I can’t imagine how any country would think the US is trustworthy enough to be the place where everyone stores their data. If companies cannot comply with data sovereignty laws then they shouldn’t exist at all. Personally, even as a US citizen, I’m hoping tech companies in Europe and Asia become independent enough to no longer be beholden to US interests. It’s clear that the era where any one country has global hegemony should end.
I do not trust anyone with my data. This is just my preference but every year I move further and further away from using the internet for anything other than making comments on this site and watching a few vloggers. In a few years I will not have more than 3 to 5 logins on anything and those will be value add and must be within driving distance. All critical services I use will require walking into a building in person.
If I could find a reputable construction company to build my underground home I would be a true troglodyte.
I looked at many of those. Plenty of people are indeed upgrading silos. I looked at the cost to repair and overhaul these facilities but it would be just a little more to do it right on my property with high performance high pressure concrete and do it right in a place outside of the nuclear sponge. Only challenge is getting the right people up here but I will not give up on the idea.
It seems to me that major US cloud companies are using politics to try to get more value from non-US data, which I believe will push the EU (and others) to accelerate the move to their own alternatives. This is another move that seems to sacrifice longer-term trust (and profits) to boost near-term profits.
Same. I don't trust the US as much as the rest of the world does not trust them. They want control with little to offer for it. My data and compute is safer offshore at this time.
Major US tech businesses are making money with analytics/ads though, so they would never roll out end-to-end encryption in a serious way. At least outside the US, a lot of E2E-encrypted services are popping up (Proton, Zeitkapsl, etc.).
I don't trust the small number of E2E US services at all. E.g., some of the companies that were/are in PRISM seem to have very convenient 'accidental' backdoors. E.g. WhatsApp doing backups on Google Drive without encryption by default on Android or Apple doing iCloud backups of iMessage that are not E2E encrypted unless you enable ADP. And even if you are wise enough to enable E2E in both cases, most people that you communicate with don't, because they use the defaults, so it's game over anyway.
In the EU, we have been fighting a bitter battle against Chat Control X.Y for some time now.
That won't change until Ursula von der Leyen goes. Her nickname in Germany (since 2009) is Zensursula, because she attempted to build a pan-German firewall.
She failed in Germany, but she may yet succeed in the entire EU.
This. When I look at why my life sucks and is on hard difficulty mode, it's not because I use US tech instead of EU tech. Most people and companies have bigger economic challenges right now trying to keep the lights on, than data sovereignty and domestic alternatives. My company just had a 3rd round of layoffs and its wasn't due to lack of EU SW.
The lack of data sovereignty does have large geopolitical consequences though. Without data sovereignty of EU government services and businesses, the US can blackmail EU continuously or even worse, in the case of e.g. a conflict over Greenland, cause chaos by turning off access to US tech. So for the EU, tech sovereignty is a matter of life and death.
Also, a lot of crap in Western countries is caused by tech broligarchs enriching themselves in favor of workers en destroying democracy for tech feudalism. So if we can bring down their sales Tesla-style, I'm all in for it.
>Also, a lot of crap in Western countries is caused by tech broligarchs enriching themselves in favor of workers en destroying democracy for tech feudalism.
Not true. The reason my Col is off the charts, salary low and housing unaffordable is due to EU central bank printing too much money leaving us holding the bags, government's zoning laws making housing expensive and them importing millions of immigrants despite record unemployment numbers to put downward pressure on wages and upward pressure on housing. None of this is done by US tech bros, it's all done by EU rulers and elites.
US tech bros is an orthogonal issue that distracts from the core issues.
The quantity theory of money is trivially shown to be nonsense just by considering what happens to savings (i.e. nothing). You need to up your analysis if you want to truly understand.
You've made accusations but have not brought arguments to support that my take on EU leaders and elites being the ones fucking us, our CoL and purchasing power, is wrong.
And savings absolutely did eventually get obliterated by excessive Covid money printing, what are you on about?
I've not made any accusations, nor do I think that the elites are not to blame. I said that "money printing" is not the problem here. The reason it's not the problem is because the quantity of money simply reflects savings. By focussing on "money printing", you're missing the actual problems. Arguably, that's the point, since the elite tend to do well when money is considered a scarce commodity.
Sure, spending might cause inflationary effects, but that's orthogonal to quantity (flows not stocks), but then economics is the science of confusing stocks with flows.
> I’m hoping tech companies in Europe and Asia become independent enough to no longer be beholden to US interests
What tech companies?
At the end of the day, it's all about capital and IP.
American domiciled VCs and companies can outinvest just about any other competitor, and much of the core IP for vast swathes of critical next-gen technologies (high NA EUV, Foundation Models, Quantum Computing) is in the US, but American companies are fine transferring technology abroad (often with American government backing [3][4]) and moving jobs abroad.
China has a similar ecosystem but prefers to invest domestically and for IP to remain within China.
Meanwhile Japan, Taiwan, and Korea continue to back the US no matter what due to tensions with China and North Korea along with existing fixed asset investments in the US.
When companies like Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, and others are able to invest tens of billions of dollars in India [0], Poland [1], Israel [2], Portugal [5], Ireland [6], and others it makes them more open to collaborate with American capital and IP instead of dealing with alternatives who cannot deploy similar amounts of capital and transfer IP.
> What tech companies? At the end of the day, it's all about capital and IP.
It's not just about capital and IP. It's now about a halo of related things, like everyone using US payment networks - if the US unbanks you, even banks in your own country can't do business with you[1]. Or everyone using a US-based messaging platform (WhatsApp) because its been subsidised by a BigTech to cost $0, whereas text messages are still not free...
>American domiciled VCs and companies can outinvest just about any other competitor,
Because every investor in the world put their money in the US. They knew the best companies and people would centralize around that hub.
When the US is a rogue, isolated idiocracy -- already true, but the world takes time to adapt to this new reality -- how much of that money do you think will flow to the US?
Much of the capital is US originated and domiciled.
American public pension funds alone hold $6 Trillion in AUM [0] and American endowment funds hold a little under $1 Trillion in AUM [1], and tend to be the LPs for most VC funds as most institutional investors follow the Yale Investment Model.
>Much of the capital is US originated and domiciled.
Neither of your citations has any relevance to this at all. That endowments and pensions funds have money...what is your point? Ah, the old HN "look I've provided citations so upvote me, even if they don't support my contention".
Canadians alone hold almost $4 trillion dollars in US securities. Because the US was the centre of the capital universe. Just like we saw it as the centre of the media and music universe. Americans mistook the free world basically anointing the US into some confused notion that it was actually some earned accomplishment.
It's to highlight the depth of capital within the US.
When we in the VC/PE space raise a fund, we are investing other people's money. Most of that money is of American origin and American domiciled.
You do see some large players like in Canada and Europe, but even they are not similar in size to American pension funds and endowments, let alone other American institutional investors.
Edit: Can't reply
> these will often end up being national level and will look individually much smaller than the ones from the US, purely because the US has more people.
Absolutely! And that's what makes it so difficult for Europe to decouple from the US or China.
Most attempts at EU federalization are undermined by national level politicans as the keys to hard power (defense, foreign policy, FDI attraction) remain under the purview of individual European states, becuase push comes to shove, an American employer or fund can threaten to leave and that country's entire political apparatus will work to appease us at the expense of Brussels.
This is how Meta and Amazon have been able to neuter the GDPR thanks to Ireland [0] and Luxembourg [1] respectively.
Even India got the FTA with the EU by using the carrot on France [2] and Italy [3] and the stick on Germany [4].
Europe is in a very tough position because the incentives of a politician who wants to build their career in Brussels is different from one who wants to build their career in Berlin, Bucharest, or Bratislava.
> You do see some large players like in Canada and Europe, but even they are not similar in size to American pension funds and endowments, let alone other American institutional investors.
Look, I haven't dug into this, but if one wants a fair comparison, then you need to account for the size of an economy. If 330mn people need pensions, then you'll obviously see much larger pension funds. If 400mn people across 27 countries want pensions, these will often end up being national level and will look individually much smaller than the ones from the US, purely because the US has more people.
This reads like wishful thinking from a butthurt European. I am not a fan of many of Trump's policies and I think ex-US investor sentiment has definitely soured. But it's not like the USA is now DPRK.
> how much of that money do you think will flow to the US?
If there's one thing you can be sure of about aggregate investor behavior, it's that investors seek good risk-adjusted returns regardless of any moral or political objections.
So long as capital flows remain unimpeded, property rights are respected, and US companies have good expected future returns, investors' money will continue to flow in to the US.
Except that's exactly how the average democrat voter or European who consumes democrat media sees the US.
>If there's one thing you can be sure of about aggregate investor behavior, it's that investors seek good risk-adjusted returns regardless of any moral or political objections.
This. Companies like Nvidia, Google et-al and investors, don't care about and won't leave the US over morals, they'll go and stay where the money is good as long as it lasts. Trying to lecture them about morals from the EU won't change this. Otherwise they wouldn't be using slave labor in Congo and sweatshop labor in China.
> This. Companies like Nvidia, Google et-al and investors, don't care about and won't leave the US over morals, they'll go and stay where the money is good as long as it lasts. Trying to lecture them about morals from the EU won't change this. Otherwise they wouldn't be using slave labor in Congo and sweatshop labor in China.
Nobody will leave over morals (well except possibly the Norweigan sovereign wealth fund), but it's worth noting that for non-dollar investors, the US markets have basically been flat since the start of 2025, because the dollar has declined.
It's entirely possible that the US no longer takes in more global capital, if this continues. It's very unlikely that all the foreign investors will leave quicker, but it's much more likely that they'll leave as they sell their investments over time.
If investors leave, where will they go though? Most of EU economy isn't doing amazing right now either, with the economies of France and Germany being propped up on life support by government spending, and there's more political turmoil at the horizon. Asia?
Large European pension funds are rapidly decreasing (as rapid as a pension fund can without causing too much panic, devaluing remaining assets). E.g. some large pension funds have removed 1/4th of their investments in the US in less than a year. That is pretty unheard of.
>some large pension funds have removed 1/4th of their investments in the US in less than a year.
I saw the news about the danish fund dropping some of their US investment and on closer inspection, in absolute terms it was a drop in the bucket. Mostly an optics maneuvre.
Again, non dollar investors are flat since start of 2025. This isn't just politicisation (although that's part of it), it's that other markets are doing better than the US for now.
This will be a slow process, but the direction seems pretty clear (I fully expect to see a major economy introduce capital controls within the next twenty years).
> it's that other markets are doing better than the US for now.
Which? US currently has a rocky status due to Trump's interference, but Trump will pass while the likes of EU and Japan won't be able to fix their structural issues of low birthrates, crazy high debt welfare speeding, etc.
A single Dutch pension fund that was much larger (ABP, IIRC one or two orders of magnitude) retracted 1/4th (10 billion). But they only found out after journalists checked out a year report. Most pension funds just don't talk about it, because (1) they do not want the value of their assets drop too much as long as they haven't moved them; and (2) they do not want to draw the ire of the Trump administration in the meanwhile.
> the economies of France and Germany being propped up on life support by government spending
The US government is running (and has been for at least a decade now) a substantial deficit, which is basically propping up the economy with government support.
> there's more political turmoil at the horizon
Again, look to your own house. Even if you ignore all the Trump noise, the attempted politicisation of the Fed is very dangerous for the US economy.
> Asia?
Asia & Europe. It's beyond absurd that the US stock markets have 65% of total value, and was never going to last forever. All this craziness from the government is just speeding up something that was always going to happen.
>Even if you ignore all the Trump noise, the attempted politicisation of the Fed is very dangerous for the US economy.
Yes, but Trump is a passing issue that will eventually go away, and won't be able to fuck with tarries and the economy anymore just so his friends can do insider trading.
>Asia & Europe.
why do you think so? Japan's economy has no great future prospects, and neither EU's with many German bankruptcies and companies relocating abroad. Chinese companies and workers outside of the largest metro areas have bad time too.
I'm from Europe and have no idea what "democrat" is. Do you mean the US party? I didn't know they publish in Europe. Do you maybe mean everything not-MAGA? Now that's quite a blanket statement then, applying I'd say to 90% of Europeans - I'd be scared if 90% of the continent sees you like DPRK (hint: no, they don't). So please, either explain, or just cut back on useless sensationalistic metaphors.
>I'd be scared if 90% of the continent sees you like DPRK
Sees me? I'm European, and am speaking to how I see other Europeans see the US, which comes from the local media which is heavily anti-US as it twists and omits facts to maintain a constant anti-Trump narrative no matter the facts since people lap it up without doing any due diligence or research online.
Remember the BBC famously clipped Trump's speech to make it seem like he said something he didn't actually say on Jan 6.
It's funny how the BBC makes one mishap (I agree that it was bad) and we hear about it for months. At the same time Fox and others are spewing constant disinformation. Similarly, watch MSNBC for a day and you'll learn that most European media are a gold standard for journalism in comparison.
It's not a mishap to intentionally create disinformation in order to slander someone. Mishap is when I spill my drink on someone.
And it's not only one "mishap", the BBC has a documented history of bias and cover-ups, where the government and state agencies like MI5 since WW2, dictate their narrative. It's not a more objective source of truth as other media out there.
>and we hear about it for months.
Because the likes of the BBC, The Guardian, etc, consider themselves beyond reproach, when in fact they've been infected with the same partisan misinformation disease as the like sof Fox news, except in the other political direction.
Yes definitely, everyone who disagrees with NPCs parroting mainstream media information told them, are brain rotted. No need to think for yourself or do research in alternative sources, just blindly believe whatever the BBC and Co. tell you.
If you're not in the EU, what even is the impact on you that was caused by GDPR? You're essentially not affected by it unless you run a business, which now you need to take greater care of the personal data you store. Is that what's annoying you or what?
The EU is to blame for cookie banners on basically every website on the internet.
I wish the US had something similar, and that there was more enforcement of disallowing "accept all" buttons without an equivalent "reject all" option. I also recognize that websites don't need the banner if they aren't trying to track me, but lets not pretend there aren't annoying consequences.
> I also recognize that websites don't need the banner if they aren't trying to track me
And I recognize that there is a non-trivial cost to knowing if you need the banner or not, and people are likely to ask their web designer/dev "Hey, where's the cookie banner?" and then pay for the subsequent cost of implementing that because it's cheaper than expensive lawyers.
Companies could just reduce the amount of tracking data they're trying to harvest - then they wouldn't need a banner. If you're annoyed then be mad at the company - not the law trying to offer you some way to protect your data.
It is like blaming government for policy to make cigarette packaging unappealling.
