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It's not even just data stored on US servers. According to the CLOUD Act, any data stored by a US company, regardless of location, can be demanded by any authority in the US.

No sovereign nation should use US companies for data storage or processing. Period.

The attempts to shift to open source or non-US services are inevitably hobbled by US companies lobbying (read: bribing) politicians.

European countries aren’t known for strong privacy against the state. There are exceptions, but the EU’s “privacy rights” are almost exclusively against corporations.

American privacy, by contrast, is almost exclusively focused on state surveillance.

There are holes, the biggest being that foreigners on foreign soil have no privacy rights. Nor do the dead.

But I’m not impressed with the “rights” Europeans have against state surveillance.

Europeans aren’t willing to spend the money to do massive spy programs. Ok, fine. But that’s not the same as having civil liberties opposition.

Switzerland has a reputation, good and bad, for strong privacy. But that’s not the norm.

I read an article that dug into public GDPR cases, which is a surprisingly small set, and it explained they have had a near zero impact on the massive advertising and data broker industry. They mostly just have a large back log of legal cases against large US companies like Google which occasionally result in fines - but even that moves very very slowly and has little impact on their global business models. They do also occasionally charged a few smaller European companies a few grand for violations.

The key thing is that companies like Google and Meta run giant ad networks, there's many thousands of companies buying ads then collecting data in their own systems and reselling it.

The privacy issues of data retention on Google/Meta/etc social and SaaS platforms is something to care about but it is only a small piece of the puzzle of data privacy.

Ads will remain a major business for the foreseeable future as nobody is going to pay $5/m to use Instagram with no data collection.

> But I’m not impressed with the “rights” Europeans have against state surveillance.

Me neither. Lately the EU Commission came up with a plan to create an inventory of every single valuable items owned by every single EU citizen: from Magic The Gathering and Pokemon cards to jewelry/heirloom, paintings, gold and silver coins/bars, cryptocurrencies coins, watches, cars, boats, etc. Anything with some value: would go in the inventory. The European Parliament asked the question: "Can you guarantee us this will never ever be used as a basis to confiscate these items?" to which the European Commission answered: "No, we cannot guarantee that".

That's basically where we're at in the EU now.

Full commie style inventory of every single item with any value. And it's obvious that either taxation of confiscation is the end goal.

It's not passed yet as a law, but that's the kind of thing the EU Commission has its busy bees working on.

If I have to choose: as an EU citizen I'm not just a bit but much more comfortable with my data in the hands of US companies than EU ones. Now of course I'd prefer my data to be neither with Uncle Sam nor with the EU but that's not realistic.

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Yeah, because the US can't deal with their criminals my data privacy has to be violateb by a foreign, hostile government.

It's not clear on my end what scenario you're talking about here.

Are you talking about a potential situation where a Drugs-R-Us are using (for example) an American service, but directing them to store it on EU servers?

Or are you talking about Drugs-R-Us using a non-American service in general?

There has always been alternatives within the EU. In addition, law enforcement entities in the US and EU have always been cooperating.

The internet however is not limited to US and EU. Criminals have always been using services all over the globe.

You think EU does not have any law enforcement?

Interpol, European authorities, international mandates, police force cooperation,...

> Then they can put all their data in EU servers and not worry US authorities can look at it even with a valid warrant and a court order.

Ah, Americans. "Valid warrants and court orders" are national. Unless there are international agreements (of which there are many), whatever Bumf** PD, Oregon does should have no impact on what a Lithuanian server hosting company does. Of course, this is not how it works in real life and many non-Americans consider that abusive, and rightfully so.

FYI - this kind of extra-territoriality was what started WW1. An ethnic Serb Bosnian (Gavrilo Princip) shot the Austro-Hungarian heir apparent and as a result Austria-Hungary sent Serbia an ultimatum.

The ultimatum contained lots of harsh terms, which Serbia accepted, except for 1. The term they refused was to allow Austro-Hungarian police, prosecutors, judges to directly investigate, arrest, prosecute and imprison Gavrilo's possible collaborators. And the reason they refused that was because it's basically giving up sovereignty. Once you let another country send their police force investigate, arrest, prosecute and imprison whomever they want, they have full control. They can imprison your prime minister and you have no recourse except for starting a war.

So Serbia accepted that if it wanted to remain independent, it would have to accept fighting a war.

what we need to do is put some heavy tariffs on intercontinental packets.

What if it's for crimes like... a terminated pregnancy (considered a crime in many states)? Or the "Unamerican" act of calling Trump a cunt?

> Then they can put all their data in EU servers and not worry US authorities can look at it even with a valid warrant and a court order.

I have yet to see the EU ignore a valid judicial warrant except in the most extreme cases.

The point, however, is that you have to have a valid judicialwarrant and not some random-ass piece of paper generated by Adderall-addled sycophants of fascist South African nepobabies.

> No sovereign nation should use US companies for data storage or processing. Period.

So what is Europe supposed to do just stop pretending to be sovereign?

I am not sure if you meant to say what you said.

By many measures Europe is in fact pretending to be sovereign. I think it is what they are attempting to do at the moment, "stop pretending to be sovereign" and actually BE sovereign. At least that seems to be the claimed attempt.

If anyone is not sure why I would say that Europe is not sovereign, I will answer that question if you ask, but considering the current state of things and even just this discussion about data sovereignty and other related topics about using and deploying European technologies; I suspect most, if not all have a sense that Europe is in fact not sovereign... and that's without even pointing out huge elephants in the room like the 275 US military installations across Europe, and not even to touch on the fact that NATO is really just ** pulls curtain back ** SURPRISE! ... America, Europe Division.

The rest of NATO has more soldiers than US. Would US win? Maybe. But how many millions dead Americans? US lost in Afghanistan and there they just fought terrorists.

The US (like any country) struggles in asymmetrical/guerilla warfare. It always devolves to the famous statement by a US officer during the Vietnam war that “We had to destroy Ben Tre in order to save it.”

If the gloves were off then the equation would be different. A fight with the rest of NATO would be conventional warfare where the US has a giant advantage.

>The rest of NATO has more soldiers than US. Would US win?

what are you even talking about? nowhere is anybody on any side even hinting that the problem with NATO is it stops the EU from having a war with the US.

the problem with NATO is that it shares a burden and some feel they don't want to pay their obligations and some feel their share is too much, and then it was based around invasion of the territories of western and then middle europe, and ukraine came along and it's a serious threat to middle europe but its not covered by NATO.

275 US military installations across Europe that are not prepared or equipped to fight a conflict against the nation's military that host them.

US abducted the leader of a sovereign in a night without having any military installations in his country. Sovereignty is very brittle in this context. I am sure an unprepared installation can still be useful if need be. But in any case no need in sight. Europe is not sovereign because it’s not a nation, it’s a loose union with very limited actual integration outside the integration required to facilitate easier trading from strong industrial economies to their poor neighbours. There is nothing to be concerned about in this space for the US until someone in Europe (France or Germany) actually becomes more dangerous to Europe than the US.

I don't think GP was implying anything about US military fighting against Europe? Just that having another country's military all up inside your country is weird from a sovereignty perspective.

Similarly, in the 2000s, the US pushed back against the development of Galileo and preferred that Europe continue relying on GPS. That created tensions between the US and the EU.

Fighting data sovereignty is a losing battle for the US: data are too strategic to outsource, even to allies.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_(satellite_navigation)

At this stage tech companies should be pushing for very strong legislation that makes the US a bastion of data privacy to restore trust. But they are still pushing in the other direction.

No amount of legislation can stop subpoenas, wiretapping and other extrajudicial means the US has used for data surveillance since the inception of the Patriot Act. With data privacy increasingly becoming a critical matter of national security, strengthening data sovereignty laws and holding corporations accountable was always the way forward.

This is untrue. Subpoenas, wiretapping, and other extrajudicial means can be stopped by legislation that bans them. You can't say in one breath that legislation that enables it (Patriot Act) cannot be undone by more legislation. There are many hurdles required to produce the required legislation, which may not even be broadly supported by the public, but it isn't correct to say "no amount of legislation can stop existing legislation".

A bad legislation is comparatively difficult to revert than a good legislation

None of them want that. Meta actively hates you. Google doesn’t want data privacy. Neither does Apple, even if they aren’t overtly abusing it for advertising. Why would any of them push for more privacy? Their users largely don’t care (or they wouldn’t use those services in the first place).

also, just like galileo, this seem to be the correct path for europe to take.

> Fighting data sovereignty is a losing battle for the US: data are too strategic to outsource, even to allies.

Essentially it comes to this. The only way to force the issue is to make confrontational demands that will just lead to a hard split.

We are pivoting out of a huge number of US services at my job. I think windows, Google, PaloAltoNetworks and Aws will be the last we leave, but infoblox is out next year (that's part of my job right now), and old Cisco hardware will stop being replaced by new Cisco hardware in 6 months.

Are you replacing Cisco with Ericsson?

Palo is starting to require telemetry that sends realtime data on rulebase and hitcount from every firewall to increase support effectiveness.

You mean sent to palo with no opt out? That’s hard to believe.

I may have heard something different than what I can find in the docs right now. It wouldn't surprise me though.

It's difficult to imagine the US diplomats themselves have any real levers to pull here. The bridges have already been quite burned, and any attempt at a carrot or a stick may just speed up countries' data sovereignty initiates.

That is useful information to pursue data sovereignty even more.

I can’t imagine how any country would think the US is trustworthy enough to be the place where everyone stores their data. If companies cannot comply with data sovereignty laws then they shouldn’t exist at all. Personally, even as a US citizen, I’m hoping tech companies in Europe and Asia become independent enough to no longer be beholden to US interests. It’s clear that the era where any one country has global hegemony should end.

I do not trust anyone with my data. This is just my preference but every year I move further and further away from using the internet for anything other than making comments on this site and watching a few vloggers. In a few years I will not have more than 3 to 5 logins on anything and those will be value add and must be within driving distance. All critical services I use will require walking into a building in person.

If I could find a reputable construction company to build my underground home I would be a true troglodyte.

> If I could find a reputable construction company to build my underground home I would be a true troglodyte

If you have the resources you could always buy an existing underground structure and renovate. Like a missile silo. Or buy an already renovated one:

https://washingtonmissilebase.com/

I imagine upkeep is pretty expensive, probably needs a lot of HVAC, dehumidifying, pumping, etc to keep you from dying due to weird mold and stuff lol

I looked at many of those. Plenty of people are indeed upgrading silos. I looked at the cost to repair and overhaul these facilities but it would be just a little more to do it right on my property with high performance high pressure concrete and do it right in a place outside of the nuclear sponge. Only challenge is getting the right people up here but I will not give up on the idea.

> I do not trust anyone with my data.

Then why give it up in the first place? "Because you have to" is probably going to be the argument, but I don't buy that.

I'm glad you agree. It will take more than you or I to put a stop to this for people not yet on the internet but I will ask the US government to help.

Usually, when you want to have people not know who built what, you use an LLC.

THEN the LLC hires the subcontractors in stages without them knowing about each other.

Youd take about 5 years, but itd be about as secure as you could be if you lost trust in soceity.

It’s a trope in survivalist fiction. The contractors hired to build a bunker are often the first to attempt a breach once a crisis hits.

I somewhat agree but if I get contractors they will likely be coming from one or two states away. If the fecal matter is splattering the fan it is unlikely they will make it this far. I will also have the design reviewed by multiple third parties to identify security weaknesses and have those addressed as part of the contracts. And then of course there will be party poppers long before they get close.

This is all just fantasy of course as I have not yet found a highly rated company within a few states that have vast experience with upper-end UHPC 60K PSI which has to be done right the first time and I need to get the designs baked first addressing all the "Errm Achtuwallly" memes.

Other comments talk about society collapsing. I am totally fine with that. I will set up a copy of HN and make silly comments on it then as admin give myself points and reply using alternate accounts. Then I will start some contrarian arguments and then ragebait the contrarian personality. Another personality will step in and calm everything down. Then 48 hours later another alt will make a totally unrelated comment and just after that there will be spam for bitcoin in Uganda. All of this powered by the Sun and my farts. Some poor bastard will happen across this site on internet over CB radio.

