[HN Gopher] Europe is breaking its reliance on American science
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Europe is breaking its reliance on American science
Author : whynotmaybe
Score : 84 points
Date : 2025-08-04 18:48 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| givemeethekeys wrote:
| Yeah, just like they're breaking their reliance on the American
| military /s.
| surfsvammel wrote:
| Yes. Very similar actually. Most of Europe is increasing
| spending on military defence.
| xyzzzzzzz wrote:
| So they finally are doing what trump asked them to do?
| whynotmaybe wrote:
| No, they've been doing it since Russia's war in Ukraine.
|
| 3 days after the start of the invasion, Germany announced a
| EUR100 billion increase to military spending.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeitenwende_speech
| tharne wrote:
| The fact that you think that's a big number just
| underscores how dire Europe's security situation is at
| the moment. One hundred billion Euros sounds like a lot,
| but China spends two and a half times that much on
| defense every single year, the U.S. spends 10X that much
| every single year, and even the Russians spend more than
| that every single year. Nevermind the fact Europe needs
| to play catch up here, not just keep pace.
| vikaveri wrote:
| Wikipedia says Russia spent 100 billion in 2023, so
| increase of 100 billion should be more than that don't
| you think? Are you misinformed or deliberately lying?
| chrisco255 wrote:
| You have to adjust figures for PPP, or Purchasing Power
| Parity, due to exchange rate differences. In 2024,
| Russia's PPP adjusted military spend was somewhere
| between $300B and $400B [1][2]. Their technology is also
| vastly superior to Germany's and they have a much larger
| personnel. It doesn't matter how much you spend if you
| don't get your money's worth.
|
| The 100B euro investment was also a temporary one-off
| budget allocation that had been distributed over the past
| 2 years and to little effect:
| https://www.grosswald.org/eu100-billion-later-fixing-the-
| bun...
|
| [1] https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/debating-defence-
| budgets-why-... [2] https://militaryppp.com/blog/
| seydor wrote:
| By promising to buy more american weapons, more american LNG
| and investing in american companies.
|
| We europeans are having a really hard time breaking our US
| addiction. I mean what are we even doing in here
| bpodgursky wrote:
| Europe is deciding that US technology addiction is better
| than Russian subjugation.
|
| It's not a time to be playing political games buying sub-
| par weapons. Bad for Saab, but that's reality. The world is
| dangerous again.
| alimw wrote:
| If your weapons can stop working according the whim of
| America, that would be seriously subpar.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| The reality is that European solidarity is not ironclad
| either. Is the US, or Germany, or Sweden more likely to
| fold and deactivate* weapon systems under nuclear
| blackmail?
|
| It sounds hypothetical but seriously, what would Gripen
| do if tactical nukes were dropped on Estonia and Putin
| threatened the same on Sweden if they didn't back off? I
| don't know, and you don't either.
|
| *I've not seen credible accusations this is possible, but
| assuming it is
| jltsiren wrote:
| Those "promises" were meaningless BS. Every European should
| know that the EU cannot make such promises, because it has
| no power in those matters. Defense policy is up to the
| member states, while investments and energy purchases are
| mostly made by private entities.
| givemeethekeys wrote:
| *Most of Europe has promised to do something... in the
| glorious future, where anything is possible. Anything at all!
| inejge wrote:
| Those things take time and have an inertia in both branches:
| it's easier to continue using the existing resources than
| standing up your own, but once you're committed to developing a
| replacement it's not easy to stop.
|
| (EU already did it, however partially, with its own satellite
| navigation system.)
| pfdietz wrote:
| Yes, they will divert money from their social welfare
| spending into military spending any day now.
|
| Any. Day. Now.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| I think it makes sense. Europe and other countries need to
| boycott the US based on how the US is negatively affecting the
| world and driving consumption. Similar to how many countries
| boycotted Russia.
| linotype wrote:
| You really think what the US has done is remotely on par with
| what Russia is doing?
| bestouff wrote:
| Not necessarily but nobody was trusting Russia.
