inequality. The timeframe of withdrawal is faster than entering, and is insufficient to unearth the complex network of roots that took generations to plant.
When the trunk is pulled, the pain is felt in vast numbers of small ways that add up. These roots are what contain the vast majority of the surface area after all.
Read some history (everything geopolitics after the second world war), you should ask yourself why for 76 years that's exactly what the US did (and perhaps why this is the first time that question occurred to you).
It's because the relationship between Europe and the US is not a mutually beneficial one, the US benefited the most from its power and influence over western Europe, and that doesn't just apply to Europe. NATO and the roughly 128 military bases in 58 different countries don't exist because the US somehow likes to subsidize the military spending of these countries for some altruistic purpose, it exists because it strengthens US influence across the world.
That's soft power, and if it fails, it means war (in total 123 military conflicts since WW2). It's a less bloody alternative to make sure the US gets what it wants because its the stronger party in any geopolitical relationship.
That's the logic behind it. The same logic applies to military aid it gives to Egypt and Israel (that Trump continues to give).
This is a common talking point, but I think it is totally wrong. The US didn't finance and organize Europe's defense.
They did spend money on their own defense forces which happen to be best positioned in Europe near the best interest as a superpower.
America spent money against their Russian adversary. This money was always well spent as far as I can see it.
I understand that Trump wants Zelenskyy to sign the minerals deal and that implicitly there’s security guarantees. Fine there’s at least a through line. However; by demonstrating that the US is willing to revoke access to this war material during an active shooting war over some ego thing they’re showing allies who’ve invested in the US military equipment that they’re vulnerable to suffer this same fate. Now Europe is turning hard away from US tech.
To some degree this is a good thing, I think, from USA’s POV. Trump has said it’s unfair USA spends the most on NATO and that member states should pay more (how many don’t hit the 2% target). However; the point was to spend their 2% GDP on American armaments. Now Europe is taking their demand and money and investing in domestic military equipment. Which will inevitably beg the question in the coming years if NATO, a US establishment, is to be made redundant?
This US administration can’t seem to have their cake and eat it too. They want money, demand for their goods, but every time they act out they drive away their business partners.
In any event, maybe NATO just needs go squeak by four years without an Article 5 invocation to be back to normal.
I don't think there are any "security guarantees". What could they be?
The "endgame" as far as I understand it: The US wants access to the minerals as a compensation for the money already spent and, perhaps, to restore some of the support currently put on hold (satellite data access). Once the Ukranian resistance is broken, the US and Russia will jointly dictate a peace, gradually install a Russia-friendly regime and split the profit between them. They will happily invite the EU to finance some of the rebuilding of Ukraine that is then mainly performed by US and Russian companies. The US furthermore hopes that by spearheading the lifting of sanctions it will get priority access to some beneficial deals with and within Russia itself.
That said, I don’t know what more Ukraine would want given the Budapest Memorandum already ties the USA, UK, and Russia to Ukraine’s defense. That’s proven to be a mixed success, as both USA, UK, and other countries have indeed stepped up for Ukraine’s defense.
Do the NATO agreements specify American armaments? Europe could have spent on European armaments and armies too, just chose not too because they didn't see a reason to.
Europe not buying F35 or whatever hurts US arms industry, but probably not the general strategic position of the US. There's even a credible argument (dont know how credible?) that these arms programs actually undermine security by investing crazy money in outdated / ineffective technology. The dumb part would be not learning from the Ukrainians how to fight a modern war.
US participation in NATO may be made redundant, but Europe's need for a credible collective defense agreement is not going away.
I don't think this is true at all, I think Trump wants Ukraine to be conquered and for Russia to win and for people to stop bothering him about any of it.
Trump blew up whatever nonsense minerals deal there was, and is actively sabotaging the Ukrainian defence efforts via this, and ending intelligence sharing, and apparently leaning on random American companies to stop them selling services to Ukraine, and by providing diplomatic cover and support to Russia.
people haven't seem to have caught on yet - the US has switched sides, it is now part of the Russia bloc.