Yes, everyone who works on the bunker will know about it; and all these billionaires are trying to build their survivalist camps but dont actually consider any of the easily/practically broken parts of society they implicitly rely on.

Realistically, society we know it won't survive if it dwindles to beneath a couple of millions.

yeah but also realistically if you have the money you don't build a bunker, you build a pseudo military installation, and ex military is where you find your "handymen" to take care of "housekeeping." of course, your ex military pals should be consulted regarding real estate because even here its location location location.

As we know it, yes, but society in general will last until there's less than 2 people per kilometer or so

It seems to me that major US cloud companies are using politics to try to get more value from non-US data, which I believe will push the EU (and others) to accelerate the move to their own alternatives. This is another move that seems to sacrifice longer-term trust (and profits) to boost near-term profits.

Depends how much compromising information they already have access to on the politicians concerned :-)

Please don't stop us having access to your information, else we will destroy you with the information we already hold :-)

I'm a US citizen and I hope more of the world decouples because I think a lot of our issues are due to a lack of competition.

Even as a US citizen ... I have started to decouple from US business that hold my data.

Same. I don't trust the US as much as the rest of the world does not trust them. They want control with little to offer for it. My data and compute is safer offshore at this time.

Control is one part of it. The other concerning part is leaks and sharing it with third parties.

The two are linked, sadly – data brokers are a good way to conduct mass profiling.

where did you move your blog to? hetzner?

But we have our own issues outside of the US.

They reality is the average person is between a rock and a hard place.

Major US tech businesses are making money with analytics/ads though, so they would never roll out end-to-end encryption in a serious way. At least outside the US, a lot of E2E-encrypted services are popping up (Proton, Zeitkapsl, etc.).

I don't trust the small number of E2E US services at all. E.g., some of the companies that were/are in PRISM seem to have very convenient 'accidental' backdoors. E.g. WhatsApp doing backups on Google Drive without encryption by default on Android or Apple doing iCloud backups of iMessage that are not E2E encrypted unless you enable ADP. And even if you are wise enough to enable E2E in both cases, most people that you communicate with don't, because they use the defaults, so it's game over anyway.

There were four other countries in Five Eyes, and right now the UK and Australia have laws on the books that are ostensibly worse than the Cloud Act in the US if you're a foreign company with data hosted in those countries. That includes me, an American, who uses the Australian email service Fastmail.

On the other hand Apple can no longer off ADP in the UK.[0]

That some businesses are not trustworthy seems less a concern for me, than that many governments would like to make all business insecure by design.

[0] https://support.apple.com/en-gb/122234

I mean Europe just fundamentally doesn't think privacy should apply to the government.

In the EU, we have been fighting a bitter battle against Chat Control X.Y for some time now.

That won't change until Ursula von der Leyen goes. Her nickname in Germany (since 2009) is Zensursula, because she attempted to build a pan-German firewall.

She failed in Germany, but she may yet succeed in the entire EU.

This. When I look at why my life sucks and is on hard difficulty mode, it's not because I use US tech instead of EU tech. Most people and companies have bigger economic challenges right now trying to keep the lights on, than data sovereignty and domestic alternatives. My company just had a 3rd round of layoffs and its wasn't due to lack of EU SW.

The lack of data sovereignty does have large geopolitical consequences though. Without data sovereignty of EU government services and businesses, the US can blackmail EU continuously or even worse, in the case of e.g. a conflict over Greenland, cause chaos by turning off access to US tech. So for the EU, tech sovereignty is a matter of life and death.

Also, a lot of crap in Western countries is caused by tech broligarchs enriching themselves in favor of workers en destroying democracy for tech feudalism. So if we can bring down their sales Tesla-style, I'm all in for it.

>Also, a lot of crap in Western countries is caused by tech broligarchs enriching themselves in favor of workers en destroying democracy for tech feudalism.

Not true. The reason my Col is off the charts, salary low and housing unaffordable is due to EU central bank printing too much money leaving us holding the bags, government's zoning laws making housing expensive and them importing millions of immigrants despite record unemployment numbers to put downward pressure on wages and upward pressure on housing. None of this is done by US tech bros, it's all done by EU rulers and elites.

US tech bros is an orthogonal issue that distracts from the core issues.

The quantity theory of money is trivially shown to be nonsense just by considering what happens to savings (i.e. nothing). You need to up your analysis if you want to truly understand.

What happened to savings in Zimbabwe when they printed trillions of dollars? Did that do anything to what those savings would buy?

Here is a discussion of Zimbabwe more complete that I'm likely to write in a comment on HN: https://billmitchell.org/blog/?p=3773

You've made accusations but have not brought arguments to support that my take on EU leaders and elites being the ones fucking us, our CoL and purchasing power, is wrong.

And savings absolutely did eventually get obliterated by excessive Covid money printing, what are you on about?

I've not made any accusations, nor do I think that the elites are not to blame. I said that "money printing" is not the problem here. The reason it's not the problem is because the quantity of money simply reflects savings. By focussing on "money printing", you're missing the actual problems. Arguably, that's the point, since the elite tend to do well when money is considered a scarce commodity.

Sure, spending might cause inflationary effects, but that's orthogonal to quantity (flows not stocks), but then economics is the science of confusing stocks with flows.

"Currency printing" and inflation are exactly the same thing.

> I think a lot of our issues are due to a lack of competition.

I think a lot of our issues are due to a lack of cooperation.

>Unipolar worlds are safer than Bipolar. Multipolar is extremely dangerous.

Do you want more people dead? I assume you didn't know how dangerous the world is without a hegemon..

The competition is China and the US is becoming so hysterical about it that I genuinely hope that the PLA is prepared for a nuclear first strike.

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I can’t imagine such a thing either, but here in Europe plenty of organisations continue planning on increasing their reliance and lock-in on American tech corps.

Which is perfectly fine (albeit perhaps stupid, I agree) for private enterprise. It's the public ones that need to shift first and foremost.

I mean the other options are China and Europe but honestly it's probably way safer as a EU/European citizen to have your data in the USA vs Europe.

The last thing I want is Europe in control of any of my data they just fundamentally don't think privacy from the government should exist. Pair that with the frankly appalling lack of free speech I wouldn't want to risk it.

You are free to put your data whereever you want. But from a national security perspective, it is critical that Europe can run vital, public services on software and infrastructure under their own control

Safer to have my data in the country that tries to manufacture a casus belli against my country than in my country? Safer to have my data in a country where I have no influence on what the legislature has to say on the handling of my data? Safer to have my data in a country with almost no privacy protection laws? Are we living in the same europe?

Such a missed opportunity. We could have been to data privacy and protection what Switzerland is to Banking.

But no, our cooperate oligarch overlords just can't keep their hands out of the piggy bank.

The swiss have a long tradition of discretion.

America has a long tradition of selling anything to the highest bidder. There was never any chance they were going to change.

Swiss? Where money laundering is basically a given?

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Didn't the US jail a guy for making a joke about Charlie Kirk? Didn't Don Lemon get arrested for protesting? How about the US government making it illegal to monitor ICE's activity?

As a Canadian, I can't think of anyone getting arrested for comments they made online, unless they are truly hate/violence/threats which would get anyone arrested in similar countries such as the US.

Just this week there was a white nationalist group protesting in Hamilton, and no one was arrested.

Europe is also not a country, it is a continent with many countries having different laws surrounding free speech.

> Europe...where they throw people in jail for social media posts? What do you think when they find out peoples' private convos?

When did this happen?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp3wkzgpjxvo

https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/uk-court-jails-man-racist-tweets-s...

https://www.dw.com/en/germany-greens-habeck-presses-charges-...

https://reclaimthenet.org/germany-online-speech-raids-politi...

I'm sure you can find more; those were just the lowest hanging fruit in 2 minutes of searching.

Context on the first one, she wasn't jailed for the post itself. She pleaded guilty (against her own legal advice apparently) to the crime of inciting racial hatred which carries a prison sentence.

There were other people also arrested at the time who did not plead guilty to this and were not charged.

Also she did call for a hotel filled with migrants to be set on fire while people were actively trying to do just that.

First link

> The wife of a Conservative councillor has been jailed for 31 months after calling for hotels housing asylum seekers to be set on fire.

Saying she was put in jail for social media posts is like saying a murderer was jailed for breathing air.

Meanwhile a US citizen was jailed for a meme quoting Trump after Kirk death.

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/12/17/politics/retired-cop-jail...

> Meanwhile a US citizen was jailed for a meme quoting Trump after Kirk death.

And that was wrong, too. Also newsworthy because it is so unusual.

> First link

I think it's probably legal under US jurisprudence, but fine, you can have that one. How about the guy who got raided for calling Robert Habeck a "professional moron"? Or the 170 other people raided in Germany for their online speech?

This is not what actually happened; see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46431000

So you folks think just because it's internet we should be able to insult and call for racial action? Maybe you think in real life that should be acceptable too?

I support free speech through any media, including all noncommercial speech not including:

  - defamation (with extra lenience for speech about public figures)
  - evidence of child sex abuse
  - incitement to imminent lawless action likely to cause disorder

For example, under the guise of fighting "hate speech", the EU has already used the DSA to censor disfavored political speech like, "I think that LGBTI ideology, gender ideology, transgender ideology are a big threat to Slovakia, just like corruption"[0].

And yes, people obviously have the right to insult their politicians. It's honestly perplexing to encounter someone defending an early morning house raid because the guy called a politician a "professional moron". Are you actually Robert Habeck??

[0]: https://judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/republicans-j... (p. 19)

Even here on HN insulting other posters gets you banned. Same in many US media. There's quite a discrepancy between what people claim and the reality on the field, why you think? Yes I'm aware I'm shifting focus from Europe to the US, but you know, who should cast the first stone...

It's 100% acceptable in real life that the whole concept of free speech. Seriously you can say shit like that all day every day in the USA and the cops probably won't even bother you.

Probably here lies the entire chasm between the US and Europe. In Europe insulting people on the street is not considered acceptable, also spreading neonazi propaganda and everything - ACLU or not (btw ACLU is also an US thing). So the US will jump at the idea of containing someone who publishes threats and insults, while the European will, well, try to contain them. I'm an European and call that respect for your co citizens, something not understandable for the US. Maybe that's also why social-democracy is here so well established, because we believe in a community, while the US advocates the person against everybody else. Just thinking loud.

Germany – Robert Habeck insult raids (2024–2025): Multiple citizens faced police raids, investigations, fines, or suspended sentences (jail risk if violated) for online posts calling Green politician Robert Habeck derogatory names like "idiot" or "moron," or sharing mocking memes, under Section 188 enhancing penalties for insulting politicians. https://www.dw.com/en/germany-greens-habeck-presses-charges-...

Germany – Friedrich Merz "Pinocchio" case (2025–2026): A pensioner faced criminal investigation (potential fine or jail under Section 188) for a Facebook post calling Chancellor Friedrich Merz "Pinocchio," prosecuted as an insult likely to impair a politician's public duties. https://www.facebook.com/60minutes/posts/dozens-of-police-te...

Germany – Ricarda Lang insult investigation (2024–2025): A citizen was investigated (potential fine/jail) for an online post calling politician Ricarda Lang "fat," charged as criminal insult under Section 185 protecting officials from derogatory remarks. https://nypost.com/2025/02/21/world-news/germans-cant-insult...

There are UK examples too

> Multiple citizens faced police raids, investigations, fines, or suspended sentences (jail risk if violated) for online posts calling Green politician Robert Habeck derogatory names like "idiot" or "moron," or sharing mocking memes [...]

The police raids were done because of the posted Nazi images, NOT because of the Habeck insults.

And here we are again, spreading lies right?

Robert Habeck was NOT arrested, he and his friends were investigated in the broader case of neo-nazi propaganda which they were spreading as well. Unless you consider neo-nazi freedom of speech, of course.

The Pinocchio case meant exactly one official letter sent to that guy, lol "arrests". The investigation was dropped and everybody criticized the investigation.

