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.
AWS, GCP and Azure looked unbeatable a month ago
but today, if you're a government official in the UK, Poland or Germany, would you be recommending AWS as your cloud provider?
absolutely not
they now have massive geopolitical risks associated with them due to being under the control of the increasingly unstable and authoritarian US regime that will sacrifice 80 years of foreign policy and soft power for a soundbite on fox news
They don't. Sovereign cloud in EU has been progressing for a few years now.
Such that some of your mentioned "unbeatable" hyperscalers have already been positioning (e.g. ceasable infrastructure), and some interesting new players on the block. As well as old benefiting from the related market positions: https://www.oracle.com/cloud/eu-sovereign-cloud/
they are not sovereign because they're running software developed by a company liable to coercion by the regime
Doesn't matter if it is a EU subsidiary. The US parent company must abide by US law and give US authorities the data.
EU citizens cannot trust their data in the hands of US companies. No matter if it is on servers in Europe hosted by European subsidiaries.
Unfortunately critical infrastructure providers flock to that, though there are some exceptions.
I think you underestimate what a capitalist system can accomplish, and how quickly.
It's a cute little badge that does very very little to address the real concerns.
Just last month, I had to change my dedicated server provider and was genuinely concerned about hosting my websites on US-based entities. Would Trump impose a tariff to antagonize my country and president? I don't have the resources to keep changing providers and migrating my services.
I ended up hosting locally.
It's even more absurd to suggest that this can be done in response to the US becoming more hostile than they are today. By the time they are more hostile, we're talking about open hostilities. It's only safe to assume that they will have exfiltrated all the data they are interested in, and then sabotaged or destroy as much of the hardware as possible (as can be done remotely), making the data center next to worthless. And prior to nationalization it was "their data-center", they were entirely within their "rights" to sabotage and destroy it.
The time to migrate away from data-centers to minimize geo political risk is now, not when the current data centers operators are actively trying to deal damage.
But long before that, I believe there will be other noticeable effects. As someone working in a medium sized European company, with substantial investments across private infrastructures, AWS, GCP and some Azure, I can testify to that since last couple of weeks the Public Cloud Exit strategies around having services being prepared is a very hot topic. This concerns both existing services preparations as well as enforcing standards and configurations for new services.
the enemy will never put you into a position where the rational thing to do is to launch your nukes (nationalise their data centres)
but they will push and push up against that line
the way to deal with this is gradual decoupling, ideally backed up by legislation and government subsidy
I see the point. But I would not underestimate the grit of Europeans when backed into a corner, like this
The USA a Europe had very friendly relations for decades, that has changed overnight.
All bets are off
Maybe Europe should open source a fighter jet and let the world compete on how they'll manufacture it.
The ability to scale advanced or exotic materials science at will was a cornerstone of why US weaponry is difficult to copy. People always underestimate this aspect but it is a major reason why manufacturing of state-of-the-art hardware is not fungible.
Heck, even Italian Agusta sold some of their platforms to a NATO ally with build/iterate/export permissions...
I'll not be able to leave some companies outright, but I'll be taking backups and reducing my reliance fast.
Now there are new ideas getting pushed (through influencers like Musk): that Ukraine "should be sanctioned", that Ukraine "should give their minerals to the US", that Ukraine "should give up their lands", that Zelensky "should resign" and finally that "US should leave NATO".
With such allies, you don't really need enemies.
https://www.abhafoundation.org/assets/books/html/1984/24.htm...
In fact, we discussed how the whole idea of an USA ex-president calling up a personal militia, trying a coup that could reboot a civil war, giving up half way, and not ending up in jail or even politically castrated was garbage fiction until 5 jan 2021.
By the 2008 attack on Georgia it was clear that there is no democratisation of Russia, but some people didn't want to believe it for a long time, not even after 2014 attack on Ukraine.
I don't know which is more wrong, the broad claim here or the claim that you are a liberal.
I mean, what you describe was generally the case...but between the fall of the USSR and the start of the new US-Russia Cold War around 1998-1999, with the belief that Russia was on a path that, while rocky, led to Western-friendly democracy with the right support.