Tell me it doesn't fit.
Edit: this story just dropped off the main page. Currently sitting at 85 points and 77 comments. It had position 2 or so, now it has position 79.
Who will want to buy American military technology, when the ability to employ it is at the whim of whoever wins the next election?
Especially as it's clear now than any alliance with the US is fragile at best, and could end overnight depending on which side of the bed Trump wakes up on.
Low cost, simple to operate, and specially designed to fight Russian aggression.
At the end of Trump’s term:
- Europe will still be using F-16s and F-35s
- The US will still be in NATO, and will still be actively committed to the alliance
- European defense spending will be massively higher, with manufacturing and supply chains that are far less easily disrupted
- The US forces deployed to Europe will still be there, but will be bolstered by more European troops
- Russia will have maintained its status as simultaneously a threat and a non-threat
- Whatever the outcome in Ukraine, suddenly, nobody will care. The media won’t talk about it, people will have largely forgotten, and some other controversy or distraction will be the story of the day.
All of which will nicely serve the broader long term interests of the United States.
As it always is, no matter who is in the White House.
This is already gone: "US ‘to cease all future military exercises in Europe’" https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/politics/2025/03/08/us-to-cea...
I'm sure the Ukrainians will care, and most of us in Europe will too.
In the middle to long term though, Europe should and will decouple from the US in defense and tech. US influence will be reduced. European almost made a fatal mistake with Galileo that the US wanted to kill [0] and I don't think they will make that mistake again. F-35, Starlink, air defense will be built by European companies.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_(satellite_navigation)
Also, stop flagging news articles simply because they are slightly anti-Trump.
What would he have done? How would he weaken the USA and strengthen Russia?
At this point, I don't see a difference between Trump + GOP (leaders) and actual traitors.
At the very least this entire 180 and the attempt to humiliate Zelensky in the White House is Trump wanting to enact some kind of revenge.
At the very worst him praising Putin, threatening to leave Nato, threatening other allies, moving troops out of Germany and into Hungary, et all just reeks of something more.. conspiracy theory or not it's pretty disgusting as someone looking in from the outside.
Also he adores Putin and Xi and is doing what he can to become like them. There's no conspiracy, Trump really is that much of a child.
[citation needed]
Then again, even if a global nuclear war broke out, some of his loyalists would still be convinced that Trump is playing some sort of 3D chess and that it's all going according to his masterful plan.
This is why the Democrats lost. All they care about is war in the Ukraine. Bernie Sanders supports the war too, but at least he says a few scraps from the table should go to US workers. But he is thrown aside. The Democrats were for the Ukraine war, Jill Stein and Trump were not, and Americans voted for this.
Americans voted for this, Trump is implementing it, and all the warmongers and war profiteers and neocons have left is some neocon press and downvotes here for the majority American opinion which screwy old Trump is implementing.
It's in the interest of the USA to cooperate and be part of defensive alliances. When USA goes to their wars and they ask for help, Europeans, Canadians and Australians oblige. If USA goes full isolationist, the rest of the world must develop their own nukes and their own forces. Goodbye to the dollar hegemony and the industrial military complex. USA fought hard with the USSR to achieve hegemony, and now that they got it they throw it away?
If that's what US wants, it's OK, but I believe some people don't fully understand the reality or the consequences. The US citizen don't pay taxes for Europe protection; Europe citizens pay taxes to buy american weapons.
Bulgaria, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Romania are in NATO. "Defensive alliance" means the US bankrolls and guarantees their security, there is no two way street with them, they can do nothing for us.
Finland is the most ridiculous case as Stalin could have easily swallowed it up in 1945 if it was in Russia's interest to do so, with little a peep from the West. Them joining NATO in 2023 is an absurdity. A military alliance which should have never existed in the first place - which both Taft and former VP Henry Wallace said in the 1940s.