Every company wants to spy on you using cookies and sell you data or target ads. cookies banners are warnings to protect your data from these greedy companies.
If you want to be pedantic, the companies who track us across the internet with all of these third party tracking cookies on every website are the enemy here, not informed disclosure and consent.
> The EU is to blame for cookie banners on basically every website on the internet.
Yeah, just like it's the EU's fault sometimes that the police cuts of roads when a drunk driver collides with another car, it can impossibly be the fault of the driver themselves.
Maybe try to point the blame in the direction of the ones that are A) showing you the banners in the first place and B) refuses to remove them and instead decide to inconvenience you
You know, like we do with every other single thing.
Besides, GDPR has nothing to do with those cookie banners, you're yet another example of people not understanding how any of these things work, yet find it valuable somehow to point blame in some direction, even if they don't understand the fundamental reasons things are the way they are.
I'm sure you also think EU is the same as Europe, as that tends to also be a common misconception among the people who don't understand the cookies banners or GDPR.
First, cookie banners are associated with a totally different legislation, not GDPR, and they began appearing long before GDPR existed.
Second, the EU is not to blame for cookie banners. Companies doing tracking via cookies are to blame. They always have the option to not have a cookie banner--just don't do the things that require cookie banners. They deliberately choose to do these things, and then people complain about the banners.
In California, where everything can give you cancer, do people consider that a failure of the companies putting the notices on everything, or a failure of government?
That's a failure of government because the law mandates the notice in so many places that it becomes pointless noise.
Cookie banners are not analogous. It's easy to make a web site that doesn't need cookie banners. It's actually easier to make a site that doesn't need them than to make one that does. Adding in the tracking that requires banner takes effort. But companies prefer to put in that effort and annoy their users so they can have that tracking. That's 100% on them, not on the government.
> The EU is to blame for cookie banners on basically every website on the internet.
This is the most low-rent complaint imaginable and it boggles my mind how I keep seeing it made straight-faced. One time I literally timed how long it took me to dismiss a EU cookie banner, it was about 350ms and only needs to be done once per site. All this outrage is over 350ms and I cannot take it seriously.
I think the general vibe I get from some Americans is that they're OK with some abuse, as long as you don't tell them about it or do it to your face, and they would rather have some abuse than none but having to make their own choices. Of course, small subsection of people, but plenty of HN commentators make that exact case over and over whenever the discussions about cookie banners come up.
Yes, the EU passed the ePrivacy directive in 2002. It was terribly broken (didn't actually address the problem it meant to), and resulted in malicious compliance of "cookie banners".
The EU then learned from these mistakes and passed the GDPR in 2016. The GDPR is quite on point - it directly addresses the problem, preempts the foreseeable ways which companies could sidestep such regulation, and didn't succumb to lobbyists looking to install backdoors.
The US could learn a thing or two from the EU regarding legislation.
If the EU announced that non-EU entities aren't subject to GDPR, I think that would substantially defuse and perhaps entirely eliminate the conflict. Their current guidance is precisely the opposite (https://gdpr.eu/what-is-gdpr/): "the GDPR applies to you even if you’re not in the EU". They even have a details page to make sure it's 100% clear (https://gdpr.eu/companies-outside-of-europe/): if you're a Colorado company with more than 250 employees, selling mainly to other Colorado businesses, the GDPR applies to you in full and the EU claims the authority to levy fines against you for violations.
I don't understand your response. As I said, the EU's position is that it doesn't matter whether you "just leave", because the GDPR still applies to companies who are not located in the EU and do not do business in the EU.
I get why people find this hard to believe, because it is kind of a crazy rule, but I repeat once again that this does not matter. Even if you have never sold a single product to an EU resident, and never plan to do so, the EU says as my original comment detailed that you are subject to the GDPR the instant an EU resident provides you with personal data.
(And of course, it's also the case that "selling to an EU resident" is substantially broader than "doing business in the EU" - EU residents do often travel to foreign countries and provide personal data to stores they transact with while there.)
Didn't the US jail a guy for making a joke about Charlie Kirk? Didn't Don Lemon get arrested for protesting? How about the US government making it illegal to monitor ICE's activity?
As a Canadian, I can't think of anyone getting arrested for comments they made online, unless they are truly hate/violence/threats which would get anyone arrested in similar countries such as the US.
Just this week there was a white nationalist group protesting in Hamilton, and no one was arrested.
Europe is also not a country, it is a continent with many countries having different laws surrounding free speech.
> Meanwhile a US citizen was jailed for a meme quoting Trump after Kirk death.
And that was wrong, too. Also newsworthy because it is so unusual.
> First link
I think it's probably legal under US jurisprudence, but fine, you can have that one. How about the guy who got raided for calling Robert Habeck a "professional moron"? Or the 170 other people raided in Germany for their online speech?
So you folks think just because it's internet we should be able to insult and call for racial action? Maybe you think in real life that should be acceptable too?
I support free speech through any media, including all noncommercial speech not including:
- defamation (with extra lenience for speech about public figures)
- evidence of child sex abuse
- incitement to imminent lawless action likely to cause disorder
Even those few exceptions are dangerous to liberty. Certainly anything else is too easily twisted into political censorship.
For example, under the guise of fighting "hate speech", the EU has already used the DSA to censor disfavored political speech like, "I think that LGBTI ideology, gender ideology, transgender ideology are a big threat to Slovakia, just like corruption"[0].
And yes, people obviously have the right to insult their politicians. It's honestly perplexing to encounter someone defending an early morning house raid because the guy called a politician a "professional moron". Are you actually Robert Habeck??
Germany – Robert Habeck insult raids (2024–2025): Multiple citizens faced police raids, investigations, fines, or suspended sentences (jail risk if violated) for online posts calling Green politician Robert Habeck derogatory names like "idiot" or "moron," or sharing mocking memes, under Section 188 enhancing penalties for insulting politicians.
https://www.dw.com/en/germany-greens-habeck-presses-charges-...
Germany – Friedrich Merz "Pinocchio" case (2025–2026): A pensioner faced criminal investigation (potential fine or jail under Section 188) for a Facebook post calling Chancellor Friedrich Merz "Pinocchio," prosecuted as an insult likely to impair a politician's public duties.
https://www.facebook.com/60minutes/posts/dozens-of-police-te...
Germany – Ricarda Lang insult investigation (2024–2025): A citizen was investigated (potential fine/jail) for an online post calling politician Ricarda Lang "fat," charged as criminal insult under Section 185 protecting officials from derogatory remarks.
https://nypost.com/2025/02/21/world-news/germans-cant-insult...
Robert Habeck was NOT arrested, he and his friends were investigated in the broader case of neo-nazi propaganda which they were spreading as well. Unless you consider neo-nazi freedom of speech, of course.
The Pinocchio case meant exactly one official letter sent to that guy, lol "arrests". The investigation was dropped and everybody criticized the investigation.
Ricarda Lang case was a request to the well-known network Gab to identify who insulted the politician, because in Germany insults are a crime. Maybe in the US insulting is a popular free speech pastime, but this is not US. Gab refused to identify the person and that was that.
So, again, I can see when we are spreading lies to support some ideology, but they are just that: lies.
There's a reason the acronym TACO exists - every time Trump goes after the really deep money the backlash forces him to change his tune. If only the tariffs disproportionately affected the rich then we would have been done with them within a week - instead the most effected individuals and companies just got carve outs.
> Or the US where even the mainstream media can challenge the president?
The same US that was banning reporters from the press secretary's office (this isn't even new to Trump, Clinton also tried to pull the same shit back in the day)? The one where people were denied their entry visas because of memes of JD Vance? Where the white house has an official list of "Media Offenders"[0]?
Also we can't really ignore the US actively turning extremely hostile and talking about annexing territory belonging to its ex-allies when discussing things like this. That by itself makes the case pretty obvious for anyone, because why would you do business with a nation led by a sub-zero IQ petulant dementia patient that actively threatens annexation?
> Europe...where they throw people in jail for social media posts?
People in some EU Countries (Because "Europe" is a continent that encompasses many different countries with different laws and regulations, including EU and non-EU ones with very different laws and regulations. Denmark and Hungary could not be further from one another in pretty much every regard, for example) have been arrested for posts on social media, but who has actually been jailed for this? Where does this claim even come from, is it just a weird hope from USA-ians so they can portray "Europe" as some sort of free speech hell where you can't say anything without big brother knocking on the door?
To be abundantly clear I don't support people even getting arrested for the dumb shit they say online, but no one's going to prison because of this (that I'm aware of anyway).
Here in the Netherlands, the favorite pass time of most people was shitting on Rutte when he was PM, not to mention Geert and the absolute clown show that his cabinet was. The King and royal family in general gets shit all the time from every side of the political spectrum. Nobody has even been arrested here (as far as I know anyways, could be wrong) for that kind of speech. Notice how I'm not quivering in fear of talking shit about my government?
US 'diplomats' are campaigns big donors, or primary supports. I've eaten with someone who expected to be named diplomat in Europe because he supported Obama by 2007, but was one-uped by a richer donor post-primary.
I think it’s fair to say that diplomats appear to be appointed under a two-faced system.
On the one side you have some diplomats who really are quite capable career foreign policy wonks, appointed in a manner which appears to be meritocratic.
On the other side you have folks appointed, like you mention, as a kind of patronage.
Traditionally, it has been that the softer counterparties (Friendly countries, European allies, small island nations, etc) are staffed with patrons while the more difficult or geopolitically sensitive relationships are manned by professionals, but this is certainly not always true, and one can find many counterexamples.
some added context (both my parents are/were in the Foreign Service):
your location is assigned based on a competitive bidding system where you select from a list of cities to do your next tour. some countries/cities are obviously dangerous for a variety of reasons and they are called "hardship tours" (think iraq or afghanistan). you get bonus money for these and sometimes are forbidden from bringing family.
posts in places like Europe or East Asia are very desirable and highly competitive. but often it's a matter of fit. my dad was a hedge fund manager before the Foreign Service so his first posting was actually in Frankfurt. you can also do a tour in the continental US, such as in DC or NY. because of his economics background he has done a few of those.
most of the time the head ambassador is a political appointee, but the grunts are regular people who have made this their career.
> US 'diplomats' are campaigns big donors, or primary supports
To be clear, there are political and career diplomats, and each administration mixes and matches to its taste. (The current one veers strongly towards political appointees. That is to say, folks who raised money.)
This is how most foreign services are run, with maybe the exception of China.
>This is how most foreign services are run, with maybe the exception of China.
Absolutely not most. What country in Europe has a significant amount of ambassadors that are not career diplomats / government workers ?
In France, Germany, Switzerland you would either need to be a career diplomat/ foreign service worker or in rare cases you would be a career government employee assigned as diplomat to some specific country for some reason (i.e you were trade minister and become ambassador to your biggest trading partner).
The most "political" appointee ambassador in Europe I can think of is Mandelson but he is (as we found out) supremely connected to US power networks and he is still a lifetime politician/ government employee.
I know nothing about this but JumpCrisscross seems to use "political" to mean "has donated large sums of money" while your use of "political" is more like.. someone who does politics.
Is there any evidence of this being an actual pattern? I cannot speak for the rest of the americans, but I, personally, haven’t noticed it because it didn’t seem to be the case to me at all.
Asking because from my perception over the past 12 months, US ambassadors got more friendly and cordial with some countries (e.g., Japan[0]/Taiwan/South Korea[1]) and less cordial with others (e.g., certain european countries, like UK, that attempt to [imo unjustly] press american businesses that don’t even have any business presence within their jurisdiction).
The US doesn't have diplomats anymore. Just Republican donors with no experience. Hell, Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner's dad is a diplomat. A really bad one.
The US ambassador to France has just had his access to parliamentarians and members of the government withdrawn because he is trying to turn a neo-Nazi who died in a fight into a political martyr. There are similar situations in Belgium and Poland.
American diplomats have been doing Trump's dirty work for a some time.
I am more concerned about US interference in elections and campaigning for the far right than lobbying for data at the moment.
This administration really, truly lives under the delusion that they hold "all the cards". In every engagement they think it is for them to dictate and everyone else to follow. Any graciousness they show is just kind benevolence.
And the "diplomats" of this administration is a rogues gallery of Epstein associates (e.g. pedophile sex-trafficking garbage) and self-dealing criminals. Just a who's-who of garbage.
They are sending their absolute worst.
Americans are just blissfully unaware how much their country is being destroyed. It's staggering stuff. Even if you're a super conservative, there should be utter embarrassment and outrage about how incompetent and clownish this parade of imbeciles is.
> don't think the memory of America as a bully will go away
It won't. But going digitally sovereign will cost Europe tens of billions of euros. If there is a friendly race on the other side of the Atlantic, that will not mean the memories go away. But the urgency of the initiative is certainly sapped.
Oh for sure, this administration is just a symptom that the US has become an idiocracy levered by a plutocracy. A poorly educated, easily manipulated populace.
Trump is just the result of this, and it isn't going to stop when he kicks it. It'll be the next populist nonsense. The world needs to move on from America.
"When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” - Trump
Just replace Mexico with America. There must be some Freudian issue going on with Trump here.
The super conservatives share this belief that the US holds all the cards. This is the idea of American exceptionalism. We're special, we're uniquely capable, we can do anything we want because everyone else has no choice but to engage with us. If Europe abandons us, that's a win because they're just a drain on us. International trade is screwing us, so wrecking it will usher in a new golden age.
atleast most senses of this exceptionalism have been fading away in europe thanks to the result of two world wars. (and many, many conflicts before that)
(He later doubled down on the decision to erase any mention of the racial segregation black US soldiers were submitted to while serving in the army during WWII.)
The title should be "US orders diplomats to fight _EU_ data sovereignty initiatives".
Why? Because the US is far too pussy to fight the other countries that have such initiatives - some of them reaching further than the EU's - knowing that unlike the EU those countries are definitely not going to take their shit.
I can tell you that if the US says to Japan or Korea, just to name two such examples, "stop enacting privacy/sovereignty laws that interfere with US big tech or we tariff you" , there's absolutely zero chance they're going to be listened to and the only thing it will do is make people hate the US.
I don't think it's going to be anymore successful in the EU, honestly. The last couple of years have EU politicians throughly over their shit, and it's unlikely many concessions to US BigTech can be bought without serious reciprocity on the table (for example, a major expansion of US military aid to Ukraine)
I don't think it's right to say "privacy/sovereignty". As gestured towards in the source article, Japan and Korea have joined the US's preferred data privacy forum https://www.globalcbpr.org/. Data sovereignty is not a common idea outside the EU, and AFAIK even the current American government doesn't object to US citizens' data being stored in foreign servers under foreign jurisdiction.
