[HN Gopher] Airbus to migrate critical apps to a sovereign Euro ...
___________________________________________________________________
Airbus to migrate critical apps to a sovereign Euro cloud
Author : saubeidl
Score : 424 points
Date : 2025-12-20 08:36 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theregister.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theregister.com)
| _ache_ wrote:
| Good, and them get ride of Palantir as a "data manager". It's a
| step in financing EU sovereign cloud providers.
| hulitu wrote:
| > Good, and them get ride of Palantir as a "data manager".
|
| And how do we fight terrorists, CSAM and political opponents
| without Palantir ?
| _ache_ wrote:
| I don't think Airbus is fighting terrorists, child abuse or
| political opponents. So what is your point ? Airbus is
| fighting industrial espionage.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Missed the sarcasm. But FWIW, all three are legitimate
| threat actors for a strategic airplane manufacturer.
| _ache_ wrote:
| I don't see how child abuse content is a risk for a
| airplane manufacturer but that is not how Palentir is
| used at Airbus.
|
| I'm talking about the Skywise data platform.
|
| https://www.aircraft.airbus.com/en/services/enhance/skywi
| se-...
| t43562 wrote:
| Seems extremely dangerous to be doing those kinds of things
| with software from someone politically hostile. Perhaps the
| EU should be weaning itself off that too?
| general1465 wrote:
| > And how do we fight terrorists, CSAM and political
| opponents without Palantir ?
|
| You can make exactly same argument for client (phone)
| scanning and depreciation of encryption.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > And how do we fight terrorists, CSAM and political
| opponents without Palantir ?
|
| By doing police legwork and by prevention work (i.e. offer
| help to pedophiles, don't go and wreck MENA countries for
| funsies, but invest in helping the civilian populations).
| bambax wrote:
| Your comment may be sarcastic, IDK; but if it is I concur.
|
| Fighting "CSAM" is absurd and ridiculous, and used as a
| justification for eroding public liberties. So is the fight
| against "terrorism".
|
| The US government has decided to kill innocent fishermen _en
| masse_ and labelled its victims "narco-terrorists" as a
| justification for these crimes.
|
| We absolutely do not need Palantir.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| > Fighting "CSAM" is absurd and ridiculous, and used as a
| justification for eroding public liberties. So is the fight
| against "terrorism".
|
| Labelling like this works both ways you know.
| j_maffe wrote:
| Please add a /s we can't afford sarcasm in this climate
| anymore
| pyrale wrote:
| The sarcasm is too damn high!
| flumpcakes wrote:
| Some people in the US deride it's close allies as "freeloaders"
| because they choose to use and buy US tech, reinforcing the US's
| position as a global powerhouse. (Meanwhile US tech is built on
| the shoulders of their allies.) Now we see these same allies are
| starting to look inward and invest in technology they own
| completely because the US is acting decisively not like an ally.
| Something unthinkable since WW2.
|
| I don't see this news as anything but a good thing. For every
| technology out there, the EU needs a native alternative. It's
| clear the current US administration wants to make the EU worse
| based on a politics of grievance.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| I agree, this is a good thing. Long term stable large contracts
| are great simulation for a market. Airbus obviously has a large
| amount of military work, and its data needs to stay in Europe.
|
| What we also need is a faster acceleration of military spending
| so this can happen with more companies.
| ExoticPearTree wrote:
| > thing. Long term stable large contracts are great
| simulation for a market.
|
| They are not. It can hurt Airbus very much if a provider says
| they can provide a certain level of hardware/software for 10
| years and in three years the RAM or storage goes through the
| roof and the provider is not big enough to absorb all the
| losses.
|
| People don't choose the hyperscalers because they are based
| in the US, they choose them because they are too big to fail
| and have pretty much unlimited resources and have multiplr
| streams of revenue.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| I would expect a contract review for millions in hosting to
| review how the company will mitigate those costs. Normally
| you would expect them to contract away the risk themselves.
| In fact the current rise in RAM costs is due to exactly
| this, big hosters contracting for long term RAM certainty.
| everfrustrated wrote:
| There's a futures market for RAM prices if you want to
| hedge that risk. No different than corn.
| filoleg wrote:
| > There's a futures market for RAM prices if you want to
| hedge that risk. No different than corn.
|
| Yeah, and that's a fine vehicle for insuring against this
| risk for a finance company or for an individual.
|
| I am prepared to be wrong on the following take (as it is
| based on nothing more than just "it came to me in a
| dream"), but my hunch is that neither Airbus nor the EU
| state governments are currently even attempting to hedge
| the RAM price risk by accumulating a RAM futures stash on
| the market.
| unmole wrote:
| > Some people in the US deride it's close allies as
| "freeloaders" because they choose to use and buy US tech
|
| This is a disingenuous straw man. The _allies_ are derided for
| literally freeloading on US military protection while
| underinvesting in their own defense.
| oliwarner wrote:
| How's that? How many Middle Eastern refugees are America
| sheltering from the fallout of American aggression and the
| regimes it props up?
|
| The US isn't anywhere close to paying its way.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| Freeloading?
|
| My country spends less on defence as a percentage of GDP than
| the US. But it spends much of that with US companies. This is
| not Freeloading. It was a deal. Cancel TSR-2, and buy
| American and we will lend you some money. Cancel your nuclear
| program and buy US submarine launched missiles and we will
| help you look after yourself. Now let Visa and Mastercard
| skim off all your transactions and we will keep you secure to
| keep the money flowing. Sweetheart tax deals for US companies
| to operate, and we will keep you safe to keep the money
| flowing. It is not Freeloading, it is colonialism
| LightBug1 wrote:
| I can hear the whoosh going over the head of anyone
| associated with Trump. Thanks for trying though.
| mlrtime wrote:
| Agreed those things exist, in most contracts one or both
| parties feel they are not getting a 'fair' deal and will
| renegotiate terms, this is very common.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| Let's not pretend this was something the US didn't want for
| most of the last seventy years.
| xorcist wrote:
| Pray tell, how much of, say, the latest Afghanistan war did
| the US pay and how much do their allies need to bear? The
| rebuilding of a whole country, the reinstatement of the
| Taliban regime, the destabilization of the region, and the
| still ongoing stream of refugees? The political aftermath of
| which is still felt in Europe.
| Amezarak wrote:
| Europe could have simply denied entry to the refugees and
| avoided their entire refugee problem. It's especially silly
| to blame the US when most EU states strongly supported the
| downfall of Qaddafi and Assad.
| ExoticPearTree wrote:
| > The political aftermath of which is still felt in Europe.
|
| Nobody is forcing Europe to allow people without visas in.
| Building a eall and shooting on site anyone who crosses it
| is a very simple and effective method of keeping
| immigration in check.
|
| But no, the EU seems hellbent on destroying itself by
| allowing all kinds of savages through its borders.
| saubeidl wrote:
| I'd argue the savages are the people shooting civilians.
| alephnerd wrote:
| The EU is so much more civilized by bribing Turkiye [0],
| Libya [1], Morocco, Mauritania, Tunisia [2], and other
| nations to shoot and/or indefinitely detain them for you
| guys instead.
|
| Yet we as Americans are the savages.
|
| European civil society needs to drop this charade of
| moralizing and being "rules based". The reality is EU
| policymakers are equally as mercurial and open to making
| deals with devils. The issue is a subset of you guys have
| a weird form of "white saviourship" and sense of
| exceptionalism.
|
| Finally, a plurality of us Americans either never had or
| no longer have blood ties with Europe. As an Asian
| American who used to work om the Hill, I myself and my
| peers increasingly ignore or overlook Europe despite
| having went to college with a number of your up-and-
| coming decisionmakers. In 2025, the majority of us
| Americans are Latino, Black, Mixed, Asian, or multi-
| generational White American.
|
| Any positive historical ties we had with Europe (in
| reality, a fluke from 1939-2011) was because of 1.5 gen
| Central and Eastern European immigrants turned NatSec
| Advisers like Kissinger (German), Albright (Czech), and
| Brzezinski (Polish). From a soft power perspective, when
| we don't look inward we increasingly look to Latin
| America or Asia. And economically as well - our total
| trade with all of Europe is barely $975B compared to
| $1.5T with all of the Americas and around $2-2.5T with
| Asia.
|
| [0] - https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2017/03/the-
| eu-turkey...
|
| [1] -
| https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/feb/05/eu-
| dea...
|
| [2] -
| https://english.elpais.com/international/2024-06-01/mass-
| arr...
| saubeidl wrote:
| What are you talking about? Are you guys shooting people
| at the border?
|
| I was reacting to the guy above, not Americans.
| alephnerd wrote:
| Ah my bad. I have become reflexively acerbic due to some
| of the latent hypocrisy I've seen on some European HNers.
| avianlyric wrote:
| > Building a wall and shooting on site anyone who crosses
| it is a very simple and effective method of keeping
| immigration in check.
|
| Ah yes a wall, like that famously effective one that
| Trump built. Tell me has US managed to actually finish it
| yet?
| jeltz wrote:
| Does the US plan to pay for this wall?
| hshdhdhj4444 wrote:
| The current U.S. President has insisted that Europeans are
| freeloading. Given that he's been the primary proponent of
| this idea, and given that he's been cutting off aid and has
| made cutting off this "freeloading" the central plank of his
| defense strategy, the U.S. defense budget must have gone down
| significantly right?
|
| https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5656174-trump-
| si...
|
| > The bill approves a record $901 billion in military
| spending for fiscal 2026
|
| Oh...
| throw0101c wrote:
| > _The allies are derided for literally freeloading on US
| military protection while underinvesting in their own
| defense._
|
| 1. No one forced the US to spend a bajillion dollars on
| defense.
|
| 2. The US did so out of their own free will, _and_ out of
| self-interest: their power hegemony allowed for peaceful
| trade routes that benefited the US economy and US
| corporations.
|
| 3. Their own defense against what? What threats, until fairly
| recently, did the Europeans face that they needed to spend
| money protecting against?
| baq wrote:
| > Their own defense against what? What threats, until
| fairly recently, did the Europeans face that they needed to
| spend money protecting against?
|
| Same ones the US built the most expensive army in the world
| to defend against
| Wilder7977 wrote:
| Guess which country had never any interest in a strong
| (politically and militarily) Europe, to maintain the world
| hegemony?
|
| A Europe with an independent defense is dangerous competition
| for the US. Maybe it means that some international trade will
| be done in Euro. Maybe it means foreign policies in Europe's
| interests.
| bambax wrote:
| Of course it's a good thing. It's an excellent thing. Is there
| any European company or individual arguing otherwise?
| kakacik wrote:
| Country of Ukraine? Those suckers who bought F-35s or at
| least paid for them? And few other cases.
|
| Long term, I agree with you.
| anovikov wrote:
| What's the problem with F-35s? Israel actively uses them
| and appears to be very happy. They provided them advantage
| no one platform could.
| aziaziazi wrote:
| The problem is about politic, not F35s capabilities: US
| is a strong ally of Israel but many don't feel the same
| in Europe.
| breve wrote:
| A necessary step to reduce risk to infrastructure given that the
| US government has become erratic and has decided it is now anti-
| Europe.
|
| The US means to undermine the EU: https://www.dw.com/en/will-
| trump-pull-italy-austria-poland-h...
|
| The US means to annex European territory:
| https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0j9l08902eo
|
| It's the same reason you don't want Chinese equipment in your
| telecommunications infrastructure. You can't trust what the
| Chinese government will do to it or with it.
| petcat wrote:
| > It's the same reason you don't want Chinese equipment in your
| telecommunications infrastructure. You can't trust what the
| Chinese government will do to it or with it.
|
| Doesn't Europe actually have _a lot_ of Chinese equipment in
| their telecom infrastructure? Is this an effort just to try not
| to make that mistake again?
