A necessary step to reduce risk to infrastructure given that the US government has become erratic and has decided it is now anti-Europe.<p>The US means to undermine the EU: <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/will-trump-pull-italy-austria-poland-hungary-from-eu/a-75134777" rel="nofollow">https://www.dw.com/en/will-trump-pull-italy-austria-poland-h...</a><p>The US means to annex European territory: <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0j9l08902eo" rel="nofollow">https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0j9l08902eo</a><p>It's the same reason you don't want Chinese equipment in your telecommunications infrastructure. You can't trust what the Chinese government will do to it or with it.
this is not a new issue: airbus has been the victim of corporate espionage supposedly by boeing with aid by the nsa in a well documented case in november 2011, and they are not the only victim of US government agency supported corporate espionage: investigations into the selector lists that ran in the cabinet noir at DE-CIX have shown that a large part of them were targeting european corporations. and that predates the cloud act of 2018, which made american infrastructure significantly less trustworthy.
The French DGSE was also exposed targeting dozens of american tech aerospace companies in the 90s (and probably still are). That type of state-assisted industrial espionage is pretty common, even between "friendly" nations.
I think what's different now is the US announcing its intent to meddle into internal EU politics and supporting political opposition.
Even before that, remember the echelon incident in the 90s where the US used military espionage to Boeing an edge in commercial posts.
> It's the same reason you don't want Chinese equipment in your telecommunications infrastructure.<p>Hopefully now "Europe" will think before fire selling all of its hardware manufacturing companies to foreign firms.
> It's the same reason you don't want Chinese equipment in your telecommunications infrastructure. You can't trust what the Chinese government will do to it or with it.<p>Doesn't Europe actually have <i>a lot</i> of Chinese equipment in their telecom infrastructure? Is this an effort just to try not to make that mistake again?
The UK certainly ripped out a lot of Huawei equipment. Which is why our cellular coverage is a bit shitty these days
As an American, I would much prefer spotty cellar coverage to a Salt Typhoon attack. You lot got off easy!
I moved to UK in late 2013 and to be fair, from my observation the cellular coverage in the country has always been more than just a bit shitty.<p>Incidentally, the voice call quality in the UK is <i>also</i> really crappy. Operators compress/downsample the audio stream to the very edge of recognisability, because investing in sufficient infrastructure to support higher bandwidths is expensive.
No, not a lot as the EU has two very competitive providers in Ericsson and Nokia
They're both very expensive and the carriers primarily care about cost and features. And huawei will take a dozen devs, give them a one way ticket and put them in a hotel room near a customer to grind our whatever feature needed to seal the deal.<p>I remember years ago talking to some EU telecom VP who was on the engineering side that said "id buy from North Korea if the price was right".<p>We live in new times anyways - most of the carriers have outsourced a lot of the tech stuff to the vendors anyways.
> <i>some EU telecom VP who was on the engineering side that said "id buy from North Korea if the price was right".</i><p>Then he has no principle and cannot be trusted.
Yes. I worked for a Cambodian telco, when there was a range of Alcatel, Nokia, etc switching equipment across 10 carriers. Huawei swept the lot within 2 years, and Alcatel staff told me they were losing everywhere - they couldn't match the price or technology. This was before the US decided to sanction Huawei.
The entire problem is they aren't nearly as "very competitive" as would be politically convenient.
Europe will just end up doing whatever is cheapest. It's the same story as always. They'll say some stuff publicly but they'll quietly come back to American tech once they see the price tag difference. They're very cost sensitive and their investors are extremely risk-averse.
> They're very cost sensitive and their investors are extremely risk-averse.<p>Being risk-averse unfortunately now means "avoid the USA".
With US tech now in profit-squeezing mode rather than user-acquisition mode, the cost sensitivity might favor switching for things like SaaS.
Would (gently) note that we’re commenting on an article re: American tech risk. :)<p>Not sure it’s really sunk in for my fellow Americans what’s going on, we’re not exactly used to consequences and it’s still considered, a best, impolite to treat a holistic evaluation of policies as something beyond debate.
Yep - just look at their oil/energy situation: they still buy it by the boatload from you know who, but just through 3rd parties.
But look at solar adoption across Europe since 2022. It’s going gang busters and now with sodium batteries coming online next year, cheap home energy storage is about to boom as well.<p>Europe doesn’t want to buy Russian gas, but there is also the very real political reality of what happens if your citizens freeze to death. I will be very surprised if any EU state is reliant on Russian gas by 2035.
When people start talking about battery technology that has not even reached scale as any kind of political solution, you know people have lost the plot.<p>Taking one look at just the cost required for the network, even outside of the cost of any generation at all, you realize this is an insane and slapping a few solar panels down is far from a solution.<p>And also lets not ignore that places that have done a lot of the 'lets just build renewable and hope for the best' have very high energy prices. And maybe possible maybe sodium batteries might show up will not solve these issues.