Ricarda Lang case was a request to the well-known network Gab to identify who insulted the politician, because in Germany insults are a crime. Maybe in the US insulting is a popular free speech pastime, but this is not US. Gab refused to identify the person and that was that.

So, again, I can see when we are spreading lies to support some ideology, but they are just that: lies.

I did not spread any lies

^ I did not say Robert Habeck was arrested

Re the other cases: in a good democracy, insulting politicians should not be a crime and there should be no investigations for someone insulting a politician.

That is your POV. I fear that democracy erodes when there's insults, belittling, ... instead of exchange of arguments and the contest of ideas. Because at some point insults turn into ugly actions. Whether it's Charlie Kirk or Melissa Hortman.

Where is that good democracy? This is not a rhetorical question.

> Unless you consider neo-nazi freedom of speech

I mean that's why it's called free speech. Probably the most famous case the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) fought for was to make sure Nazi's could hold a rally and march through Skokie, Illinois, USA an area famous for being predominantly Jewish.

>China...where you cannot criticize the CCP?

I'd be more worried about the data being stolen and resold even faster than elsewhere tbh. staying out of the way of the ccp as a random guy on the other end of the world should be doable.

Can you explain what happened to Larry Bushart?

> Or the US where even the mainstream media can challenge the president?

The same US that was banning reporters from the press secretary's office (this isn't even new to Trump, Clinton also tried to pull the same shit back in the day)? The one where people were denied their entry visas because of memes of JD Vance? Where the white house has an official list of "Media Offenders"[0]?

Also we can't really ignore the US actively turning extremely hostile and talking about annexing territory belonging to its ex-allies when discussing things like this. That by itself makes the case pretty obvious for anyone, because why would you do business with a nation led by a sub-zero IQ petulant dementia patient that actively threatens annexation?

> Europe...where they throw people in jail for social media posts?

People in some EU Countries (Because "Europe" is a continent that encompasses many different countries with different laws and regulations, including EU and non-EU ones with very different laws and regulations. Denmark and Hungary could not be further from one another in pretty much every regard, for example) have been arrested for posts on social media, but who has actually been jailed for this? Where does this claim even come from, is it just a weird hope from USA-ians so they can portray "Europe" as some sort of free speech hell where you can't say anything without big brother knocking on the door?

To be abundantly clear I don't support people even getting arrested for the dumb shit they say online, but no one's going to prison because of this (that I'm aware of anyway).

Here in the Netherlands, the favorite pass time of most people was shitting on Rutte when he was PM, not to mention Geert and the absolute clown show that his cabinet was. The King and royal family in general gets shit all the time from every side of the political spectrum. Nobody has even been arrested here (as far as I know anyways, could be wrong) for that kind of speech. Notice how I'm not quivering in fear of talking shit about my government?

[0] https://www.whitehouse.gov/mediabias/

Also the Reporters Without Borders ranking:

https://rsf.org/en/index

US 57th place, the first non-European country is at position 16 (New Zealand).

> Or the US where even the mainstream media can challenge the president?

Can you name the last time this actually had an effect on a Republican-leaning president?

There's a reason the acronym TACO exists - every time Trump goes after the really deep money the backlash forces him to change his tune. If only the tariffs disproportionately affected the rich then we would have been done with them within a week - instead the most effected individuals and companies just got carve outs.

> I’m hoping tech companies in Europe and Asia become independent enough to no longer be beholden to US interests

What tech companies?

At the end of the day, it's all about capital and IP.

American domiciled VCs and companies can outinvest just about any other competitor, and much of the core IP for vast swathes of critical next-gen technologies (high NA EUV, Foundation Models, Quantum Computing) is in the US, but American companies are fine transferring technology abroad (often with American government backing [3][4]) and moving jobs abroad.

China has a similar ecosystem but prefers to invest domestically and for IP to remain within China.

Meanwhile Japan, Taiwan, and Korea continue to back the US no matter what due to tensions with China and North Korea along with existing fixed asset investments in the US.

When companies like Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, and others are able to invest tens of billions of dollars in India [0], Poland [1], Israel [2], Portugal [5], Ireland [6], and others it makes them more open to collaborate with American capital and IP instead of dealing with alternatives who cannot deploy similar amounts of capital and transfer IP.

[0] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-12-11/india-dra...

[1] - https://www.gov.pl/web/primeminister/google-invests-billions...

[2] - https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/sjcwdmxxzg

[3] - https://www.state.gov/pax-silica

[4] - https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/20...

[5] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-11-11/microsoft...

[6] - https://www.irishtimes.com/business/2025/11/27/microsoft-has...

The world respected IP because the alternative was being tariffed. Now that we already are, the US can take it's IP laws and shove 'em for all I care.

Tariffs existed before a year ago, whether you knew about them or not.

The US bullying other countries to follow its interests has also existed before a year ago. People are just waking up to the idea that it's going to get worse and not better.

Obviously. What's your point? Do you mean to tell me nothing changed in how the US tariffs their imports?

No, I'm saying what you said was misleading at best, because tariffs already existed.

> What tech companies? At the end of the day, it's all about capital and IP.

It's not just about capital and IP. It's now about a halo of related things, like everyone using US payment networks - if the US unbanks you, even banks in your own country can't do business with you[1]. Or everyone using a US-based messaging platform (WhatsApp) because its been subsidised by a BigTech to cost $0, whereas text messages are still not free...

[1]: https://english.elpais.com/international/2025-12-28/the-comp...

>American domiciled VCs and companies can outinvest just about any other competitor,

Because every investor in the world put their money in the US. They knew the best companies and people would centralize around that hub.

When the US is a rogue, isolated idiocracy -- already true, but the world takes time to adapt to this new reality -- how much of that money do you think will flow to the US?

Much of the capital is US originated and domiciled.

American public pension funds alone hold $6 Trillion in AUM [0] and American endowment funds hold a little under $1 Trillion in AUM [1], and tend to be the LPs for most VC funds as most institutional investors follow the Yale Investment Model.

[0] - https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2025/2024-ann...

[1] - https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=73

>Much of the capital is US originated and domiciled.

Neither of your citations has any relevance to this at all. That endowments and pensions funds have money...what is your point? Ah, the old HN "look I've provided citations so upvote me, even if they don't support my contention".

Canadians alone hold almost $4 trillion dollars in US securities. Because the US was the centre of the capital universe. Just like we saw it as the centre of the media and music universe. Americans mistook the free world basically anointing the US into some confused notion that it was actually some earned accomplishment.

It's to highlight the depth of capital within the US.

When we in the VC/PE space raise a fund, we are investing other people's money. Most of that money is of American origin and American domiciled.

You do see some large players like in Canada and Europe, but even they are not similar in size to American pension funds and endowments, let alone other American institutional investors.

Edit: Can't reply

> these will often end up being national level and will look individually much smaller than the ones from the US, purely because the US has more people.

Absolutely! And that's what makes it so difficult for Europe to decouple from the US or China.

Most attempts at EU federalization are undermined by national level politicans as the keys to hard power (defense, foreign policy, FDI attraction) remain under the purview of individual European states, becuase push comes to shove, an American employer or fund can threaten to leave and that country's entire political apparatus will work to appease us at the expense of Brussels.

This is how Meta and Amazon have been able to neuter the GDPR thanks to Ireland [0] and Luxembourg [1] respectively.

Even India got the FTA with the EU by using the carrot on France [2] and Italy [3] and the stick on Germany [4].

Europe is in a very tough position because the incentives of a politician who wants to build their career in Brussels is different from one who wants to build their career in Berlin, Bucharest, or Bratislava.

[0] - https://www.euractiv.com/news/irish-privacy-regulator-picks-...

[1] - https://www.aboutamazon.eu/news/policy/amazon-leaders-meet-l...

[2] - https://www.reuters.com/world/india/india-signs-74-billion-d...

[3] - https://www.lagazzettamarittima.it/2025/10/30/rixi-in-india-...

[4] - https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/volksw...

> You do see some large players like in Canada and Europe, but even they are not similar in size to American pension funds and endowments, let alone other American institutional investors.

Look, I haven't dug into this, but if one wants a fair comparison, then you need to account for the size of an economy. If 330mn people need pensions, then you'll obviously see much larger pension funds. If 400mn people across 27 countries want pensions, these will often end up being national level and will look individually much smaller than the ones from the US, purely because the US has more people.

Unfortunately most European countries don't pension funds. It's a pity...

(Anyway to put another argument: the US can outflow. Why should people invest to a Trumpland?)

> Unfortunately most European countries don't pension funds. It's a pity...

Many Europeans prefer bank deposits to investment in markets, that's true. I assure you though, there are lots and lots of pension funds in Europe, as well as many, many insurance companies who represent similar capital profiles.

Which EU countries don’t have any pension funds?

> Neither of your citations has any relevance to this at all.

it's a common pattern in GPs comments

pretty certain he just asks the "AI" for citations on whatever he's written

(for a VC he sure has a lot of time to waste shit-posting on the internet)

> When the US is a rogue, isolated idiocracy

This reads like wishful thinking from a butthurt European. I am not a fan of many of Trump's policies and I think ex-US investor sentiment has definitely soured. But it's not like the USA is now DPRK.

> how much of that money do you think will flow to the US?

If there's one thing you can be sure of about aggregate investor behavior, it's that investors seek good risk-adjusted returns regardless of any moral or political objections.

So long as capital flows remain unimpeded, property rights are respected, and US companies have good expected future returns, investors' money will continue to flow in to the US.

> But it's not like the USA is now DPRK.

I'd say the perception is probably worse

kim is simply not a threat

he also hasn't threatened to invade us, and he's not kidnapped any foreign leaders (recently)

Exactly. These guys have blinders.

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> This. Companies like Nvidia, Google et-al and investors, don't care about and won't leave the US over morals, they'll go and stay where the money is good as long as it lasts. Trying to lecture them about morals from the EU won't change this. Otherwise they wouldn't be using slave labor in Congo and sweatshop labor in China.

Nobody will leave over morals (well except possibly the Norweigan sovereign wealth fund), but it's worth noting that for non-dollar investors, the US markets have basically been flat since the start of 2025, because the dollar has declined.

It's entirely possible that the US no longer takes in more global capital, if this continues. It's very unlikely that all the foreign investors will leave quicker, but it's much more likely that they'll leave as they sell their investments over time.

If investors leave, where will they go though? Most of EU economy isn't doing amazing right now either, with the economies of France and Germany being propped up on life support by government spending, and there's more political turmoil at the horizon. Asia?

Large European pension funds are rapidly decreasing (as rapid as a pension fund can without causing too much panic, devaluing remaining assets). E.g. some large pension funds have removed 1/4th of their investments in the US in less than a year. That is pretty unheard of.

(Most of them are reinvesting in Europe.)

>some large pension funds have removed 1/4th of their investments in the US in less than a year.

I saw the news about the danish fund dropping some of their US investment and on closer inspection, in absolute terms it was a drop in the bucket. Mostly an optics maneuvre.

Again, non dollar investors are flat since start of 2025. This isn't just politicisation (although that's part of it), it's that other markets are doing better than the US for now.

This will be a slow process, but the direction seems pretty clear (I fully expect to see a major economy introduce capital controls within the next twenty years).

> it's that other markets are doing better than the US for now.

Which? US currently has a rocky status due to Trump's interference, but Trump will pass while the likes of EU and Japan won't be able to fix their structural issues of low birthrates, crazy high debt welfare speeding, etc.

> Which? US currently has a rocky status due to Trump's interference

In non-dollar terms, the US markets have been flat since 2025 (so basically since "liberation day").

> fix their structural issues of low birthrates,

This is a problem basically everywhere. It's definitely worse in Europe than in the US, but the US is on the same trajectory (modulo immigration).

> crazy high debt welfare speeding

Where exactly are you talking about? The US government has been spending more than it takes in for the past decade at least, mostly on entitlements (i.e. welfare spending).