We are pivoting out of a huge number of US services at my job. I think windows, Google, PaloAltoNetworks and Aws will be the last we leave, but infoblox is out next year (that's part of my job right now), and old Cisco hardware will stop being replaced by new Cisco hardware in 6 months.
Even as a US citizen... fuck that... it'd be like saying the US should open its' data up for China without any restrictions at all, even if they are slurping up everything they can as a state actor.
While, if you choose to use a US service, it shouldn't be required to host data in your country, if you know it's a US service with data in the US... government data is another thing entirely.. and $cloud provider should be required to accommodate if they want that business, or for companies in a given country for that matter.
What kind of success are countries having finding technical talent with the right savvy fighter mindset to sever the dependence on an aggressive and culturally-entrenched threat?
(Even the ordinary open source world has a lot of intrigue to be careful of. And most developers still think nothing of pulling in a fleet of dependencies from PyPI/NPM/Cargo/etc. as well as third-party network services. Everyone is being taught in school to play to FAANG interview rituals, and many go on to a career style of performative sprints. HCI is almost lost as a field to UX euphemism. Almost no one can deploy a system that won't be compromised, and most don't even try, except for some mandated ineffective theatre. AI homework-cheating mindset isn't helping. Etc. Not to complain, but to be clear the kind of inertia a country is facing.)
Do the countries wanting to fight this have enough of they right homegrown talent already, and know how to find and nurture it?
If they're importing additional talent, do they know how to find and incentive the right people, while turning away the ones with the wrong mindsets for this mission?
(ProTips: Look for the hardcore privacy&security non-careerist nerds. The left-leaning, societal-minded ones. Give them what they've been looking for, or support to help make what they've been looking for. Don't offer to pay too well. Anyone who asks "Why would I want to live in your country, when I can make more money elsewhere?" gets a permaban.)
Europe, if you want good tech businesses you need to create a tech business friendly environment.
Banning US tech companies without creating (really) fertile grounds for business is just going to be shooting yourself in the foot. A replacement Google won't grow on a farm only fed worker/consumer fertilizer.
It's almost diabolical that the only way Europe can get rid of the US, is to be more like the US.
Apple is the same size as Europe's tech sector...just Apple.
Of the top 50 tech companies on Earth, 3 are European and 30 are American.[1]
Europe has a seriously lacking tech scene. The situation is borderline catastrophic.Even just this past week the OpenClaw guy ditched the EU for the US, calling out the EU's infertile business scene[2]. These are exactly the kind of people the EU should be clearing a path for and rolling out a rug. Wake up.
lol, it's always because of money. European tech startups often sell out to US investors because they offer more money.
I've worked for companies that plodded along nicely privately owned, 20-50 employees, but they got "offers they couldn't refuse" from US companies and sold. Usually just buying us to stamp out potential competition/buying a customer base
Apple is a bit of a terrible example. They're not profitable unless they offshore hardware assembly, and their service revenue is considered an anticompetitive monopoly even domestically. The only way they got to this point was by fucking over American labor and the free market.
If you account for the market damages that Apple is responsible for, the situation is already catastrophic. The EU has every justification to decouple themselves from capricious and unaccountable businesses like Apple, Google and Microsoft.
On the other hand, if US tech businesses want to keep access to European markets they shouldn't support US politicians who want to override the sovereignty of those nations.
Businesses exist to fill a demand. And the market will pay accordingly. For example:
The shame of all this is that now every country will have a worse, more expensive - but yes, soveriegn - solution, and the US makes less money through trade. Everyone loses, except people who want to hurt western economies.
Or maybe a better product that’s cheaper. Let’s not let hubris get the best of us. There’s nothing special about the US. I mean imagine being an Oracle customer and switching to a local supplier. Must be like emerging from a nightmare
Similarly, in the 2000s, the US pushed back against the development of Galileo and preferred that Europe continue relying on GPS. That created tensions between the US and the EU.
Fighting data sovereignty is a losing battle for the US: data are too strategic to outsource, even to allies.
That'd be amazing. It'd suck for some weeks initially, including for myself and the companies I'm involved in, but at least then it'll start being a "all hands on desk" sort of thing instead of "Lets make sure we finish this before the end of 2026" which is the current state of affairs.
I mean, the easy thing to do is revoke US-EU data transfers. The ECJ is definitely going to do it anyway, and it provides a lot of leverage. If you keep it gone for long enough, then the Mag7 are basically forced to store data in the EU, and respect the laws.
As a bonus, it would nuke the markets, causing the US administration to backpedal on whatever. (Obviously I'd prefer not to nuke the markets, but something needs to happen to push back against the US).
This would only happen in a world where the US has entirely abandoned Ukraine though (i.e. no intelligence sharing).
I imagine if the current administration does, Europe could retaliate by withholding ASML’s tech or even doing a mass sell off of US treasuries. Europe is admittedly not in a position of strength compared to the US, but there are still a lot of levers they can pull.
The problem is that the core technology that makes ASML's tech valuable is the EUV light source which is entirely designed, developed, and manufactured by Cymer in California, which is a US company that ASML acquired in 2013. That acquisition was permitted only under strict technology sharing and export-control agreements.
I have no doubt that this administration would forcefully "take back" Cymer if the EU tried to restrict access to ASML lithography machines. They would force a sale back to US ownership, TikTok-style.
This framing gets the supply chain backwards. Cymer makes the source vessel, the part that generates tin droplets and converts them to plasma. But the laser that actually powers that process is a 17-ton, 40kW CO2 beast with 457,000 parts, built exclusively by TRUMPF in Germany. And the optics, mirrors smooth to tens of picometers that literally no one else on Earth can make, come from Carl Zeiss, also German, organized as a foundation that no foreign government can force into a sale. ASML only manufactures about 15% of an EUV machine's components. The rest comes from roughly 1200 suppliers concentrated in Germany and the Netherlands. Seizing Cymer gets you one subsystem with no laser to drive it and no optics to focus it.
The real problem with this theory is that EUV isn't a product with a capturable bottleneck. It's more like a standing wave of institutional knowledge distributed across organizations that have been co-developing at picometer tolerances for 30 years. TRUMPF's leadership described the arrangement as a "virtually merged company" with open books across all three firms. That kind of integration knowledge doesn't transfer via acquisition. China has been throwing enormous resources at this with access to published research and former ASML engineers, and their prototype still isn’t expected to produce working chips until 2028-2030. Saying the US could grab Cymer and start producing EUV machines is like seizing a transmission plant and calling yourself a car manufacturer.
Yes, we all know that ASML is a multi-national effort, with critical technology components provided by several countries. The point is that the EUV light source is one of the critical technology components and it has not been replicated anywhere else (so far, see xLight founded by Dept. of Energy engineers and funded by the US gov).
It's a bargaining chip that this administration will undoubtedly use to make sure that US access to ASML lithography machines remains undisturbed.
You're missing the point. Nobody will take back anything since that hurts everyone, but if the US wanted they could license EUV tech to Nikon or Canon and give ASML a huge PITA of refreshed competition.
Similar to TRUMPF lasers and Zeiss optics, other companies from US and Japan like Coherent and Canon could have a crack at replicating the laser and mirrors given enough IP and resources if the US really wanted to decouple from ASML, since they're still man made objects, not magic things given by gods.
US is the richest country in the world and the second biggest manufacturer after China. Do you think the country that built the SR-72 and other sci-fi shit wouldn't be able to make a EUV lithography machine in house if they were to treat it like a Manhattan project instead of a side hustle?
>other companies from US and Japan like Coherent and Canon could have a crack at replicating the laser and mirrors given enough IP and resources if the US really wanted to decouple from ASML, since they're still man made objects, not magic things given by gods.
this exact same logic applies the other way, though... unless Cymer is selling magic objects given by gods?
>Do you think the country that built the SR-72 and other sci-fi shit wouldn't be able to make a EUV lithography machine in house if they were to treat it like a Manhattan project instead of a side hustle?
do you think that ASML (or TRUMPF or whatever non-US entity) would be unable to make the EUV light source in house if they were to treat it like a Manhattan project instead of a side hustle?
I agree with you, but that was my point exactly. No party holds all the cards to dictate the rules of the game like people bullish on ASML thought that they're somehow untouchable. They're untouchable because the US allows them to be because they play ball with the US admin and push back against rules they don't like from the Dutch government.
It's a gentlemen's agreement that will be held together by mutually assured destruction if one party tries to decouple completely.
The general decoupling from US tech you see has started after the general enshitification of major IT services from FFANG, not exclusively due to Trump, and not exclusively to US, Spotify is also seeing a lot of backlash.
>do you think that ASML (or TRUMPF or whatever non-US entity) would be unable to make the EUV light source in house if they were to treat it like a Manhattan project instead of a side hustle?
The EU(Germany, Spain and France) can't unite to build a next gen fighter jet together, can't decide how to tackle illegal mass migration, can't decide a sane energy policy that isn't hypocritical or anti-industry, or on a single direction on defeating Russia. A EUV Manhattan project is the least of their issues right now which moves the balance of power in the US court for the moment until EU members figure out how to work together.
> can't decide how to tackle illegal mass migration
the mass migration caused by american wars in the middle east you mean?
Also, frontex seems to be working fine so far.
>on a single direction on defeating Russia
unlike the US, which has stopped all military aid to ukraine in 2025, and seems to be favouring russia more and more.
Lets not forget, europe is increasing its military en masse mainly because on one hand you have the russian flattening ukraine, and on other hand you have the US demanding greenland.
> In 1997, ASML began studying a shift to using extreme ultraviolet and in 1999 joined a consortium, including Intel and two other U.S. chipmakers, in order to exploit fundamental research conducted by the US Department of Energy. Because the Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) it operates under is funded by the US government, licensing must be approved by Congress.
> I imagine if the current administration does, Europe could retaliate by withholding ASML’s tech […]
There is a bit of M.A.D. scenario: a bunch of components in ASML machines (like EUV light generation?) come from US companies. Also, the two main chip CAD software vendors (duopoly) are in the US.
for everything inside the EU, i highly doubt it is.
For extraterritioral trade. The EU is large enough to trade with other countries in euros instead of dollars.
There's no chance in hell that he would because if there's one easy way to piss off the oligarchy it's to make their net worth plummet. And losing >20% of revenue in one fell swoop does just that. Europe remains a huge profit center. That's why all the talk by many Americans including on HN in the past about "well if the EU keeps fining Meta and co billions, maybe they'll stop doing business there!". They'd be removed from their positions before they could even utter the phrase considering it. Imagine how that earnings call would go. "Yeah uhh, we left a market where we were making 20 billion per year net profit because we got fined 5 billion. Mhm.".
Trump's grip on the US oligarchy isn't even 1% as tight as Putin's on Russia's, who has everything completely under his thumb. If the US oligarchy conspires to depose Trump, he's gone next week. That they're all sucking up to him doesn't refute that at all, that's just the optimal move until it isn't. All these people do is take the optimal move for their own net worth at the current point in time.
I'm sure this would be better received if I took an LLM and had it rewrite this in a less conversational and higher-brow way, but it's no longer the time for that.
It's not even just data stored on US servers. According to the CLOUD Act, any data stored by a US company, regardless of location, can be demanded by any authority in the US.
No sovereign nation should use US companies for data storage or processing. Period.
The attempts to shift to open source or non-US services are inevitably hobbled by US companies lobbying (read: bribing) politicians.
There's a substantial population of most countries who feel that everyone else on the planet is somehow inferior. Basic nationalism. One of the big achievements of the 20th century was reducing that so it might be below 50% in many places.
However, that's not the same as "enemy". That's a more confrontational level. It's that particular branch of the far right which has recently risen to prominence. Ironically, in a lot of different countries.
Just started exporting my data from google, guess this is the start of my uncoupling journey.
Looking forward to changing my bank card to a EU alternative when its available.
I don't feel like I have major usage issues, but maybe once I have decoupled from the big players, it will be clearer what I had gotten used to, for which there was another way to approach.
The biggest pain points will probably be YouTube, Claude, Gemini and Google docs. The main issues will probably stem from collaborating with others, rather than my own personal usage.
Given that the US has basically no data or privacy protections for its own citizens let alone non-US citizens, it's not surprising that countries are moving away from keeping their data in US-owned places. US companies mine data for everything and the kitchen sink and train AI using it without any sort of notice.
standard kyc doesn't run on dedicated infrastructure isolated from the vendor's main cloudflare stack. you don't build a separate gcp cluster for routine age checks. the architecture tells you what the data is worth before anyone admits it.
I bet it’s too late now. They will need very very persuasive arguments to kill all the initiatives, and while they may convince some governments and lobbying groups, I doubt they will manage to convince every IT responsible.
Sigh. Anecdotally, more Europeans no longer want their governments to rely on software and data controlled by US companies, because they no longer trust the US to act as a reliable ally, defending the same values. Whether you agree or disagree with these concerns, they are valid for many Europeans.
In an ironic twist of fate, the US government's actions could end up causing long-term damage to US tech companies.
This is all based on anecdotal evidence, so I could be wrong, but I have to call it like I see it.
At the end of the day it isn't US tech companies that'd suffer (outside some minor short term pain) it's the US. If being in America is bad for business those companies (which already exist multi-nationally in most cases) will just pack up their US holdings.
As an EU citizen I really hope we can gain some meaningful distance to the US asap. I hope my leaders feel the same. And if everything works out I think this will be great for the EU.
This is really some sort of diplomatic Streisand effect. If the US would not have been so aggressive and just string us along they could have continued to feed us their slop indefinitely without us noticing.
This just accelerates the Balkanization of the Internet, which already is segregated by China and Russia. Maybe it was inevitable. Corporations benefit the most from open access and as they have demonstrated with unrestricted AI scraping they obey no morality, ethics, or law they are not compelled to by force.
This has already been on the table for over 6 years now - Stratechery (a tech blog most decisionmakers read) posited the Four Internet theory all the way back in 2020 [0]
It is incredibly stupid and counterproductive to make this kind of statement publicly.
Most of the GAFAM companies are doing their utmost to try to reassure their European customers with a facade of sovereignty.
Reminds me of the "US high healthcare costs are subsidising EU cheap healthcare".
The rough argument was: pharma companies need big payoffs when they discover a new drug and, due to structural characteristics of the US market, that's where they can get the highest prices.
So pharmas make a large chunk of their profits in the US and then sell drugs more cheaply in e.g. Europe.