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| Europe will just end up doing whatever is cheapest. It's the
| same story as always. They'll say some stuff publicly but
| they'll quietly come back to American tech once they see the
| price tag difference. They're very cost sensitive and their
| investors are extremely risk-averse.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| With US tech now in profit-squeezing mode rather than user-
| acquisition mode, the cost sensitivity might favor
| switching for things like SaaS.
| cpursley wrote:
| Yep - just look at their oil/energy situation: they still
| buy it by the boatload from you know who, but just through
| 3rd parties.
| ben_w wrote:
| > They're very cost sensitive and their investors are
| extremely risk-averse.
|
| Being risk-averse unfortunately now means "avoid the USA".
| victorbjorklund wrote:
| US says that Europe is their number one enemy. Using
| American tech is the most risky thing you can do since
| Trump declared that they are now a hostile enemy with
| intents of overthrowing European democracies.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > US says that Europe is their number one enemy.
|
| Pardon my French, but where do you get that nonsense
| from?
| talideon wrote:
| The latest US national security strategy, one would
| assume.
| ulfw wrote:
| No, not a lot as the EU has two very competitive providers in
| Ericsson and Nokia
| fidotron wrote:
| The entire problem is they aren't nearly as "very
| competitive" as would be politically convenient.
| pigggg wrote:
| They're both very expensive and the carriers primarily care
| about cost and features. And huawei will take a dozen devs,
| give them a one way ticket and put them in a hotel room
| near a customer to grind our whatever feature needed to
| seal the deal.
|
| I remember years ago talking to some EU telecom VP who was
| on the engineering side that said "id buy from North Korea
| if the price was right".
|
| We live in new times anyways - most of the carriers have
| outsourced a lot of the tech stuff to the vendors anyways.
| Angostura wrote:
| The UK certainly ripped out a lot of Huawei equipment. Which
| is why our cellular coverage is a bit shitty these days
| bigyabai wrote:
| As an American, I would much prefer spotty cellar coverage
| to a Salt Typhoon attack. You lot got off easy!
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| How was it a mistake? Europe got a lot of good telecom
| infrastructure for a low price. There's no evidence it was
| compromised.
|
| It was actually the US that was pressuring Europe to get rid
| of Chinese telecom equipment, as part of the first Trump
| administration's broader strategy against China.
| pembrook wrote:
| Europe should be building domestic digital capacity regardless
| (and not just servers) but saying it needs to treat the US like
| China is a bit melodramatic given the economic and physical
| threat to Europe is 10X greater in the east.
|
| The US is not anti-Europe. The US has just begun to start
| evaluating its relationship with Europe rationally and wants it
| to grow up beyond the post-WW2 training wheels.
|
| The overreaction to this kind of gives vibes of slamming the
| door and screaming "you don't love me!" because dad won't buy a
| new toy.
| saubeidl wrote:
| The US literally wrote a national security strategy
| describing that it wants to dismantle the EU.
|
| What do you mean it's not anti-Europe? It's literally trying
| to destroy our shared institutions!
| pembrook wrote:
| This is all political ragebait and rumors, just like those
| claiming the US was going to pull out of NATO at the
| beginning of this administration.
|
| Also, Europe is doing a fine job harming our shared
| institutions all on its own, we don't need any help in that
| department.
| saubeidl wrote:
| Their VP and one of their government-linked oligarchs is
| meeting with literal Neonazis in Germany that are trying
| to topple the constitutional order:
| https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/14/jd-vance-afd-
| meetin...
|
| To say they're not anti-Europe is either hopelessly naive
| or cynically ideologically aligned with their goals.
| mlrtime wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_for_Germany
|
| AFG are Neonazis?
| saubeidl wrote:
| Indeed.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/19/turmoil-in-
| ger...
|
| https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/dangerous-
| liais...
| drysine wrote:
| By this logic the Ukraine is a neo-Nazi country. One
| can't have it both ways.
|
| Times Of Israel[0]:
|
| "The criticism came one day after Ukrainians marked the
| 111th birthday of Stepan Bandera, the wartime leader of
| the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), a
| violently anti-Semitic organization that collaborated
| with the Nazis. Among Holocaust historians, the consensus
| is that the OUN and its military offshoot, known as the
| UPA, were responsible for the deaths of thousands of Jews
| and up to 100,000 Poles during the war (estimates vary).
|
| In a joint letter to civic leaders in Lviv and Kyiv,
| Israeli ambassador Joel Lion and his Polish counterpart,
| Bartosz Cichocki, expressed concern regarding efforts to
| honor Bandera and Andryi Melnyk, the head of a competing
| faction of the OUN.
|
| In Kyiv on Wednesday, local officials raised a giant
| banner with Bandera's picture over the city
| administration building, prompting anger from Jewish
| activists. That came just over a week after the Lviv
| Oblast Council approved funding for a 2020 celebration in
| honor of Melnyk.
|
| Israel and Poland, which have clashed repeatedly in
| recent years over differing interpretations of the
| history of the Second World War, came together on
| Thursday to issue a rare joint condemnation of Ukraine
| over its efforts to rehabilitate nationalists who
| collaborated with the Nazis.
|
| The criticism came one day after Ukrainians marked the
| 111th birthday of Stepan Bandera, the wartime leader of
| the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), a
| violently anti-Semitic organization that collaborated
| with the Nazis. Among Holocaust historians, the consensus
| is that the OUN and its military offshoot, known as the
| UPA, were responsible for the deaths of thousands of Jews
| and up to 100,000 Poles during the war (estimates vary).
|
| In a joint letter to civic leaders in Lviv and Kyiv,
| Israeli ambassador Joel Lion and his Polish counterpart,
| Bartosz Cichocki, expressed concern regarding efforts to
| honor Bandera and Andryi Melnyk, the head of a competing
| faction of the OUN.
|
| In Kyiv on Wednesday, local officials raised a giant
| banner with Bandera's picture over the city
| administration building, prompting anger from Jewish
| activists. That came just over a week after the Lviv
| Oblast Council approved funding for a 2020 celebration in
| honor of Melnyk.
|
| "Remembering our innocent brothers and sisters murdered
| in the occupied territories of Poland 1935-1945, which
| now constitute a part of Ukraine, we the Ambassadors of
| Poland and Israel believe, that celebrating these
| individuals is an insult," Lion and Cichocki wrote.
|
| "Glorification of those who promoted actively the ethnic
| cleansing is counterproductive in the fight against
| Antisemitism and the reconciliation of our People," they
| continued.
|
| ...
|
| Thursday's letter is the second time that Lion and
| Cichocki have come together to call for a change in
| Ukrainian memory policy. In June, the pair signed a joint
| letter to the mayor of the Ukrainian city of Ivano-
| Frankisvsk, protesting the unveiling of a monument
| honoring Roman Shukhevych, a collaborator with the Nazis
| who was implicated in the murder of countless Jews and
| ethnic Poles.
|
| Following Ukraine's 2014 revolution, the former Soviet
| republic's parliament passed a series of bills known
| collectively as the Decommunization Laws, meant to sever
| the country's ties to its Russian and Soviet past. One of
| the bills prohibited what it called the "public denial of
| the legitimacy of the struggle for independence of
| Ukraine in the twentieth century."
|
| In practical terms, these bills paved the way for the
| rehabilitation of Ukrainian ultranationalist figures who
| had collaborated with the Nazis.
|
| Over the last several years, streets all over Ukraine
| have been named after far-right figures and steps have
| been taken to rehabilitate their images, casting them as
| fighters for democracy whose followers saved Jews from
| the Germans.
|
| Asked about the letter, Ambassador Lion told The Times of
| Israel that Israel and Poland "have a common interest in
| combating Holocaust denial and rewriting of History." "
|
| [0] https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-row-over-holocaust-
| history-...
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| From the wikipedia article you just linked to: https://en
| .wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_for_Germany#Neo-Na...
|
| and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_for_Germany
| #German...
| Amezarak wrote:
| If the #2 or #1 most popular political party in Germany
| are "literal Neonazis", I think Germany and likely Europe
| as a whole has a much bigger problem than whatever
| America is doing.
| saubeidl wrote:
| Those two are not unrelated.
|
| It's a result of deliberate media manipulation and hybrid
| warfare by the US and Russia.
| Amezarak wrote:
| I see.
|
| Well, foreign intervention and propaganda in democracies
| is nothing new. It is well documented all the way back to
| the time of ancient Greece.
|
| So your contention is that in Germany and perhaps other
| countries (France?) some of the most popular political
| parties are popular only because their partisans are
| uneducated dupes or worse, in thrall to foreign powers.
| Perhaps you would be better off ideologically not
| supporting democracy - it sounds like it is not for you.
| Of course democracy has its problems - and people voting
| for dumb ideas is one of them!
|
| You can either accept that it's your duty to convince
| your citizens you are right to win their votes, or you
| can insist that everyone else is wrong and democracy
| means they should shut up and vote only the "right" way
| in accordance with establishment approved opinions and go
| about what Europe has been doing, which is to continue to
| pursue unpopular policies and blame
| Russiia/nazis/America/the Internet/free speech for their
| problems.
|
| European center and left parties could suck all the
| oxygen out of the room and starve the far-right overnight
| if they simply introduced and enforced major immigration
| restrictions - but it's precisely this which is not a
| Establishment Approved Idea and deemed Unthinkable Hate.
| Democracy, as long as your opinions are allowed.
| saubeidl wrote:
| > So your contention is that in Germany and perhaps other
| countries (France?) some of the most popular political
| parties are popular only because their partisans are
| uneducated dupes or worse, in thrall to foreign powers.
| Perhaps you would be better off ideologically not
| supporting democracy - it sounds like it is not for you.
| Of course democracy has its problems - and people voting
| for dumb ideas is one of them!
|
| I don't! I think authoritarian leftism is the way to go
| as most people are too stupid for their own good tbh.
| MangoToupe wrote:
| > European center and left parties could suck all the
| oxygen out of the room and starve the far-right overnight
| if they simply introduced and enforced major immigration
| restrictions
|
| Economic suicide. Why would anyone argue for this? Europe
| might as well just nuke itself.
|
| Granted, if I were a conservative European, I would also
| be pro nuking myself.
| MangoToupe wrote:
| Let's not forget Israel.
| fifilura wrote:
| Indeed it is a huge problem, in particular their
| affiliation with muscovite fascism. It is a huge threat
| to all of Europe.
|
| Dealing with this was a big problem already, the US
| policy is just a not-very-welcome frosting on the cake in
| this respect.
| LadyCailin wrote:
| Project 2025 was just political rage bait and rumors too,
| until it wasn't.
| MangoToupe wrote:
| It can be both. The document is massive, very
| contradictory and incoherent, and most of the people
| hysterical over it haven't even read it. Look I'm no fan
| of the trump administration but people should have
| concrete concerns, not waving around "project 2025" like
| some symbol of the country's imminent collapse.
| Unfortunately, our country is nowhere near collapse and
| this administration is not going to be the thing to bring
| it down. Though they're trying their hardest, i will
| admit.
| mannykannot wrote:
| Talk of how it might be interpreted is rather beside the
| point when the administration appears to be implementing
| a particular interpretation and SCOTUS appears to be fine
| with that, whether or not it is a selective one. Those
| are the concrete concerns of which you speak.
|
| It is helpful to have the document publicly available,
| but only if enough people heed its implicit warning.
| MangoToupe wrote:
| I would argue the concrete concerns we should have is the
| fact that we seem to be committing economic suicide,
| which will have decades of economic and sociopolitical
| fallout. If you think people have an appetite for fascism
| today, wait until you see what decades of deflating
| economies will do.
| systemBuilder wrote:
| This article is about FAFO for MAGA loyalists in the USA.
| Well, MAGA has FA'd with US-European relations. Now they
| get to FO where it takes us (i.e. over the waterfall,
| isolating the USA from everything good in the world.)
| DaSHacka wrote:
| I doubt there's ever going to be an FO. What does Europe
| have of any value? What was the last thing of relevance
| they've done? Help with WWII?
| jeltz wrote:
| What was the last thing the US did of any relevance? Help
| with WWII. Just as stupid claim.
| DaSHacka wrote:
| I mean, we still borderline run the world, so there's
| that. In this very OP it's major news that Europe is
| trying to move off of US technology, because we're just
| so dominant.
| blibble wrote:
| only for the remaining part of the decade, if the US is
| lucky
|
| trump pissing away a century of hard-won soft power
| handed the century to China
| ExoticPearTree wrote:
| Yes, because the EU i stitutiins as they are now need to be
| razed from the face of the earth. Plain and simple.
|
| The EU needs to be gone and try again something like this
| in a generation or two, with more emphasis on competition,
| development and creativity, rather than regulation and
| socialism.
| saubeidl wrote:
| What socialism? What are you talking about?
|
| The EU parliament has a conservative majority [0], as
| does the Council. [1]
|
| It's a right-wing organization. I wish there was
| socialism, mate.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenth_European_Parliame
| nt#Curr...