> Goodbye to the dollar hegemony and the industrial military complex. Goodbye military industrial complex? Hallelujah!
> USA fought hard with the USSR to achieve hegemony
It's more absurd thinking. In 1917 Russia's economy was about Brazil's size. It was like an NFL team playing against a high school team for over a century. Russia barely even had influence over the communists in China.
In fact, it seems quite many others are asking the same questions - a US Senate Committee has just directly asked,
“is Trump a Russian asset”?
- via Forbes:
Also what does US gain if all countries are using f16?
Complete ignorant of strategy, international relations and power dynamics here.
Is it nagging anyone else that the "Forbes Analyst" gets called Aks, Aske and Ax in just 10 lines or it is just me?
I'm hoping that people eventually understand that "losing credibility" isn't a deterrent when the offending party is entrenched enough that they believe (correctly or not) that everyone will keep buying their stuff anyway.
But yeah, actual experts with access to hardware should validate if there is a kill switch and if replacement parts / weapons could be reverse engineered before buying any more.
People don't want the US to interfere with domestic politics in Ukraine, they want it to help the national government that has overwhelming support from the local populace fend off an invasion from a foreign nation. They're not in favor of overthrowing the government, they want to prevent that very thing from happening.
Those who disagree about this particular topic obviously deserve whatever they get here. That's why ad hominem rules do not apply to them, and there is no need to be civil when replying to Russian trolls such as them!!
If astroturfing were happening, it would show up as most anyone critical of the astroturf comments being downvoted and/or flagged into grey oblivion, while the astroturf brigade would present as an unusually large number of comments that all agree with each other.
Anyway, I have been keeping track for a small study I a doing on information warfare, and look forward to presenting my research on this. Am still gathering screenshots and other data. So far, I am in awe at the deep thinking and high level of civil discourse on display here. I really like that folks here show respect even to those who disagree.
If the point is to piss off every single one of the US' allies in an any% speedrun, the current administration seems to be doing a pretty bang-up job of this.
It's terrifying, though. The world's (current) superpower might have a big military and all, but actively signalling that you don't really need friends can only lead to a decrease in overall geopolitical stability, right?
[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/09/trump-pick-for...
At this point, Russia got maximum from this war. These rare minerals deal is just to distract and it's nothing compared to oil, manganese and soil Russia will capture.
Also, I'm struggling to find any reason for Zelensky to sign the deal – no protection, zero chance to get land back. Just thrown under the bus. EU is better option.
(and without the notorious US-made military equipment kill-switch ability - like with the F16s here)
And while we're at it, this time will be different: Instead of the membership criteria being anti-soviet communism, as in NATO, it should be effective Liberal Democracy - and - Freedom from Exceptionalist Exemptions, namely from the International Rule of Law. So, to be part,
1. Compulsory International Criminal Court membership and compliance - hence no exceptionalistic US, and no exceptionalistic Israel.
2. No "Illiberal Democracies": say, for example, composite of a minimum 0.67 score on the WJP Rule of Law Index and others: therefore no Orbanic Hungary, and no illiberal others like it. Poland, Slovakia, Italy: time to make some hard choices if you want in.
3. Democratic backsliding removes you rights in the Alliance, and, can proportionally lead to outright expulsion.
Not one more new military equipment purchase from the US, (and dispreference for other non-qualifying nations procurement). Member nations should use their - substantial - industrial capacity to equip themselves with indigenous military materiel.
Hey, it would be actually great for the economy!
Initially European scope, but bridges to a broader global scope (or even a secondary sister-Alliance) with open-ended partnerships with Canada, Australia, New Zeland, Japan, South Korea, and yes: Taiwan.
US and/or Israel want to join, if a more Democratic future selves? Simple: fully join the ICC, and meet the Alliance's full criteria as every other member. Same applies for prospective new members.
Sweden shows how principled positions can be maintained while building serious defense capabilities. Now multiply that model by Europe's combined industrial and technological base.