Fairly weak and incomplete argument [1], but I've seen this pushed seriously by people in public debates in the US.
[1] - a couple of obvious issues with this argument are: 1. why is it Europe's fault that the US has structural issues that prevent it from negotiating drug proces as a united front? 2. healthcare costs are largely inflated by admin costs in the US. Drugs can be expensive too, sure, but this argument ignores the big cost intrinsic to the insane insurance and billing system prevalent in the US.
Pharma companies want to make money - they'll charge what the market can bear up to what they're allowed to. Some countries cap this - others don't. In the US the government actually subsidizes medication costs in a graduated manner that allows the price point to be set much higher than a natural market would allow - there are also tools like manufacturer rebates or drug trial cards that can also subsidize the price if you've got more time than money and are willing to jump through the various hoops.
So, the premise is high drug costs in the US subsidize drug prices in the EU.
Presumably this conclusion was arrived at because pharma companies sell drugs at a higher cost in the US than they do in EU, Canada, or anywhere else. Therefore elevating profits in the US relative to profit margins in other nations. (Note: they reportedly use the profit to develop new drugs, so this is where the subsidization comes into play, as higher profit markets will drive increased revenue and future drug development.)
And your argument against the premise is: 1. The EU is not at fault, and 2. Drugs cost more in the US because of the poor healthcare system.
Argument 1 does not attack the premise: Undoubtedly the EU is not at fault, the EU does not set drug prices in the US. Pharma companies do, within the context of the US economy, of course.
The premise does not assign fault, it’s an assessment of where profit comes from.
Argument 2 is more direct in addressing the premise, but still misses the point: you might be right, mostly right, or you could be wrong. I lean toward agreeing with the point you made (US healthcare system sucks), it doesn’t address the profit differential across different nations.
So, what about the premise is weak and incomplete?
Pharma shareholders want profit, and the US supplies that at a greater rate than the EU (likely due to the regulatory environment). They’ll take a lower profit margin vs. no profit at all, so they operate accordingly.
None of that goes against the premise that the extra profit from the US market is subsidizing the research costs for drug products that enter the EU market.
Your response is fair. I didn't present the argument fully - there is on last step which says "therefore, EU is somehow indebted to the US". That last step is, I think, less defensible.
Also, even in the absence of the "indebtedness" conclusion, the subsidy argument assumes that pharma companies would reduce their R&D spend, instead of just accepting lower margins if the US could more aggressively negotiate drug prices.
>> signed by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the agency said such laws would "disrupt global data flows, increase costs and cybersecurity risks, limit Artificial Intelligence (AI) and cloud services, and expand government control in ways that can undermine civil liberties and enable censorship."
Such fine bullshit, of the highest quality.
Distributing infrastructure may slightly reduce efficiency but seems like a good idea for so many reasons: national pride, increased security, more resilience to outside influences, etc.
Given the socio-political climate, it's really bonkers to go bashing every ally the US has had since WW2 and then in the other hand go "No No No, trust only us with your data"
America has lost trust internationally because this administration is amoral, chaotic and transactional. Trust is a very expensive commodity because it takes generations to build and can be destroyed in a moment. This is a fight that America is going to lose and we're all the worse off for it.
To be fair data sovereignty is usually just a way for governments to crack down on free speech/internet usage. They require all the company servers be in the country, then when they want to get information it's easier to get a warrant and threaten to take away all their servers. This is what they did in China/Russia and why they're doing it in the EU.
It's also probably just good business for the US, but locking down on citizen freedom is the only real reason I've seen countries do it.
Great, that means its working. I hope every single country in the world builds competent IT infrastructure. Having more competition will help us to develop more and better technology and have more alternatives, and overall increase the quality and resilience of technology globally. The current effective monopsy of US cloud providers has caused an unnecessary hard convergence that prevents innovation, is dangerous to privacy and security, and unnecessarily hinders national sovereignty.
Confidence that in the short term nothing will change. All large-scale change is hard. Change that impacts everyone's workflow will be resisted even if the new thing is better, and in many areas the alternatives are pretty mediocre. Also a combination of political and economic pressure has in the past been successful in making meaningful initiatives fail or roll them back.
In the long term this is an issue. But I'm not sure the US stock market actually cares that much about what the world will look like in 4 or 8 years.
The US recently rolled out a childhood investment account that offered to pump a thousand dollars per child into the main market index funds backed by the US government. In the SOTU there was also a mention of matching the first thousand dollar invested in an approved retirement account for all residents - not just federal employees.
The US government is pumping the stock market with debt - as long as nobody starts dumping bonds or currency this is an action that will make number go up.
The rich and ultra rich tend to borrow against their investments rather than spending their own money. As long as the number continues to go up it's basically a free money pipe for everyone over a certain level of wealth.
That's mostly AI panic based on the narratives swirling around in finance news. I'd agree this threat of decoupling is more serious, but I also think the market knows that US tech is so deeply embedded everywhere that decoupling will take decades.
Good luck with that. I hope the EU is not stupid enough to stop this initiative.
This would not be happening if it was not for the US dummy in chief. The EU was looking to do this for a while, but where taking its time until recent events.
>the US was really, really foolish to crystalise the risk by locking out those judges
Do you think the Trump admin thinks about the consequences of their decisions for more than 5 minutes into the future?
They're all about making a quick buck via scams, insider trading and rug pulls, future consequences be damned. Sometimes they make a good call when they listen to what their corporate lobbyists say.
> The cable said the Trump administration was pushing for "a more assertive international data policy" and that diplomats should "counter unnecessarily burdensome regulations, such as data localization mandates."
For any government in Europe, it should be extremely pressing to untangle itself as quickly as possible from US-based companies as suppliers.
But to be frank, even regulations should be unnecessary here. Private businesses in Europe (and elsewhere) should consider it an existential threat to depend on cloud services from the US. We are all one executive order away from having access cut.
> Private businesses in Europe (and elsewhere) should consider it an existential threat to depend on cloud services from the US
They do already, everyone except the ones truly deep into the US ecosystem already have plans or are making plans for how to get out from US infrastructure in 2026.
The argument that it’s wrong would be because it’s bad for US consumers and those abroad too. There’s monopolization arguments, and there’s clear evidence of wrong-doing by these companies already.
Even for US tech folks like HN, I doubt it would help us. US companies hoard their profits and power, so most people here would see no benefit. It’s yet another move to protect rich corporations and the corporate cronies of the most corrupt administration in US history.
The article didn’t say it was wrong by my reading: it reported that it’s happening.
That said: “benefits US companies” != good public policy for the US as a whole. It’s explicitly trying to interfere in how other countries govern themselves for the benefit of shareholders, not because it’s necessarily good policy.
It’s also something we wouldn’t necessarily appreciate if done to us by our allies. If we have any actual allies left given all of Trump’s tariffs and threats against other countries.
In a normal, mature government, advocacy for your nation's products would be reasonable, and even then, would be controversial in this instance. "Do not protect your citizens' privacy, our citizens might get ideas".
I think it's the assumptions that are baked in with the Trump regime. No subtlety, no mutual benefit, do as we say or else.
I can’t imagine how any country would think the US is trustworthy enough to be the place where everyone stores their data. If companies cannot comply with data sovereignty laws then they shouldn’t exist at all. Personally, even as a US citizen, I’m hoping tech companies in Europe and Asia become independent enough to no longer be beholden to US interests. It’s clear that the era where any one country has global hegemony should end.
I do not trust anyone with my data. This is just my preference but every year I move further and further away from using the internet for anything other than making comments on this site and watching a few vloggers. In a few years I will not have more than 3 to 5 logins on anything and those will be value add and must be within driving distance. All critical services I use will require walking into a building in person.
If I could find a reputable construction company to build my underground home I would be a true troglodyte.
> If I could find a reputable construction company to build my underground home I would be a true troglodyte
If you have the resources you could always buy an existing underground structure and renovate. Like a missile silo. Or buy an already renovated one:
https://washingtonmissilebase.com/
I imagine upkeep is pretty expensive, probably needs a lot of HVAC, dehumidifying, pumping, etc to keep you from dying due to weird mold and stuff lol
I looked at many of those. Plenty of people are indeed upgrading silos. I looked at the cost to repair and overhaul these facilities but it would be just a little more to do it right on my property with high performance high pressure concrete and do it right in a place outside of the nuclear sponge. Only challenge is getting the right people up here but I will not give up on the idea.
> I do not trust anyone with my data.
Then why give it up in the first place? "Because you have to" is probably going to be the argument, but I don't buy that.
I'm glad you agree. It will take more than you or I to put a stop to this for people not yet on the internet but I will ask the US government to help.
Usually, when you want to have people not know who built what, you use an LLC.
THEN the LLC hires the subcontractors in stages without them knowing about each other.
Youd take about 5 years, but itd be about as secure as you could be if you lost trust in soceity.
It’s a trope in survivalist fiction. The contractors hired to build a bunker are often the first to attempt a breach once a crisis hits.
It seems to me that major US cloud companies are using politics to try to get more value from non-US data, which I believe will push the EU (and others) to accelerate the move to their own alternatives. This is another move that seems to sacrifice longer-term trust (and profits) to boost near-term profits.
Depends how much compromising information they already have access to on the politicians concerned :-)
Please don't stop us having access to your information, else we will destroy you with the information we already hold :-)
I'm a US citizen and I hope more of the world decouples because I think a lot of our issues are due to a lack of competition.
Even as a US citizen ... I have started to decouple from US business that hold my data.
Same. I don't trust the US as much as the rest of the world does not trust them. They want control with little to offer for it. My data and compute is safer offshore at this time.
where did you move your blog to? hetzner?
But we have our own issues outside of the US.
They reality is the average person is between a rock and a hard place.
Major US tech businesses are making money with analytics/ads though, so they would never roll out end-to-end encryption in a serious way. At least outside the US, a lot of E2E-encrypted services are popping up (Proton, Zeitkapsl, etc.).
I don't trust the small number of E2E US services at all. E.g., some of the companies that were/are in PRISM seem to have very convenient 'accidental' backdoors. E.g. WhatsApp doing backups on Google Drive without encryption by default on Android or Apple doing iCloud backups of iMessage that are not E2E encrypted unless you enable ADP. And even if you are wise enough to enable E2E in both cases, most people that you communicate with don't, because they use the defaults, so it's game over anyway.
On the other hand Apple can no longer off ADP in the UK.[0]
That some businesses are not trustworthy seems less a concern for me, than that many governments would like to make all business insecure by design.
[0] https://support.apple.com/en-gb/122234
In the EU, we have been fighting a bitter battle against Chat Control X.Y for some time now.
That won't change until Ursula von der Leyen goes. Her nickname in Germany (since 2009) is Zensursula, because she attempted to build a pan-German firewall.
She failed in Germany, but she may yet succeed in the entire EU.
This. When I look at why my life sucks and is on hard difficulty mode, it's not because I use US tech instead of EU tech. Most people and companies have bigger economic challenges right now trying to keep the lights on, than data sovereignty and domestic alternatives. My company just had a 3rd round of layoffs and its wasn't due to lack of EU SW.
The lack of data sovereignty does have large geopolitical consequences though. Without data sovereignty of EU government services and businesses, the US can blackmail EU continuously or even worse, in the case of e.g. a conflict over Greenland, cause chaos by turning off access to US tech. So for the EU, tech sovereignty is a matter of life and death.
Also, a lot of crap in Western countries is caused by tech broligarchs enriching themselves in favor of workers en destroying democracy for tech feudalism. So if we can bring down their sales Tesla-style, I'm all in for it.
>Also, a lot of crap in Western countries is caused by tech broligarchs enriching themselves in favor of workers en destroying democracy for tech feudalism.
Not true. The reason my Col is off the charts, salary low and housing unaffordable is due to EU central bank printing too much money leaving us holding the bags, government's zoning laws making housing expensive and them importing millions of immigrants despite record unemployment numbers to put downward pressure on wages and upward pressure on housing. None of this is done by US tech bros, it's all done by EU rulers and elites.
US tech bros is an orthogonal issue that distracts from the core issues.
The quantity theory of money is trivially shown to be nonsense just by considering what happens to savings (i.e. nothing). You need to up your analysis if you want to truly understand.
What happened to savings in Zimbabwe when they printed trillions of dollars? Did that do anything to what those savings would buy?
Here is a discussion of Zimbabwe more complete that I'm likely to write in a comment on HN: https://billmitchell.org/blog/?p=3773
You've made accusations but have not brought arguments to support that my take on EU leaders and elites being the ones fucking us, our CoL and purchasing power, is wrong.
And savings absolutely did eventually get obliterated by excessive Covid money printing, what are you on about?
I've not made any accusations, nor do I think that the elites are not to blame. I said that "money printing" is not the problem here. The reason it's not the problem is because the quantity of money simply reflects savings. By focussing on "money printing", you're missing the actual problems. Arguably, that's the point, since the elite tend to do well when money is considered a scarce commodity.
Sure, spending might cause inflationary effects, but that's orthogonal to quantity (flows not stocks), but then economics is the science of confusing stocks with flows.
The competition is China and the US is becoming so hysterical about it that I genuinely hope that the PLA is prepared for a nuclear first strike.
This is probably the dumbest comment I've read in months. Impressive.
Such a missed opportunity. We could have been to data privacy and protection what Switzerland is to Banking.
But no, our cooperate oligarch overlords just can't keep their hands out of the piggy bank.
> I’m hoping tech companies in Europe and Asia become independent enough to no longer be beholden to US interests
What tech companies?
At the end of the day, it's all about capital and IP.
American domiciled VCs and companies can outinvest just about any other competitor, and much of the core IP for vast swathes of critical next-gen technologies (high NA EUV, Foundation Models, Quantum Computing) is in the US, but American companies are fine transferring technology abroad (often with American government backing [3][4]) and moving jobs abroad.
China has a similar ecosystem but prefers to invest domestically and for IP to remain within China.
Meanwhile Japan, Taiwan, and Korea continue to back the US no matter what due to tensions with China and North Korea along with existing fixed asset investments in the US.
When companies like Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, and others are able to invest tens of billions of dollars in India [0], Poland [1], Israel [2], Portugal [5], Ireland [6], and others it makes them more open to collaborate with American capital and IP instead of dealing with alternatives who cannot deploy similar amounts of capital and transfer IP.
[0] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-12-11/india-dra...
[1] - https://www.gov.pl/web/primeminister/google-invests-billions...
[2] - https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/sjcwdmxxzg
[3] - https://www.state.gov/pax-silica
[4] - https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/20...
[5] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-11-11/microsoft...