Yeah they are just insane whishfull thinkers.<p>I calculated the costs of covering the needs of Germany for a 2 days low production event (as it happened between 6-9 december) and you would need about a trillion dollar.
That's for something that cannot even garantee you more than 48h of runtime for half the country's needs.<p>You would need at least 4 times that to be safe.
Even if batteries price are divided by 2 (very unlikely, there are large fixed costs) you would need trillions of dollar for a single country.
That's just not happening any time soon and even in 30 years time, I doubt it will be that prevalent of a solution.
I did a conservative calculation if you started around 2000 in Germany and went full nuclear like France did. Not using any fancy new nuclear or anything. Literally just mass production of standard nuclear plants. Plus all the updates of the grid, including domestic fuel enrichment and 'waste' storage. Plus all the investment necessary to great a fully modern grid to electrify the economy.<p>We are talking in the order of 500 billion Euro and this is very conservative assumption on nuclear construction cost. Much worse cost then what France actually achieved in their build-out. Also much of that is actually the grid, grids are really expensive it turns out. But building nuclear in central location next to places where there used to be coal plants, makes grid cost much cheaper because most of the grid is already there perfectly positioned to feed the population clusters. And that accounts for actually increasing overall production of energy, not decreasing as Germany is actually doing.<p>On the other-hand for the renewable path that Germany is going since 2000, just the grid alone is going to cost more then 500 billion euro, some estimation suggest that 2000-2045 total gird investment requirement is above significantly above that. Sadly today where everything is in this different private organization, this information is all over the place and 'semi'-private organization doing different parts of the infrastructure.<p>In total, between all the renewables, the grid and the storage, we are talking 1.5 trillion euro and that still includes gas peakers. If you want to go beyond and really go all in, it would be even more then that, as you suggest.<p>Turns out, if you plan includes trying to gather solar energy in Greece and Spain (or even Egypt), transporting it to Germany and then storing it into batteries there, well yeah, that's going to be expensive. And the solar panels you import from China aren't the expensive part.<p>France did the exact right think in the 70/80s build reliable long term energy generation, sadly since the 90s the newer generation of French politicians done literally anything they can to handle the situation as a badly and as incompetently as possible but that's a different story.
Yeah, pretty much this.<p>One thing that is really important to understand is that power is not something that is uniformely needed everywhere at the same level.
Traditionally, power plants were created close to where industries needed them. Renewables require specific conditions to be viable and those factors are not necesseraly what allows industries to thrive, so you need a lot of additional infrastructure to make it possible.<p>Turns out this infrastructure is extremely coslty and very hard to make reliable. So, even if you have infinite money, that's a massive challenge in itself. But now Europe does not have that much money, the massive debt burdens being a large evidence of this. Yet we are asked to pay more for this future, in the name of climate change, even though most of the factors contributing to this is already happening overseas, largely out of the control of European regulations. So what is the point exactly ?<p>In the long run, it just ends up making everyone more dependent on external powers while weakening the position of the countries that believe in that "solution".<p>Nuclear constructions costs are largely overblown, because of the massive bureaucracy/over-regulation, thanks to Germany in no small part. If China can manage to build twice as fast at half the cost, we are doing something wrong for sure.<p>But the conversation is dominated by ideologues, that have an sadist like fetish. As if weakening your position will ever make your competition/enemies take pity on you and allows you to dictate the terms of the converstion, because people are supposed to be nice, right ?<p>Even with perfect implementation, there is no way to make renewables work to allow industries to thrive, and now we are going to pay the price of those poor political choices.<p>With all the money in the world, it was already a discutable choice, but now it is just replacing depence on fossil fuel with depence on overseas manufacturing (most of it in China). Funny thing is that China is not that stupid, and we are selling them the knowledge/skillset to become dominant on the cheap.
I just can't fathom what was going on in the mind of the decision makers 20 years ago, but now it seems they are just insane. There is no way it will work in 15 years, yet we needed that power generation yesterday.<p>In the process of trying to make climate change better, we have done the reverse. Now people are burning more wood, and I feel like we might go back to coal if electricity doesn't become cheaper (for residential heat). Gas is hopeless, even if the depency on Russia wasn't that strong.
Electric cars are very nice but if it turns out to be more expensive to run them than just using foreign oil it's not going to happen.<p>I'm just rambling at this point but it feels like there was a large anti-nuclear sentiment by people who are dominated by irrational fears and they have dominated our politics for the worse. It's really not usefull to fear a nuclear meltdown if you end up making your people poorer overtime. Why would you fear something with such a low probability of problems if you end up having to become dependent on foreing power that has no such quaslm.<p>France had the right path but then leftist ideologues took power and Germany's sabotaging did the rest. In theory we are not at war but in practice, there is very much an economical/ideological battleground going on and we are losing it.