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_the_European
| _Union#...
| ExoticPearTree wrote:
| So this is why they give out subsidies left and right? Is
| this why they are working on increasing taxes?
|
| Right now in politics you can claim to be whatever you
| want and your policy stance to be opposite: I am on the
| right but I vote left wing measures.
| saubeidl wrote:
| All of those are right wing policies, designed to support
| an inherently broken system of capitalism.
|
| Left wing would be the state owning the means of
| production.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > The US literally wrote a national security strategy
| describing that it wants to dismantle the EU.
|
| The official 2025 NSS document does _not_ explicitly state
| a US goal to dismantle the European Union.
|
| The strategy is highly critical of the EU's direction and
| Europe's _trajectory_ in ways that critics could say could
| indirectly undermine EU cohesion, but there 's no formal
| language saying the US wants to dismantle the EU.
|
| Critics interpret the tone and strategic shift as
| potentially indirectly weakening EU cohesion if taken as
| encouragement to nationalist or Eurosceptic political
| forces.
| saubeidl wrote:
| Heh there's two versions, the one with the spicier
| additions has not been officially published.
|
| https://archive.ph/eT1FY
| andsoitis wrote:
| > Heh there's two versions, the one with the spicier
| additions has not been officially published.
|
| I hear there's a third version.
| saubeidl wrote:
| Let me know once papers of record start reporting about
| it then.
| Lapel2742 wrote:
| > The US is not anti-Europe.
|
| Sure. They are not anti-Europe. They just announced that they
| want to topple democracy in our countries, destroy the
| European Union, want to annex a European territory and are
| best buddies with Vladimir Putin. But beside of that they are
| really good friends ... not!
| pembrook wrote:
| They did not, this is all political ragebait journalism and
| memes.
| alphager wrote:
| Disbanding the EU is an official goal of the new US
| security strategy.
| mlrtime wrote:
| Divide and conquer is working well it seems.
|
| There is no conspiracy, sorry.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| The EU is not Europe. I never see any pro-EU sentiment
| anywhere besides on HN and Reddit. Talk to Europeans and
| they hate the EU and see it as an oppressive foreign
| power. Except for the Germans.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > Talk to Europeans and they hate the EU and see it as an
| oppressive foreign power.
|
| Your framing is off, I'm afraid.
|
| Across Europe, most people see the EU as more good than
| bad, especially compared to the alternative of countries
| acting alone. At the same time, support is often cautious
| rather than enthusiastic.
| nephihaha wrote:
| Voter turn out is extremely low in certain central and
| eastern Europe for EU elections. I think it was down to
| under 20% in some places a few years ago.
|
| I had hoped that the UK would vote to remain and Europe
| would move away from a centralist, authoritarian model,
| but it's got worse especially since 2020. The EU is its
| own worst enemy.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > move away from a centralist, authoritarian model,
|
| EU is authoritarian? Why do you think that?
| nephihaha wrote:
| It is restricting freedom of expression, and increasing
| public surveillance.
| jeltz wrote:
| The EU is what held back the surveillance in the UK. Post
| brexit they went all in on surveillance.
| nephihaha wrote:
| Both the UK and the EU are rolling in censorship,
| surveillance and digital ID.
| watwut wrote:
| It insists on things like "corruption is bad", "human
| rights are for everyone including gays" so naturally
| certain conservative groups find that authoritarian.
| DaSHacka wrote:
| also things such as chat control and surveilling the
| entire populace, but I'm sure you must be right that the
| problem people have with it is that they say "corruption
| is bad"
| jeltz wrote:
| Chat control is a Swedish proposal that has consistently
| lost in the Parliament. We should of course keep fighting
| it but at least as a Swede I know things would have been
| much worse without the EU.
| rdm_blackhole wrote:
| > Chat control is Swedish proposal.
|
| It was pushed by Sweden but also by many other countries
| including France (which loves to give lessons of
| democracy to the world by the way and is very much at the
| forefront of human rights or so they say) and Hungary
| amongst others.
|
| > has consistently lost in the Parliament.
|
| It has consistently lost so far. Secondly the reason it
| has lost is because people like me took the time to
| actually reach out to any MEP who would take my call to
| tell them to oppose this law. If we had waited for the EU
| to react and put a stop to this madness, we would still
| be waiting.
|
| This law should never have been proposed in the first
| place anyway. The fact that it was proposed and debated
| is a shameful action in itself.
|
| > I know things would have been much worse without the
| EU.
|
| How can you know for sure? You can't. Since it originated
| from the EU commission, it stands to reason that without
| the EU commission it would not have happened.
|
| You believe that the EU is good because that is your
| belief. The European countries existed for 100s of years
| before the EU. There is no reason to think that they
| can't go back to this state in the future.
| nephihaha wrote:
| Human rights are for everyone, not just people you agree
| with. If you bring in censorship, surveillance and
| smother protest for people you disagree with, you will
| find it getting used against you yourself at some point.
| Europe has imported this false binary from the USA, and
| it is not benefitting it either.
|
| The EU has its fair share of corruption, but it is is
| better at hiding it than developing countries. Its
| current president Ursula Von Der Leyen is a fraud who
| appears to have cheated at university, and only got to
| where she did due to wealth and aristocratic family
| connections.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| I've never seen any pro-EU attitude in the European
| countries I've lived in. Except for among the political
| and media class. But those aren't representatives of the
| general population.
|
| But I haven't lived in central Europe, like Germany,
| Belgium, etc. Where the attitudes seem to be quite pro-
| EU.
|
| The original statement still stands. Europe is not the
| EU. The EU is not Europe.
| saubeidl wrote:
| That is more indicative of the company you keep than the
| actual reality on the ground.
|
| https://news.gallup.com/poll/657860/member-states-show-
| stron...
| phatfish wrote:
| Which Europeans have you "talked" to? Discord and twitter
| don't count. People moan about the EU like they moan
| about their own national government.
|
| Opinion polls on actually leaving the EU show a minority
| in favour. Most Europeans saw Brexit play out and realise
| sticking the finger up at your neighbours is not a
| winning strategy.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| I guess real life doesn't count either? Good that we can
| rely on HN and Reddit, where the pro-EU sentiment is
| strong. I just haven't seen that in real life, which is
| why I suggest maybe it might be particular to Germans and
| probably Belgians and Dutch.
| Lapel2742 wrote:
| > Talk to Europeans and they hate the EU and see it as an
| oppressive foreign power.
|
| Maybe you should get out of your right-wing bubble.
|
| - EU approval among its citizens hits record high as
| security fears grow, poll shows
| (https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/eu-approval-among-
| its-c...)
|
| - Nearly three quarters of EU citizens (74%) say that,
| taking everything into account, their country has
| benefited from being a member of the EU.
| (https://europa.eu/eurobarometer/surveys/detail/3378)
| nephihaha wrote:
| The EU is busy clamping down on freedom of expression and
| forcing through Digital ID. It isn't some paradise.
|
| There are things I like about the EU, but it also has
| some things horribly wrong.
| Lapel2742 wrote:
| > It isn't some paradise.
|
| Compared to the USA it still is.
| nephihaha wrote:
| The EU has better healthcare and welfare overall, but
| fewer individual rights in other areas. Less gun crime
| (although this depends on region). Poverty levels vary a
| lot across the EU.
|
| Americans take homeschooling for granted, for better or
| worse, but it is banned in some European countries like
| Germany.
|
| Also the USA allows groups such as the Amish their
| liberty, which would be extremely unlikely in much of the
| EU where state interference would either force them out
| or destroy them.
|
| The US has umpteen issues but is much better for freedom
| of expression frankly, although it is being steered away
| from that.
| watwut wrote:
| Right now EU is not arresting own citizens for failure to
| provide ID card while america does that even when said
| people have id card.
|
| EU is not demanding 5 yeara of social media public from
| kids entering in.
|
| EU is not killing fisherman to feel manly.
|
| EU is overall more democratic and more free. The parts
| that sux Hungary and Slovakia dont sux because of EU, but
| despite it.
|
| It is ok for Germany to not have homeschooling.
| nephihaha wrote:
| The EU is not more "free". There are a lot of things you
| can't say or will get shut down for. Most of the EU does
| not have the same freedom of expression or religion that
| the USA guarantees in its founding documents. The
| collective cannot have freedom if the individual does
| not. That includes the right to disagree.
|
| The EU and USA are going down the same road. Social media
| is a part of this censorship of open discussion and is
| usually American based, but works hand in hand with the
| European governments. Both European and American
| governments seem happy to deceive citizens into a
| surveillance state.
|
| It is unacceptable to ban homeschooling. Some children
| need to be homeschooled, because of disabilities, or even
| high intelligence. Given the fact that Germany has
| suffered from both far right and far left dictatorships
| within living memory, anything that does not promote
| blind obedience to the state should be encouraged.
|
| Many parts of Europe retain a feudal mentality, which
| includes constant deference to authority.
| mopsi wrote:
| > There are a lot of things you can't say or will get
| shut down for.
|
| Such as? I honestly can't think of anything.
| > It is unacceptable to ban homeschooling. Some children
| need to be homeschooled, because of disabilities, or even
| high intelligence.
|
| European education laws prioritize the child's right to
| education and social development over parental autonomy
| as an absolute. Mandatory schooling laws have been
| adopted to ensure minimum educational standards and to
| safeguard against neglect and abuse, which is especially
| important when it comes to disabilities. Someone with
| proper training and decades of experience will educate a
| disabled child far more effectively than a parent whose
| only guaranteed qualification may be knowing how to have
| sex.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| I don't give very much for statistics and opinion polls.
| People tend to give the answer they think they're
| "supposed to give" in those. I base my assessment on my
| experience from talking to people in real life.
|
| > Maybe you should get out of your right-wing bubble.
|
| Your comment is nasty, but I don't think you're this
| nasty in real life. Probably you're just blowing off some
| steam online.
| ulfw wrote:
| You have no idea what you're talking about. Stop
| generalising. You don't know what Europeans think at all
| "except for the Germans"
| carlosjobim wrote:
| I have an idea of what I'm talking about. I say that the
| EU is not Europe. Nor is Europe the EU. People in these
| conversations need to understand the difference, because
| it is significant. Norway, Great Britain, Iceland and
| Switzerland aren't in the EU.
| pembrook wrote:
| It is not. I know the media has pushed this ragebait to
| get engagement from you, but you can literally read the
| official policy document.
| ExoticPearTree wrote:
| Well, to be fair, the EU in its current form needs to be
| killed with fire.
|
| It was supposed to be something akin to United States of
| Europe, but instead in devolved into a bureaucracy that
| regulates the shit out if everything, is incredibly
| socialist and the EC thinks it is above everyone else.
| Lapel2742 wrote:
| > It was supposed to be something akin to United States
| of Europe
|
| No, it never was.
|
| > but instead in devolved into a bureaucracy
|
| No it hasn't:
|
| "There are two striking aspects of this rejection of EU
| bureaucracy. First, in comparison with other, comparable
| entities, such as the US federal bureaucracy, the EU's
| administrative apparatus has a marginal size.
| Specifically, the EU, which is responsible for more than
| 440 million citizens, employs only around 60,000 people,
| while the US federal bureaucracy has more than two
| million employees that govern a territory with about 330
| million inhabitants. Accordingly, the EU bureaucracy is
| comparatively small and far from being the "bureaucratic
| monster" which it is frequently portrayed as."
|
| https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2023/09/04/why-do-so-
| many...
|
| > that regulates the shit out if everything,
|
| I'm thankful for that. That is why our food is way better
| and way healthier than the shit the US makes it's
| citizens eat.
|
| > is incredibly socialist and the EC thinks it is above
| everyone else.
|
| LOL. No it's not "socialist" and the European Commission
| is the executive branch of the European Union. If you
| really think the Commission behaves as if they are above
| everything else (they do not!), I pull an American
| president.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > That is why our food is way better and way healthier
| than the shit the US makes it's citizens eat.
|
| The US optimized for convenience, affordability, and
| variety.