[6] - https://www.irishtimes.com/business/2025/11/27/microsoft-has...
The world respected IP because the alternative was being tariffed. Now that we already are, the US can take it's IP laws and shove 'em for all I care.
Tariffs existed before a year ago, whether you knew about them or not.
Obviously. What's your point? Do you mean to tell me nothing changed in how the US tariffs their imports?
> What tech companies? At the end of the day, it's all about capital and IP.
It's not just about capital and IP. It's now about a halo of related things, like everyone using US payment networks - if the US unbanks you, even banks in your own country can't do business with you[1]. Or everyone using a US-based messaging platform (WhatsApp) because its been subsidised by a BigTech to cost $0, whereas text messages are still not free...
[1]: https://english.elpais.com/international/2025-12-28/the-comp...
>American domiciled VCs and companies can outinvest just about any other competitor,
Because every investor in the world put their money in the US. They knew the best companies and people would centralize around that hub.
When the US is a rogue, isolated idiocracy -- already true, but the world takes time to adapt to this new reality -- how much of that money do you think will flow to the US?
"idiocracy" ... wow ... such a cool word! And so true.
Thank you.
Wait till you see the movie.
Much of the capital is US originated and domiciled.
American public pension funds alone hold $6 Trillion in AUM [0] and American endowment funds hold a little under $1 Trillion in AUM [1], and tend to be the LPs for most VC funds as most institutional investors follow the Yale Investment Model.
[0] - https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2025/2024-ann...
[1] - https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=73
>Much of the capital is US originated and domiciled.
Neither of your citations has any relevance to this at all. That endowments and pensions funds have money...what is your point? Ah, the old HN "look I've provided citations so upvote me, even if they don't support my contention".
Canadians alone hold almost $4 trillion dollars in US securities. Because the US was the centre of the capital universe. Just like we saw it as the centre of the media and music universe. Americans mistook the free world basically anointing the US into some confused notion that it was actually some earned accomplishment.
> Neither of your citations has any relevance to this at all.
it's a common pattern in GPs comments
pretty certain he just asks the "AI" for citations on whatever he's written
(for a VC he sure has a lot of time to waste shit-posting on the internet)
It's to highlight the depth of capital within the US.
When we in the VC/PE space raise a fund, we are investing other people's money. Most of that money is of American origin and American domiciled.
You do see some large players like in Canada and Europe, but even they are not similar in size to American pension funds and endowments, let alone other American institutional investors.
Edit: Can't reply
> these will often end up being national level and will look individually much smaller than the ones from the US, purely because the US has more people.
Absolutely! And that's what makes it so difficult for Europe to decouple from the US or China.
Most attempts at EU federalization are undermined by national level politicans as the keys to hard power (defense, foreign policy, FDI attraction) remain under the purview of individual European states, becuase push comes to shove, an American employer or fund can threaten to leave and that country's entire political apparatus will work to appease us at the expense of Brussels.
This is how Meta and Amazon have been able to neuter the GDPR thanks to Ireland [0] and Luxembourg [1] respectively.
Even India got the FTA with the EU by using the carrot on France [2] and Italy [3] and the stick on Germany [4].
Europe is in a very tough position because the incentives of a politician who wants to build their career in Brussels is different from one who wants to build their career in Berlin, Bucharest, or Bratislava.
[0] - https://www.euractiv.com/news/irish-privacy-regulator-picks-...
[1] - https://www.aboutamazon.eu/news/policy/amazon-leaders-meet-l...
[2] - https://www.reuters.com/world/india/india-signs-74-billion-d...
[3] - https://www.lagazzettamarittima.it/2025/10/30/rixi-in-india-...
[4] - https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/volksw...
> You do see some large players like in Canada and Europe, but even they are not similar in size to American pension funds and endowments, let alone other American institutional investors.
Look, I haven't dug into this, but if one wants a fair comparison, then you need to account for the size of an economy. If 330mn people need pensions, then you'll obviously see much larger pension funds. If 400mn people across 27 countries want pensions, these will often end up being national level and will look individually much smaller than the ones from the US, purely because the US has more people.
> When the US is a rogue, isolated idiocracy
This reads like wishful thinking from a butthurt European. I am not a fan of many of Trump's policies and I think ex-US investor sentiment has definitely soured. But it's not like the USA is now DPRK.
> how much of that money do you think will flow to the US?
If there's one thing you can be sure of about aggregate investor behavior, it's that investors seek good risk-adjusted returns regardless of any moral or political objections.
So long as capital flows remain unimpeded, property rights are respected, and US companies have good expected future returns, investors' money will continue to flow in to the US.
> But it's not like the USA is now DPRK.
I'd say the perception is probably worse
kim is simply not a threat
he also hasn't threatened to invade us, and he's not kidnapped any foreign leaders (recently)
>But it's not like the USA is now DPRK.
Except that's exactly how the average democrat voter or European who consumes democrat media sees the US.
>If there's one thing you can be sure of about aggregate investor behavior, it's that investors seek good risk-adjusted returns regardless of any moral or political objections.
This. Companies like Nvidia, Google et-al and investors, don't care about and won't leave the US over morals, they'll go and stay where the money is good as long as it lasts. Trying to lecture them about morals from the EU won't change this. Otherwise they wouldn't be using slave labor in Congo and sweatshop labor in China.
> This. Companies like Nvidia, Google et-al and investors, don't care about and won't leave the US over morals, they'll go and stay where the money is good as long as it lasts. Trying to lecture them about morals from the EU won't change this. Otherwise they wouldn't be using slave labor in Congo and sweatshop labor in China.
Nobody will leave over morals (well except possibly the Norweigan sovereign wealth fund), but it's worth noting that for non-dollar investors, the US markets have basically been flat since the start of 2025, because the dollar has declined.
It's entirely possible that the US no longer takes in more global capital, if this continues. It's very unlikely that all the foreign investors will leave quicker, but it's much more likely that they'll leave as they sell their investments over time.
If investors leave, where will they go though? Most of EU economy isn't doing amazing right now either, with the economies of France and Germany being propped up on life support by government spending, and there's more political turmoil at the horizon. Asia?
Large European pension funds are rapidly decreasing (as rapid as a pension fund can without causing too much panic, devaluing remaining assets). E.g. some large pension funds have removed 1/4th of their investments in the US in less than a year. That is pretty unheard of.
(Most of them are reinvesting in Europe.)
>some large pension funds have removed 1/4th of their investments in the US in less than a year.
I saw the news about the danish fund dropping some of their US investment and on closer inspection, in absolute terms it was a drop in the bucket. Mostly an optics maneuvre.
Again, non dollar investors are flat since start of 2025. This isn't just politicisation (although that's part of it), it's that other markets are doing better than the US for now.
This will be a slow process, but the direction seems pretty clear (I fully expect to see a major economy introduce capital controls within the next twenty years).
> it's that other markets are doing better than the US for now.
Which? US currently has a rocky status due to Trump's interference, but Trump will pass while the likes of EU and Japan won't be able to fix their structural issues of low birthrates, crazy high debt welfare speeding, etc.
A single Dutch pension fund that was much larger (ABP, IIRC one or two orders of magnitude) retracted 1/4th (10 billion). But they only found out after journalists checked out a year report. Most pension funds just don't talk about it, because (1) they do not want the value of their assets drop too much as long as they haven't moved them; and (2) they do not want to draw the ire of the Trump administration in the meanwhile.
So what you're saying is, we can buy the dip?
> the economies of France and Germany being propped up on life support by government spending
The US government is running (and has been for at least a decade now) a substantial deficit, which is basically propping up the economy with government support.
> there's more political turmoil at the horizon
Again, look to your own house. Even if you ignore all the Trump noise, the attempted politicisation of the Fed is very dangerous for the US economy.
> Asia?
Asia & Europe. It's beyond absurd that the US stock markets have 65% of total value, and was never going to last forever. All this craziness from the government is just speeding up something that was always going to happen.
>Even if you ignore all the Trump noise, the attempted politicisation of the Fed is very dangerous for the US economy.
Yes, but Trump is a passing issue that will eventually go away, and won't be able to fuck with tarries and the economy anymore just so his friends can do insider trading.
>Asia & Europe.
why do you think so? Japan's economy has no great future prospects, and neither EU's with many German bankruptcies and companies relocating abroad. Chinese companies and workers outside of the largest metro areas have bad time too.
I'm from Europe and have no idea what "democrat" is. Do you mean the US party? I didn't know they publish in Europe. Do you maybe mean everything not-MAGA? Now that's quite a blanket statement then, applying I'd say to 90% of Europeans - I'd be scared if 90% of the continent sees you like DPRK (hint: no, they don't). So please, either explain, or just cut back on useless sensationalistic metaphors.
>I'd be scared if 90% of the continent sees you like DPRK
Sees me? I'm European, and am speaking to how I see other Europeans see the US, which comes from the local media which is heavily anti-US as it twists and omits facts to maintain a constant anti-Trump narrative no matter the facts since people lap it up without doing any due diligence or research online.
Remember the BBC famously clipped Trump's speech to make it seem like he said something he didn't actually say on Jan 6.
It's funny how the BBC makes one mishap (I agree that it was bad) and we hear about it for months. At the same time Fox and others are spewing constant disinformation. Similarly, watch MSNBC for a day and you'll learn that most European media are a gold standard for journalism in comparison.
Talk about using double standards.
>It's funny how the BBC makes one mishap
It's not a mishap to intentionally create disinformation in order to slander someone. Mishap is when I spill my drink on someone.
And it's not only one "mishap", the BBC has a documented history of bias and cover-ups, where the government and state agencies like MI5 since WW2, dictate their narrative. It's not a more objective source of truth as other media out there.
>and we hear about it for months.
Because the likes of the BBC, The Guardian, etc, consider themselves beyond reproach, when in fact they've been infected with the same partisan misinformation disease as the like sof Fox news, except in the other political direction.
Trying to make out that BBC and The Guardian are the least bit like Fox News is brain rot material.
Yes definitely, everyone who disagrees with NPCs parroting mainstream media information told them, are brain rotted. No need to think for yourself or do research in alternative sources, just blindly believe whatever the BBC and Co. tell you.
> What tech companies? At the end of the day, it's all about capital and IP.
it's a critical industry, so can be regulated to prevent foreign interference
airlines aren't granted freedom of the air unless they're domestically owned
and exactly the same approach can be applied to tech companies
Japan is a terrible example for you, they are focused on ditching the US.
I don't care if they go sovereign, but the GDPR crap is annoying. Would be funny if the US just forced them to get rid of it.
If you're not in the EU, what even is the impact on you that was caused by GDPR? You're essentially not affected by it unless you run a business, which now you need to take greater care of the personal data you store. Is that what's annoying you or what?
The EU is to blame for cookie banners on basically every website on the internet.
I wish the US had something similar, and that there was more enforcement of disallowing "accept all" buttons without an equivalent "reject all" option. I also recognize that websites don't need the banner if they aren't trying to track me, but lets not pretend there aren't annoying consequences.
> I also recognize that websites don't need the banner if they aren't trying to track me
And I recognize that there is a non-trivial cost to knowing if you need the banner or not, and people are likely to ask their web designer/dev "Hey, where's the cookie banner?" and then pay for the subsequent cost of implementing that because it's cheaper than expensive lawyers.
Companies could just reduce the amount of tracking data they're trying to harvest - then they wouldn't need a banner. If you're annoyed then be mad at the company - not the law trying to offer you some way to protect your data.
It is like blaming government for policy to make cigarette packaging unappealling.
Every company wants to spy on you using cookies and sell you data or target ads. cookies banners are warnings to protect your data from these greedy companies.
If you want to be pedantic, the companies who track us across the internet with all of these third party tracking cookies on every website are the enemy here, not informed disclosure and consent.
> The EU is to blame for cookie banners on basically every website on the internet.
Yeah, just like it's the EU's fault sometimes that the police cuts of roads when a drunk driver collides with another car, it can impossibly be the fault of the driver themselves.
Maybe try to point the blame in the direction of the ones that are A) showing you the banners in the first place and B) refuses to remove them and instead decide to inconvenience you
You know, like we do with every other single thing.
Besides, GDPR has nothing to do with those cookie banners, you're yet another example of people not understanding how any of these things work, yet find it valuable somehow to point blame in some direction, even if they don't understand the fundamental reasons things are the way they are.
I'm sure you also think EU is the same as Europe, as that tends to also be a common misconception among the people who don't understand the cookies banners or GDPR.
First, cookie banners are associated with a totally different legislation, not GDPR, and they began appearing long before GDPR existed.
Second, the EU is not to blame for cookie banners. Companies doing tracking via cookies are to blame. They always have the option to not have a cookie banner--just don't do the things that require cookie banners. They deliberately choose to do these things, and then people complain about the banners.
In California, where everything can give you cancer, do people consider that a failure of the companies putting the notices on everything, or a failure of government?
That's a failure of government because the law mandates the notice in so many places that it becomes pointless noise.
Cookie banners are not analogous. It's easy to make a web site that doesn't need cookie banners. It's actually easier to make a site that doesn't need them than to make one that does. Adding in the tracking that requires banner takes effort. But companies prefer to put in that effort and annoy their users so they can have that tracking. That's 100% on them, not on the government.
Case in point, GitHub & Gitlab (I think, not 100% sure) don't have cookie banners, one would hardly call those two sites small
> The EU is to blame for cookie banners on basically every website on the internet.
This is the most low-rent complaint imaginable and it boggles my mind how I keep seeing it made straight-faced. One time I literally timed how long it took me to dismiss a EU cookie banner, it was about 350ms and only needs to be done once per site. All this outrage is over 350ms and I cannot take it seriously.
Also, why would you not want cookie banners? I prefer being able to choose to opt out of them, even if it's annoying
I think the general vibe I get from some Americans is that they're OK with some abuse, as long as you don't tell them about it or do it to your face, and they would rather have some abuse than none but having to make their own choices. Of course, small subsection of people, but plenty of HN commentators make that exact case over and over whenever the discussions about cookie banners come up.
Yes, the EU passed the ePrivacy directive in 2002. It was terribly broken (didn't actually address the problem it meant to), and resulted in malicious compliance of "cookie banners".
The EU then learned from these mistakes and passed the GDPR in 2016. The GDPR is quite on point - it directly addresses the problem, preempts the foreseeable ways which companies could sidestep such regulation, and didn't succumb to lobbyists looking to install backdoors.
The US could learn a thing or two from the EU regarding legislation.
You don't have to interact with GDPR if you don't use EU companies?
Not even that, if they aren't living in the EU the GDPR doesn't affect their lives in any way.
unless your customers are EU citizens.