That's positive news, but I'm talking about oil - which is still needed for modern industrial economies (plastics, diesel, etc).
The US would too if they had no choice. Which we don't, you can't just turn a whole economy around to become oil free.<p>Steps are being made but it takes time
US says that Europe is their number one enemy. Using American tech is the most risky thing you can do since Trump declared that they are now a hostile enemy with intents of overthrowing European democracies.
My Scaleway cloud stuff is way cheaper than AWS. Much simpler billing too.
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How was it a mistake? Europe got a lot of good telecom infrastructure for a low price. There's no evidence it was compromised.<p>It was actually the US that was pressuring Europe to get rid of Chinese telecom equipment, as part of the first Trump administration's broader strategy against China.
The US leadership and billionaires are literally trying to destroy my country by supporting far right parties here. I never want to have anything to do with the US again at least until they sort their own crap out.
Yeah I don't want to deal with a country that's trying to pretend to be our friend and then literally giving encouraging speeches to groups trying to destroy our continent.<p>Even if the democrats make it back to power, a lot of trust and goodwill has been lost. There can always be another trump.
> You can't trust what the Chinese government will do to it or with it.<p>It's not clear that europe even trusts europe anymore. Especially with french and german economic dominance looking shakier than ever, debt financing an unpopular war in the east piling up, mounting deficits, industry collapse, youth unemployment... european countries (or greenland for that matter) could do a whole lot worse than turning to china.<p>Agreed, though, that reliance on US is foolhardy. I can't make any sense of why we're trying to saw the feet off our own economy.
Yea, in 29 Germany, France and UK will have elections, and far-right parties with anti-EU and partially pro-Russian attitudes are leading the polls. If they win, there will be hardly any unified "Europe" left. Why would I then trust Germany ruled by AfD over MAGA-America?<p>At least with China there's some consistency. I can reliably trust them not to give a shit about me or my privacy, and to further their geopolitical interests. Meanwhile populists in the West aren't really even acting rationally from geopolitical perspective, they're more unpredictable.
China is just not compatible with us ideologically. Freedom of speech, surveillance, state control. That stuff won't work here. It works in China because they've been under it for thousands of years.
It's incredible how quickly such obvious hostility as plans to incite what amounts to secession in a putatively friendly, allied sovereign entity has become normalized and ho-hum.
Europe should be building domestic digital capacity regardless (and not just servers) but saying it needs to treat the US like China is a bit melodramatic given the economic and physical threat to Europe is 10X greater in the east.<p>The US is not anti-Europe. The US has just begun to start evaluating its relationship with Europe rationally and wants it to grow up beyond the post-WW2 training wheels.<p>The overreaction to this kind of gives vibes of slamming the door and screaming “you don’t love me!” because dad won’t buy a new toy.
The difference is, Europeans used to trust their US partners, and built a lot of infrastructure on US services. This trust has been betrayed, so things now need to change.<p>It never existed to begin with with China, so no change is necessary.<p>That's not "melodramatic".
There never was a relationship of mutual trust, it was always a relationship of Europe being under the wing of the US as a buffer against the USSR.<p>The US now wants to push Europe out of the nest, but most Europeans have only ever known life "living in their parents house".<p>Building an independent Europe is not compatible with the current European ethos of work/life/life/life balance, and will likely result in Europe either coming back to the US, falling into economic chaos, or moving into daddy Xi's house. They are a socialist country after all...
How much do you guys suffer about this work life balance, I can't wrap my head around the level of brainwash you guys have been through to use concepts as socialised wealth and wellness as a bad thing<p>these evil europeans wanting to have a break from work! how dare them!
>> The difference is, Europeans used to trust their US partners<p>> There never was a relationship of mutual trust<p>Technically, you're not disagreeing with GP. :)<p>Or :( I guess.