We just need the political will to execute - instead of just rolling over and wagging our tail to bullies.
One step could be to replace what Israel replaced, for more independance. Wouldn't buy their solution though, they sell bad pagers.
Trump has the soccer world cup in USA soon. Spectators could make it hell, boo the USA anthem at every game. I think they will.
Also it could explain this stuff which is hard otherwise.
Otherwise, I think what Trump has said about Ukraine is more or less what he believes and wants. He wants there to be peace, quickly, so that he can be known as a peace maker. He wants to be known as the person who can do the undoable. His henchmen repeat it endlessly - "only Donald Trump could bring peace here". He does not care about the details for Ukraine, and he doesn't really care about the details for Europe - he's wanted to cut loose from Europe since the first term.
In addition, there's probably quite a lot of personal apathy towards Zelensky specifically.
Finally it's possible that his China hawks are also shaping his base tendencies to try to deliver a Russia-China split. But I don't think that Trump really believes in that, it's just the people in his admin trying to make something of this situation. And I don't really believe that even a peace favourable to Putin can deliver the type of split that the China hawks might dream of, at least within this term.
That is also a probable explanation for what's happening, if you believe in UFOs and aliens.
Sorry, I mean no disrespect.
As a non-american and non-westerner, it's absolutely wild to see what people are willing to believe when it comes to Trump. Surely, there's a more rational and simple explanation for what's going on ?
Trump is constantly failing the five year old test. A child could tell you that this is the wrong thing to do.
Everyone who for voted for this scum should be blamed.
> the Biden Air Force was able to keep up with the Russian adaptation by constantly tweaking the AN/ALQ-131 frequencies, under Trump, Ukrainian pilots are not receiving updates, and the programs could soon become obsolete.
If so, title seems inflammatory. Not that I support the action, just saying it should be characterized accurately
You're right, probably both. Unfortunately the question alone makes HN have much less utility.
One area where this is especially of interest is everyone considering their dependency on U.S. products. If you live in a country under military threat, questions like what happens if the first strike against Canada involved a malicious Chrome or Windows update or holding back a patch for a vulnerability the NSA wants to exploit is quite an interesting problem.
> Most stories about politics, [...] unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon
The US killing trust in its export of arms is definitely a new phenomenon. It breaks with +80 years of policy.
All startups in SV will now have to consider if they will have an export market at all.
Which non-US companies would now like to be dependent on whatever export restrictions that Trump might make up in the future?
Ideally, "hacker news" is for people who have a hacker/engineer mindset. Look at the actual facts of the situation, not the flashy sales brochure.
Odds are that your second hypothesis is the correct one. You may wish to start by comparing what you think the current administration is doing with what it is actually doing.
You cannot count on Fox News to be accurate, they have never claimed to present "accurate" news.
You may be interested in the results of this study, where Fox viewers were paid to watch CNN for a month.
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/fox-news-study-compari...
MAGA is a particular brand of "the right" that is pretty clearly evil/dumb.
Ultimately USA is just 350 million people. Without its allies it's just another country. You can't bully half the world into "better deals" forever. Some countries might agree short-term out of desperation, but long term they'll throw you under the bus.
Consider how you would behave if your business partner changed the price +25% -25% every few days, threatened to cut you off if you don't do what he wants and insulted you randomly. You'd search for a reliable competition.
It seems like most folks in the comment section didn’t even read TFA.
Per TFA, this impacts F-16s NOT F-35s
Per TFA, the US is not actively “turning off” any piece of equipment, they are no longer providing updates (something with which we are all familiar.
Per TFA, this means that the US is no longer providing active support in a country-vs-country battle of electronic warfare. Which is what the title and article says, and very different from what most of you actually READ.
But this should absolutely worry F-35 operators.
Title it about F16s
> Per TFA, the US is not actively “turning off” any piece of equipment
From the article: "the Trump administration has cut off vital support for their [the F16s'] jamming capabilities"
What article are you reading?