If the EU announced that non-EU entities aren't subject to GDPR, I think that would substantially defuse and perhaps entirely eliminate the conflict. Their current guidance is precisely the opposite (https://gdpr.eu/what-is-gdpr/): "the GDPR applies to you even if you’re not in the EU". They even have a details page to make sure it's 100% clear (https://gdpr.eu/companies-outside-of-europe/): if you're a Colorado company with more than 250 employees, selling mainly to other Colorado businesses, the GDPR applies to you in full and the EU claims the authority to levy fines against you for violations.
Why would they need to defuse it? If you want to do business in our market, abide by our laws. If not... just leave and miss out on the huge market?
I cannot understand the constant whining of Apple and other companies, whereas if the PRC asks to jump, they ask 'how high'?
I don't understand your response. As I said, the EU's position is that it doesn't matter whether you "just leave", because the GDPR still applies to companies who are not located in the EU and do not do business in the EU.
If you are selling to EU residents you are doing business in the EU, no?
I get why people find this hard to believe, because it is kind of a crazy rule, but I repeat once again that this does not matter. Even if you have never sold a single product to an EU resident, and never plan to do so, the EU says as my original comment detailed that you are subject to the GDPR the instant an EU resident provides you with personal data.
(And of course, it's also the case that "selling to an EU resident" is substantially broader than "doing business in the EU" - EU residents do often travel to foreign countries and provide personal data to stores they transact with while there.)
> I can’t imagine how any country would think the US is trustworthy enough to be the place where everyone stores their data.
I do not necessarily disagree, but playing devil's advocate here...
Who else would you trust with your data besides the US?
China...where you cannot criticize the CCP?
Europe...where they throw people in jail for social media posts? What do you think when they find out peoples' private convos?
Canada...where the gov is basically the same as Europe?
Or the US where even the mainstream media can challenge the president?
Give me the US any day.
Didn't the US jail a guy for making a joke about Charlie Kirk? Didn't Don Lemon get arrested for protesting? How about the US government making it illegal to monitor ICE's activity?
As a Canadian, I can't think of anyone getting arrested for comments they made online, unless they are truly hate/violence/threats which would get anyone arrested in similar countries such as the US.
Just this week there was a white nationalist group protesting in Hamilton, and no one was arrested.
Europe is also not a country, it is a continent with many countries having different laws surrounding free speech.
> Europe...where they throw people in jail for social media posts? What do you think when they find out peoples' private convos?
When did this happen?
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp3wkzgpjxvo
https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/uk-court-jails-man-racist-tweets-s...
https://www.dw.com/en/germany-greens-habeck-presses-charges-...
https://reclaimthenet.org/germany-online-speech-raids-politi...
I'm sure you can find more; those were just the lowest hanging fruit in 2 minutes of searching.
First link
> The wife of a Conservative councillor has been jailed for 31 months after calling for hotels housing asylum seekers to be set on fire.
Saying she was put in jail for social media posts is like saying a murderer was jailed for breathing air.
Meanwhile a US citizen was jailed for a meme quoting Trump after Kirk death.
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/12/17/politics/retired-cop-jail...
> Meanwhile a US citizen was jailed for a meme quoting Trump after Kirk death.
And that was wrong, too. Also newsworthy because it is so unusual.
> First link
I think it's probably legal under US jurisprudence, but fine, you can have that one. How about the guy who got raided for calling Robert Habeck a "professional moron"? Or the 170 other people raided in Germany for their online speech?
So you folks think just because it's internet we should be able to insult and call for racial action? Maybe you think in real life that should be acceptable too?
I support free speech through any media, including all noncommercial speech not including:
Even those few exceptions are dangerous to liberty. Certainly anything else is too easily twisted into political censorship.For example, under the guise of fighting "hate speech", the EU has already used the DSA to censor disfavored political speech like, "I think that LGBTI ideology, gender ideology, transgender ideology are a big threat to Slovakia, just like corruption"[0].
And yes, people obviously have the right to insult their politicians. It's honestly perplexing to encounter someone defending an early morning house raid because the guy called a politician a "professional moron". Are you actually Robert Habeck??
[0]: https://judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/republicans-j... (p. 19)
Germany – Robert Habeck insult raids (2024–2025): Multiple citizens faced police raids, investigations, fines, or suspended sentences (jail risk if violated) for online posts calling Green politician Robert Habeck derogatory names like "idiot" or "moron," or sharing mocking memes, under Section 188 enhancing penalties for insulting politicians. https://www.dw.com/en/germany-greens-habeck-presses-charges-...
Germany – Friedrich Merz "Pinocchio" case (2025–2026): A pensioner faced criminal investigation (potential fine or jail under Section 188) for a Facebook post calling Chancellor Friedrich Merz "Pinocchio," prosecuted as an insult likely to impair a politician's public duties. https://www.facebook.com/60minutes/posts/dozens-of-police-te...
Germany – Ricarda Lang insult investigation (2024–2025): A citizen was investigated (potential fine/jail) for an online post calling politician Ricarda Lang "fat," charged as criminal insult under Section 185 protecting officials from derogatory remarks. https://nypost.com/2025/02/21/world-news/germans-cant-insult...
There are UK examples too
And here we are again, spreading lies right?
Robert Habeck was NOT arrested, he and his friends were investigated in the broader case of neo-nazi propaganda which they were spreading as well. Unless you consider neo-nazi freedom of speech, of course.
The Pinocchio case meant exactly one official letter sent to that guy, lol "arrests". The investigation was dropped and everybody criticized the investigation.
Ricarda Lang case was a request to the well-known network Gab to identify who insulted the politician, because in Germany insults are a crime. Maybe in the US insulting is a popular free speech pastime, but this is not US. Gab refused to identify the person and that was that.
So, again, I can see when we are spreading lies to support some ideology, but they are just that: lies.
> Or the US where even the mainstream media can challenge the president?
Can you name the last time this actually had an effect on a Republican-leaning president?
There's a reason the acronym TACO exists - every time Trump goes after the really deep money the backlash forces him to change his tune. If only the tariffs disproportionately affected the rich then we would have been done with them within a week - instead the most effected individuals and companies just got carve outs.
> Or the US where even the mainstream media can challenge the president?
The same US that was banning reporters from the press secretary's office (this isn't even new to Trump, Clinton also tried to pull the same shit back in the day)? The one where people were denied their entry visas because of memes of JD Vance? Where the white house has an official list of "Media Offenders"[0]?
Also we can't really ignore the US actively turning extremely hostile and talking about annexing territory belonging to its ex-allies when discussing things like this. That by itself makes the case pretty obvious for anyone, because why would you do business with a nation led by a sub-zero IQ petulant dementia patient that actively threatens annexation?
> Europe...where they throw people in jail for social media posts?
People in some EU Countries (Because "Europe" is a continent that encompasses many different countries with different laws and regulations, including EU and non-EU ones with very different laws and regulations. Denmark and Hungary could not be further from one another in pretty much every regard, for example) have been arrested for posts on social media, but who has actually been jailed for this? Where does this claim even come from, is it just a weird hope from USA-ians so they can portray "Europe" as some sort of free speech hell where you can't say anything without big brother knocking on the door?
To be abundantly clear I don't support people even getting arrested for the dumb shit they say online, but no one's going to prison because of this (that I'm aware of anyway).
Here in the Netherlands, the favorite pass time of most people was shitting on Rutte when he was PM, not to mention Geert and the absolute clown show that his cabinet was. The King and royal family in general gets shit all the time from every side of the political spectrum. Nobody has even been arrested here (as far as I know anyways, could be wrong) for that kind of speech. Notice how I'm not quivering in fear of talking shit about my government?
[0] https://www.whitehouse.gov/mediabias/
Also the Reporters Without Borders ranking:
https://rsf.org/en/index
US 57th place, the first non-European country is at position 16 (New Zealand).
How can you be so confrontational and still want people to give you business and data?
I really don't envy the diplomats' job at the moment.
US 'diplomats' are campaigns big donors, or primary supports. I've eaten with someone who expected to be named diplomat in Europe because he supported Obama by 2007, but was one-uped by a richer donor post-primary.
I think it’s fair to say that diplomats appear to be appointed under a two-faced system.
On the one side you have some diplomats who really are quite capable career foreign policy wonks, appointed in a manner which appears to be meritocratic.
On the other side you have folks appointed, like you mention, as a kind of patronage.
Traditionally, it has been that the softer counterparties (Friendly countries, European allies, small island nations, etc) are staffed with patrons while the more difficult or geopolitically sensitive relationships are manned by professionals, but this is certainly not always true, and one can find many counterexamples.
Okay, thanks for the added details (and your sibling too), today I've learned something.
some added context (both my parents are/were in the Foreign Service):
your location is assigned based on a competitive bidding system where you select from a list of cities to do your next tour. some countries/cities are obviously dangerous for a variety of reasons and they are called "hardship tours" (think iraq or afghanistan). you get bonus money for these and sometimes are forbidden from bringing family.
posts in places like Europe or East Asia are very desirable and highly competitive. but often it's a matter of fit. my dad was a hedge fund manager before the Foreign Service so his first posting was actually in Frankfurt. you can also do a tour in the continental US, such as in DC or NY. because of his economics background he has done a few of those.
most of the time the head ambassador is a political appointee, but the grunts are regular people who have made this their career.
> US 'diplomats' are campaigns big donors, or primary supports
To be clear, there are political and career diplomats, and each administration mixes and matches to its taste. (The current one veers strongly towards political appointees. That is to say, folks who raised money.)
This is how most foreign services are run, with maybe the exception of China.
>This is how most foreign services are run, with maybe the exception of China.
Absolutely not most. What country in Europe has a significant amount of ambassadors that are not career diplomats / government workers ?
In France, Germany, Switzerland you would either need to be a career diplomat/ foreign service worker or in rare cases you would be a career government employee assigned as diplomat to some specific country for some reason (i.e you were trade minister and become ambassador to your biggest trading partner).
The most "political" appointee ambassador in Europe I can think of is Mandelson but he is (as we found out) supremely connected to US power networks and he is still a lifetime politician/ government employee.
Former speaker of the chancellor (and TV news anchor before that) is German ambassador to Israel. Next ambassador will be a career politician.
It‘s not uncommon, though I‘d say even the „cool posts“ like Paris or London usually go to career diplomats.
I know nothing about this but JumpCrisscross seems to use "political" to mean "has donated large sums of money" while your use of "political" is more like.. someone who does politics.
This. Political allies who bundle donations get nominated to cushy ambassador positions. https://publicintegrity.org/politics/barack-obamas-ambassado...
Nobody in America noticed this but lately US ambassadors are going out of their way to insult and undermine the nations that they're posted in.
Wolf Warrior diplomacy on-shored, or perhaps American Sniper diplomacy?
Is there any evidence of this being an actual pattern? I cannot speak for the rest of the americans, but I, personally, haven’t noticed it because it didn’t seem to be the case to me at all.
Asking because from my perception over the past 12 months, US ambassadors got more friendly and cordial with some countries (e.g., Japan[0]/Taiwan/South Korea[1]) and less cordial with others (e.g., certain european countries, like UK, that attempt to [imo unjustly] press american businesses that don’t even have any business presence within their jurisdiction).
0. U.S. Ambassador George Glass participated in remarks emphasizing the “new golden age” of U.S.-Japan relations, underlining partnership. (https://jp.usembassy.gov/ambassador-glass-remarks-at-yomiuri...)
1. The U.S. signed Technology Prosperity Deals with both Japan and South Korea in late 2025, advancing shared technology and innovation goals. (https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2025/10/the-united-state...)
evidence of pattern, maybe:
https://www.npr.org/2026/02/24/g-s1-111302/france-spat-with-...
You should look up the word "imperialism" because it's something countries like to do to extract as much wealth as possible to benefit a few people.
The US doesn't have diplomats anymore. Just Republican donors with no experience. Hell, Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner's dad is a diplomat. A really bad one.
The US ambassador to France has just had his access to parliamentarians and members of the government withdrawn because he is trying to turn a neo-Nazi who died in a fight into a political martyr. There are similar situations in Belgium and Poland.
American diplomats have been doing Trump's dirty work for a some time.
I am more concerned about US interference in elections and campaigning for the far right than lobbying for data at the moment.
"Fight"…
This administration really, truly lives under the delusion that they hold "all the cards". In every engagement they think it is for them to dictate and everyone else to follow. Any graciousness they show is just kind benevolence.
And the "diplomats" of this administration is a rogues gallery of Epstein associates (e.g. pedophile sex-trafficking garbage) and self-dealing criminals. Just a who's-who of garbage.
They are sending their absolute worst.
Americans are just blissfully unaware how much their country is being destroyed. It's staggering stuff. Even if you're a super conservative, there should be utter embarrassment and outrage about how incompetent and clownish this parade of imbeciles is.
Are you sure it's just 'this administration'? I don't think the memory of America as a bully will go away soon, regardless of who comes into power.
> don't think the memory of America as a bully will go away
It won't. But going digitally sovereign will cost Europe tens of billions of euros. If there is a friendly race on the other side of the Atlantic, that will not mean the memories go away. But the urgency of the initiative is certainly sapped.
> But going digitally sovereign will cost Europe tens of billions of euros.
That will be spent in Europe, improving the economy of member states.
Certainly much better than just sending that money to the US.
It's tens of billions of euros spent domestically, much better than being siphoned away to the USA to fund this shitshow.
At least the money will keep flowing into our own economy, it will hurt but in the longer term it can only be beneficial.
Oh for sure, this administration is just a symptom that the US has become an idiocracy levered by a plutocracy. A poorly educated, easily manipulated populace.
Trump is just the result of this, and it isn't going to stop when he kicks it. It'll be the next populist nonsense. The world needs to move on from America.
"When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” - Trump
Just replace Mexico with America. There must be some Freudian issue going on with Trump here.
Every accusation this administration makes is a confession.
The super conservatives share this belief that the US holds all the cards. This is the idea of American exceptionalism. We're special, we're uniquely capable, we can do anything we want because everyone else has no choice but to engage with us. If Europe abandons us, that's a win because they're just a drain on us. International trade is screwing us, so wrecking it will usher in a new golden age.
atleast most senses of this exceptionalism have been fading away in europe thanks to the result of two world wars. (and many, many conflicts before that)
> This administration really, truly lives under the delusion that they hold "all the cards".
I think it's simpler than that: they think the world is a zero-sum game, so why bother being anything but utterly confrontational at every turn?
Of course, that's a childish way to view the world, but we're a childish people.