Neither the European welfare state nor China's authoritarian leftism are socialist. They are, respectively, welfare-state capitalism and nationalist "socialism" (aka Naziism).<p>On the European side, socialism is a question of who owns businesses. If the majority of businesses are owned by the people who are working at those businesses, you have a socialist economy. Welfare states, regulatory regimes, and high tax rates do not change the ownership of businesses, they are about who provides the infrastructure around those businesses. If you have an economy where infrastructure is owned by a liberal nation-state, and businesses are owned by whoever gambled capital on the venture, then you get a capitalist economy. If your infrastructure is privately owned by individuals, then those owners become feudal lords and you get feudalism.<p>On the Chinese side, you might point out that there are laws that require CCP ownership of all businesses, eat the party line that says the CCP is the representative of the working class, and say, "hey that's a socialism". But this ownership and representation is purely nominal. The average Chinese worker has more or less zero political agency; speaking out gets you censored and harassed. How is that worker ownership? If, say, America started punishing individual shareholders who voted against Trump-aligned board members, we'd correctly recognize that the shareholders do not meaningfully own their businesses anymore.<p>"Moving into Daddy Xi's house" would be stupid. The EU and China are not aligned on basically any core value; it'd basically be a surrender of one to the other. Actually, to be clear, the EU isn't even aligned on basically any core value <i>with itself</i>[0]. In fact, I would argue that's a way bigger headwind than European workers being used to a top-heavy welfare state. The EU has the resources to build a sovereign cloud, or run its own military, or source its own energy. But for each one there are challenges posed by the uniquely decentralized structure of Europe:<p>- Europe <i>could</i> build a sovereign cloud, but probably not one for each member state. So they're going to have to agree what country holds the data, and agree that that country can and <i>will</i> spy on all the others.<p>- Europe <i>could</i> fund its own military, tell NATO to pound sand, and re-colonize America for the trouble. But who runs that military? Given the history of EU politics, it would be France and Germany, and <i>every other country in the EU</i> has a history of being colonized by France or Germany. They are not trustworthy.<p>- Europe <i>could</i> fix its energy dependence, but Germany thinks nuclear power is Satan and wants to backstop renewables with the dirtiest-burning coal you can mine.<p>You'll notice a recurring theme here. The problem with Europe is not its fiscal deficit, the perceived laziness of its workers, or what have you. It's the lack of trust. The most trustworthy member state of the European Union was the United States of America, and so that's why everyone put their data on American servers, and let America dominate NATO, and so on. This is not Europe getting kicked out of the nest, it's the kids realizing their parent is a gaslighting asshole <i>and</i> that all their siblings, including themselves, are cut from the same cloth.<p>[0] Trump's current tariff actions and threats of territory annexation have galvanized the European public against America's government. However, prior to Trump coming back, Europe was full of far-right nutjobs that were just as cringe. Actually, a lot of them are still in power in Europe, and they're way more competent and cunning than Cheeto Mussolini.
It is US themselves that have decleared they are a hostile enemy to Europe now. China had made zero claims to annex parts of Europe. USA makes claims to annex parts of Denmark. China officially does not say their goal is to overthrow European democracies but US says their goal is to change the democratic govts of Europe.
They control Europe's digital infrastructure and are able to increase rent to usurous levels (tarrifs!) because Europe is dependent on their digital services. Without digital sovereignty, Europe has no sovereignty and will quickly become a modern colony from which wealth will be extracted.
Might have something to do with trying to split off various EU countries and threatening to annex Greenland. Or maybe that's part of the growing-up process.
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> want to annex a European territory<p>Greenland is not in europe. It may be a danish colony but that doesn't make it "european territory" any more than french guiana is. EU territory? Sure. But europe is a penninsula on the western flank of eurasia.<p>Edit: huh I had no idea how complicated the classification of eu territories is: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_territories_of_members_of_the_European_Economic_Area" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_territories_of_members...</a>
> Greenland is not in europe. It may be a danish colony but that doesn't make it "european territory" any more than french guiana is. EU territory? Sure. But europe is a penninsula on the western flank of eurasia.<p>You are right that Greenland is not in Europe (it sits on the Nort American tectonic plate).<p>It is also not an EU territory, however, it is linked to Europea through Denmark. European influence exists through governance, education, and trade.<p>Most Greenlanders identify primarily as Kalaallit (Inuit) and Greenlandic, not European.
Does that mean Hawaii isn’t part of US because it’s far away from mainland?
Its not a colony. Stop diminishing the agency of Greenlanders.
And Hawaii is not in America. Certainly neither is Guam etc.<p>What kind of argument are you even trying to make?
> And Hawaii is not in America. Certainly neither is Guam etc.<p>Sure, no argument here.<p>> What kind of argument are you even trying to make?<p>Mostly that characterizing Greenland as European is just as insane as characterizing French Guiana that way. Or the falknlands, New Caledonia, Polynesia, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Aruba, Curaçao, Anguilla, Bermuda, the Virgin Islands, etc etc. These are colonies—not part of europe, and should have been made whole decades ago with the resolution of WWII, and their continued presence as "rightfully" part of European nations destabilizes our globe.<p>Europe is welcome to extend its economic privileges to all nations of earth, and I for one will continue to argue for kicking us out of Hawaii and Guam while ensuring we don't further engage in predatory trade agreements.<p>Of course, I don't expect any of this predation to cease anytime soon.
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Oh, so US is giving up their claims to Purto Rico, Alaska, Hawaii, etc? Or are American imperalists holding on to their colonies?