| LaurensBER wrote:
| Not at all but it seems reasonable to set some standards for
| the game (e.g supporting free trade) and stop playing with
| those that do not respect the rules.
|
| Unfortunately with both China and America not respecting the
| rules that's not realistic for Europe at the moment but one
| can dream.
| LarsKrimi wrote:
| Yes. Russia has been threatening invasions for years. Now for
| 7 months America has started doing it too.
|
| It's a much worse feeling being threatened with military
| invasion by someone your own government tries to continue
| insisting is a close ally
| chrisco255 wrote:
| The U.S. should pull out of NATO and leave Europe to deal with
| Russia, and the inevitable World War 3 that would ensue. The
| U.S. isn't driving consumption, we plateaued on that basis
| years ago. However, we're not so suicidal as the Europeans, who
| have resigned themselves to wring their hands and mock
| Americans as they get leapfrogged by China, India, and the rest
| of the rapidly developing world while contributing little but
| feckless regulatory edicts.
| richwater wrote:
| > The United States funds 57% of Argo's $40 million annual
| operating expenses, while the EU funds 23%.
|
| Why the hell is the US on the hook for practically 2/3rds the
| cost of a system that monitors the entire worlds' ocean?
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| 1. Why should the EU monitor the Pacific? The Pacific is big.
|
| 2. The EU claims the EU as its sphere of influence. The U.S
| claims The U.S and Central and South America by virtue of the
| Monroe Doctrine.
|
| 3. The U.S wanted to be in charge and be big and important, so
| if you want to be big and important you gotta do more.
|
| 4. The EU has military bases in the EU and the waters which
| touch the EU. The U.S has a military presence in every Ocean of
| the world.
| azinman2 wrote:
| > The EU has military bases in the EU and the waters which
| touch the EU. The U.S has a military presence in every Ocean
| of the world.
|
| UK/France and I'm sure others have bases all over the world.
| nosianu wrote:
| But that is their business and not the EU. And I have no
| idea why you included the UK anyway - not in the EU.
|
| Here is a list, by the way:
| https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-
| rankings/overseas-...
|
| Something else: Let's also ignore (or not) that the
| headline of the submission is waaayyy too grand for what's
| actually in the article. It's only about meteorological
| data collection. As important as it may be, there's a lot
| more science than that.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| > The EU claims the EU as its sphere of influence. The U.S
| claims The U.S and Central and South America by virtue of the
| Monroe Doctrine.
|
| The Monroe Doctrine is a policy from the 19th century. A lot
| has happened since then.
|
| > The U.S wanted to be in charge and be big and important
|
| The EU isn't a sovereign country unto itself, so it either
| must be "big and important" or it has no other reason to
| exist. The EU is the second or third largest economy by GDP
| and not far off from the U.S. but it expects the U.S. to pay
| disproportionate levels for everything as if it's still 1946.
|
| > The EU has military bases in the EU and the waters which
| touch the EU
|
| The EU doesn't have military bases.
| perihelions wrote:
| $820 billion in hurricane damages since 2016, and the cost
| center we should focus on is some $40 million/year spent
| researching causes of that? That's roughly similar in
| proportionality--and in reasoning--to a datacenter deleting its
| smoke detectors. (If that _is_ what you want for your
| discounts, there is OVH).
|
| https://www.wunderground.com/article/storms/hurricane/news/2...
| chrisco255 wrote:
| The hurricanes will continue, as they always have, as will
| aerial, satellite, and oceanic monitoring of hurricanes, but
| that is not what the OP article is talking about.
| epistasis wrote:
| Why the hell should I have to live a worse life with more storm
| damages, less military preparedness, etc. etc. etc. just
| because sycophants are willing to make up ridiculous excuses
| for extremely unwise decisions? Such is the pain of democracy,
| while we still have one.
| zekrioca wrote:
| It is one of the side effects in terms of costs that a country
| has in order to enable the safe flow of global trade.
| lawlessone wrote:
| Because they chose too?