Most 'diplomats' of the new USA are just grifters like Witkoff or Kushner. Real estate people cosplaying diplomats.
The US as the world has known it is gone
https://apnews.com/article/france-us-ambassador-kushner-far-...
Another example from Denmark: https://edition.cnn.com/2026/01/28/europe/us-embassy-copenha...
Belgium too:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/feb/18/belgium-invest...
And of course Joe Popolo in the Netherlands:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/nov/11/displays-black...
(He later doubled down on the decision to erase any mention of the racial segregation black US soldiers were submitted to while serving in the army during WWII.)
By no means exclusive to the US (e.g. Peter Mandelson).
We do a mini version of that corruption here in New Zealand too. Owen Glen was a donor who got a diplomatic posting to Monaco.
https://www.odt.co.nz/news/politics/key-concerned-murkiness-...
Definitely exclusive to the US due to the degree to which US presidents have been doing it.
Misleading title by Reuters.
The title should be "US orders diplomats to fight _EU_ data sovereignty initiatives".
Why? Because the US is far too pussy to fight the other countries that have such initiatives - some of them reaching further than the EU's - knowing that unlike the EU those countries are definitely not going to take their shit.
I can tell you that if the US says to Japan or Korea, just to name two such examples, "stop enacting privacy/sovereignty laws that interfere with US big tech or we tariff you" , there's absolutely zero chance they're going to be listened to and the only thing it will do is make people hate the US.
I don't think it's going to be anymore successful in the EU, honestly. The last couple of years have EU politicians throughly over their shit, and it's unlikely many concessions to US BigTech can be bought without serious reciprocity on the table (for example, a major expansion of US military aid to Ukraine)
Not only europe:
https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/20...
https://apnews.com/article/chile-united-states-china-visa-sa...
I don't think it's right to say "privacy/sovereignty". As gestured towards in the source article, Japan and Korea have joined the US's preferred data privacy forum https://www.globalcbpr.org/. Data sovereignty is not a common idea outside the EU, and AFAIK even the current American government doesn't object to US citizens' data being stored in foreign servers under foreign jurisdiction.
Like an abusive spouse.
'No, you can't leave me, you need me.' Actually, we don't. We used to have a good relationship and you lit it on fire. Bye, US.
We are pivoting out of a huge number of US services at my job. I think windows, Google, PaloAltoNetworks and Aws will be the last we leave, but infoblox is out next year (that's part of my job right now), and old Cisco hardware will stop being replaced by new Cisco hardware in 6 months.
Are you replacing Cisco with Ericsson?
Palo is starting to require telemetry that sends realtime data on rulebase and hitcount from every firewall to increase support effectiveness.
That is useful information to pursue data sovereignty even more.
Even as a US citizen... fuck that... it'd be like saying the US should open its' data up for China without any restrictions at all, even if they are slurping up everything they can as a state actor.
While, if you choose to use a US service, it shouldn't be required to host data in your country, if you know it's a US service with data in the US... government data is another thing entirely.. and $cloud provider should be required to accommodate if they want that business, or for companies in a given country for that matter.
Time for an nth amendment to introduce shame to the Konstityushon?
What kind of success are countries having finding technical talent with the right savvy fighter mindset to sever the dependence on an aggressive and culturally-entrenched threat?
(Even the ordinary open source world has a lot of intrigue to be careful of. And most developers still think nothing of pulling in a fleet of dependencies from PyPI/NPM/Cargo/etc. as well as third-party network services. Everyone is being taught in school to play to FAANG interview rituals, and many go on to a career style of performative sprints. HCI is almost lost as a field to UX euphemism. Almost no one can deploy a system that won't be compromised, and most don't even try, except for some mandated ineffective theatre. AI homework-cheating mindset isn't helping. Etc. Not to complain, but to be clear the kind of inertia a country is facing.)
Do the countries wanting to fight this have enough of they right homegrown talent already, and know how to find and nurture it?
If they're importing additional talent, do they know how to find and incentive the right people, while turning away the ones with the wrong mindsets for this mission?
(ProTips: Look for the hardcore privacy&security non-careerist nerds. The left-leaning, societal-minded ones. Give them what they've been looking for, or support to help make what they've been looking for. Don't offer to pay too well. Anyone who asks "Why would I want to live in your country, when I can make more money elsewhere?" gets a permaban.)
A great deal of what may be included in "homegrown talent" in the US according to this comment, indeed has come from other countries...
Europe, if you want good tech businesses you need to create a tech business friendly environment.
Banning US tech companies without creating (really) fertile grounds for business is just going to be shooting yourself in the foot. A replacement Google won't grow on a farm only fed worker/consumer fertilizer.
It's almost diabolical that the only way Europe can get rid of the US, is to be more like the US.
There is plenty of technology companies in Europe.
It might not seem like it for the HN crowd, who mostly make a living stringing web libraries together.
Apple is the same size as Europe's tech sector...just Apple.
Of the top 50 tech companies on Earth, 3 are European and 30 are American.[1]
Europe has a seriously lacking tech scene. The situation is borderline catastrophic.Even just this past week the OpenClaw guy ditched the EU for the US, calling out the EU's infertile business scene[2]. These are exactly the kind of people the EU should be clearing a path for and rolling out a rug. Wake up.
[1]https://companiesmarketcap.com/tech/largest-tech-companies-b... [2]https://www.businessinsider.com/openclaw-creator-slams-europ...
> calling out the EU's infertile business scene
lol, it's always because of money. European tech startups often sell out to US investors because they offer more money.
I've worked for companies that plodded along nicely privately owned, 20-50 employees, but they got "offers they couldn't refuse" from US companies and sold. Usually just buying us to stamp out potential competition/buying a customer base
So maybe Europe should let Europeans be the wealthy ones, rather than losing them to the US?
Apple is a bit of a terrible example. They're not profitable unless they offshore hardware assembly, and their service revenue is considered an anticompetitive monopoly even domestically. The only way they got to this point was by fucking over American labor and the free market.
If you account for the market damages that Apple is responsible for, the situation is already catastrophic. The EU has every justification to decouple themselves from capricious and unaccountable businesses like Apple, Google and Microsoft.
On the other hand, if US tech businesses want to keep access to European markets they shouldn't support US politicians who want to override the sovereignty of those nations.
Businesses exist to fill a demand. And the market will pay accordingly. For example:
Spotify SE == Napster US
Netflix US == Lovefilm UK
Craigslist US == Gumtree UK
Hmm. Where was http invented? Where was ARM invented?
And the web browser, Linux, GSM, EUV Lithography (ASML), Python, Turing, Babbage, Lovelace...
If it's so cumbersome why don't US companies pull out the EU market? bet they make money anyway don't they
The shame of all this is that now every country will have a worse, more expensive - but yes, soveriegn - solution, and the US makes less money through trade. Everyone loses, except people who want to hurt western economies.
Or maybe a better product that’s cheaper. Let’s not let hubris get the best of us. There’s nothing special about the US. I mean imagine being an Oracle customer and switching to a local supplier. Must be like emerging from a nightmare
Similarly, in the 2000s, the US pushed back against the development of Galileo and preferred that Europe continue relying on GPS. That created tensions between the US and the EU.
Fighting data sovereignty is a losing battle for the US: data are too strategic to outsource, even to allies.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_(satellite_navigation)
also, just like galileo, this seem to be the correct path for europe to take.
I wonder if he would go so far as to withhold access to US tech to this end.
That'd be amazing. It'd suck for some weeks initially, including for myself and the companies I'm involved in, but at least then it'll start being a "all hands on desk" sort of thing instead of "Lets make sure we finish this before the end of 2026" which is the current state of affairs.
I mean, the easy thing to do is revoke US-EU data transfers. The ECJ is definitely going to do it anyway, and it provides a lot of leverage. If you keep it gone for long enough, then the Mag7 are basically forced to store data in the EU, and respect the laws.
As a bonus, it would nuke the markets, causing the US administration to backpedal on whatever. (Obviously I'd prefer not to nuke the markets, but something needs to happen to push back against the US).
This would only happen in a world where the US has entirely abandoned Ukraine though (i.e. no intelligence sharing).
I imagine if the current administration does, Europe could retaliate by withholding ASML’s tech or even doing a mass sell off of US treasuries. Europe is admittedly not in a position of strength compared to the US, but there are still a lot of levers they can pull.
> retaliate by withholding ASML’s tech
The problem is that the core technology that makes ASML's tech valuable is the EUV light source which is entirely designed, developed, and manufactured by Cymer in California, which is a US company that ASML acquired in 2013. That acquisition was permitted only under strict technology sharing and export-control agreements.
I have no doubt that this administration would forcefully "take back" Cymer if the EU tried to restrict access to ASML lithography machines. They would force a sale back to US ownership, TikTok-style.
This framing gets the supply chain backwards. Cymer makes the source vessel, the part that generates tin droplets and converts them to plasma. But the laser that actually powers that process is a 17-ton, 40kW CO2 beast with 457,000 parts, built exclusively by TRUMPF in Germany. And the optics, mirrors smooth to tens of picometers that literally no one else on Earth can make, come from Carl Zeiss, also German, organized as a foundation that no foreign government can force into a sale. ASML only manufactures about 15% of an EUV machine's components. The rest comes from roughly 1200 suppliers concentrated in Germany and the Netherlands. Seizing Cymer gets you one subsystem with no laser to drive it and no optics to focus it.
The real problem with this theory is that EUV isn't a product with a capturable bottleneck. It's more like a standing wave of institutional knowledge distributed across organizations that have been co-developing at picometer tolerances for 30 years. TRUMPF's leadership described the arrangement as a "virtually merged company" with open books across all three firms. That kind of integration knowledge doesn't transfer via acquisition. China has been throwing enormous resources at this with access to published research and former ASML engineers, and their prototype still isn’t expected to produce working chips until 2028-2030. Saying the US could grab Cymer and start producing EUV machines is like seizing a transmission plant and calling yourself a car manufacturer.
Yes, we all know that ASML is a multi-national effort, with critical technology components provided by several countries. The point is that the EUV light source is one of the critical technology components and it has not been replicated anywhere else (so far, see xLight founded by Dept. of Energy engineers and funded by the US gov).
It's a bargaining chip that this administration will undoubtedly use to make sure that US access to ASML lithography machines remains undisturbed.
You're missing the point. Nobody will take back anything since that hurts everyone, but if the US wanted they could license EUV tech to Nikon or Canon and give ASML a huge PITA of refreshed competition.
Similar to TRUMPF lasers and Zeiss optics, other companies from US and Japan like Coherent and Canon could have a crack at replicating the laser and mirrors given enough IP and resources if the US really wanted to decouple from ASML, since they're still man made objects, not magic things given by gods.
US is the richest country in the world and the second biggest manufacturer after China. Do you think the country that built the SR-72 and other sci-fi shit wouldn't be able to make a EUV lithography machine in house if they were to treat it like a Manhattan project instead of a side hustle?
>other companies from US and Japan like Coherent and Canon could have a crack at replicating the laser and mirrors given enough IP and resources if the US really wanted to decouple from ASML, since they're still man made objects, not magic things given by gods.
this exact same logic applies the other way, though... unless Cymer is selling magic objects given by gods?
>Do you think the country that built the SR-72 and other sci-fi shit wouldn't be able to make a EUV lithography machine in house if they were to treat it like a Manhattan project instead of a side hustle?
do you think that ASML (or TRUMPF or whatever non-US entity) would be unable to make the EUV light source in house if they were to treat it like a Manhattan project instead of a side hustle?
I agree with you, but that was my point exactly. No party holds all the cards to dictate the rules of the game like people bullish on ASML thought that they're somehow untouchable. They're untouchable because the US allows them to be because they play ball with the US admin and push back against rules they don't like from the Dutch government.
It's a gentlemen's agreement that will be held together by mutually assured destruction if one party tries to decouple completely.
The general decoupling from US tech you see has started after the general enshitification of major IT services from FFANG, not exclusively due to Trump, and not exclusively to US, Spotify is also seeing a lot of backlash.
>do you think that ASML (or TRUMPF or whatever non-US entity) would be unable to make the EUV light source in house if they were to treat it like a Manhattan project instead of a side hustle?
The EU(Germany, Spain and France) can't unite to build a next gen fighter jet together, can't decide how to tackle illegal mass migration, can't decide a sane energy policy that isn't hypocritical or anti-industry, or on a single direction on defeating Russia. A EUV Manhattan project is the least of their issues right now which moves the balance of power in the US court for the moment until EU members figure out how to work together.
> can't decide how to tackle illegal mass migration
the mass migration caused by american wars in the middle east you mean? Also, frontex seems to be working fine so far.
>on a single direction on defeating Russia
unlike the US, which has stopped all military aid to ukraine in 2025, and seems to be favouring russia more and more.
Lets not forget, europe is increasing its military en masse mainly because on one hand you have the russian flattening ukraine, and on other hand you have the US demanding greenland.
Who needs further enemies with friends like this?
> In 1997, ASML began studying a shift to using extreme ultraviolet and in 1999 joined a consortium, including Intel and two other U.S. chipmakers, in order to exploit fundamental research conducted by the US Department of Energy. Because the Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) it operates under is funded by the US government, licensing must be approved by Congress.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASML_Holding
> I imagine if the current administration does, Europe could retaliate by withholding ASML’s tech […]
There is a bit of M.A.D. scenario: a bunch of components in ASML machines (like EUV light generation?) come from US companies. Also, the two main chip CAD software vendors (duopoly) are in the US.
The EU could also cut US access to clearing houses (Clearstream / EuroClear) or the SWIFT payment system.
>The EU could also cut US access to clearing houses (Clearstream / EuroClear) or the SWIFT payment system.
Right, so that the USA would cut us from DTCC?
Eu finance sector is MUCH more dependent on access to US markets than the other way around.
is it though?
for everything inside the EU, i highly doubt it is. For extraterritioral trade. The EU is large enough to trade with other countries in euros instead of dollars.
He wouldn't dare, the coward! ;)
There's no chance in hell that he would because if there's one easy way to piss off the oligarchy it's to make their net worth plummet. And losing >20% of revenue in one fell swoop does just that. Europe remains a huge profit center. That's why all the talk by many Americans including on HN in the past about "well if the EU keeps fining Meta and co billions, maybe they'll stop doing business there!". They'd be removed from their positions before they could even utter the phrase considering it. Imagine how that earnings call would go. "Yeah uhh, we left a market where we were making 20 billion per year net profit because we got fined 5 billion. Mhm.".