What a bizarre description of what the US did.<p>Greenland has been inching towards independence since the seventies, because that's the common ambition of greenlandic peoples and it's slow because there are rather deep ties between Denmark and Greenland. These ties are to some extent very negative for the greenlanders, they're generally discriminated against and have been viciously mistreated at times, but a quick clean cut would also be quite painful for them.<p>In the seventies Greenland joined the EU predecessor EEC with Denmark, quickly realised that europeans were emptying their fishing waters and in the early eighties left the union. It's the only entity to have done so. Then the independence process trudged on, they self-manage in many areas now, even more since a 2008 referendum where some 75% or so voted in favour of independence. Since 2009 there is a law that says that Greenland can become independent whenever they want, as long as it's approved by greenlander referendum and the danish parliament.<p>To the extent they're a colony international law also clearly gives them the right to unilaterally declare independence. A majority of greenlanders are likely still in favour, but a majority also would prefer to postpone it if it would result in worse living conditions, since that's what polls usually conclude.<p>Ignoring half a century of rather delicate politics and independence ambitions the US shat all over it and said that they wanted to buy it, and then several years later said that they might just annex instead. This is quite belligerent and nasty behaviour, which in my opinion should have caused european countries to start dumping US bonds and stop answering calls from the White House.
> if it would result in worse living conditions<p>Well nobody is <i>forcing</i> Denmark to be a dick about decolonization, nor a dick to all the people it never colonized. That's a choice.<p>> This is quite belligerent and nasty behaviour<p>So was colonizing, well, anywhere. Europe still hasn't been appropriately punished for this. And yes, the US deserves to be punished severely for its own brutal conquests.
Denmark isn't "being a dick about decolonization", it's just that they happen to be very kindly subsidising half of Greenland's budget, which causes even many enthusiastic about the idea of an independent Greenland cause to think that leaving might be a mistake.<p>Conversely, the leader of the present day United States threatens to colonising Greenland by force to show off how powerful he is. Ergo Europeans, particularly Greenlanders, have little reason to trust the US
> Denmark isn't "being a dick about decolonization", it's just that they happen to be very kindly subsidising half of Greenland's budget, which causes even many enthusiastic about the idea of an independent Greenland cause to think that leaving might be a mistake.<p>Brother, spread this pro-colonization propaganda elsewhere.<p>> Conversely, the leader of the present day United States threatens to colonising Greenland by force to show off how powerful he is. Ergo Europeans, particularly Greenlanders, have little reason to trust the US<p>Conversely? Brother, they are the same thing.
You know nothing about this, so stop spreading your made up lies. A roadmap for Greenlandic independence is in place. The Greenlandic parliament is controlling the speed of this process.
Currently Denmark participates in financing Greenland, pulling the rug on it would likely not be pleasant for the greenlanders and if they did I'd count that as rather dickish unless the greenlanders had a near consensus on the issue and asked the danish parliament to do it.<p>Well, some justice have been sought and won, but a lot remains. To me it seems like an attempt at distraction to clump together the treatment of the Mau Mau and the nuking of Algeria with Denmark's relation with Greenland.<p>Besides economic relations, independence for Greenland would also mean that they would need to seek justice to a larger extent through international courts and in at least some cases it's likely easier for greenlanders to find justice in danish courts.
Ok, why doesn't denmark finance birundi?<p>> Well, some justice have been sought and won<p>And yet denmark hasn't burned. How do you remediate this contradiction?<p>> To me it seems like an attempt at distraction to clump together the treatment of the Mau Mau and the nuking of Algeria with Denmark's relation with Greenland.<p>Believe me, britain deserves far worse than just being burned down. But denmark still must face justice
You make it sound that the brits were the bad guys, when it was an elite top % pulling the strings and the rest were mostly trying to make ends meet.<p>But yes agree, the elite extracting wealth from the colonies back in the days, and still are extracting wealth from your average Joe, deserves far worse.
Colonies can only address this at the granularity of the nationalism with which they were presented. If every-day brits don't want to be blamed, they need to make their own rebellion to show they aren't party to the evil done in their name.<p>I think this is true of my own country (the US), and it's hopeless. I think most americans are ok with the evil done in their name. I wish I had better advice or insight.<p>But pretending like two imperial powers arguing over greenland is some great injustice just spits in the face of humanity. Have some fucking dignity. Greenland deserves better than to be treated like a piece of property
It does, through NGO:s, humanitarian aid and african development and investment funds.<p>If you think a war for liberation is appropriate for the greenlanders I suggest you move there and agitate in local languages for this.
> It does, through NGO:s, humanitarian aid and african development and investment funds.<p>Oh? so you're pro continued rape of africa? How has that worked out? Which african peoples are asking for this at this point?<p>Christian charity failed generations ago and it's pathetic to see people still voicing support for it
Why do you want to punish the Greenlanders? They would rather be a Danish colony than an American.