From 1999-2014 (but generally declining through that period) engagement was viewed as useful, in part because Russia’s hostile turn was seen by some as curable with reassurance, but more because Russia was seen as a generally hostile generally but having useful alignments of interest in some parts of the world.
But by a decade ago, 2015? “Normalizing relations with Russia and disengaging with the rest of the world militarily” was certainly not a common, much less the dominant, American liberal position on foreign policy.
All Europe has to do is stop all local support for US bases and force all resupply to be done via the US military and the bases existing infra, not via ANY civilian infrastructure (no civilian airports, no civilian trucking, no civilian shipping). That's just one pain point in the USAs soft underbelly that we didn't have to worry about before because we had allies.
For example, 15% of every F35 is made in UK.
The president of peace who is not interested in war, but something much crueler, extortion and retribution which seems to be positioning the world for a real WW3. Not a Fox news theortical "Biden" inspired one.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy83r93l208o
"Poland announces military training plan for all men"
Trump talks about invading Canada or Greenland and people act like it is a joke. I don't think it is.
The US is in a position to completely dictate to Europe what they will or won't do, using Russia as a proxy for now. We are 48 days in. A couple of weeks ago I replied to someone suggesting the US could provide weapons to Russia with disbelief. I no longer consider that an impossible scenario. Europe stops buying F35s? Trump tells Europe that if they don't buy them he's going to sell them to Russia. I mean that's a relatively tame response compared to the options on the table.
Right now the only chance for Europe is to stop this madness in the US. We have this "take it down" act, the executive order to produce a report advising whether or not to declare martial law, the January 6th pardon of the Proud Boys who are now effectively a paramilitary force of thousands waiting for Trump to deploy. These are all familiar elements in history and I think we are in for a bloody, bloody summer. I think we're going to see government forces opening fire on protesters, martial law declared, and the implementation of Chinese style suppression and crackdown on dissent online. Maybe attempts to strip US citizens of their citizenship and "deport" them for good measure, anything to try to sow fear into average people to not step out of line. If the administration is successful in quashing the opposition and getting everyone to go back to work, Europe could easily next on the chopping block. Remember all the things Bannon said about the EU during the first administration.
Actually Europe would stop supplying components for the F-35's so the US would not be able to build any more or keep the ones they have working, let alone sell them to Russia. Russia would never buy them anyway, how could they trust that the next US president wouldn't pull the plug on spare parts? Would they trust that Trump is going to become dictator for life? (And what happens after he dies?) Russia has their own fighters that may not be quite as capable in some ways, but are good enough. Russia sells jet fighters themselves, they do not buy them.
>Europe is completely reliant on the US and US technology for defense right now, these systems took decades and trillions of dollars to build and refine, and an 800 billion EUR investment does not magically create a military industrial complex overnight.
Europe already has a large local military industrial complex. Half of what Ukraine has received has come from Europe. They would only have to expand what they have, not develop new technologies, except perhaps for a replacement for the Patriot missile system. They'd get a boost from converting their existing factories from building US weapons components to building EU weapons components as well.
I'm actually surprised that the US military industrial complex (MIC) is not screaming bloody murder about some of this. They stand to lose sales of replacement weapons for those sent to Ukraine, to lose support contracts for F-16's, and to lose a whole lot more if the US pulls out of NATO. Even if the US does not pull out of NATO, the NATO countries have already started investing in their own defense industries, which is going to severely cut into US MIC profits. They should be terrified.
Look up ASML, make America great again :)
I don't think there are any particular weapon types for which there is no qualified European alternative. Very many systems are however designed around some amount of American components. Even if there are locally produced, reasonably equivalent versions of those components, you can't just swap them out without major redesign work.
For example the license-manifactured jet engines used in the Saab 39 Gripen. If Trump/Musk pulls the plug on support for those, it will be an epic headache to rebuild around some other engine. Not quite designing a new plane from scratch, but very major rework.
Strategic bombers and fifth-generation multi-role aircraft are definitely missing. You could maybe convert A400Ms using a Rapid-Dragon style system into an adequate B-52/Tu-95/H-6N-like bomber, but it wouldn't be a modern penetration bomber like the B-1 and certainly not like the B-2 or B-21. The arguably best European fighter is the French 4.5+ gen Rafale. It's damn good but lacks the stealth of the F-22 and J-10, and the sensor fusion of the F-35.