|
| You can eat very healthily in the US, but it requires
| more intentional choices. In many (not all) EU countries,
| the default option is closer to healthy.
| Lapel2742 wrote:
| > You can eat very healthily in the US, but it requires
| more intentional choices.
|
| It requires money too. If you are poor your choices are
| naturally limited and in the end you are dependent on
| government regulations to eat at least somewhat healthy.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > It requires money too. If you are poor your choices are
| naturally limited
|
| Yes, because the US optimizes for convenience, price, and
| variety, so you see more industrialized food.
|
| On average, poor people in Europe eat healthier than poor
| people in the US, but still significantly worse than
| wealthier Europeans.
| Lapel2742 wrote:
| > On average, poor people in Europe eat healthier than
| poor people in the US, but still significantly worse than
| wealthier Europeans.
|
| Sure. But in the end the EU feeds it's citizens healthier
| food than the US does. That's all I'm saying. I'm glad we
| have those regulations.
| andsoitis wrote:
| We agree.
|
| What's interesting is JFK Jr. (our Secratary of Health
| and Human Services) has a stance that Americans eat too
| many ultra-processed foods. He wants people to eat more
| whole foods and fewer additives. He questions
| conventional warnings about saturated fat and supports
| dietary changes than include more full-fat dairy and
| meats. He prefers education over bans or mandates.
| Lapel2742 wrote:
| > He prefers education over bans or mandates.
|
| And that is not working for the poor of which the US
| seems to have plenty for a developed country.
|
| The poor have no choice, even if they are educated, and
| the food industry is fine with selling them garbage. It's
| legal to do so after all. AFAIK food is generally even
| cheaper in Europe than in the USA. Even with those
| regulations.
| blibble wrote:
| > There are two striking aspects of this rejection of EU
| bureaucracy. First, in comparison with other, comparable
| entities, such as the US federal bureaucracy, the EU's
| administrative apparatus has a marginal size.
| Specifically, the EU, which is responsible for more than
| 440 million citizens, employs only around 60,000 people,
| while the US federal bureaucracy has more than two
| million employees that govern a territory with about 330
| million inhabitants.
|
| that's because the EU co-opted existing member state
| agencies instead of creating its own
|
| e.g. the german federal department of agriculture
| effectively is controlled by the EU (almost all of its
| duties are an EU competence), but 100% of its costs are
| attributed to germany
|
| this makes the EU look much more efficient than it is
| watwut wrote:
| It makes them lool as efficient as they actually are.
| Being able to use existing infrastructure is good.
| nephanth wrote:
| Socialist is a very weird term to use here. The eu is the
| epitome of neoliberalism, even more so than the us
| ExoticPearTree wrote:
| Tge EU is liberal just as much as I'm asian...
| nephanth wrote:
| The EU in its current form is mostly about markets. It
| routinely pushes for the sacrifice of government
| monopolies to the altar of the free market (see for a
| recent example the french train network). Most of its
| regulations are to ensure a level field for a balanced
| market.
|
| Hell it pushes for free markets even when it makes very
| little sense (the eu electricity market and its weird
| idiosyncrasies are an artifact of that)
|
| It basically bans member governments from printing money
| and imposes very strict limits of 3% GDP on government
| deficits. For reference the US deficit was 5.9% gdp this
| year, Almost twice as much. this greatly limits
| government control over the economy.
| rdm_blackhole wrote:
| > imposes very strict limits of 3% GDP on government
| deficits.
|
| You might want to check that information. This very
| strict limit is only enforced on selective EU countries
| like Greece for example.
|
| France has had routinely yearly deficits above 3% in the
| last 10 years and has never been worried one bit about
| it.
|
| For the record the French deficit was around 5.4% this
| year and it is set to increase again next year as the
| parliament is completely blocked and a budget compromise
| cannot be reached.
|
| Even the so called debt ceiling defined in the pact of
| stability is mostly ignored. Italy and France are both
| well above the 100% debt to GDP ratio when the treaty
| says that every country within the EU should be at or
| below 60%.
|
| > It basically bans member governments from printing
| money
|
| It only bans the ones that have adopted the Euro. The
| countries that have declined to adopt the euro are free
| to do as they please more or less.
|
| The euro countries though may not be able to print money,
| but they just get the ECB to do it for them via
| quantitative easing which has been used since 2008 and
| only recently stopped when the interests rates started
| climbing after the pandemic.
| jeltz wrote:
| Then you are very Asian.
| victorbjorklund wrote:
| You get that EU mostly is a free trade union? You know
| free trade that MAGA hates (I heard Americans today love
| tariffs).
| victorbjorklund wrote:
| And then Americans wonder why they are being viewed as a
| hostile enemy of Europe...
| MangoToupe wrote:
| > want to annex a European territory
|
| Greenland is not in europe. It may be a danish colony but
| that doesn't make it "european territory" any more than
| french guiana is. EU territory? Sure. But europe is a
| penninsula on the western flank of eurasia.
|
| Edit: huh I had no idea how complicated the classification
| of eu territories is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special
| _territories_of_members...
| andsoitis wrote:
| > Greenland is not in europe. It may be a danish colony
| but that doesn't make it "european territory" any more
| than french guiana is. EU territory? Sure. But europe is
| a penninsula on the western flank of eurasia.
|
| You are right that Greenland is not in Europe (it sits on
| the Nort American tectonic plate).
|
| It is also not an EU territory, however, it is linked to
| Europea through Denmark. European influence exists
| through governance, education, and trade.
|
| Most Greenlanders identify primarily as Kalaallit (Inuit)
| and Greenlandic, not European.
| ulfw wrote:
| And Hawaii is not in America. Certainly neither is Guam
| etc.
|
| What kind of argument are you even trying to make?
| drysine wrote:
| That the EU tries to keep hold on its colony and gets
| jealous when the US talks to Greenland citizens over the
| EU's head.
| cess11 wrote:
| What a bizarre description of what the US did.
|
| Greenland has been inching towards independence since the
| seventies, because that's the common ambition of
| greenlandic peoples and it's slow because there are
| rather deep ties between Denmark and Greenland. These
| ties are to some extent very negative for the
| greenlanders, they're generally discriminated against and
| have been viciously mistreated at times, but a quick
| clean cut would also be quite painful for them.
|
| In the seventies Greenland joined the EU predecessor EEC
| with Denmark, quickly realised that europeans were
| emptying their fishing waters and in the early eighties
| left the union. It's the only entity to have done so.
| Then the independence process trudged on, they self-
| manage in many areas now, even more since a 2008
| referendum where some 75% or so voted in favour of
| independence. Since 2009 there is a law that says that
| Greenland can become independent whenever they want, as
| long as it's approved by greenlander referendum and the
| danish parliament.
|
| To the extent they're a colony international law also
| clearly gives them the right to unilaterally declare
| independence. A majority of greenlanders are likely still
| in favour, but a majority also would prefer to postpone
| it if it would result in worse living conditions, since
| that's what polls usually conclude.
|
| Ignoring half a century of rather delicate politics and
| independence ambitions the US shat all over it and said
| that they wanted to buy it, and then several years later
| said that they might just annex instead. This is quite
| belligerent and nasty behaviour, which in my opinion
| should have caused european countries to start dumping US
| bonds and stop answering calls from the White House.
| MangoToupe wrote:
| > if it would result in worse living conditions
|
| Well nobody is _forcing_ Denmark to be a dick about
| decolonization, nor a dick to all the people it never
| colonized. That 's a choice.
|
| > This is quite belligerent and nasty behaviour
|
| So was colonizing, well, anywhere. Europe still hasn't
| been appropriately punished for this. And yes, the US
| deserves to be punished severely for its own brutal
| conquests.
| jeltz wrote:
| Why do you want to punish the Greenlanders? They would
| rather be a Danish colony than an American.
| notahacker wrote:
| Denmark isn't "being a dick about decolonization", it's
| just that they happen to be very kindly subsidising half
| of Greenland's budget, which causes even many
| enthusiastic about the idea of an independent Greenland
| cause to think that leaving might be a mistake.
|
| Conversely, the leader of the present day United States
| threatens to colonising Greenland by force to show off
| how powerful he is. Ergo Europeans, particularly
| Greenlanders, have little reason to trust the US
| MangoToupe wrote:
| > Denmark isn't "being a dick about decolonization", it's
| just that they happen to be very kindly subsidising half
| of Greenland's budget, which causes even many
| enthusiastic about the idea of an independent Greenland
| cause to think that leaving might be a mistake.
|
| Brother, spread this pro-colonization propaganda
| elsewhere.
|
| > Conversely, the leader of the present day United States
| threatens to colonising Greenland by force to show off
| how powerful he is. Ergo Europeans, particularly
| Greenlanders, have little reason to trust the US
|
| Conversely? Brother, they are the same thing.
| tokai wrote:
| You know nothing about this, so stop spreading your made
| up lies. A roadmap for Greenlandic independence is in
| place. The Greenlandic parliament is controlling the
| speed of this process.
| MangoToupe wrote:
| > so stop spreading your made up lies.
|
| No need to act a clown. Greenland will never be european!
| saubeidl wrote:
| It is European right now. It's under European
| sovereignty.
| cess11 wrote:
| Currently Denmark participates in financing Greenland,
| pulling the rug on it would likely not be pleasant for
| the greenlanders and if they did I'd count that as rather
| dickish unless the greenlanders had a near consensus on
| the issue and asked the danish parliament to do it.
|
| Well, some justice have been sought and won, but a lot
| remains. To me it seems like an attempt at distraction to
| clump together the treatment of the Mau Mau and the
| nuking of Algeria with Denmark's relation with Greenland.
|
| Besides economic relations, independence for Greenland
| would also mean that they would need to seek justice to a
| larger extent through international courts and in at
| least some cases it's likely easier for greenlanders to
| find justice in danish courts.
| MangoToupe wrote:
| Ok, why doesn't denmark finance birundi?
|
| > Well, some justice have been sought and won
|
| And yet denmark hasn't burned. How do you remediate this
| contradiction?
|
| > To me it seems like an attempt at distraction to clump
| together the treatment of the Mau Mau and the nuking of
| Algeria with Denmark's relation with Greenland.
|
| Believe me, britain deserves far worse than just being
| burned down. But denmark still must face justice
| Flatterer3544 wrote:
| You make it sound that the brits were the bad guys, when
| it was an elite top % pulling the strings and the rest
| were mostly trying to make ends meet.
|
| But yes agree, the elite extracting wealth from the
| colonies back in the days, and still are extracting
| wealth from your average Joe, deserves far worse.
| victorbjorklund wrote:
| Oh, so US is giving up their claims to Purto Rico,
| Alaska, Hawaii, etc? Or are American imperalists holding
| on to their colonies?
| drysine wrote:
| Worst of all, they are holding on the most of North
| America
| MangoToupe wrote:
| > And Hawaii is not in America. Certainly neither is Guam
| etc.
|
| Sure, no argument here.
|
| > What kind of argument are you even trying to make?
|
| Mostly that characterizing Greenland as European is just
| as insane as characterizing French Guiana that way. Or
| the falknlands, New Caledonia, Polynesia, Guadeloupe,
| Martinique, Aruba, Curacao, Anguilla, Bermuda, the Virgin
| Islands, etc etc. These are colonies--not part of europe,
| and should have been made whole decades ago with the
| resolution of WWII, and their continued presence as
| "rightfully" part of European nations destabilizes our
| globe.
|
| Europe is welcome to extend its economic privileges to
| all nations of earth, and I for one will continue to
| argue for kicking us out of Hawaii and Guam while
| ensuring we don't further engage in predatory trade
| agreements.
|
| Of course, I don't expect any of this predation to cease
| anytime soon.
| victorbjorklund wrote:
| Would you say that US attacked Japan first because Japan
| never ever attacked US? Only Hawaii which is not
| American.
| tokai wrote:
| Its not a colony. Stop diminishing the agency of
| Greenlanders.
| MangoToupe wrote:
| Of course it's a colony; this is just an observable fact.
| This is true regardless of how Greenland polls. Agency is
| immaterial.
| victorbjorklund wrote:
| It's not more a colony than Purto Rico is. Would you say
| US would be OK if China annexes Purto Rico because they
| are a colony of US?
| MangoToupe wrote:
| US foreign policy is nearly as dimwitted as european
| foreign policy is. Of course puerto rico is a colony.
|
| But also, actually, if China did annex puerto rico? Snap
| snap snap. Good for them. They really made it out the
| hood. May god look upon the rest of us so positively
| victorbjorklund wrote:
| Does that mean Hawaii isn't part of US because it's far
| away from mainland?
| MangoToupe wrote:
| You got it baby, free hawaii
| Derbasti wrote:
| The difference is, Europeans used to trust their US partners,
| and built a lot of infrastructure on US services. This trust
| has been betrayed, so things now need to change.
|
| It never existed to begin with with China, so no change is
| necessary.
|
| That's not "melodramatic".