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And then Americans wonder why they are being viewed as a hostile enemy of Europe…
> It was supposed to be something akin to United States of Europe<p>No, it never was.<p>> but instead in devolved into a bureaucracy<p>No it hasn't:<p>"There are two striking aspects of this rejection of EU bureaucracy. First, in comparison with other, comparable entities, such as the US federal bureaucracy, the EU’s administrative apparatus has a marginal size. Specifically, the EU, which is responsible for more than 440 million citizens, employs only around 60,000 people, while the US federal bureaucracy has more than two million employees that govern a territory with about 330 million inhabitants. Accordingly, the EU bureaucracy is comparatively small and far from being the “bureaucratic monster” which it is frequently portrayed as."<p><a href="https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2023/09/04/why-do-so-many-people-hate-eu-bureaucracy/" rel="nofollow">https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2023/09/04/why-do-so-many...</a><p>> that regulates the shit out if everything,<p>I'm thankful for that. That is why our food is way better and way healthier than the shit the US makes it's citizens eat.<p>> is incredibly socialist and the EC thinks it is above everyone else.<p>LOL. No it's not "socialist" and the European Commission is the executive branch of the European Union. If you really think the Commission behaves as if they are above everything else (they do not!), I pull an American president.
> That is why our food is way better and way healthier than the shit the US makes it's citizens eat.<p>The US optimized for convenience, affordability, and variety.<p>You can eat very healthily in the US, but it requires more intentional choices.
In many (not all) EU countries, the default option is closer to healthy.
> You can eat very healthily in the US, but it requires more intentional choices.<p>It requires money too. If you are poor your choices are naturally limited and in the end you are dependent on government regulations to eat at least somewhat healthy.
> It requires money too. If you are poor your choices are naturally limited<p>Yes, because the US optimizes for convenience, price, and variety, so you see more industrialized food.<p>On average, poor people in Europe eat healthier than poor people in the US, but still significantly worse than wealthier Europeans.
> On average, poor people in Europe eat healthier than poor people in the US, but still significantly worse than wealthier Europeans.<p>Sure. But in the end the EU feeds it's citizens healthier food than the US does. That's all I'm saying. I'm glad we have those regulations.
Regulation is about setting minimum standards for acceptance, not specifying exactly how.<p>This means that if I walk into a random croissant shop and buy a croissant, I don't subsequently have 2 days of food poisoning.<p>Arguably, healthier being the default is also good. The less I personally need to think about this, the more I can think about other more useful things.
> There are two striking aspects of this rejection of EU bureaucracy. First, in comparison with other, comparable entities, such as the US federal bureaucracy, the EU’s administrative apparatus has a marginal size. Specifically, the EU, which is responsible for more than 440 million citizens, employs only around 60,000 people, while the US federal bureaucracy has more than two million employees that govern a territory with about 330 million inhabitants.<p>that's because the EU co-opted existing member state agencies instead of creating its own<p>e.g. the german federal department of agriculture effectively is controlled by the EU (almost all of its duties are an EU competence), but 100% of its costs are attributed to germany<p>this makes the EU look much more efficient than it is
Socialist is a very weird term to use here. The eu is the epitome of neoliberalism, even more so than the us
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> Even Zelenskyy acknowledged that the US provides more aid than the EU. And this is despite the fact that Europe has twice the population and doesn't have a vast ocean between it and Russia.<p>Why does the population matter at all? The US GDP is $30T and the EU GDP is $21T.
> Isn't it exactly the opposite, and it was the EU that attempted to overthrow democracy in the US (and failed)?<p>What are you talking about? According to US intelligence agencies, bipartisan Senate reports, and federal prosecutions, Russia, China, and Iran have been singled out at running disinformation campaigns. The EU has never been accused by the US of trying to topple democracy in the US.
>the EU has LITERALLY provided less aid to Ukraine than it has given to Russia<p>The EU is buying resources from Russia, not providing aid to it.
They did not, this is all political ragebait journalism and memes.
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> The US literally wrote a national security strategy describing that it wants to dismantle the EU.<p>The official 2025 NSS document does <i>not</i> explicitly state a US goal to dismantle the European Union.<p>The strategy is highly critical of the EU's direction and Europe's <i>trajectory</i> in ways that critics could say could indirectly undermine EU cohesion, but there's no formal language saying the US wants to dismantle the EU.<p>Critics interpret the tone and strategic shift as potentially indirectly weakening EU cohesion if taken as encouragement to nationalist or Eurosceptic political forces.
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What socialism? What are you talking about?<p>The EU parliament has a conservative majority [0], as does the Council. [1]<p>It's a right-wing organization. I wish there was socialism, mate.<p>[0] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenth_European_Parliament#Current_composition" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenth_European_Parliament#Curr...</a><p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_the_European_Union#Governments_represented_in_the_Council" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_the_European_Union#...</a>
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This article is about FAFO for MAGA loyalists in the USA. Well, MAGA has FA'd with US-European relations. Now they get to FO where it takes us (i.e. over the waterfall, isolating the USA from everything good in the world.)