Maybe also add heavy-lift helicopters, I don't think Europe produces anything in the class of the CH-53/CH-46 and definitely not the Mi-26, but a good-enough big heli is a much easier engineering problem compared to the other two aforementioned equipment categories.
You know the announcement that the US is supplying weapons to Russia and potentially even North Korea isn't that far off don't you?
I guess we’ve been lucky so far?
The protests will escalate in the summer, when the weather is warmer, more time has passed for awareness of what is happening to soak in, and students are on school break.
Let's not forget that American history is riddled with interventionist failures, from Afghanistan to Vietnam, and CIA-backed operations that destabilized the Middle East and Africa, leaving behind suffering and chaos.
Meanwhile, American corporations have shown blatant disregard for local laws, privacy, and security while exploiting loopholes to dodge taxes, further eroding global trust. Europe literally had to fine them millions, just to get them to start paying _minimum_ attention..
The recent instability in American and the division between its own citizens has exacerbated the issue and now with Trump, I believe it has reach new heights, even causing conflict with its (arguably) closest ally and loving neighbor: Canada.
As a Canadian, it saddens me to write this, because I have nothing but love for American people.
I think that in a few months, we will see the U.S. economy doing very well and somehow rebuilding its industrial base. In the long term, U.S. influence and wealth will make up a much smaller share of the world’s wealth than it does today.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
Note: it is my prediction at 70% (e.g. I think there is 70% that it will happen).
> US imports and exports will decrease over time.
So prices will rise and and government expenditures will fall. Where exactly will that growth come from?
Your labour market has been running at full employment for a while, 4-5% unemployment, there's no leftover hands to help with building up multiple industrial bases. Unless you want massive inflation when all these openings for the rebuilding of USA's industrial base, and need to pay a lot to absorb as much labour as possible to actually happen.
Not even considering in how much risk the investors of this new industrial base will be having to hedge against, who knows when Trump will increase tariffs on their inputs until everything rebuilds internally, financial hedging, oversupplying their warehouses to prepare for shocks, etc. are all quite expensive. Who will pay for it?
Unbelievable amount of damage done in just a month.
Honestly I expected it on his last term.
Oh, that's why Trump is trying to speed up TSMC to build chips on US soil! Now everything makes sense! Surely, TSMC will just do it! And the Chinese will wait for the transition period to finish before they attack the island!
This is absolutely intended to be sarcastic and demonstrate the absurdity that someone who cuts ties with allies would ever do anything to help the next one. And if that next one is threatened with war, it would ever feel comfortable to effectively destroy their only bargaining chip for assured US military help afterwards.
Man, all I know is this year isn't going to end well. For anyone.
Not seeing much restraint there.
I'd say the other way round - rebuilding everything that was outsourced will take a long time, so hard times are ahead. In the long term, I hope the USA will be less dependent on China.
But at the same time the way it was done completely destroyed the credibility of the USA as a reliable partner, both in trade as well as military relations. Countries will organize new treaties, and the USA will be a powerful player but with far less influence than before.
For the coal mines, maybe you could fund them through some museum budget?
Where the competition is less slanted, yes you see countries selecting Leopard for their MBT over Abrams (the US won't sell the advanced Abrams armor packages). But when it's F-35 vs. literally anything else, the competition is for second place. You only really choose something else when F-35 isn't an option at all. Threats aren't needed when you just have to do a fly-off.
Sure, technical capabilities are crucial, but don't political and economic factors significantly influence the adoption of the F-35? Factors like strengthening alliances, diplomatic influence, cost sharing, job creation, and export strategies.
My point is: you don't just buy a plane. You buy into an ecosystem where supply chains, political partnership, trade deals and long-term support are just as important. Take away some of that, and I'm sure for a lot of buyers the Typhoon or Gripen suddenly start looking a lot more attractive.
Obviously many countries have bought the F-35 because of some pressure from the US or as a way to buy protection. Nobody would do that again today.