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| There never was a relationship of mutual trust, it was
| always a relationship of Europe being under the wing of the
| US as a buffer against the USSR.
|
| The US now wants to push Europe out of the nest, but most
| Europeans have only ever known life "living in their
| parents house".
|
| Building an independent Europe is not compatible with the
| current European ethos of work/life/life/life balance, and
| will likely result in Europe either coming back to the US,
| falling into economic chaos, or moving into daddy Xi's
| house. They are a socialist country after all...
| lnxg33k1 wrote:
| How much do you guys suffer about this work life balance,
| I can't wrap my head around the level of brainwash you
| guys have been through to use concepts as socialised
| wealth and wellness as a bad thing
|
| these evil europeans wanting to have a break from work!
| how dare them!
| nothrabannosir wrote:
| >> The difference is, Europeans used to trust their US
| partners
|
| > There never was a relationship of mutual trust
|
| Technically, you're not disagreeing with GP. :)
|
| Or :( I guess.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Neither the European welfare state nor China's
| authoritarian leftism are socialist. They are,
| respectively, welfare-state capitalism and nationalist
| "socialism" (aka Naziism).
|
| On the European side, socialism is a question of who owns
| businesses. If the majority of businesses are owned by
| the people who are working at those businesses, you have
| a socialist economy. Welfare states, regulatory regimes,
| and high tax rates do not change the ownership of
| businesses, they are about who provides the
| infrastructure around those businesses. If you have an
| economy where infrastructure is owned by a liberal
| nation-state, and businesses are owned by whoever gambled
| capital on the venture, then you get a capitalist
| economy. If your infrastructure is privately owned by
| individuals, then those owners become feudal lords and
| you get feudalism.
|
| On the Chinese side, you might point out that there are
| laws that require CCP ownership of all businesses, eat
| the party line that says the CCP is the representative of
| the working class, and say, "hey that's a socialism". But
| this ownership and representation is purely nominal. The
| average Chinese worker has more or less zero political
| agency; speaking out gets you censored and harassed. How
| is that worker ownership? If, say, America started
| punishing individual shareholders who voted against
| Trump-aligned board members, we'd correctly recognize
| that the shareholders do not meaningfully own their
| businesses anymore.
|
| "Moving into Daddy Xi's house" would be stupid. The EU
| and China are not aligned on basically any core value;
| it'd basically be a surrender of one to the other.
| Actually, to be clear, the EU isn't even aligned on
| basically any core value _with itself_ [0]. In fact, I
| would argue that's a way bigger headwind than European
| workers being used to a top-heavy welfare state. The EU
| has the resources to build a sovereign cloud, or run its
| own military, or source its own energy. But for each one
| there are challenges posed by the uniquely decentralized
| structure of Europe:
|
| - Europe _could_ build a sovereign cloud, but probably
| not one for each member state. So they 're going to have
| to agree what country holds the data, and agree that that
| country can and _will_ spy on all the others.
|
| - Europe _could_ fund its own military, tell NATO to
| pound sand, and re-colonize America for the trouble. But
| who runs that military? Given the history of EU politics,
| it would be France and Germany, and _every other country
| in the EU_ has a history of being colonized by France or
| Germany. They are not trustworthy.
|
| - Europe _could_ fix its energy dependence, but Germany
| thinks nuclear power is Satan and wants to backstop
| renewables with the dirtiest-burning coal you can mine.
|
| You'll notice a recurring theme here. The problem with
| Europe is not its fiscal deficit, the perceived laziness
| of its workers, or what have you. It's the lack of trust.
| The most trustworthy member state of the European Union
| was the United States of America, and so that's why
| everyone put their data on American servers, and let
| America dominate NATO, and so on. This is not Europe
| getting kicked out of the nest, it's the kids realizing
| their parent is a gaslighting asshole _and_ that all
| their siblings, including themselves, are cut from the
| same cloth.
|
| [0] Trump's current tariff actions and threats of
| territory annexation have galvanized the European public
| against America's government. However, prior to Trump
| coming back, Europe was full of far-right nutjobs that
| were just as cringe. Actually, a lot of them are still in
| power in Europe, and they're way more competent and
| cunning than Cheeto Mussolini.
| jamesblonde wrote:
| They control Europe's digital infrastructure and are able to
| increase rent to usurous levels (tarrifs!) because Europe is
| dependent on their digital services. Without digital
| sovereignty, Europe has no sovereignty and will quickly
| become a modern colony from which wealth will be extracted.
| pembrook wrote:
| The reason the US is able to raise rents (tariffs) has
| nothing to do with Europe buying US digital services.
|
| The tariffs are on European _exports._ The problem is
| Europe has a weak domestic consumer market and is dependent
| on _selling stuff_ to the US, not buying from them.
| jamesblonde wrote:
| Nonsense. Unilaterial tarrifs are not how trade
| agreements work. This is pure extractive rent.
|
| The reason the US is not able to extract the same rents
| from China is that they have digital sovereignty and the
| US cannot just pull the cloud plug from them.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > Nonsense. Unilaterial tarrifs are not how trade
| agreements work. This is pure extractive rent.
|
| What do you mean by "unilateral tariffs"?
|
| > The reason the US is not able to extract the same rents
| from China is that they have digital sovereignty and the
| US cannot just pull the cloud plug from them.
|
| The US has higher tariffs against Chinese imports than
| European imports.
| microtonal wrote:
| The EU has a services deficit compared to the US, the US
| has a goods deficit compared to Europe. Together, they
| are almost in balance, the difference is just 3% of total
| trade [1]. Put differently, the US and the EU need each
| other. This is why Trump is using footguns.
|
| [1] https://policy.trade.ec.europa.eu/eu-trade-
| relationships-cou...
| victorbjorklund wrote:
| It is US themselves that have decleared they are a hostile
| enemy to Europe now. China had made zero claims to annex
| parts of Europe. USA makes claims to annex parts of Denmark.
| China officially does not say their goal is to overthrow
| European democracies but US says their goal is to change the
| democratic govts of Europe.
| ExoticPearTree wrote:
| > It's the same reason you don't want Chinese equipment in your
| telecommunications infrastructure. You can't trust what the
| Chinese government will do to it or with it.
|
| Using this logic, every country should develop its own critical
| equipment from scratch, in terms of both hardware and software.
|
| My belief is that there is no problem with the Chinese
| equipment, just scare-mongering from the US because it has no
| manufacturer of 5G equipment. And Europe jumped on the
| bandwagon just because.
| throw0101c wrote:
| >> _It 's the same reason you don't want Chinese equipment in
| your telecommunications infrastructure. You can't trust what
| the Chinese government will do to it or with it._
|
| > _Using this logic, every country should develop its own
| critical equipment from scratch, in terms of both hardware
| and software._
|
| The logic is don't use infrastructure of people you don't
| trust. If Europeans don't trust Chinese, then don't use
| Chinese infra; if the Europeans don't trust the US (anymore),
| then don't use US infra. The Europeans could trust the
| Canadians, and use Canadian infra for example.
| rapnie wrote:
| Yes, there is a lot of affinity towards Canada in Europa, I
| feel. Last Bastion of Democracy on the North-American
| continent, and not part of the whacky Trump-Atlantian
| Hemisphere.
| ExoticPearTree wrote:
| Canada is as democratic as the UK...
| xethos wrote:
| Without agreeing or disagreeing, I will note that GP
| specifically called out North America
| ninalanyon wrote:
| As in "not very"?
| locknitpicker wrote:
| > Europeans don't trust Chinese, then don't use Chinese
| infra; if the Europeans don't trust the US (anymore), then
| don't use US infra.
|
| I'm seeing the EU being singled out as unreasonable for
| avoiding the risk represented by buying their whole
| infrastructure from companies with deep and blatant ties to
| CCP's armed forces.
|
| Somehow these critics are omitting the fact that most of
| the world, specially asian countries, have also banned
| them.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concerns_over_Chinese_involve
| m...
| arrrg wrote:
| For decades trusting the US was no problem at all. The
| relationship was mutually beneficial. Cooperation and trust
| among nations is possible and Juche (completely self-
| reliance) is not a worthwhile goal at all. So, sure,
| cooperation is great and should always be a goal - it also
| secures peace (people who are economically intertwined are
| less likely to go to war with each other).
|
| The issue is the US burning up that earned mutual trust. And
| at some point you have to sadly abandon ship. Cooperation is
| great, trade is great, but not under all circumstances and
| all the time.
| BSDobelix wrote:
| Have you already forgot the Merkel Phone incident?
|
| https://www.reuters.com/article/world/us-spy-agency-
| tapped-g...
|
| Trusting the US should be considered a problem since
| decades.
| HolyLampshade wrote:
| This is not uncommon between even allies:
| https://www.dw.com/en/german-intelligence-spied-on-white-
| hou...
|
| The issue has less to do with intelligence silliness, and
| more to do with the fact that the overall geopolitical
| objectives of the US can not be trusted, and that rift
| has grown to a point where self-reliance on critical
| infrastructure may be in Europe's best interest.
| bayindirh wrote:
| That's a small blip on the timeline. If you want some
| serious, long running stuff, you should read Crypto AG
| scandal.
| BSDobelix wrote:
| >Crypto AG
|
| The cracked encryption was not given to "friends" but
| country's like Libya
| bayindirh wrote:
| > not given to "friends"...
|
| US started to eavesdrop on Turkey and Greece first.
| Germany pulled out of the project by citing this is going
| too far for them. Some citations from news:
|
| The Germans were taken aback by the Americans'
| willingness to spy on all but their closest allies, with
| targets including NATO members Spain, Greece, Turkey and
| Italy [0].
|
| Operation Rubicon [1] has a map of spied countries, incl.
| NATO allies and "friends".
|
| I failed to find that great long-read article. If I can
| find, I will attach it here, too.
|
| [0]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/world/n
| ational-...