|
| It more than likely has uses in defence?
|
| Hegemony isn't free.
| tharne wrote:
| Lol, I'll believe it when I see it. Is this the same Europe that
| despite everything going on in the world is:
|
| - Still buying Russian gas
|
| - Dependent on U.S. Military bases for their own security
|
| - Dependent on Chinese manufacturing for consumer goods
|
| - Dependent on the U.S. for software and cloud infrastructure
|
| - Dependent on the Chinese for computer hardware
|
| Best of luck Europe, you've had a good run, but you've gotten
| yourself into a fine mess here.
| lazyeye wrote:
| Yes the funding of Russia's war machine (by buying Russian
| energy) whilst expecting the US to fund the EU's defense takes
| some level of nerve. Nobody should take the EU seriously.
| tobias3 wrote:
| Yeah, it was a mistake taking this free trade, globalization,
| UN, WTO, basic human rights, ICC, change through trade, nuclear
| disarmament etc. stuff seriously. Cost us bigly.
| lazyeye wrote:
| Not everything but in alot of cases yes it was a mistake.
| Trade has never been free, globalization has been a negative
| for alot of people etc
| tharne wrote:
| It really did cost you bigly. Compared with 25 years ago,
| Europe is less safe, less powerful, and more dependent on
| other countries for very important things.
| jemmyw wrote:
| That is arguably incorrect and a matter of perception.
| Europe was perceived to be safer and more powerful 25 years
| ago. But is in fact, safer and more powerful now than it
| was then. Are you safer if the dependencies are unknown or
| if they're known and people are talking about them? Are you
| safer if you believe the US will have your back, not
| knowing that it won't really, or are you safer with better
| knowledge on how far support will go?
|
| The EU countries are, right now, pumping up their military
| budgets. Russia has just spent several years destroying
| it's huge stock of soviet era equipment. 25 years ago, that
| equipment was in better shape and the EU was reducing
| military budgets all over the place, and Ukraine was closer
| to Russia's sphere of influence - potentially far less safe
| but nobody knew it?
| jemmyw wrote:
| The problem is that for a lot of these problems Europe hasn't
| had that much self determination over the last 75 years. The US
| had to intervene twice in world wars that started in Europe.
| And after WWII the US did, arguably, a reasonably noble thing
| in how it provided investment to rebuild Europe. No more wars
| out of Europe and a market to sell US goods to, and then a bit
| later a bulwark against the USSR. All these things meant a
| forced dependency. And the US still wants to sell its military
| equipment, and under Trump very very keen to sell more goods. I
| would argue that this situation also contributed to Europe
| losing it's initial developments in computing with brain drain
| to the US.
|
| 75 years just isn't that long in geopolitics, and it's a hard
| ship to turn around. Only 25 years ago the relationship between
| the US and Europe was still very strong and it didn't look like
| there was any pulling back.
|
| You mention buying Russian gas. Again, it's very hard to
| suddenly stop that gas flow. Even Ukraine didn't shut down the
| gas pipelines going from Russian to Europe while they had
| existing contracts in place, it's happening this year. Gas from
| Russia was 40%, is now less than 11%, is forecast to drop much
| further this and next year. These kind of economic dependencies
| also continued for surprising long in previous wars between
| countries that were actually in hot wars with each other.
|
| The kind of changes you're talking about are slow. The US also
| has it's dependencies on Asian manufacturing that it is also
| now trying to turn around, and that will also be slow.
| pfdietz wrote:
| I thought the results of science are free for everyone to see.
| That's how science works.
|
| So isn't it optimal to depend on science someone else does? They
| spend the money, but you both reap whatever knowledge is
| obtained.
| Rodmine wrote:
| No, "science" often produces results favourable to those who
| fund it.
| pfdietz wrote:
| So, the results aren't published? How is that consistent with
| how science is supposed to be done?
|
| Or do you mean there are spinoffs? But then how is science
| supposed to be superior at producing these compared to
| directed development of actually useful things?
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