A single Dutch pension fund that was much larger (ABP, IIRC one or two orders of magnitude) retracted 1/4th (10 billion). But they only found out after journalists checked out a year report. Most pension funds just don't talk about it, because (1) they do not want the value of their assets drop too much as long as they haven't moved them; and (2) they do not want to draw the ire of the Trump administration in the meanwhile.

So what you're saying is, we can buy the dip?

> the economies of France and Germany being propped up on life support by government spending

The US government is running (and has been for at least a decade now) a substantial deficit, which is basically propping up the economy with government support.

> there's more political turmoil at the horizon

Again, look to your own house. Even if you ignore all the Trump noise, the attempted politicisation of the Fed is very dangerous for the US economy.

> Asia?

Asia & Europe. It's beyond absurd that the US stock markets have 65% of total value, and was never going to last forever. All this craziness from the government is just speeding up something that was always going to happen.

>Even if you ignore all the Trump noise, the attempted politicisation of the Fed is very dangerous for the US economy.

Yes, but Trump is a passing issue that will eventually go away, and won't be able to fuck with tarries and the economy anymore just so his friends can do insider trading.

>Asia & Europe.

why do you think so? Japan's economy has no great future prospects, and neither EU's with many German bankruptcies and companies relocating abroad. Chinese companies and workers outside of the largest metro areas have bad time too.

I'm from Europe and have no idea what "democrat" is. Do you mean the US party? I didn't know they publish in Europe. Do you maybe mean everything not-MAGA? Now that's quite a blanket statement then, applying I'd say to 90% of Europeans - I'd be scared if 90% of the continent sees you like DPRK (hint: no, they don't). So please, either explain, or just cut back on useless sensationalistic metaphors.

>I'd be scared if 90% of the continent sees you like DPRK

Sees me? I'm European, and am speaking to how I see other Europeans see the US, which comes from the local media which is heavily anti-US as it twists and omits facts to maintain a constant anti-Trump narrative no matter the facts since people lap it up without doing any due diligence or research online.

Remember the BBC famously clipped Trump's speech to make it seem like he said something he didn't actually say on Jan 6.

It's funny how the BBC makes one mishap (I agree that it was bad) and we hear about it for months. At the same time Fox and others are spewing constant disinformation. Similarly, watch MSNBC for a day and you'll learn that most European media are a gold standard for journalism in comparison.

Talk about using double standards.

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Please don't break the site guidelines like this. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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Can you please stop breaking the site guidelines so we don't have to keep banning you?

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

And what rule did I break exactly? Please show it to me and point out which of my comments broke that rule.

The GP comment broke the rules against (1) snark, (2) name-calling, (3) fulmination, and (4) ideological battle, for starters.

Thanks

"idiocracy" ... wow ... such a cool word! And so true.

Thank you.

If the comment is not sarcasm (I can't tell reliably anymore), there's a movie called Idiocracy. I think the word comes from the movie, or at least its wide adoption was heavily influenced by it (because someone somewhere probably coined the word before the movie was made).

Wait till you see the movie.

> What tech companies? At the end of the day, it's all about capital and IP.

it's a critical industry, so can be regulated to prevent foreign interference

airlines aren't granted freedom of the air unless they're domestically owned

and exactly the same approach can be applied to tech companies

Japan is a terrible example for you, they are focused on ditching the US.

>It’s clear that the era where any one country has global hegemony should end.

Unipolar worlds are safer than Bipolar. Multipolar is extremely dangerous.

I imagine you didn't know that more people will be killed if the US doesn't have hegemony.

Don't worry, China is coming out pretty far ahead so I'm sure we'll still be in a unipolar world when this is all over, and you can sleep safe at night. I imagine you didn't know.

You better be Han Chinese or you're cooked.

At least the US has the benefit of not really having a core ethnic class.

(To stem off the haters, the US has a "massive problem with racism" exactly because we have such a mixed society. Most monoracial places are obscenely and shamelessly racist, but never has a chance to arise)

Tell that to Steven Miller and Trump.

> Don't worry, China is coming out pretty far ahead so I'm sure we'll still be in a unipolar world when this is all over, and you can sleep safe at night. I imagine you didn't know.

With their current demographics? Doubt it.

I don't know man?

The Chinese are clearly doing some "rebalancing" lately. Some would even say that "rebalancing" is not a strong enough word. "De-linking" is a word a lot of those people are more comfortable with using to describe what we're seeing.

You can't really have a unipolar power if that power simply "takes all their marbles and goes home" so to speak.

I think we need to really do some strategic planning around scenarios where China or Europe simply withdraws from the rest of the world. Or decides they only need subsaharan Africa for instance.

Or, the nightmare scenario; where China, Europe, and subsaharan Africa actually figure out that together they don't really need anything from the rest of us.

assuming the hegemon is benevolent. if the hegemon isnt, you have nowhere to run. welcome to the labor camp, please leave your belongings here, the showers are to the right.

saying unipolar is better is like saying absolute monarchy is better. sure it is, as long as the good king is alive.

I don't care if they go sovereign, but the GDPR crap is annoying. Would be funny if the US just forced them to get rid of it.

If you're not in the EU, what even is the impact on you that was caused by GDPR? You're essentially not affected by it unless you run a business, which now you need to take greater care of the personal data you store. Is that what's annoying you or what?

The EU is to blame for cookie banners on basically every website on the internet.

I wish the US had something similar, and that there was more enforcement of disallowing "accept all" buttons without an equivalent "reject all" option. I also recognize that websites don't need the banner if they aren't trying to track me, but lets not pretend there aren't annoying consequences.

Companies could just reduce the amount of tracking data they're trying to harvest - then they wouldn't need a banner. If you're annoyed then be mad at the company - not the law trying to offer you some way to protect your data.

> I also recognize that websites don't need the banner if they aren't trying to track me

And I recognize that there is a non-trivial cost to knowing if you need the banner or not, and people are likely to ask their web designer/dev "Hey, where's the cookie banner?" and then pay for the subsequent cost of implementing that because it's cheaper than expensive lawyers.

It is like blaming government for policy to make cigarette packaging unappealling.

Every company wants to spy on you using cookies and sell you data or target ads. cookies banners are warnings to protect your data from these greedy companies.

> The EU is to blame for cookie banners on basically every website on the internet.

Yeah, just like it's the EU's fault sometimes that the police cuts of roads when a drunk driver collides with another car, it can impossibly be the fault of the driver themselves.

Maybe try to point the blame in the direction of the ones that are A) showing you the banners in the first place and B) refuses to remove them and instead decide to inconvenience you

You know, like we do with every other single thing.

Besides, GDPR has nothing to do with those cookie banners, you're yet another example of people not understanding how any of these things work, yet find it valuable somehow to point blame in some direction, even if they don't understand the fundamental reasons things are the way they are.

I'm sure you also think EU is the same as Europe, as that tends to also be a common misconception among the people who don't understand the cookies banners or GDPR.

First, cookie banners are associated with a totally different legislation, not GDPR, and they began appearing long before GDPR existed.

Second, the EU is not to blame for cookie banners. Companies doing tracking via cookies are to blame. They always have the option to not have a cookie banner--just don't do the things that require cookie banners. They deliberately choose to do these things, and then people complain about the banners.

In California, where everything can give you cancer, do people consider that a failure of the companies putting the notices on everything, or a failure of government?

That's a failure of government because the law mandates the notice in so many places that it becomes pointless noise.

Cookie banners are not analogous. It's easy to make a web site that doesn't need cookie banners. It's actually easier to make a site that doesn't need them than to make one that does. Adding in the tracking that requires banner takes effort. But companies prefer to put in that effort and annoy their users so they can have that tracking. That's 100% on them, not on the government.

> But companies prefer to put in that effort and annoy their users so they can have that tracking.

This is making the assumption that the company has already paid the significant legal fees to see if they need the banner or not. Or ignoring the companies that think it is easier to add the banner than pay a law firm to review it's data usage.

It's like 'Hey, I make T-shirts. I want to sell them to anyone who visits my website. Do I need a cookie banner? I don't know. I do collect personal information to facilitate the transaction. I do retain the information for refund purposes. I do log IP addresses. Is this covered without a banner? Am I 'safer' to just make a banner saying we are saving their data and using it? I can't afford a lawyer to review everything we do, but I can afford a developer to make a banner like they did on other sites. Even if they implement it incorrectly, I think it's worth the cost to have the banner because I probably won't be liable if I attempted to follow the law. And maybe I'm wrong there because again, I have no idea what the letter of the law requires. I just make t-shirts and want to sell them.'

Tossing up a banner doesn't really help. You're required to allow users to opt out of anything that's not essential to the service being requested by the user. So regardless of whether you're going to have a banner or not, you have to identify what's essential. And once you've done that, you could stop there and not have anything non-essential.

Case in point, GitHub & Gitlab (I think, not 100% sure) don't have cookie banners, one would hardly call those two sites small

If you want to be pedantic, the companies who track us across the internet with all of these third party tracking cookies on every website are the enemy here, not informed disclosure and consent.

Yes, the EU passed the ePrivacy directive in 2002. It was terribly broken (didn't actually address the problem it meant to), and resulted in malicious compliance of "cookie banners".

The EU then learned from these mistakes and passed the GDPR in 2016. The GDPR is quite on point - it directly addresses the problem, preempts the foreseeable ways which companies could sidestep such regulation, and didn't succumb to lobbyists looking to install backdoors.

The US could learn a thing or two from the EU regarding legislation.

> The EU is to blame for cookie banners on basically every website on the internet.

This is the most low-rent complaint imaginable and it boggles my mind how I keep seeing it made straight-faced. One time I literally timed how long it took me to dismiss a EU cookie banner, it was about 350ms and only needs to be done once per site. All this outrage is over 350ms and I cannot take it seriously.

Also, why would you not want cookie banners? I prefer being able to choose to opt out of them, even if it's annoying

I think the general vibe I get from some Americans is that they're OK with some abuse, as long as you don't tell them about it or do it to your face, and they would rather have some abuse than none but having to make their own choices. Of course, small subsection of people, but plenty of HN commentators make that exact case over and over whenever the discussions about cookie banners come up.

Seems to be the case as well. Theres also a bit of apathy in that its become so normalised people dont even care

You don't have to interact with GDPR if you don't use EU companies?

Not even that, if they aren't living in the EU the GDPR doesn't affect their lives in any way.

unless your customers are EU citizens.

Can't have the cake (EU money) and eat it (ignore EU laws), too.

If the EU announced that non-EU entities aren't subject to GDPR, I think that would substantially defuse and perhaps entirely eliminate the conflict. Their current guidance is precisely the opposite (https://gdpr.eu/what-is-gdpr/): "the GDPR applies to you even if you’re not in the EU". They even have a details page to make sure it's 100% clear (https://gdpr.eu/companies-outside-of-europe/): if you're a Colorado company with more than 250 employees, selling mainly to other Colorado businesses, the GDPR applies to you in full and the EU claims the authority to levy fines against you for violations.

Why would they need to defuse it? If you want to do business in our market, abide by our laws. If not... just leave and miss out on the huge market?

I cannot understand the constant whining of Apple and other companies, whereas if the PRC asks to jump, they ask 'how high'?

I don't understand your response. As I said, the EU's position is that it doesn't matter whether you "just leave", because the GDPR still applies to companies who are not located in the EU and do not do business in the EU.

If you are selling to EU residents you are doing business in the EU, no?

I get why people find this hard to believe, because it is kind of a crazy rule, but I repeat once again that this does not matter. Even if you have never sold a single product to an EU resident, and never plan to do so, the EU says as my original comment detailed that you are subject to the GDPR the instant an EU resident provides you with personal data.

(And of course, it's also the case that "selling to an EU resident" is substantially broader than "doing business in the EU" - EU residents do often travel to foreign countries and provide personal data to stores they transact with while there.)

I've read your links and you're misreading them.

1. GDPR applies to EU residents in the EU. The protection does not apply to EU residents going on trips to the US.

2. Based on the examples they've presented, there is a SUPER clean solution to your concerns. Geo-blocking. Problem solved, bye bye GDPR. But don't go crying for EU citizen money, can't have it both ways.

Just read the examples they present, they're fairly well written.