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Rubicon
| strangegecko wrote:
| China is decidedly anti democratic and authoritarian. They're
| also preparing for military activities to expand their
| territory.
|
| It's not that each country needs to develop their own, but it
| is prudent to not depend on those who have a fundamentally
| different and incompatible world view.
| klabb3 wrote:
| > it is prudent to not depend on those who have a
| fundamentally different and incompatible world view.
|
| Like Saudi Arabia and formerly the Saddam regime (when he
| sold oil in USD)?
|
| While compatible world view is used as an argument against
| diplomatic and economic relations, in reality it's just a
| bonus, not a requirement. What's important is plain old
| cost benefit and national interests. The US is still a
| better ally for EU than China, but it's gotten drastically
| worse fast. And while China has territorial ambitions, they
| are nowhere near EU. The US is the good old status quo
| "devil you know", but it's abundantly evident now that
| nobody really knew them, including many of their own
| political elites domestically.
|
| On diplomacy timescales, ignoring China because of human
| rights concerns is exceptionally short-sighted, both for EU
| if US continues current path, and for global stability in
| case conflicts escalate between China and US. There is no
| choice that guarantees EU will have a strong "human rights"
| ally in 10 years.
| throw310822 wrote:
| > China is decidedly anti democratic and authoritarian
|
| Let's also say that democracy is very important internally.
| But as a EU citizen (or even better as a middle east
| citizen) whether they're democratic or authoritarian makes
| very little difference to me- I don't get a say in what
| they do. And in the case of the ME, it wasn't China or its
| allies that reduced several countries to rubble, it was the
| democratic US.
|
| > it is prudent to not depend on those who have a
| fundamentally different and incompatible world view
|
| There are no such things as "incompatible world view" but
| certainly closer or more distant ones. And I think the
| fundamental values of the US are pretty far away from those
| of the EU.
| kelvinjps10 wrote:
| By definition democracy and authoritarianim/dictatorship
| are no compatible
| throw310822 wrote:
| I'm not sure I understand what it means to be
| "compatible". We are talking about different countries
| with different regimes of course: in what sense two
| countries are or aren't compatible?
| ben_w wrote:
| Only with a single nation.
|
| Between nations, if that were so, no trade relationship
| would be possible between your go-to examples of each.
| ulfw wrote:
| We can see the same with everything in the US.
|
| Huawei became very competitive to Apple. Outsold Apple in
| it's home market. Huawei got banned.
|
| DJI has a near monopoly on drones. No US company could
| compete and players like GoPro shut down their consumer drone
| projects. DJI got/is about to get banned.
|
| Tiktok was dangerous to Meta. TikTok got almost
| banned/forced-sold.
|
| Chinese EVs are better than almost any US offering. Chinese
| EVs got banned (by 100%+ tarrifs on them).
|
| Sale of AI and Chips to China got banned. No ChatGPT or
| Claude offered to us here in Hong Kong.
|
| This is all the US Tech sector can do now. Short term this
| will go very well but long term this leads to the US falling
| behind and behind because American companies have
| artificially created barriers where they aren't forced to
| comepete anymore, meanwhile the world moves on and has a
| competitive environment. Innovation will move faster Ex-USA
|
| I fly a DJI Mini 5 Pro, use a Huawei Freeclip 2 earphone, a
| Huawei GT6 watch, a Xiaomi Silicon Carbon powerbank, an Oppo
| Find N5 foldable. Most are better/unique compared to what you
| can even get in America. And that's only the beginning.
| That's only 2025.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > Huawei became very competitive to Apple. Huawei got
| banned.
|
| How would you explain Samsung, LG, Sony, etc.?
|
| > DJI got banned.
|
| Untrue.
|
| Supply is constrained and future of new product
| availability is uncertain because of FY2025 National
| Defesnse Authorization ACt, which requires a security audit
| by late Dec 2025. If that doesn't happen, DJI could
| automatically be added to the FCC's restricted list, which
| could block new products from being certified and sold in
| the US.
|
| In the meantime, for sale at Best Buy, Adorama, B&H,
| Walmart, etc. e.g. https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1
| 737927-REG/dji_cp_ma...
|
| > Sale of AI and Chips to China got banned.
|
| Your argument is that US tech companies do not have the
| ability to compete, but this example doesn't support your
| claim; in fact it does the opposite.
|
| But even so, your information is out of date. Nvidia is now
| allowed to sell its advanced H200 AI chips to China. The
| whiplash is dumb, but the move is aimed at maintaining US
| AI leadership, support American jobs, while addressing
| concerns about China's military AI development.
| beAbU wrote:
| As a former Huawei phone owner, and a present Honor phone
| owner, Samsung LG and Sony does not hold a candle to the
| quality on offer from Honor and Huawei.
|
| And this is coming from someone who has owned multiple
| Samsungs over the years.
| is_true wrote:
| Huawei embeds ads in the stock apps. How can you have ads
| in a file manager app?
| beAbU wrote:
| My default has always been replace the stock apps with
| the ones I'm most familiar with, so I never noticed the
| ads tbh.
| kelnos wrote:
| I agree generally that protectionism is bad, but the
| examples you present are just the US (finally!) doing to
| China what China has done to the world for decades. They
| rely on relatively unencumbered trade in Western markets,
| while locking their own markets up from outside
| competition.
| ulfw wrote:
| And yet you can buy a Tesla in China or an iPhone or any
| luxury bag or or or. Plenty of brands. It's not quite as
| black and white as people think.
|
| What you're talking about is social
| networks/messengers/news which are limited not so much
| for competitive reasons but national security reasons.
| They like to control what people see which is something a
| Google, Meta or X cannot guarantee.
|
| You can very much buy US software, e.g.
| https://www.microsoft.com/zh-
| cn/microsoft-365/buy/microsoft-... etc.
|
| You can buy a Prada bag, a Ralph Lauren sweater, the
| newest iPhone or Mac, a Model Y, adidas or Nikes, Adobe
| Photoshop... etc etc
| filoleg wrote:
| > DJI got banned
|
| Not sure how that statement squares against the fact that a
| lot of major US stores (Amazon, Target, Costco, Walmart,
| B&H Photo, Microcenter, etc.) have DJI products available
| for purchase, as well as that there is literally a physical
| retail DJI store[0] within a ~20min subway ride away from
| my apartment in the US.
|
| 0. https://maps.app.goo.gl/yAUyv6LcmKMbsSyX6
| tw04 wrote:
| > just scare-mongering from the US because it has no
| manufacturer of 5G equipment.
|
| Even if that were accurate, which it isn't, what exactly do
| you think the US stands to gain by Europe buying 5g from
| someone other than China (like the European providers
| Ericsson and nokia)?
| ExoticPearTree wrote:
| Control. The equipment made by Ericsson or Nokia uses US
| made components which can be used just like what the US
| accuses China of.
|
| Secondly, it stops China gaining as much experience in this
| field as it could have.
| watwut wrote:
| > Using this logic, every country should develop its own
| critical equipment from scratch, in terms of both hardware
| and software.
|
| USA claims and treats Europe as the ennemy. Not every country
| treats every other country as the ennemy.
|
| USA is, right now vicious and less trustworthy then China.
| Which is unfortunate cause China is not trustworthy.
| Jon_Lowtek wrote:
| According to the "Huawei cyber security evaluation centre"
| (HCSEC) oversight boards annual report to the national
| security adviser of the United Kingdom (note: HCSEC was a
| joint lab between NSCS, GCHQ and Huawei with a lot of access
| to internal documentation and firmware source code and so on
| to check if they are telling the truth when they promised
| there is no backdoor for the chinese ministry of national
| security in the 5G equipment) their quality and basic
| security processes are so bad, that it is believable that all
| the vulnerabilities are unintentional. However they did
| improve in the years prior to being kicked out, so you are
| not wrong that it was somewhat of a bandwagon move following
| the us sanctions.
| MangoToupe wrote:
| > You can't trust what the Chinese government will do to it or
| with it.
|
| It's not clear that europe even trusts europe anymore.
| Especially with french and german economic dominance looking
| shakier than ever, debt financing an unpopular war in the east
| piling up, mounting deficits, industry collapse, youth
| unemployment... european countries (or greenland for that
| matter) could do a whole lot worse than turning to china.
|
| Agreed, though, that reliance on US is foolhardy. I can't make
| any sense of why we're trying to saw the feet off our own
| economy.
| reeredfdfdf wrote:
| Yea, in 29 Germany, France and UK will have elections, and
| far-right parties with anti-EU and partially pro-Russian
| attitudes are leading the polls. If they win, there will be
| hardly any unified "Europe" left. Why would I then trust
| Germany ruled by AfD over MAGA-America?
|
| At least with China there's some consistency. I can reliably
| trust them not to give a shit about me or my privacy, and to
| further their geopolitical interests. Meanwhile populists in
| the West aren't really even acting rationally from
| geopolitical perspective, they're more unpredictable.
| nickff wrote:
| Are you talking about the same China which has repeatedly
| performed industrial espionage, embedded surveillance into
| products, and supported the Russian invasion of Ukraine?
| sschueller wrote:
| > It's the same reason you don't want Chinese equipment in your
| telecommunications infrastructure.
|
| Hopefully now "Europe" will think before fire selling all of
| its hardware manufacturing companies to foreign firms.
| PedroBatista wrote:
| Yeah, for those foreign firms to manufacture goods from US
| companies in order to fill Walmarts and number go up.
| awestroke wrote:
| Manufacture goods _from_ US companies? Do you mean "for"?
| mathgradthrow wrote:
| Is it actually anti-europe to ask europe to meet its NATO
| obligations?
| burkaman wrote:
| This is a non sequitur that has nothing to do with the
| comment or articles you're responding to.
| bogeholm wrote:
| Whataboutism.
|
| The linked articles are not about NATO obligations.
| DaSHacka wrote:
| Literally this.
|
| "The US is gonna have their FO moment aaaany day now, they're
| gonna regret messing with us Europeans!"
|
| "Bro you haven't even kept your end of the deal on your NATO
| military spending."
|
| Turns out despite all the hubub, the 'superpower' fading the
| fastest was Europe after all.
| jeltz wrote:
| Most of Europe does meet them. It is mainly a few countries
| like Spain which does not.
| i_am_a_peasant wrote:
| The US leadership and billionaires are literally trying to
| destroy my country by supporting far right parties here. I
| never want to have anything to do with the US again at least
| until they sort their own crap out.
| Sharlin wrote:
| It's incredible how quickly such obvious hostility as plans to
| incite what amounts to secession in a putatively friendly,
| allied sovereign entity has become normalized and ho-hum.
| Jon_Lowtek wrote:
| this is not a new issue: airbus has been the victim of
| corporate espionage supposedly by boeing with aid by the nsa in
| a well documented case in november 2011, and they are not the
| only victim of US government agency supported corporate
| espionage: investigations into the selector lists that ran in
| the cabinet noir at DE-CIX have shown that a large part of them
| were targeting european corporations. and that predates the
| cloud act of 2018, which made american infrastructure
| significantly less trustworthy.
| forgotTheLast wrote:
| The French DGSE was also exposed targeting dozens of american
| tech aerospace companies in the 90s (and probably still are).
| That type of state-assisted industrial espionage is pretty
| common, even between "friendly" nations. I think what's
| different now is the US announcing its intent to meddle into
| internal EU politics and supporting political opposition.
| PeterStuer wrote:
| Good, but how independent of US service providers is S/4HANA in
| practice?
| sylware wrote:
| Airbus is putting all its design on internet? wow...
| raverbashing wrote:
| You'd be fooling yourself if you think any moderately complex
| company still hasn't moved to the cloud or isn't thinking about
| it (with _rare_ exceptions)
| notahacker wrote:
| Yeah, not really sure how a globally distributed
| manufacturing operation with a complex supply chain and
| customers all over the world that need access to data for
| their operations is supposed to function effectively without
| it.
|
| (and I say that as someone that used to sell commercial
| aviation data that came on CDs...)
| sylware wrote:
| I don't think this is related to that "critical" stuff.
|
| It seems there is a misunderstanding over the
| classification of 'critical' stuff.
|
| We may all have a very different definition.
|
| All I know: the second your are connected to internet, you
| are cooked.
| notahacker wrote:
| I'm not sure what the 'critical' stuff is either or what
| the details of Airbus' network hosting and knowledge
| compartmentalization strategy is, but you're not going to
| run a globally distributed manufacturing business with
| complex supply and maintenance requirements without
| having technical specs, CAD files, diagnostic criteria
| customer records etc sitting on computers connected to
| the internet.
| pestaa wrote:
| Managing product data on the cloud does not mean public
| internet access, unless someone messes something up big time.
| hulitu wrote:
| > Airbus is putting all its design on internet? wow...
|
| Not only Airbus. You see, cloud is secure, information is
| encrypted and only you have access to your data.
| sylware wrote:
| It would be reasonably "secure" if it is encrypted on a
| physically private network using in-house _modified_
| _mainstream_ encryption algorithm, then after an over-the-air
| transfer then you can store it on a third party could under
| the control of foreign interests. Oh, don't forget the file
| names have to be encrypted too.
|
| Everything else is, I am sorry to say, BS.
| pona-a wrote:
| > in-house _modified_ _mainstream_ encryption algorithm
|
| Why would a company without cryptographic expertise
| modifying an existing algorithm without any particular goal
| in mind just to be different, produce something more secure
| than the winning solution in an open cryptographic
| competition?
|
| > directory names
|
| And file structure too, preferably. Incremental sync could
| be done with XTS mode.
| sylware wrote:
| You need only cryptographic common sense: it seems you
| have no idea how much it is easy to modify a mainstream
| cryptographic software to add basic and robust
| cryptographic modifications...
|
| Are you an AI?
| jamesnorden wrote:
| >You need only cryptographic common sense
|
| Sounds like the "I know a guy" kind of thing that
| shouldn't be done if you really care about security.
|
| >Are you an AI?
|
| Non-sequitur.