Project 2025 was just political rage bait and rumors too, until it wasn’t.
It can be both. The document is massive, very contradictory and incoherent, and most of the people hysterical over it haven't even read it. Look I'm no fan of the trump administration but people should have concrete concerns, not waving around "project 2025" like some symbol of the country's imminent collapse. Unfortunately, our country is nowhere near collapse and this administration is not going to be the thing to bring it down. Though they're trying their hardest, i will admit.
Talk of how it might be interpreted is rather beside the point when the administration appears to be implementing a particular interpretation and SCOTUS appears to be fine with that, whether or not it is a selective one. Those are the concrete concerns of which you speak.<p>It is helpful to have the document publicly available, but only if enough people heed its implicit warning.
I would argue the concrete concerns we should have is the fact that we seem to be committing economic suicide, which will have decades of economic and sociopolitical fallout. If you think people have an appetite for fascism today, wait until you see what decades of deflating economies will do.
Their VP and one of their government-linked oligarchs is meeting with literal Neonazis in Germany that are trying to topple the constitutional order: <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/14/jd-vance-afd-meeting-019130" rel="nofollow">https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/14/jd-vance-afd-meetin...</a><p>To say they're not anti-Europe is either hopelessly naive or cynically ideologically aligned with their goals.
If the #2 or #1 most popular political party in Germany are "literal Neonazis", I think Germany and likely Europe as a whole has a much bigger problem than whatever America is doing.
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_for_Germany" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_for_Germany</a><p>AFG are Neonazis?
Indeed.<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/19/turmoil-in-germany-over-neo-nazi-mass-deportation-meeting-explained" rel="nofollow">https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/19/turmoil-in-ger...</a><p><a href="https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/dangerous-liaisons-the-true-proximity-of-germany-s-afd-to-neo-nazis-a-e69c51d3-4b3c-49d2-8d54-d7b0a19c3f9a" rel="nofollow">https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/dangerous-liais...</a>
From the wikipedia article you just linked to: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_for_Germany#Neo-Nazi_controversies" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_for_Germany#Neo-Na...</a><p>and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_for_Germany#German_nationalism" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_for_Germany#German...</a>
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Is it actually anti-europe to ask europe to meet its NATO obligations?
This is a non sequitur that has nothing to do with the comment or articles you're responding to.
Most of Europe does meet them. It is mainly a few countries like Spain which does not.
Whataboutism.<p>The linked articles are not about NATO obligations.
Literally this.<p>"The US is gonna have their FO moment aaaany day now, they're gonna regret messing with us Europeans!"<p>"Bro you haven't even kept your end of the deal on your NATO military spending."<p>Turns out despite all the hubub, the 'superpower' fading the fastest was Europe after all.
> It's the same reason you don't want Chinese equipment in your telecommunications infrastructure. You can't trust what the Chinese government will do to it or with it.<p>Using this logic, every country should develop its own critical equipment from scratch, in terms of both hardware and software.<p>My belief is that there is no problem with the Chinese equipment, just scare-mongering from the US because it has no manufacturer of 5G equipment. And Europe jumped on the bandwagon just because.
For decades trusting the US was no problem at all. The relationship was mutually beneficial. Cooperation and trust among nations is possible and Juche (completely self-reliance) is not a worthwhile goal at all. So, sure, cooperation is great and should always be a goal – it also secures peace (people who are economically intertwined are less likely to go to war with each other).<p>The issue is the US burning up that earned mutual trust. And at some point you have to sadly abandon ship. Cooperation is great, trade is great, but not under all circumstances and all the time.
>> <i>It's the same reason you don't want Chinese equipment in your telecommunications infrastructure. You can't trust what the Chinese government will do to it or with it.</i><p>> <i>Using this logic, every country should develop its own critical equipment from scratch, in terms of both hardware and software.</i><p>The logic is don't use infrastructure of people you don't trust. If Europeans don't trust Chinese, then don't use Chinese infra; if the Europeans don't trust the US (anymore), then don't use US infra. The Europeans could trust the Canadians, and use Canadian infra for example.
> Europeans don't trust Chinese, then don't use Chinese infra; if the Europeans don't trust the US (anymore), then don't use US infra.<p>I'm seeing the EU being singled out as unreasonable for avoiding the risk represented by buying their whole infrastructure from companies with deep and blatant ties to CCP's armed forces.<p>Somehow these critics are omitting the fact that most of the world, specially asian countries, have also banned them.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concerns_over_Chinese_involvement_in_5G_wireless_networks" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concerns_over_Chinese_involvem...</a>
Yes, there is a lot of affinity towards Canada in Europa, I feel. Last Bastion of Democracy on the North-American continent, and not part of the whacky Trump-Atlantian Hemisphere.