How can you be so confrontational and still want people to give you business and data?

I really don't envy the diplomats' job at the moment.

US 'diplomats' are campaigns big donors, or primary supports. I've eaten with someone who expected to be named diplomat in Europe because he supported Obama by 2007, but was one-uped by a richer donor post-primary.

I think it’s fair to say that diplomats appear to be appointed under a two-faced system.

On the one side you have some diplomats who really are quite capable career foreign policy wonks, appointed in a manner which appears to be meritocratic.

On the other side you have folks appointed, like you mention, as a kind of patronage.

Traditionally, it has been that the softer counterparties (Friendly countries, European allies, small island nations, etc) are staffed with patrons while the more difficult or geopolitically sensitive relationships are manned by professionals, but this is certainly not always true, and one can find many counterexamples.

The patrons are doing an excellent job of adding to the 'more difficult' list.

Okay, thanks for the added details (and your sibling too), today I've learned something.

some added context (both my parents are/were in the Foreign Service):

your location is assigned based on a competitive bidding system where you select from a list of cities to do your next tour. some countries/cities are obviously dangerous for a variety of reasons and they are called "hardship tours" (think iraq or afghanistan). you get bonus money for these and sometimes are forbidden from bringing family.

posts in places like Europe or East Asia are very desirable and highly competitive. but often it's a matter of fit. my dad was a hedge fund manager before the Foreign Service so his first posting was actually in Frankfurt. you can also do a tour in the continental US, such as in DC or NY. because of his economics background he has done a few of those.

most of the time the head ambassador is a political appointee, but the grunts are regular people who have made this their career.

> US 'diplomats' are campaigns big donors, or primary supports

To be clear, there are political and career diplomats, and each administration mixes and matches to its taste. (The current one veers strongly towards political appointees. That is to say, folks who raised money.)

This is how most foreign services are run, with maybe the exception of China.

>This is how most foreign services are run, with maybe the exception of China.

Absolutely not most. What country in Europe has a significant amount of ambassadors that are not career diplomats / government workers ?

In France, Germany, Switzerland you would either need to be a career diplomat/ foreign service worker or in rare cases you would be a career government employee assigned as diplomat to some specific country for some reason (i.e you were trade minister and become ambassador to your biggest trading partner).

The most "political" appointee ambassador in Europe I can think of is Mandelson but he is (as we found out) supremely connected to US power networks and he is still a lifetime politician/ government employee.

Former speaker of the chancellor (and TV news anchor before that) is German ambassador to Israel. Next ambassador will be a career politician.

It‘s not uncommon, though I‘d say even the „cool posts“ like Paris or London usually go to career diplomats.

I know nothing about this but JumpCrisscross seems to use "political" to mean "has donated large sums of money" while your use of "political" is more like.. someone who does politics.

I think they're using it in a technical sense that's idiosyncratic to America: "career" members of the Foreign Service Corps, versus "political" appointees that can be directly appointed at higher ranks, but at the pleasure of the (in turn politically-appointed) secretary.

The first might have joined the Foreign Service and worked their way up; the second might have had a career elsewhere (not necessarily in political office), get invited to work for an administration, and then leave once there's a change in power.

> but at the pleasure of the (in turn politically-appointed) secretary

Parent is correct. The amount varies from administration to administration. But if you really want to be an ambassador, you're well positioned if you bundle a few hundred thousand to a few million dollars for the winning campaign. (There are traditionally limits. You can't usually buy your way into the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad or London. But for the postings with limited security implications, where the focus is on trade, you're mostly hosting expensive parties for your post.)

>This is how most foreign services are run

It is not. The vast majority of the world has a professionalized diplomatic corps roughly modeled on a Prussian or French system. As Fukuyama points out in Political Order and Political Decay the US is an odd case because it democratized before it developed an administrative state and as a result is somewhere between "Greece and Prussia" and ended up with a spoils-based and clientelist system, somewhat moderated by the Progressive era.

This. Political allies who bundle donations get nominated to cushy ambassador positions. https://publicintegrity.org/politics/barack-obamas-ambassado...

Nobody in America noticed this but lately US ambassadors are going out of their way to insult and undermine the nations that they're posted in.

Wolf Warrior diplomacy on-shored, or perhaps American Sniper diplomacy?

Is there any evidence of this being an actual pattern? I cannot speak for the rest of the americans, but I, personally, haven’t noticed it because it didn’t seem to be the case to me at all.

Asking because from my perception over the past 12 months, US ambassadors got more friendly and cordial with some countries (e.g., Japan[0]/Taiwan/South Korea[1]) and less cordial with others (e.g., certain european countries, like UK, that attempt to [imo unjustly] press american businesses that don’t even have any business presence within their jurisdiction).

0. U.S. Ambassador George Glass participated in remarks emphasizing the “new golden age” of U.S.-Japan relations, underlining partnership. (https://jp.usembassy.gov/ambassador-glass-remarks-at-yomiuri...)

1. The U.S. signed Technology Prosperity Deals with both Japan and South Korea in late 2025, advancing shared technology and innovation goals. (https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2025/10/the-united-state...)

evidence of pattern, maybe:

https://www.npr.org/2026/02/24/g-s1-111302/france-spat-with-...

That's Jared Kushner's dad. The one who went to prison for setting his brother-in-law up with a prostitute to break up his sister's marriage. I am sure he will approach this new mission with the same finesse he demonstrated in the previous ones.

> US 'diplomats' are campaigns big donors, or primary supports.

So in this administration, that would be Epstein clients and co-conspirators. Truly sending the best.

How much do you have to donate exactly? I’m always surprised by how little it takes to bribe your way into government favor. I always think it must cost millions, then I hear it’s only like $100k or so. Sometimes even just $25k for local governments.

The sky’s the limit. The politicians are the ones who set the asking price, and it’s not just money. The cost is a function of how much they think they can squeeze you for discounted by how fervently you prostrate yourself to the throne.

The list of ambassadors of the US to Sweden is kind of sad. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ambassadors_of_the_Uni...)

It begins with Benjamin Franklin (well, sort of) and ends with a bunch of campaign contributors (both sides).

Seems like it started some time in the 1990s/2000s and then gradually grew more and more transactional.

It does reek of corruption, but it seems being ambassador to a close ally is basically getting several years of taxpayer-paid vacation in Europe. They're positions that have to be filled, and a career diplomat ending up in Sweden might even get bored because of the lack of anything to do.

For example ambassadors to Georgia (a country that has tensions with Russia) seem to have "better" credentials: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ambassadors_of_the_Uni...

You should look up the word "imperialism" because it's something countries like to do to extract as much wealth as possible to benefit a few people.

This administration really, truly lives under the delusion that they hold "all the cards". In every engagement they think it is for them to dictate and everyone else to follow. Any graciousness they show is just kind benevolence.

And the "diplomats" of this administration is a rogues gallery of Epstein associates (e.g. pedophile sex-trafficking garbage) and self-dealing criminals. Just a who's-who of garbage.

They are sending their absolute worst.

Americans are just blissfully unaware how much their country is being destroyed. It's staggering stuff. Even if you're a super conservative, there should be utter embarrassment and outrage about how incompetent and clownish this parade of imbeciles is.

Are you sure it's just 'this administration'? I don't think the memory of America as a bully will go away soon, regardless of who comes into power.

> don't think the memory of America as a bully will go away

It won't. But going digitally sovereign will cost Europe tens of billions of euros. If there is a friendly race on the other side of the Atlantic, that will not mean the memories go away. But the urgency of the initiative is certainly sapped.

> But going digitally sovereign will cost Europe tens of billions of euros.

That will be spent in Europe, improving the economy of member states.

Certainly much better than just sending that money to the US.

> That will be spent in Europe, improving the economy of member states.

Given EU public spending and IT I'm not so optimistic.

It's tens of billions of euros spent domestically, much better than being siphoned away to the USA to fund this shitshow.

At least the money will keep flowing into our own economy, it will hurt but in the longer term it can only be beneficial.

You're speaking as if the image of the US as a bully is anything new. It's only Europeans know that are getting a taste of US strong-arming.

Oh for sure, this administration is just a symptom that the US has become an idiocracy levered by a plutocracy. A poorly educated, easily manipulated populace.

Trump is just the result of this, and it isn't going to stop when he kicks it. It'll be the next populist nonsense. The world needs to move on from America.

"When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” - Trump

Just replace Mexico with America. There must be some Freudian issue going on with Trump here.

Every accusation this administration makes is a confession.

> This administration really, truly lives under the delusion that they hold "all the cards".

I think it's simpler than that: they think the world is a zero-sum game, so why bother being anything but utterly confrontational at every turn?

Of course, that's a childish way to view the world, but we're a childish people.

[dead]

The super conservatives share this belief that the US holds all the cards. This is the idea of American exceptionalism. We're special, we're uniquely capable, we can do anything we want because everyone else has no choice but to engage with us. If Europe abandons us, that's a win because they're just a drain on us. International trade is screwing us, so wrecking it will usher in a new golden age.

atleast most senses of this exceptionalism have been fading away in europe thanks to the result of two world wars. (and many, many conflicts before that)

The US ambassador to France has just had his access to parliamentarians and members of the government withdrawn because he is trying to turn a neo-Nazi who died in a fight into a political martyr. There are similar situations in Belgium and Poland.

American diplomats have been doing Trump's dirty work for a some time.

I am more concerned about US interference in elections and campaigning for the far right than lobbying for data at the moment.

"Fight"…

Most 'diplomats' of the new USA are just grifters like Witkoff or Kushner. Real estate people cosplaying diplomats.

The US as the world has known it is gone

https://apnews.com/article/france-us-ambassador-kushner-far-...

Belgium too:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/feb/18/belgium-invest...

And of course Joe Popolo in the Netherlands:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/nov/11/displays-black...

(He later doubled down on the decision to erase any mention of the racial segregation black US soldiers were submitted to while serving in the army during WWII.)

Another example from Denmark: https://edition.cnn.com/2026/01/28/europe/us-embassy-copenha...

By no means exclusive to the US (e.g. Peter Mandelson).

We do a mini version of that corruption here in New Zealand too. Owen Glen was a donor who got a diplomatic posting to Monaco.

https://www.odt.co.nz/news/politics/key-concerned-murkiness-...

Definitely exclusive to the US due to the degree to which US presidents have been doing it.

The US doesn't have diplomats anymore. Just Republican donors with no experience. Hell, Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner's dad is a diplomat. A really bad one.

Ambassadors being rich socialites is a both party problem and it is not new.

No the difference is that Trump's ambassadors are directly getting involved in the local politics of their postings. And they're not even hiding it.

It's a "problem" in that it shows very clearly who runs the U.S. system. These are the people actually in charge without a meritocratic gloss to make it seem nicer.

I ask the question: Is it human comprehendible data that has the value?

So would this issue still exist if the data was not human comprehendible yet a system still functioned 100% as needed?

The outlier technologists among us may read between my written lines with piquéd interest while the majority will likely just balk making claims based on lack of knowledge and awareness. For those looking to balk save your time in responding because analogously we no longer drive Ford Model Ts either and in time so too will system designs significantly change to answer the issues created by todays limited technology architectures.

Whether it be in the water you drink, the air you breath, or the technology platforms you rely on; What you cannot see matters most!

I see everyone now in the Administration is implementing the "Art of the Deal" tactics. The same tactics that bankrupted every project Trump did.

Could be a huge opening for Mistral and other European LLM providers who are okay at adhering to data sovereignty requirements

It increasingly feels like the US sees everyone as an enemy.

Is it just the government that feels this way, or do the general population of the US feel like everyone else on the planet is an enemy?

Ignorance is a Weapon.

Much of the US media is captured, so virtually nothing is fed back to us Americans. This also builds on top of US gunboat diplomacy going all the way back to the Monroe Doctrine. Keeping Americans ignorant allows our government and corporations a free hand in foreign affairs. The limited information allowed through is heavily sanitized and depicts US actions as the Good Guys attacked by the Evil X, which is why so many of our wars start with a ship "under attack" (USS Maine, RMS Lusitania, Gulf of Tonkin incident), or supposed WMDs (Iran, Iraq)

A great example is the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. Ask any American and they can call up all kinds of minute details about the attack. However if you ask them about the US trade embargoes and blockades against Japan in the months leading up to the attack, the vast majority of Americans will draw a blank. That is on purpose.