| sylware wrote:
| Doing such "customizations" (which are actually crypto
| 101) will break all attacks designed specifically for a
| crypto algo in mind. Even better if you lie on the crypto
| algorithm.
|
| Ofc, that must be encrypted on systems which "cannot
| connect" (and you can go overkill with EM protection with
| a very good faraday cage).
|
| If you are making such a technical pain for attackers,
| they will switch to social engineering anyway.
| blincoln wrote:
| Algorithms like AES-GCM are standards because - when used
| according to best practices - there _are_ no known
| practical attacks against them.
|
| If someone has an attack that would defeat the
| cryptographic protection in a particular piece of
| software, the software is likely doing one or more of the
| following:
|
| * Not using a modern, well-tested algorithm (e.g. using
| DES, a hokey custom XOR stream cipher, AES-ECB, etc.).
|
| * Not following general cryptographic best practices
| (e.g. hardcoded or predictable key/IV/nonce, insecure
| storage of keys).
|
| * Not following best practices for the specific algorithm
| (e.g. using AES-GCM, but reusing a key/nonce combination;
| using AES-CBC without applying an integrity-protection
| mechanism).
|
| * The software is doing something that doesn't make
| sense, cryptographically (e.g. using symmetric encryption
| to encrypt sensitive data, but the data and the keys are
| necessarily accessible to the same set of users/service
| accounts, so there's no net change in security).
|
| If such an attack fails because a developer has made
| changes to the cryptographic algorithm, a motivated
| attacker is likely just going to look at the code in
| Ghidra, x64dbg, etc. and figure out how to account for
| the changes. It's not a strong security control. I've
| been decrypting content stored using that kind of
| software for something like 20 years.
|
| The correct approach is to verify that the use of a
| particular type of cryptography makes sense in the first
| place, then use a well-tested modern algorithm and follow
| the current best practices. i.e. using code from years-
| old forum posts will likely result in an insecure
| product.
| blincoln wrote:
| I've been assessing systems that use cryptography for
| about 20 years as part of my work in information
| security, and I've never seen a customization that
| increased the security of a cryptographic algorithm over
| following the best practices.
|
| Usually, non-specialists fiddling with cryptographic
| algorithms makes them much less secure. Developers who
| aren't cryptographic mathematicians should generally use
| a well-respected algorithm, follow current best
| practices, and treat that component as a magic box that's
| not to be tampered with.
| FabHK wrote:
| You can have the data safely on-prem, connected to computers
| that are connected to the internet, or safely in the cloud,
| connected to computers that are connected to the internet. The
| threats are not that different.
| jasonvorhe wrote:
| Having worked with all major European clouds: Good luck, have fun
| opening a lot of support cases for things that should work ootb.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| Did you ever do it while waiving a $50m cheque though?
| ExoticPearTree wrote:
| $50mm does mot get go very far. We're a pretty small company
| (200 people) compared to Airbus and pay about $2mm/yr for
| cloud.
| letmetweakit wrote:
| It's better than having the rug pulled from under your company
| one day. This is the point in history we're at unfortunately.
| nxm wrote:
| This is pure fear-mongering
| apelapan wrote:
| Tell that to the Chief Prosecutor of the International
| Criminal Court.
|
| Why wouldn't a bunch of Airbus executives be next in line
| to be sanctioned by the US? They represent a threat to the
| profitability of Boeing.
| DaSHacka wrote:
| > It's better than having the rug pulled from under your
| company one day. This is the point in history we're at
| unfortunately.
|
| Source?
| letmetweakit wrote:
| Source??? A US administration that is completely out of
| control.
| DaSHacka wrote:
| They're doing what they were voted in to do though? Most
| of what they're doing has high baseline approval ratings,
| just not in the specific implementation.
| avh02 wrote:
| They've done great with those Epstein files. Totally
| published everything./s
| sunshine-o wrote:
| One of the reason is a lot of those "EU Sovereign Clouds" were
| malicious cash grabs.
|
| It happened several times in the last decade:
|
| - First politicians raise the alarm about "digital sovereignty"
|
| - Then some create new EU sovereign clouds that are
| pitched/forced on corporations
|
| - They usually do not work, get consolidated and then the scam
| is revealed
|
| The biggest reveal was when we discovered and warned one of our
| client the Orange "Sovereign Cloud" (French telco partially
| owned by the government !) and built to host European most
| sensitive worloads was just handed over and run by Huawei [0]
| [1]. They were not the only one who did something like that.
|
| I don't want to put actors like Hertzner in the same bag as
| they seem to be honest and really compete to offer a cheaper
| alternative to hyperscalers.
|
| - [0]
| https://www.huawei.com/en/huaweitech/publication/winwin/29/o...
|
| - [1] https://www.techmonitor.ai/hardware/cloud/orange-
| introduces-...
| abc123abc123 wrote:
| I do, works perfectly if you know what you're doing. If you
| have no clue, jump to AWS and enjoy the lockin, if you do, jump
| to a EU provider, and enjoy not being locked in, and a vastly
| lower cost.
| nxm wrote:
| Great - an anecdote. Most company leaders just want to focus
| on their core business on top of proven tech that works.
| jasonvorhe wrote:
| "if you know what you're doing"
|
| lol my team has worked with every major cloud provider for a
| decade, but sure it's all our fault because incompetence.
|
| good luck man.
|
| edit: I never even implied that AWS lock-in something
| positive. I'm getting paid to move companies from cloud to
| on-prem because that's true sovereignty.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| Much of what people call cloud is a commodity at this point. If
| you need vms, object storage, load balancers, vpcs, etc., which
| is what most people would need, that works in a lot of solutions.
| And you can usually also find managed databases, redis, and a few
| other bits and bobs. If you like Kubernetes (I personally don't),
| the whole point of that is that it kind of works everywhere.
|
| People over pay for AWS mostly because of brand recognition. And
| it's not even small amounts. You get a lot more
| CPU/memory/bandwidth with some of the competitors. AWS makes
| money by squeezing their customers hard on that. Competitors do
| the obvious thing of being a bit more generous. Companies could
| save a ton just switching to competing solutions. Try it. It's
| not that hard. Some solutions are obviously not as complete.
|
| This not about US vs. EU but about sovereignty. If you are
| married to AWS, that's a weakness in itself. Ask yourself how
| hard it would be to move to Google cloud. Or Azure. Or whatever.
| If that's very hard, you might have a problem when Amazon jacks
| up the prices or discontinues a product.
|
| We use a mix of Google Cloud and Telekom Cloud for some of our
| more picky customers in Germany. Telekom Cloud is not very
| glamorous. But it's essentially openstack. Which is an open
| source thing backed by IBM and others. I wouldn't necessary
| recommend Telekom Cloud (it has a few weaknesses in support and
| documentation). But it does the job. And unlike AWS, I can get
| people on the phone and they are happy to talk to me.
| general1465 wrote:
| > If you are married to AWS, that's a weakness in itself
|
| I have tried Lambdas and then got this "oh-shit moment" when I
| have realized that if AWS would be to kick me out, I would be
| absolutely screwed.
|
| Now I am slowly dispersing and using VMs instead and avoiding
| all the AWS-specific stuff as much as I can.
| reese_john wrote:
| Most cloud providers have a similar offering to AWS Lambda,
| plus it is not that hard to convert your code from the event
| handling pattern impose by AWS Lambda to a long running
| container running in K8s or VMs like you are doing yourself
|
| IMO the lock-in fear is overblown as the top cloud offerings
| (S3, Lambdas, K8s as a service etc) are already commoditized
| among the top providers, the exception being specialized
| databases like DynamoDB, Spanner, Cosmos ...
|
| Not saying there wouldn't be some major work to switch your
| operations from eg AWS to GCP, but it is also not a hard
| lock-in
| jacquesm wrote:
| Most cloud providers have the same exact issue that AWS
| has: they're US based.
| keepamovin wrote:
| Not Hetzner tho
| tormeh wrote:
| I hesitate to call Hetzner "cloud". Hetzner is an EC2+S3
| competitor, not an AWS one. IMO the minimum for being a
| real cloud is you need hosted Postgres, hosted Kafka,
| hosted Kubernetes, and S3-compatible object storage.
| Without the first three Hetzner is just not in the same
| product category. Nobody sensible buys AWS for the
| comically overpriced EC2.
| keepamovin wrote:
| Is it really so much cheaper to pay for "hosted" apps
| rather than just plumbing your own on VPS/metal?
| tormeh wrote:
| It's far cheaper to do it yourself, but the entire point
| is that you outsource the management of the service. Lots
| of people don't want to deal with database failovers, or
| - god forbid - deal with Kubernetes control plane issues.
| pyrale wrote:
| On the opposite, it is more expensive, and any large
| enough company should probably at least consider renting
| metal rather than services. For a small org, though, it
| lets you avoid a lot of infrastructure/ops work.
| everfrustrated wrote:
| Another missed component is a real autoscaling load
| balancer. This often gets missed and taken for granted.
| Possibly due to if you haven't seen a good one (AWS) you
| might not realise what you're missing. Most aspiring
| "cloud" companies have fixed capacity single tennant load
| balancers which is not cloud in any definition.
| keepamovin wrote:
| Is it so hard to wire up some health/load checks and hook
| the provider API to spin up more VPS?
| selkin wrote:
| If your threat model is AWS deciding you break their AUP, the
| issue is with you doing AUP breaking stuff. This ain't your
| personal Google Play account.
| Doches wrote:
| I wonder if this includes Skywise, the Palantir-built data lake
| and design stack that they use for many many internal operations
| (design, airline support, manufacturing). Not sure what
| difference it really makes where the data is hosted if the folks
| doing the hosting call home to Colorado...
| Zigurd wrote:
| I'm sure there are 10 other things nearly as bad. No reason not
| to start the journey.
| apelapan wrote:
| From what I've seen of Skywise, it is just a glorified
| SharePoint. Different systems upload CSV files that get turned
| into database tables. Then you can define views across these
| tables that other systems can consume by having them dumped to
| CSV and dropped on an SFTP.
|
| Performance is not great, so you need middleware and batching
| anyway. As far as I am concerned, it wouldn't be a great loss
| if Skywise disappeared and just the SFTP with CSV:s remained.
| tjpnz wrote:
| Sounds like they're adopting EU cloud but will continue to use
| Google Suite. Surely there are viable EU based alternatives
| further up the stack?
| andrewstuart wrote:
| Weird.
|
| If it matters so much, run your own computer systems don't use
| any cloud.
| wrxd wrote:
| > estimates only an 80/20 chance of finding a suitable provider
|
| It would be nice to know what the requirements are. There are
| plenty of providers in the EU happy to sell cloud services
| mft_ wrote:
| They should read HN.
|
| Don't they know you can get Hetzner servers starting from
| $5/month?
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| Lmao but in all honesty, there are a lot of european cloud
| providers that I know and they are even cheaper than american
| counterparts like aws, azure, gcp. Personally I like european
| cloud too but I dont have so much as an preference and it
| depends but the current environment of america does seem a
| little hostile but not the fault of datacenters in america
| but I hope that hostility slows down
| AndroTux wrote:
| There are a lot of European "cloud" providers, but there's
| not one that offers anything even close to
| AWS/GCP/Cloudflare. If you need more than compute and S3,
| you're pretty much SOL.
| antonkochubey wrote:
| If you need much more than compute, managed k8s and blob
| storage, then you're architecting yourself for a vendor
| lock-in.
| tormeh wrote:
| Absolutely not. There's a gazillion cloud providers out
| there with hosted postgres+kafka+redis and the other big
| open source softwares. Hetzner is just not one of them.
| Phlogi wrote:
| Please list them, especially the ones with managed
| services.
| Phlogi wrote:
| Please list them, especially the ones with managed
| services..
| okanat wrote:
| Hetzner, OVH and Upcloud. All of them have object
| storage, managed Redis,Postgres and K8S.
|
| Most of the time the missing things are homegrown SaaS
| offerings of big 3 and identity services. You will not
| find equivalent IAM or BigQuery in indie clouds.
| tormeh wrote:
| Hetzner has k8s? I only see VMs and block storage.
| AndroTux wrote:
| Welcome to the real world. I'm not saying this is a good
| thing, but this is what's happened. That's why everyone
| is doing AWS. To pretend this is a non-issue and can
| easily be fixed by investing a bit in development does
| not reflect reality.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| OVH? Upcloud? Scaleway?
|
| (searching more I found Koyeb, bunny cdn offers deno
| similar to cloudflare workers)
| AndroTux wrote:
| None of these remotely come close to their US
| counterparts. Not by a long shot.
| generic92034 wrote:
| But would you need those functions to run your ERP and
| CRM systems (see the article)?
| AndroTux wrote:
| Yes. At an airbus scale, most definitely.
|
| But to give you another example (from the article): Try
| migrating Google Workspace to an EU solution. Actually
| impossible. I tried it myself, and gave up. The closest
| you'll get is Proton, which isn't EU to begin with and
| doesn't even have half of the features Google Workspace
| offers.
| everfrustrated wrote:
| Sadly there are still no European cloud providers. There
| are European hosting and VPS companies with aspirations but
| that's not the same.
| sunshine-o wrote:
| He is my free advise for Airbus:
|
| 1/ First migrate out your "17 years Accenture veteran" executive
| vice president of digital [0] (who probably sold you MS and
| Google cloud in the first place)
|
| 2/ Then appoint any inside good engineer and ask him to
| investigate this: "As one of the most prominent and sensitive
| aerospace corporation, do you think we can setup servers and run
| our software on it?"
|
| If the answer is no, Airbus might not be fit for the 21th
| century.
|
| - [0] https://www.airbus.com/en/about-us/our-
| governance/catherine-...