Trump's grip on the US oligarchy isn't even 1% as tight as Putin's on Russia's, who has everything completely under his thumb. If the US oligarchy conspires to depose Trump, he's gone next week. That they're all sucking up to him doesn't refute that at all, that's just the optimal move until it isn't. All these people do is take the optimal move for their own net worth at the current point in time.
I'm sure this would be better received if I took an LLM and had it rewrite this in a less conversational and higher-brow way, but it's no longer the time for that.
There is literally no such thing as "US tech". Even for those companies domiciled in the US, it is just the label on a world of contributions.
They are under US jurisdiction. Call it US-controlled tech if it helps.
It's not even just data stored on US servers. According to the CLOUD Act, any data stored by a US company, regardless of location, can be demanded by any authority in the US.
No sovereign nation should use US companies for data storage or processing. Period.
The attempts to shift to open source or non-US services are inevitably hobbled by US companies lobbying (read: bribing) politicians.
It increasingly feels like the US sees everyone as an enemy.
Is it just the government that feels this way, or do the general population of the US feel like everyone else on the planet is an enemy?
There's a substantial population of most countries who feel that everyone else on the planet is somehow inferior. Basic nationalism. One of the big achievements of the 20th century was reducing that so it might be below 50% in many places.
However, that's not the same as "enemy". That's a more confrontational level. It's that particular branch of the far right which has recently risen to prominence. Ironically, in a lot of different countries.
The general population doesn't even think about the rest of the world.
Just started exporting my data from google, guess this is the start of my uncoupling journey.
Looking forward to changing my bank card to a EU alternative when its available.
I don't feel like I have major usage issues, but maybe once I have decoupled from the big players, it will be clearer what I had gotten used to, for which there was another way to approach.
The biggest pain points will probably be YouTube, Claude, Gemini and Google docs. The main issues will probably stem from collaborating with others, rather than my own personal usage.
Given that the US has basically no data or privacy protections for its own citizens let alone non-US citizens, it's not surprising that countries are moving away from keeping their data in US-owned places. US companies mine data for everything and the kitchen sink and train AI using it without any sort of notice.
standard kyc doesn't run on dedicated infrastructure isolated from the vendor's main cloudflare stack. you don't build a separate gcp cluster for routine age checks. the architecture tells you what the data is worth before anyone admits it.
Step 1: Piss away soft power built over the last century or so
Step 2: Ask for favors
Step 3: Profit?
I bet it’s too late now. They will need very very persuasive arguments to kill all the initiatives, and while they may convince some governments and lobbying groups, I doubt they will manage to convince every IT responsible.
Sigh. Anecdotally, more Europeans no longer want their governments to rely on software and data controlled by US companies, because they no longer trust the US to act as a reliable ally, defending the same values. Whether you agree or disagree with these concerns, they are valid for many Europeans.
In an ironic twist of fate, the US government's actions could end up causing long-term damage to US tech companies.
This is all based on anecdotal evidence, so I could be wrong, but I have to call it like I see it.
See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47149701
At the end of the day it isn't US tech companies that'd suffer (outside some minor short term pain) it's the US. If being in America is bad for business those companies (which already exist multi-nationally in most cases) will just pack up their US holdings.
As an EU citizen I really hope we can gain some meaningful distance to the US asap. I hope my leaders feel the same. And if everything works out I think this will be great for the EU.
This is really some sort of diplomatic Streisand effect. If the US would not have been so aggressive and just string us along they could have continued to feed us their slop indefinitely without us noticing.
Sure if they can pull it off, but how can they do this without scaring away all future customers?
Interestingly, fighting it like this will only make the resolve stronger.
Could be a huge opening for Mistral and other European LLM providers who are okay at adhering to data sovereignty requirements
This just accelerates the Balkanization of the Internet, which already is segregated by China and Russia. Maybe it was inevitable. Corporations benefit the most from open access and as they have demonstrated with unrestricted AI scraping they obey no morality, ethics, or law they are not compelled to by force.
This has already been on the table for over 6 years now - Stratechery (a tech blog most decisionmakers read) posited the Four Internet theory all the way back in 2020 [0]
[0] - https://stratechery.com/2020/india-jio-and-the-four-internet...
> (passing data sovereignty laws will) expand government control in ways that can undermine civil liberties and enable censorship
This Roger Stone playbook shit is wild. This admin will piss on your leg and tell you it's raining.
It is incredibly stupid and counterproductive to make this kind of statement publicly. Most of the GAFAM companies are doing their utmost to try to reassure their European customers with a facade of sovereignty.
All these efforts will come to nothing.
Amazon sovereign cloud https://aws.eu/fr/ Azure sovereign https://www.microsoft.com/fr-fr/sovereignty Oracle soverign https://www.oracle.com/fr/cloud/eu-sovereign-cloud/ IBM https://www.ibm.com/think/topics/sovereign-cloud ...
it doesn't mean anything after Microsoft turned over eu government leaders emails to the US.
the damage is done. trump fanning the flames and then using ham fisted threats that frankly carry no weight now... are just making it worse.
the money's already been allocated. the results are inevitable.
I can't think of a worse way to approach this.
That the US doesn't like it is the best justification for it.
this is hilarious, just last week i heard american tourists complaining that "they" were subisidzing Europe's lazy lifestyle
Reminds me of the "US high healthcare costs are subsidising EU cheap healthcare".
The rough argument was: pharma companies need big payoffs when they discover a new drug and, due to structural characteristics of the US market, that's where they can get the highest prices.
So pharmas make a large chunk of their profits in the US and then sell drugs more cheaply in e.g. Europe.
Fairly weak and incomplete argument [1], but I've seen this pushed seriously by people in public debates in the US.
[1] - a couple of obvious issues with this argument are: 1. why is it Europe's fault that the US has structural issues that prevent it from negotiating drug proces as a united front? 2. healthcare costs are largely inflated by admin costs in the US. Drugs can be expensive too, sure, but this argument ignores the big cost intrinsic to the insane insurance and billing system prevalent in the US.
Pharma companies want to make money - they'll charge what the market can bear up to what they're allowed to. Some countries cap this - others don't. In the US the government actually subsidizes medication costs in a graduated manner that allows the price point to be set much higher than a natural market would allow - there are also tools like manufacturer rebates or drug trial cards that can also subsidize the price if you've got more time than money and are willing to jump through the various hoops.
So, the premise is high drug costs in the US subsidize drug prices in the EU.
Presumably this conclusion was arrived at because pharma companies sell drugs at a higher cost in the US than they do in EU, Canada, or anywhere else. Therefore elevating profits in the US relative to profit margins in other nations. (Note: they reportedly use the profit to develop new drugs, so this is where the subsidization comes into play, as higher profit markets will drive increased revenue and future drug development.)
And your argument against the premise is: 1. The EU is not at fault, and 2. Drugs cost more in the US because of the poor healthcare system.
Argument 1 does not attack the premise: Undoubtedly the EU is not at fault, the EU does not set drug prices in the US. Pharma companies do, within the context of the US economy, of course.
The premise does not assign fault, it’s an assessment of where profit comes from.
Argument 2 is more direct in addressing the premise, but still misses the point: you might be right, mostly right, or you could be wrong. I lean toward agreeing with the point you made (US healthcare system sucks), it doesn’t address the profit differential across different nations.
So, what about the premise is weak and incomplete?
Pharma shareholders want profit, and the US supplies that at a greater rate than the EU (likely due to the regulatory environment). They’ll take a lower profit margin vs. no profit at all, so they operate accordingly.
None of that goes against the premise that the extra profit from the US market is subsidizing the research costs for drug products that enter the EU market.
Your response is fair. I didn't present the argument fully - there is on last step which says "therefore, EU is somehow indebted to the US". That last step is, I think, less defensible.
Also, even in the absence of the "indebtedness" conclusion, the subsidy argument assumes that pharma companies would reduce their R&D spend, instead of just accepting lower margins if the US could more aggressively negotiate drug prices.
A people that largely can't comprehend that people walk to get groceries should not pass comment on Europe being lazy.
Not to mention the tourists that need to spend a couple of weeks practicing 'walking' in order to survive a European trip...
>> signed by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the agency said such laws would "disrupt global data flows, increase costs and cybersecurity risks, limit Artificial Intelligence (AI) and cloud services, and expand government control in ways that can undermine civil liberties and enable censorship."
Such fine bullshit, of the highest quality.
Distributing infrastructure may slightly reduce efficiency but seems like a good idea for so many reasons: national pride, increased security, more resilience to outside influences, etc.
Given the socio-political climate, it's really bonkers to go bashing every ally the US has had since WW2 and then in the other hand go "No No No, trust only us with your data"
What could go wrong?
America has lost trust internationally because this administration is amoral, chaotic and transactional. Trust is a very expensive commodity because it takes generations to build and can be destroyed in a moment. This is a fight that America is going to lose and we're all the worse off for it.
lol position #2, to #22, in just over an hour... :) (11 -> 22 in 5 minutes)
We've been acting like a bully on the playground and now we are wondering why nobody else on the playground wants to play with us
If these countries don't want Mockingbird coordinated regime change, they should ban all U.S. social media altogether.
To be fair data sovereignty is usually just a way for governments to crack down on free speech/internet usage. They require all the company servers be in the country, then when they want to get information it's easier to get a warrant and threaten to take away all their servers. This is what they did in China/Russia and why they're doing it in the EU.
It's also probably just good business for the US, but locking down on citizen freedom is the only real reason I've seen countries do it.
Great, that means its working. I hope every single country in the world builds competent IT infrastructure. Having more competition will help us to develop more and better technology and have more alternatives, and overall increase the quality and resilience of technology globally. The current effective monopsy of US cloud providers has caused an unnecessary hard convergence that prevents innovation, is dangerous to privacy and security, and unnecessarily hinders national sovereignty.
time to ban US tech companies
Why are US tech stocks not falling yet due to the trend of countries decoupling?
Confidence that in the short term nothing will change. All large-scale change is hard. Change that impacts everyone's workflow will be resisted even if the new thing is better, and in many areas the alternatives are pretty mediocre. Also a combination of political and economic pressure has in the past been successful in making meaningful initiatives fail or roll them back.
In the long term this is an issue. But I'm not sure the US stock market actually cares that much about what the world will look like in 4 or 8 years.
The US recently rolled out a childhood investment account that offered to pump a thousand dollars per child into the main market index funds backed by the US government. In the SOTU there was also a mention of matching the first thousand dollar invested in an approved retirement account for all residents - not just federal employees.
The US government is pumping the stock market with debt - as long as nobody starts dumping bonds or currency this is an action that will make number go up.
Because the market does not reflect reality.
The market reflects reality. The new reality is that the people who are invested apparently don't need liquidity, and bad news doesn't really matter.
>that the people who are invested apparently don't need liquidity
The rich and ultra rich don't need liquidity, they have our 401k plans for that.
The rich and ultra rich tend to borrow against their investments rather than spending their own money. As long as the number continues to go up it's basically a free money pipe for everyone over a certain level of wealth.
They have been, if you compare them to the performance of the non-US market, and most software companies are declining daily.
IGV down 18%. Tech stocks are falling
average trader probably doesn't realise the bigger picture
yet
Voting with your wallet doesn’t work when the corpo is big enough to buy everyone off.
See Also: Isaac Newton...
What are you talking about? There's been a ~18% drop in tech sector this past month (see: IGV)
I don't know if it's due to "decoupling" but there has been some selling recently.
That's mostly AI panic based on the narratives swirling around in finance news. I'd agree this threat of decoupling is more serious, but I also think the market knows that US tech is so deeply embedded everywhere that decoupling will take decades.
> Experts say the move signals the Trump administration is reverting to a more confrontational approach
Oh. So, like, going from school bully to abusive parent?
are we the baddies?
Good luck with that. I hope the EU is not stupid enough to stop this initiative.
This would not be happening if it was not for the US dummy in chief. The EU was looking to do this for a while, but where taking its time until recent events.
they won't stop it
the US was really, really foolish to crystalise the risk by locking out those judges
prior to that it was just a theoretical people were yelling about
now it's real, and there's a continent of hungry businesses lobbying for resources to be diverted domestically, instead of being sent to the US
and that's the EU's bread and butter
Half of the UN agencies are relocating all over the world. The financial and accounting departments are moving thousands of people to Madrid and Bonn.
They will not be coming back soon.
>the US was really, really foolish to crystalise the risk by locking out those judges
Do you think the Trump admin thinks about the consequences of their decisions for more than 5 minutes into the future?
They're all about making a quick buck via scams, insider trading and rug pulls, future consequences be damned. Sometimes they make a good call when they listen to what their corporate lobbyists say.
> The cable said the Trump administration was pushing for "a more assertive international data policy" and that diplomats should "counter unnecessarily burdensome regulations, such as data localization mandates."
For any government in Europe, it should be extremely pressing to untangle itself as quickly as possible from US-based companies as suppliers.
But to be frank, even regulations should be unnecessary here. Private businesses in Europe (and elsewhere) should consider it an existential threat to depend on cloud services from the US. We are all one executive order away from having access cut.
> Private businesses in Europe (and elsewhere) should consider it an existential threat to depend on cloud services from the US
They do already, everyone except the ones truly deep into the US ecosystem already have plans or are making plans for how to get out from US infrastructure in 2026.
I hope you are right.
It doesn't matter if the decision is illegal. The time it would take to have it "fixed" could cause already immeasurable damage.
Why is it wrong for US diplomats to advocate for a policy that clearly benefits US companies?
The argument that it’s wrong would be because it’s bad for US consumers and those abroad too. There’s monopolization arguments, and there’s clear evidence of wrong-doing by these companies already.
Even for US tech folks like HN, I doubt it would help us. US companies hoard their profits and power, so most people here would see no benefit. It’s yet another move to protect rich corporations and the corporate cronies of the most corrupt administration in US history.
The data sovereignty initiatives have been massively promoted by US policy. All this advocacy will achieve is make the US look even less trustworthy.
The article didn’t say it was wrong by my reading: it reported that it’s happening.
That said: “benefits US companies” != good public policy for the US as a whole. It’s explicitly trying to interfere in how other countries govern themselves for the benefit of shareholders, not because it’s necessarily good policy.
It’s also something we wouldn’t necessarily appreciate if done to us by our allies. If we have any actual allies left given all of Trump’s tariffs and threats against other countries.
In a normal, mature government, advocacy for your nation's products would be reasonable, and even then, would be controversial in this instance. "Do not protect your citizens' privacy, our citizens might get ideas".
I think it's the assumptions that are baked in with the Trump regime. No subtlety, no mutual benefit, do as we say or else.