When stuff does break through to us, raw and unfiltered, most will react with horror. The self image of Americans as the Good Guys cracks. This happened in the Viet-Nam conflict when journalists had a free hand to show what was happening. Massive protests and a near mutiny by the US Army caused the Pentagon to get far more involved in how wars are presented in future conflicts. More recently Americans were so horrified when they witnessed the Israeli genocide after October 7th that it completely inverted both public sentiment and support for Israel, causing the forced sale of TikTok to Oracle and under US control to clamp down on the coverage.

> caused the Pentagon to get far more involved in how wars are presented in future conflicts

Don't be better, be better looking!

I find it hard to look at the actions of the Japanese and the Americans in the late 1930s and come away with any other impression than that the Americans were the good guys.

Right? Ask any European POW who was imprisoned in Japan.

There's a substantial population of most countries who feel that everyone else on the planet is somehow inferior. Basic nationalism. One of the big achievements of the 20th century was reducing that so it might be below 50% in many places.

However, that's not the same as "enemy". That's a more confrontational level. It's that particular branch of the far right which has recently risen to prominence. Ironically, in a lot of different countries.

The republican population and the foolish minded people who want to be centrists have led to this situation of democrats and republican politicians acting out this way. More than 50% hopefully don't feel that way. I don't

The general population doesn't even think about the rest of the world.

If it's so cumbersome why don't US companies pull out the EU market? bet they make money anyway don't they

And in related news, major European democracies are spending real money architecting sovereign cloud tech - planning on replacing not just the infra, but also the key parts of commonly used SaaS stacks. (How do I know? I got a job offer from one of those governments to help them architect that; exciting times).

What kind of success are countries having finding technical talent with the right savvy fighter mindset to sever the dependence on an aggressive and culturally-entrenched threat?

(Even the ordinary open source world has a lot of intrigue to be careful of. And most developers still think nothing of pulling in a fleet of dependencies from PyPI/NPM/Cargo/etc. as well as third-party network services. Everyone is being taught in school to play to FAANG interview rituals, and many go on to a career style of performative sprints. HCI is almost lost as a field to UX euphemism. Almost no one can deploy a system that won't be compromised, and most don't even try, except for some mandated ineffective theatre. AI homework-cheating mindset isn't helping. Etc. Not to complain, but to be clear the kind of inertia a country is facing.)

Do the countries wanting to fight this have enough of they right homegrown talent already, and know how to find and nurture it?

If they're importing additional talent, do they know how to find and incentive the right people, while turning away the ones with the wrong mindsets for this mission?

(ProTips: Look for the hardcore privacy&security non-careerist nerds. The left-leaning, societal-minded ones. Give them what they've been looking for, or support to help make what they've been looking for. Don't offer to pay too well. Anyone who asks "Why would I want to live in your country, when I can make more money elsewhere?" gets a permaban.)

The UK used to have a cloud provider (UK Cloud) but it got aggressively outcompeted by the US Hyperscalers, despite primarily targeting government departments. It's interesting that at the time the UK didn't consider data sovereignty enough of an issue to support a local cloud company. Shocking really.

A great deal of what may be included in "homegrown talent" in the US according to this comment, indeed has come from other countries...

And the US is much richer for them (monetarily, and culturally).

But what if home countries had said, "We can give you the resources you need for your work and home life, and it will be for purposes you can believe in and feel good about; not for crypto rug pulls, nor for surveillance capitalism, nor for stunting and manipulative social media"?

I hope that the EU becomes a real innovation center of decentralized tech initiatives. There are all these tech movements like local-first apps, atproto/activitypub, and self-hosting that could be absolutely supercharged by both the user and developer base of Europe flat out rejecting big tech cloud platforming.

I'm convinced in the next century the EU is going to be an innovator in decentralization in general, it's already a de facto confederation in general

Interestingly, fighting it like this will only make the resolve stronger.

Step 1: Piss away soft power built over the last century or so

Step 2: Ask for favors

Step 3: Profit?

That the US doesn't like it is the best justification for it.

It is incredibly stupid and counterproductive to make this kind of statement publicly. Most of the GAFAM companies are doing their utmost to try to reassure their European customers with a facade of sovereignty.

All these efforts will come to nothing.

Amazon sovereign cloud https://aws.eu/fr/ Azure sovereign https://www.microsoft.com/fr-fr/sovereignty Oracle soverign https://www.oracle.com/fr/cloud/eu-sovereign-cloud/ IBM https://www.ibm.com/think/topics/sovereign-cloud ...

it doesn't mean anything after Microsoft turned over eu government leaders emails to the US.

the damage is done. trump fanning the flames and then using ham fisted threats that frankly carry no weight now... are just making it worse.

the money's already been allocated. the results are inevitable.

The shame of all this is that now every country will have a worse, more expensive - but yes, soveriegn - solution, and the US makes less money through trade. Everyone loses, except people who want to hurt western economies.

I think it's more likely we end up with a better software ecosystem. There will be plenty of companies for the foreseeable future willing to buy from either continent if one offering is substantially better. More competition will be better, as long as the US govt doesn't succeed in stifling it.

Microsoft for example has had a de facto monopoly in many areas for quite some time and I doubt many would argue that their software quality has flourished in recent years.

This is fair I guess. Assuming US tech got there by merit alone is probably a wrong assumption. Part of the "soft power" of getting to set the rules and whatnot.

If nothing else this gives me a positive outlook so thankyou :D

Or maybe a better product that’s cheaper. Let’s not let hubris get the best of us. There’s nothing special about the US. I mean imagine being an Oracle customer and switching to a local supplier. Must be like emerging from a nightmare

Sigh. Anecdotally, more Europeans no longer want their governments to rely on software and data controlled by US companies, because they no longer trust the US to act as a reliable ally, defending the same values. Whether you agree or disagree with these concerns, they are valid for many Europeans.

In an ironic twist of fate, the US government's actions could end up causing long-term damage to US tech companies.

This is all based on anecdotal evidence, so I could be wrong, but I have to call it like I see it.

See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47149701

At the end of the day it isn't US tech companies that'd suffer (outside some minor short term pain) it's the US. If being in America is bad for business those companies (which already exist multi-nationally in most cases) will just pack up their US holdings.

I bet it’s too late now. They will need very very persuasive arguments to kill all the initiatives, and while they may convince some governments and lobbying groups, I doubt they will manage to convince every IT responsible.

Just started exporting my data from google, guess this is the start of my uncoupling journey.

Looking forward to changing my bank card to a EU alternative when its available.

I don't feel like I have major usage issues, but maybe once I have decoupled from the big players, it will be clearer what I had gotten used to, for which there was another way to approach.

The biggest pain points will probably be YouTube, Claude, Gemini and Google docs. The main issues will probably stem from collaborating with others, rather than my own personal usage.

This is like putting your money in a bank ran by a cartel and expecting them not to steal it as soon as it benefits them.

As an EU citizen I really hope we can gain some meaningful distance to the US asap. I hope my leaders feel the same. And if everything works out I think this will be great for the EU.

This is really some sort of diplomatic Streisand effect. If the US would not have been so aggressive and just string us along they could have continued to feed us their slop indefinitely without us noticing.

Misleading title by Reuters.

The title should be "US orders diplomats to fight _EU_ data sovereignty initiatives".

Why? Because the US is far too pussy to fight the other countries that have such initiatives - some of them reaching further than the EU's - knowing that unlike the EU those countries are definitely not going to take their shit.

I can tell you that if the US says to Japan or Korea, just to name two such examples, "stop enacting privacy/sovereignty laws that interfere with US big tech or we tariff you" , there's absolutely zero chance they're going to be listened to and the only thing it will do is make people hate the US.

Not only europe:

https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/20...

https://apnews.com/article/chile-united-states-china-visa-sa...

I don't think it's going to be anymore successful in the EU, honestly. The last couple of years have EU politicians throughly over their shit, and it's unlikely many concessions to US BigTech can be bought without serious reciprocity on the table (for example, a major expansion of US military aid to Ukraine)

I don't think it's right to say "privacy/sovereignty". As gestured towards in the source article, Japan and Korea have joined the US's preferred data privacy forum https://www.globalcbpr.org/. Data sovereignty is not a common idea outside the EU, and AFAIK even the current American government doesn't object to US citizens' data being stored in foreign servers under foreign jurisdiction.

I can't think of a worse way to approach this.

Imagine if the EU builds it's own alternative services to those provided in the US, and these EU services do not rely on advertising revenue and don't shove AI in our faces at every opportunity.

Europe, please Make the Internet Great Again!

America shocked to discover everyone tolerated them because it was generally easier than not. Turns out if you make it super hard, unpredictable and vindictive, people will go the extra mile to not have to tolerate you.

Sure if they can pull it off, but how can they do this without scaring away all future customers?

Cooperate or be replaced.

Tech companies should be opposing Trump's policy and, instead, beg the Trump administration to grant meaningful concessions to countries that have rightfully lost trust in American companies. Bullying tactics will only intensify the loss of trust and fuel the push to adopt alternatives.

> the U.S. strongly supports cross-border data flows that promote growth and innovation while protecting privacy, safety, and free expression

Yeah that will be a hard no from me. They're not exactly known for their positive attitude towards privacy. And free speech seems to depend on who's aligned with the administration.

Given that the US has basically no data or privacy protections for its own citizens let alone non-US citizens, it's not surprising that countries are moving away from keeping their data in US-owned places. US companies mine data for everything and the kitchen sink and train AI using it without any sort of notice.

I wonder if he would go so far as to withhold access to US tech to this end.

That'd be amazing. It'd suck for some weeks initially, including for myself and the companies I'm involved in, but at least then it'll start being a "all hands on desk" sort of thing instead of "Lets make sure we finish this before the end of 2026" which is the current state of affairs.

I mean, the easy thing to do is revoke US-EU data transfers. The ECJ is definitely going to do it anyway, and it provides a lot of leverage. If you keep it gone for long enough, then the Mag7 are basically forced to store data in the EU, and respect the laws.

As a bonus, it would nuke the markets, causing the US administration to backpedal on whatever. (Obviously I'd prefer not to nuke the markets, but something needs to happen to push back against the US).

This would only happen in a world where the US has entirely abandoned Ukraine though (i.e. no intelligence sharing).

I imagine if the current administration does, Europe could retaliate by withholding ASML’s tech or even doing a mass sell off of US treasuries. Europe is admittedly not in a position of strength compared to the US, but there are still a lot of levers they can pull.

> retaliate by withholding ASML’s tech

The problem is that the core technology that makes ASML's tech valuable is the EUV light source which is entirely designed, developed, and manufactured by Cymer in California, which is a US company that ASML acquired in 2013. That acquisition was permitted only under strict technology sharing and export-control agreements.

I have no doubt that this administration would forcefully "take back" Cymer if the EU tried to restrict access to ASML lithography machines. They would force a sale back to US ownership, TikTok-style.

This framing gets the supply chain backwards. Cymer makes the source vessel, the part that generates tin droplets and converts them to plasma. But the laser that actually powers that process is a 17-ton, 40kW CO2 beast with 457,000 parts, built exclusively by TRUMPF in Germany. And the optics, mirrors smooth to tens of picometers that literally no one else on Earth can make, come from Carl Zeiss, also German, organized as a foundation that no foreign government can force into a sale. ASML only manufactures about 15% of an EUV machine's components. The rest comes from roughly 1200 suppliers concentrated in Germany and the Netherlands. Seizing Cymer gets you one subsystem with no laser to drive it and no optics to focus it.