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| You had me right up until 21th
| g-mork wrote:
| do you really suppose replicating the technical requirements of
| a security-sensitive company of this size in-house would be so
| easy? I've been doing infrastructure for 25 years and wouldn't
| want anywhere near this project. but what you will no doubt
| find is a pool of overconfident volunteers creating exactly the
| kind of risk outsourcing the problem allowed them to avoid in
| the first place
| sunshine-o wrote:
| The way I understand it is today is when I board on an Airbus
| I enter an hybrid of a mechanical and digital machine. I
| understand there is a lot of complex and sensitive software
| embedded/hosted on that plane that hopefully are not gonna
| kill me.
|
| So computers are actually core to their business. They
| probably almost invented things like PLM too.
|
| Nothing Airbus does is easy, this is why there are only about
| 2 companies like that in the world. This is why I do not see
| why their hosting have to be outsourced...
| esperent wrote:
| It seems every single comment in the thread is understanding
| "cloud" here to mean AWS vs Hetzner. But it's clear from the
| first paragraph of the article that what they actually mean is MS
| 365 Dynamics vs SAP. They primarily want a managed ERP + CRM
| solution, not servers.
| Sammi wrote:
| Cloud must be the most uselessly overloaded term ever. I have
| no way of knowing what you are actually talking about when you
| use it.
| apelapan wrote:
| Cloud always means "somebody else's computer".
| Sammi wrote:
| Even that isn't generic and broad enough. I've noticed so
| many people mean SaaS when they say cloud. That isn't even
| a hardware or server or infrastructure meaning. It's
| referring to a whole cohesive IT product that you subscribe
| to.
|
| Actually I'd say "cloud" says more about the business model
| than it says about the actual product.
| fulafel wrote:
| If only. But it can also mean your own computers ("private
| cloud").
| everfrustrated wrote:
| In there early days of cloud there were actual definitions
| created for it. Nobody seems to remember or care any more.
| TrickyRick wrote:
| SAP needs servers though, if they buy SAP hosted in AWS that
| kind of defeats the purpose.
| tormeh wrote:
| Indeed. And SAP has no cooperation with any European cloud
| providers, afaik. It's the big three plus alibaba. SAP wants
| to move away from on-prem, but I guess it has a solution for
| critical applications. Maybe that can be shoehorned onto OVH
| or something.
| mk89 wrote:
| It seems OVH does support SAP.
| https://www.ovhcloud.com/en/solutions/sap/
|
| How good/bad it is, I have zero expertise.
| itopaloglu83 wrote:
| As far as I know SAP is more capable and widespread, so I don't
| know why they were using Microsoft in the first place.
| jamesblonde wrote:
| I will be servers as well. Eurostack cloud providers. We are
| involved in one of these - a large car company doing the same.
| jacquesm wrote:
| And not just Airbus. Very quietly there is a lot of stuff being
| moved out of the US and away from MS, AWS, Google etc. Trump has
| absolutely no idea what he's doing and comes across as the
| proverbial bull in a China shop.
|
| History books a hundred years hence will have some choice things
| to say about how we all stood by and let this happen.
| nxm wrote:
| Any concrete evidence of any of that outside of a few companies
| "exploring" the move? For most companies it's a non-starter
| DaSHacka wrote:
| Well, they really, really, really want it to be true, so
| surely that means it practically is.
| avh02 wrote:
| On a very small personal/hobby level: backblaze (which i like
| as a company) lost my business, moved stuff over to a
| European company. I'm not a multi million dollar business but
| I've started to do what i can.
|
| Would have loved to visit the US and see all the things it
| has to offer, but absolutely not planning to in this climate.
| I think the US is currently at billions lost in just Canadian
| tourism?
| thdrtol wrote:
| It is amazing how quick a country can turn into a corrupt
| dictatorship.
|
| Airbus has the ability to move their data to another location,
| but it is very problemetic that all people with a social account
| can't. Sure, you can delete your Facebook account but it will
| take years for you profile to be gone because we all know your
| data is sold to other parties.
|
| My only option is to keep in mind that everything I put online
| will one day be read by some evil entity. Even my IP address that
| Hacker News might store (I don't know, but servers log stuff).
| DaSHacka wrote:
| > It is amazing how quick a country can turn into a corrupt
| dictatorship.
|
| I know, watching the fall of the UK and European countries has
| been really depressing to see. It's unfortunate, but it seems
| the US will have to carry the torch alone going into the mid-
| to-late 21st century.
| thdrtol wrote:
| At least we agree that a country turning into a corrupt
| dictatorship is depressing to see.
| crabmusket wrote:
| > estimates only an 80/20 chance of finding a suitable provider
|
| I must be terribly fussy but this genuinely tripped me up while
| reading. What does this phrasing even mean? Is it an 80% chance
| of success? This seems like someone has heard the phrase "80/20
| rule" and applied it somewhere it makes no sense.
| eurekin wrote:
| "sovereign Euro cloud", ah good chuckle
| Havoc wrote:
| I really hope regulators don't back down on this.
|
| Half a billion people shouldn't be reliant on whether a guy with
| clown makeup is having a dementia moment.
|
| Key infra (gov, utilities, news etc) has to be in house or at
| least in a EU country. Actually in house not big tech EU
| "sovereign" cloud wink wink nudge
| ExoticPearTree wrote:
| > Key infra (gov, utilities, news etc) has to be in house or at
| least in a EU country.
|
| For some EU functionalities there is eu-lisa which develops and
| hosts services - mostly for police, immigration, biometrics and
| a slew of others.
|
| The problem is that they are very closed environments with a
| lot if bureaucracy involved and the development is done at
| snail pace.
| DaSHacka wrote:
| > The problem is that they are very closed environments with
| a lot if bureaucracy involved and the development is done at
| snail pace.
|
| Wow, so they're authentically European! Glad to see they're
| off to a great start.
| jmyeet wrote:
| This administration has done more to undermine US power than
| probably any in history. This isn't a new statement either (eg
| [1]). Personally, I think that's not such a bad thing because we
| are the bad guys. I know people get all in their feelings when
| you say stuff like that but the number of democratically elected
| governments we've overthrown, just to get their resources, is
| indefensible.
|
| This week it broke that China is pretty far along in duplicating
| EUV litthography. The US restricts ASML, a Dutch company, from
| exporting their best machines to China and Korean, Japanese and
| Taiwanese companies from exporting their chips to China. The
| second one was a massive mistake. Why? Because it created a
| marekt for China to produce chips because they had no other
| choice.
|
| Geopolitically I think this is very similar to the USSR copying
| the atomic bomb in just 4 years after WW2 where US leaders either
| thought it was impossible or would take 20+ years.
|
| The US has become unpredictable and unreliable. Ukraine is a big
| part of this because Europe is waking up to them having to be
| responsible for their own defense and that ultimately will
| undermine US power projection through NATO.
|
| Since very early in this administration, probably back when the
| tariff nonsense began, I believed that Europe would be forced to
| distance themselves from US tech giants and at some point the EU
| would require cloud storage to be within EU borders and
| eventually require European companies to own and run that cloud
| rather than US companies.
|
| China has their own version of virtually every tech company. I
| can see the EU moving in this direction for key functions and
| cloud is likely the first of those.
|
| What's really precarious is the entire US economy is now
| essentially a bet on US companies owning a global AI future and I
| honestly don't think it's going to happen, mainly because China
| won't let it happen. DeepSeek was a shot across the bow for this
| and only the beginning.
|
| What you really need to remember about the current administration
| is we're not even 1 year into a 4 year term with everything
| that's happened and the entire foreign policy is kleptocratic not
| strategic in nature.
|
| [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45775985
| adamcharnock wrote:
| In case any SME-sized companies here are wanting to do something
| similar but are looking askance at the risk/investment/hiring
| required, then we'd [0] love to talk to you.
|
| We specialise in doing this but on a smaller scale. Eg. 10-100
| person companies that have 0-to-a-few DevOps engineers. Included
| is DevOps time each month to use as you wish, we're on call for
| SLAs, around 50% reduced cost vs AWS/Google/Azure, etc.
|
| Somewhat differently to most, we deploy onto bare metal. In
| addition to dropping costs we typically see at least a 2x speed-
| up overall. Once client just reported a 80% reduction in
| processing time.
|
| CTOs like us because we're always on-hand via Slack (plus we're
| the ones getting woken up in the night), and CFOs like us because
| billing becomes consistent.
|
| Anyway, blatant pitch complete.
|
| [0]: https://lithus.eu/
|
| adam@ above domain
| antman wrote:
| Given it was revealed that CIA specifically targeted 200million
| deals and above, it was political naivety amounting ti gross
| negligence on behalf of Airbus executives that it took them 10
| years. Same for many other large organisations and countries,
| unbelieveable.
|
| Why did it have to be Trump to make them take action?
|
| https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-france-wikileaks-economy/...
| baq wrote:
| Maybe Trump kicked the DGSE out of Boeing
| 7492632928 wrote:
| Sovereign from the EU regime?
| constantcrying wrote:
| I do not understand what this is supposed to be about.
|
| What is this "Euro Cloud" and what does it have to do with "ERP,
| manufacturing execution systems, CRM, and product lifecycle
| management (aircraft designs)"?
|
| For example I am not aware that Microsoft, Amazon or Google offer
| any PLM services. The companies offering those would be Siemens,
| Dassault and so on. Is the issue that those PLM providers are
| themselves running on Microsoft, Amazon or Google Services? But
| then the issue is with Airbus needing to force their suppliers
| into changing where there services are delivered from, but AFAIK
| these PLM providers offer on prem services, so it seems like a
| relatively trivial issue.
|
| What exactly is the "Euro Cloud" supposed to mean here, what is
| the actual issue with Airbus switching their PLM to on prem? TO
| be honest I find it hard to imagine that this isn't already the
| case. So what is going on here?
| scirob wrote:
| So which one, scale way, hetzner... Tell us who wins ?
| graemep wrote:
| The headline is misleading. They hope to hope to move on-prem
| stuff to a European provider, but not all the stuff that is
| already on US clouds.
| throw-12-16 wrote:
| Trusting the US is a bad idea.
|
| Just ask Ukraine.
| kvuj wrote:
| The same Ukraine that has taken 175 billion USD in aid from the
| US?
| throw-12-16 wrote:
| And is now getting betrayed?
|
| Yes.
| avh02 wrote:
| Been given aid*, they didn't rob your banks.
| kachapopopow wrote:
| this might be rather unrelated to the article, but I hate seeing
| companies being bought up by the US in europe and it especially
| makes me upset to see that the american president has the
| audacity to claim that european countries are just leeching off
| the US when in reality the whole world feeding the US is what
| allows it to do things that would cause any other country to go
| bankrupt.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Ultimately this plays into China's hand. They have been promoting
| "sovereign internet" for many years now (to justify their tight
| control and the GFW). See the Wuzhen "World" Internet
| Conferences.
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