The real problem with this theory is that EUV isn't a product with a capturable bottleneck. It's more like a standing wave of institutional knowledge distributed across organizations that have been co-developing at picometer tolerances for 30 years. TRUMPF's leadership described the arrangement as a "virtually merged company" with open books across all three firms. That kind of integration knowledge doesn't transfer via acquisition. China has been throwing enormous resources at this with access to published research and former ASML engineers, and their prototype still isn’t expected to produce working chips until 2028-2030. Saying the US could grab Cymer and start producing EUV machines is like seizing a transmission plant and calling yourself a car manufacturer.

Yes, we all know that ASML is a multi-national effort, with critical technology components provided by several countries. The point is that the EUV light source is one of the critical technology components and it has not been replicated anywhere else (so far, see xLight founded by Dept. of Energy engineers and funded by the US gov).

It's a bargaining chip that this administration will undoubtedly use to make sure that US access to ASML lithography machines remains undisturbed.

You're missing the point. Nobody will take back anything since that hurts everyone, but if the US wanted they could license EUV tech to Nikon or Canon and give ASML a huge PITA of refreshed competition.

Similar to TRUMPF lasers and Zeiss optics, other companies from US and Japan like Coherent and Canon could have a crack at replicating the laser and mirrors given enough IP and resources if the US really wanted to decouple from ASML, since they're still man made objects, not magic things given by gods.

US is the richest country in the world and the second biggest manufacturer after China. Do you think the country that built the SR-72 and other sci-fi shit wouldn't be able to make a EUV lithography machine in house if they were to treat it like a Manhattan project instead of a side hustle?

>other companies from US and Japan like Coherent and Canon could have a crack at replicating the laser and mirrors given enough IP and resources if the US really wanted to decouple from ASML, since they're still man made objects, not magic things given by gods.

this exact same logic applies the other way, though... unless Cymer is selling magic objects given by gods?

>Do you think the country that built the SR-72 and other sci-fi shit wouldn't be able to make a EUV lithography machine in house if they were to treat it like a Manhattan project instead of a side hustle?

do you think that ASML (or TRUMPF or whatever non-US entity) would be unable to make the EUV light source in house if they were to treat it like a Manhattan project instead of a side hustle?

I agree with you, but that was my point exactly. No party holds all the cards to dictate the rules of the game like people bullish on ASML thought that they're somehow untouchable. They're untouchable because the US allows them to be because they play ball with the US admin and push back against rules they don't like from the Dutch government.

It's a gentlemen's agreement that will be held together by mutually assured destruction if one party tries to decouple completely.

The general decoupling from US tech you see has started after the general enshitification of major IT services from FFANG, not exclusively due to Trump, and not exclusively to US, Spotify is also seeing a lot of backlash.

>do you think that ASML (or TRUMPF or whatever non-US entity) would be unable to make the EUV light source in house if they were to treat it like a Manhattan project instead of a side hustle?

The EU(Germany, Spain and France) can't unite to build a next gen fighter jet together, can't decide how to tackle illegal mass migration, can't decide a sane energy policy that isn't hypocritical or anti-industry, or on a single direction on defeating Russia. A EUV Manhattan project is the least of their issues right now which moves the balance of power in the US court for the moment until EU members figure out how to work together.

> can't decide how to tackle illegal mass migration

the mass migration caused by american wars in the middle east you mean? Also, frontex seems to be working fine so far.

>on a single direction on defeating Russia

unlike the US, which has stopped all military aid to ukraine in 2025, and seems to be favouring russia more and more.

Lets not forget, europe is increasing its military en masse mainly because on one hand you have the russian flattening ukraine, and on other hand you have the US demanding greenland.

Who needs further enemies with friends like this?

>the mass migration caused by american wars in the middle east you mean?

Nobody forced the EU to open its borders. It's their job to defend their borders from intruders, foreign especially military aged males with no visa, instead of acting as a global charity with their taxpayers' money then wonder why the far right is booming and arrest them for hate speech.

>unlike the US, which has stopped all military aid to ukraine in 2025

This is news to me that doesn't math what Google returns. Care to back that up?

>and on other hand you have the US demanding greenland

That's bad indeed on the US, but EU can't even defend Ukraine from Russia, a broke-ass country, do you think they would have gone to war with the US over Greenland? The US can do this because the EE can't do anything.

EU does not have Open Borders anymore than Trump has open borders in US.

And good luck with fighting all of NATO in a conventional war. According to Trump US is such losers they even lost in Afghanistan against the Talibans. And now you wanna fight rest of NATO (that has more soldiers than US).

> In 1997, ASML began studying a shift to using extreme ultraviolet and in 1999 joined a consortium, including Intel and two other U.S. chipmakers, in order to exploit fundamental research conducted by the US Department of Energy. Because the Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) it operates under is funded by the US government, licensing must be approved by Congress.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASML_Holding

> I imagine if the current administration does, Europe could retaliate by withholding ASML’s tech […]

There is a bit of M.A.D. scenario: a bunch of components in ASML machines (like EUV light generation?) come from US companies. Also, the two main chip CAD software vendors (duopoly) are in the US.

The EU could also cut US access to clearing houses (Clearstream / EuroClear) or the SWIFT payment system.

>The EU could also cut US access to clearing houses (Clearstream / EuroClear) or the SWIFT payment system.

Right, so that the USA would cut us from DTCC?

Eu finance sector is MUCH more dependent on access to US markets than the other way around.

is it though?

for everything inside the EU, i highly doubt it is. For extraterritioral trade. The EU is large enough to trade with other countries in euros instead of dollars.

Or they could withhold Ozempic. That would hurt too.

[flagged]

There's no chance in hell that he would because if there's one easy way to piss off the oligarchy it's to make their net worth plummet. And losing >20% of revenue in one fell swoop does just that. Europe remains a huge profit center. That's why all the talk by many Americans including on HN in the past about "well if the EU keeps fining Meta and co billions, maybe they'll stop doing business there!". They'd be removed from their positions before they could even utter the phrase considering it. Imagine how that earnings call would go. "Yeah uhh, we left a market where we were making 20 billion per year net profit because we got fined 5 billion. Mhm.".

Trump's grip on the US oligarchy isn't even 1% as tight as Putin's on Russia's, who has everything completely under his thumb. If the US oligarchy conspires to depose Trump, he's gone next week. That they're all sucking up to him doesn't refute that at all, that's just the optimal move until it isn't. All these people do is take the optimal move for their own net worth at the current point in time.

I'm sure this would be better received if I took an LLM and had it rewrite this in a less conversational and higher-brow way, but it's no longer the time for that.

There is literally no such thing as "US tech". Even for those companies domiciled in the US, it is just the label on a world of contributions.

They are under US jurisdiction. Call it US-controlled tech if it helps.

He wouldn't dare, the coward! ;)

My two thoughts:

1. China has been completely vindicated for blocking US tech domination of their local economy and creating Chinese versions of basically everything. Tech independence has become an issue of national security; and

2. There's no putting this genie back in the bottle. At some point the EU is going to make it a priority to replace all US tech companies with local alternatives. The EU is kinda dysfunctional so they won't see the success China has but I now consider this outcome inevitable.

This is the insanity of the current administration: it's done so much to destroy US soft power.

We've been acting like a bully on the playground and now we are wondering why nobody else on the playground wants to play with us

The people in this regime and their supporters really seem surprised to discover that actually other countries do have agency and national pride. Serious empathy gap in these people.

The US owned the world’s tech stack and countries let it because it was convenient and despite its problems people mostly trusted the US was on their side. In one year we’ve utterly destroyed that and made ourselves enemies of the democratic world. That Silicon Valley did not see this would threaten its global business says something.

This is something even defense analysts have been hammering about tirelessly. The American pivot to counter China should not come at the cost of the Atlantic relationship. Using Cold war scare tactics against China will not work, because China is not in the sphere of European countries that were under the shadow of Russia. China’s language and culture are so far removed from the rest of the world that the risk of direct conflict would not be a matter outside of Taiwan, and cultural hegemony will not take place in the same way Russia tried and at times succeeded.

It feels doubly stupid that not only did American Business sell out their nations’ economic base to Chinese competitors decades back, they fumbled again and sold out to the guy who (yet again) damaged relations of countries funding the service, finance and defense sectors of the US. So now you lost the manufacturing base and you lost the other money-makers. No wonder they are going all-in on fossil fuels to Europe.

No other company is as clear an example of this double whammy as Tesla. Move manufacturing to China to lose the technological edge, and alienate end-users, to lose the customer base.

Like an abusive spouse.

'No, you can't leave me, you need me.' Actually, we don't. We used to have a good relationship and you lit it on fire. Bye, US.

Republicans grew up in a world where they can do anything - voter suppression, gerrymandering, steal a presidency or a supreme court seat and nothing happens. Well some women get hit once and never come back.

This sums it up so well.

Even as a US citizen... fuck that... it'd be like saying the US should open its' data up for China without any restrictions at all, even if they are slurping up everything they can as a state actor.

While, if you choose to use a US service, it shouldn't be required to host data in your country, if you know it's a US service with data in the US... government data is another thing entirely.. and $cloud provider should be required to accommodate if they want that business, or for companies in a given country for that matter.

this is hilarious, just last week i heard american tourists complaining that "they" were subisidzing Europe's lazy lifestyle

Reminds me of the "US high healthcare costs are subsidising EU cheap healthcare".

The rough argument was: pharma companies need big payoffs when they discover a new drug and, due to structural characteristics of the US market, that's where they can get the highest prices.

So pharmas make a large chunk of their profits in the US and then sell drugs more cheaply in e.g. Europe.

Fairly weak and incomplete argument [1], but I've seen this pushed seriously by people in public debates in the US.

[1] - a couple of obvious issues with this argument are: 1. why is it Europe's fault that the US has structural issues that prevent it from negotiating drug proces as a united front? 2. healthcare costs are largely inflated by admin costs in the US. Drugs can be expensive too, sure, but this argument ignores the big cost intrinsic to the insane insurance and billing system prevalent in the US.

Pharma companies want to make money - they'll charge what the market can bear up to what they're allowed to. Some countries cap this - others don't. In the US the government actually subsidizes medication costs in a graduated manner that allows the price point to be set much higher than a natural market would allow - there are also tools like manufacturer rebates or drug trial cards that can also subsidize the price if you've got more time than money and are willing to jump through the various hoops.

So, the premise is high drug costs in the US subsidize drug prices in the EU.

Presumably this conclusion was arrived at because pharma companies sell drugs at a higher cost in the US than they do in EU, Canada, or anywhere else. Therefore elevating profits in the US relative to profit margins in other nations. (Note: they reportedly use the profit to develop new drugs, so this is where the subsidization comes into play, as higher profit markets will drive increased revenue and future drug development.)

And your argument against the premise is: 1. The EU is not at fault, and 2. Drugs cost more in the US because of the poor healthcare system.

Argument 1 does not attack the premise: Undoubtedly the EU is not at fault, the EU does not set drug prices in the US. Pharma companies do, within the context of the US economy, of course.

The premise does not assign fault, it’s an assessment of where profit comes from.

Argument 2 is more direct in addressing the premise, but still misses the point: you might be right, mostly right, or you could be wrong. I lean toward agreeing with the point you made (US healthcare system sucks), it doesn’t address the profit differential across different nations.

So, what about the premise is weak and incomplete?

Pharma shareholders want profit, and the US supplies that at a greater rate than the EU (likely due to the regulatory environment). They’ll take a lower profit margin vs. no profit at all, so they operate accordingly.

None of that goes against the premise that the extra profit from the US market is subsidizing the research costs for drug products that enter the EU market.

Your response is fair. I didn't present the argument fully - there is on last step which says "therefore, EU is somehow indebted to the US". That last step is, I think, less defensible.

Also, even in the absence of the "indebtedness" conclusion, the subsidy argument assumes that pharma companies would reduce their R&D spend, instead of just accepting lower margins if the US could more aggressively negotiate drug prices.

> american tourists

Tourists? Shouldn’t they be working?

the whole discussion started from there: they have no vacay whatsoever while Europe is off every second week celebrating some pagan season

A people that largely can't comprehend that people walk to get groceries should not pass comment on Europe being lazy.

Not to mention the tourists that need to spend a couple of weeks practicing 'walking' in order to survive a European trip...

standard kyc doesn't run on dedicated infrastructure isolated from the vendor's main cloudflare stack. you don't build a separate gcp cluster for routine age checks. the architecture tells you what the data is worth before anyone admits it.

>> signed by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the agency said such laws would "disrupt global data flows, increase costs and cybersecurity risks, limit Artificial Intelligence (AI) and cloud services, and expand government control in ways that can undermine civil liberties and enable censorship."

Such fine bullshit, of the highest quality.

Distributing infrastructure may slightly reduce efficiency but seems like a good idea for so many reasons: national pride, increased security, more resilience to outside influences, etc.

> Experts say the move signals the Trump administration is reverting to a more confrontational approach [...]

Sheesh, what was the approach before this if not confrontational?

Great, that means its working. I hope every single country in the world builds competent IT infrastructure. Having more competition will help us to develop more and better technology and have more alternatives, and overall increase the quality and resilience of technology globally. The current effective monopsy of US cloud providers has caused an unnecessary hard convergence that prevents innovation, is dangerous to privacy and security, and unnecessarily hinders national sovereignty.

The fall of the american empire: speedrun any %. The past 5 and next 5 years will be taught in history books longer than ww2 will

> (passing data sovereignty laws will) expand government control in ways that can undermine civil liberties and enable censorship

This Roger Stone playbook shit is wild. This admin will piss on your leg and tell you it's raining.

Given the socio-political climate, it's really bonkers to go bashing every ally the US has had since WW2 and then in the other hand go "No No No, trust only us with your data"

What could go wrong?

America has lost trust internationally because this administration is amoral, chaotic and transactional. Trust is a very expensive commodity because it takes generations to build and can be destroyed in a moment. This is a fight that America is going to lose and we're all the worse off for it.

> Experts say the move signals the Trump administration is reverting to a more confrontational approach

Oh. So, like, going from school bully to abusive parent?

If these countries don't want Mockingbird coordinated regime change, they should ban all U.S. social media altogether.

Time for an nth amendment to introduce shame to the Konstityushon?

Yeah, good luck with that. That ship has long sailed since Snowden and the Merkel phone affair. Threats to annex Greenland didn't help either.

Thank you trump administration for doing more for European data sovereignty in one year than the last 20 years combined lol

lol position #2, to #22, in just over an hour... :) (11 -> 22 in 5 minutes)

time to ban US tech companies

Why are US tech stocks not falling yet due to the trend of countries decoupling?

Confidence that in the short term nothing will change. All large-scale change is hard. Change that impacts everyone's workflow will be resisted even if the new thing is better, and in many areas the alternatives are pretty mediocre. Also a combination of political and economic pressure has in the past been successful in making meaningful initiatives fail or roll them back.

In the long term this is an issue. But I'm not sure the US stock market actually cares that much about what the world will look like in 4 or 8 years.

The US recently rolled out a childhood investment account that offered to pump a thousand dollars per child into the main market index funds backed by the US government. In the SOTU there was also a mention of matching the first thousand dollar invested in an approved retirement account for all residents - not just federal employees.

The US government is pumping the stock market with debt - as long as nobody starts dumping bonds or currency this is an action that will make number go up.

Because the market does not reflect reality.

The market reflects reality. The new reality is that the people who are invested apparently don't need liquidity, and bad news doesn't really matter.

>that the people who are invested apparently don't need liquidity

The rich and ultra rich don't need liquidity, they have our 401k plans for that.

The rich and ultra rich tend to borrow against their investments rather than spending their own money. As long as the number continues to go up it's basically a free money pipe for everyone over a certain level of wealth.

They have been, if you compare them to the performance of the non-US market, and most software companies are declining daily.

average trader probably doesn't realise the bigger picture

yet

Voting with your wallet doesn’t work when the corpo is big enough to buy everyone off.

IGV down 18%. Tech stocks are falling

See Also: Isaac Newton...

What are you talking about? There's been a ~18% drop in tech sector this past month (see: IGV)

I don't know if it's due to "decoupling" but there has been some selling recently.

That's mostly AI panic based on the narratives swirling around in finance news. I'd agree this threat of decoupling is more serious, but I also think the market knows that US tech is so deeply embedded everywhere that decoupling will take decades.

To be fair data sovereignty is usually just a way for governments to crack down on free speech/internet usage. They require all the company servers be in the country, then when they want to get information it's easier to get a warrant and threaten to take away all their servers. This is what they did in China/Russia and why they're doing it in the EU.

It's also probably just good business for the US, but locking down on citizen freedom is the only real reason I've seen countries do it.

are we the baddies?

Good luck with that. I hope the EU is not stupid enough to stop this initiative.

This would not be happening if it was not for the US dummy in chief. The EU was looking to do this for a while, but where taking its time until recent events.

they won't stop it

the US was really, really foolish to crystalise the risk by locking out those judges

prior to that it was just a theoretical people were yelling about

now it's real, and there's a continent of hungry businesses lobbying for resources to be diverted domestically, instead of being sent to the US

and that's the EU's bread and butter

Half of the UN agencies are relocating all over the world. The financial and accounting departments are moving thousands of people to Madrid and Bonn.

They will not be coming back soon.

I say this is 60/40 Trump. For years I have heard the UN Building in NYC is in real bad shape. I have not heard of any large repairs happening of this time.

>the US was really, really foolish to crystalise the risk by locking out those judges

Do you think the Trump admin thinks about the consequences of their decisions for more than 5 minutes into the future?

They're all about making a quick buck via scams, insider trading and rug pulls, future consequences be damned. Sometimes they make a good call when they listen to what their corporate lobbyists say.

> The cable said the Trump administration was pushing for "a more assertive international data policy" and that diplomats should "counter unnecessarily burdensome regulations, such as data localization mandates."

For any government in Europe, it should be extremely pressing to untangle itself as quickly as possible from US-based companies as suppliers.

But to be frank, even regulations should be unnecessary here. Private businesses in Europe (and elsewhere) should consider it an existential threat to depend on cloud services from the US. We are all one executive order away from having access cut.

> Private businesses in Europe (and elsewhere) should consider it an existential threat to depend on cloud services from the US

They do already, everyone except the ones truly deep into the US ecosystem already have plans or are making plans for how to get out from US infrastructure in 2026.

I hope you are right.

It doesn't matter if the decision is illegal. The time it would take to have it "fixed" could cause already immeasurable damage.

[flagged]

Why is it wrong for US diplomats to advocate for a policy that clearly benefits US companies?

The argument that it’s wrong would be because it’s bad for US consumers and those abroad too. There’s monopolization arguments, and there’s clear evidence of wrong-doing by these companies already.

Even for US tech folks like HN, I doubt it would help us. US companies hoard their profits and power, so most people here would see no benefit. It’s yet another move to protect rich corporations and the corporate cronies of the most corrupt administration in US history.

The data sovereignty initiatives have been massively promoted by US policy. All this advocacy will achieve is make the US look even less trustworthy.

The article didn’t say it was wrong by my reading: it reported that it’s happening.

That said: “benefits US companies” != good public policy for the US as a whole. It’s explicitly trying to interfere in how other countries govern themselves for the benefit of shareholders, not because it’s necessarily good policy.

It’s also something we wouldn’t necessarily appreciate if done to us by our allies. If we have any actual allies left given all of Trump’s tariffs and threats against other countries.

In a normal, mature government, advocacy for your nation's products would be reasonable, and even then, would be controversial in this instance. "Do not protect your citizens' privacy, our citizens might get ideas".

I think it's the assumptions that are baked in with the Trump regime. No subtlety, no mutual benefit, do as we say or else.

This just accelerates the Balkanization of the Internet, which already is segregated by China and Russia. Maybe it was inevitable. Corporations benefit the most from open access and as they have demonstrated with unrestricted AI scraping they obey no morality, ethics, or law they are not compelled to by force.

This has already been on the table for over 6 years now - Stratechery (a tech blog most decisionmakers read) posited the Four Internet theory all the way back in 2020 [0]

[0] - https://stratechery.com/2020/india-jio-and-the-four-internet...

Europe, if you want good tech businesses you need to create a tech business friendly environment.

Banning US tech companies without creating (really) fertile grounds for business is just going to be shooting yourself in the foot. A replacement Google won't grow on a farm only fed worker/consumer fertilizer.

It's almost diabolical that the only way Europe can get rid of the US, is to be more like the US.

There is plenty of technology companies in Europe.

It might not seem like it for the HN crowd, who mostly make a living stringing web libraries together.

Apple is the same size as Europe's tech sector...just Apple.

Of the top 50 tech companies on Earth, 3 are European and 30 are American.[1]

Europe has a seriously lacking tech scene. The situation is borderline catastrophic.Even just this past week the OpenClaw guy ditched the EU for the US, calling out the EU's infertile business scene[2]. These are exactly the kind of people the EU should be clearing a path for and rolling out a rug. Wake up.

[1]https://companiesmarketcap.com/tech/largest-tech-companies-b... [2]https://www.businessinsider.com/openclaw-creator-slams-europ...

US tech is so dominant because the US was the worlds benevolent superpower.

You've changed, we're adapting accordingly.

You might think I am trying to put down Europe, but the reality is that I am trying to make a Europe that can stand on it's own.

The economic rifts that a hard pull away from US support would create almost certainly will fracture the EU, give rise to nationalist leaders, and weaken support for Eastern Europe.

What's happening right now is exactly what Russia wants. Big brother America going away, so Russia only has to deal with countries that have been been on a 30 year status quo cruise control.

> calling out the EU's infertile business scene

lol, it's always because of money. European tech startups often sell out to US investors because they offer more money.

I've worked for companies that plodded along nicely privately owned, 20-50 employees, but they got "offers they couldn't refuse" from US companies and sold. Usually just buying us to stamp out potential competition/buying a customer base

So maybe Europe should let Europeans be the wealthy ones, rather than losing them to the US?

That explanation is not enough. What are you supposed to do with more money if your dream in life is to create cutting edge tech? There comes a point when money doesn't trump all.

Apple is a bit of a terrible example. They're not profitable unless they offshore hardware assembly, and their service revenue is considered an anticompetitive monopoly even domestically. The only way they got to this point was by fucking over American labor and the free market.

If you account for the market damages that Apple is responsible for, the situation is already catastrophic. The EU has every justification to decouple themselves from capricious and unaccountable businesses like Apple, Google and Microsoft.

On the other hand, if US tech businesses want to keep access to European markets they shouldn't support US politicians who want to override the sovereignty of those nations.

Businesses exist to fill a demand. And the market will pay accordingly. For example:

Spotify SE == Napster US

Netflix US == Lovefilm UK

Craigslist US == Gumtree UK

Hmm. Where was http invented? Where was ARM invented?

Great. Where are the trillions of dollars that came from those inventions? In the US and China.

A huge chunk of those trillions come from European and other non-US sources. Capital controls (or triggering the EU anti-coercion legislation), a truly integrated EU capital market and a few failed USD treasury auctions could very rapidly re-direct those flows.

If https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IIPUSNETIQ starts reversing, you'll see a lot of US & EU tech re-pricing (and not in the US's favour). Europe's tech talent is excellent, it's the structural financing disadvantages (and loaded trade agreements, see: https://doctorow.medium.com/https-pluralistic-net-2026-01-01...) that have historically held it back.

>A huge chunk of those trillions come from European and other non-US sources.

Well that's even worse isn't it. Europe invents something only for the US to produce it and then sell it back to Europe?

Maybe it's time for Europeans to come home from their 30 year post cold war vacation. 60-70 hour work weeks, performance based job security, 15 days vacation (that you work during anyway), corporate tax exemptions funded by social program cuts, and 35 year old billionaires leading the charge. There will be a vibrant tech scene and actually competitive software across the board within a few years.

But you probably recoiled in horror reading that. So do most other Europeans. So the strong players leave to reap the rewards that those things bring, and the rest stay behind the in the comfy status quo and say "We'll just buy xyz from the Americans".

And the web browser, Linux, GSM, EUV Lithography (ASML), Python, Turing, Babbage, Lovelace...