China is decidedly anti democratic and authoritarian. They're also preparing for military activities to expand their territory.<p>It's not that each country needs to develop their own, but it is prudent to not depend on those who have a fundamentally different and incompatible world view.
> it is prudent to not depend on those who have a fundamentally different and incompatible world view.<p>Like Saudi Arabia and formerly the Saddam regime (when he sold oil in USD)?<p>While compatible world view is used as an argument against diplomatic and economic relations, in reality it’s just a bonus, not a requirement. What’s important is plain old cost benefit and national interests. The US is still a better ally for EU than China, but it’s gotten drastically worse fast. And while China has territorial ambitions, they are nowhere near EU. The US is the good old status quo ”devil you know”, but it’s abundantly evident now that nobody really knew them, including many of their own political elites domestically.<p>On diplomacy timescales, ignoring China because of human rights concerns is exceptionally short-sighted, both for EU if US continues current path, and for global stability in case conflicts escalate between China and US. There is no choice that guarantees EU will have a strong ”human rights” ally in 10 years.
> China is decidedly anti democratic and authoritarian<p>Let's also say that democracy is very important internally. But as a EU citizen (or even better as a middle east citizen) whether they're democratic or authoritarian makes very little difference to me- I don't get a say in what they do. And in the case of the ME, it wasn't China or its allies that reduced several countries to rubble, it was the democratic US.<p>> it is prudent to not depend on those who have a fundamentally different and incompatible world view<p>There are no such things as "incompatible world view" but certainly closer or more distant ones. And I think the fundamental values of the US are pretty far away from those of the EU.
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We can see the same with everything in the US.<p>Huawei became very competitive to Apple. Outsold Apple in it's home market. Huawei got banned.<p>DJI has a near monopoly on drones. No US company could compete and players like GoPro shut down their consumer drone projects. DJI got/is about to get banned.<p>Tiktok was dangerous to Meta. TikTok got almost banned/forced-sold.<p>Chinese EVs are better than almost any US offering. Chinese EVs got banned (by 100%+ tarrifs on them).<p>Sale of AI and Chips to China got banned. No ChatGPT or Claude offered to us here in Hong Kong.<p>This is all the US Tech sector can do now. Short term this will go very well but long term this leads to the US falling behind and behind because American companies have artificially created barriers where they aren't forced to comepete anymore, meanwhile the world moves on and has a competitive environment. Innovation will move faster Ex-USA<p>I fly a DJI Mini 5 Pro, use a Huawei Freeclip 2 earphone, a Huawei GT6 watch, a Xiaomi Silicon Carbon powerbank, an Oppo Find N5 foldable. Most are better/unique compared to what you can even get in America. And that's only the beginning. That's only 2025.
> Huawei became very competitive to Apple. Huawei got banned.<p>How would you explain Samsung, LG, Sony, etc.?<p>> DJI got banned.<p>Untrue.<p>Supply is constrained and future of new product availability is uncertain because of FY2025 National Defesnse Authorization ACt, which requires a security audit by late Dec 2025. If that doesn't happen, DJI could automatically be added to the FCC's restricted list, which could block new products from being certified and sold in the US.<p>In the meantime, for sale at Best Buy, Adorama, B&H, Walmart, etc. e.g. <a href="https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1737927-REG/dji_cp_ma_00000587_01_mini_3_dji_rc.html/" rel="nofollow">https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1737927-REG/dji_cp_ma...</a><p>> Sale of AI and Chips to China got banned.<p>Your argument is that US tech companies do not have the ability to compete, but this example doesn't support your claim; in fact it does the opposite.<p>But even so, your information is out of date. Nvidia is now allowed to sell its advanced H200 AI chips to China. The whiplash is dumb, but the move is aimed at maintaining US AI leadership, support American jobs, while addressing concerns about China's military AI development.
As a former Huawei phone owner, and a present Honor phone owner, Samsung LG and Sony does not hold a candle to the quality on offer from Honor and Huawei.<p>And this is coming from someone who has owned multiple Samsungs over the years.
and DJI is now effectively banned. Oh sorry... only 'new models'...<p><a href="https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3337398/us-bars-approvals-new-models-chinas-dji-all-other-foreign-drones?module=top_story&pgtype=homepage" rel="nofollow">https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3337398/us-bars-appr...</a>
I agree generally that protectionism is bad, but the examples you present are just the US (finally!) doing to China what China has done to the world for decades. They rely on relatively unencumbered trade in Western markets, while locking their own markets up from outside competition.
And yet you can buy a Tesla in China or an iPhone or any luxury bag or or or. Plenty of brands. It's not quite as black and white as people think.<p>What you're talking about is social networks/messengers/news which are limited not so much for competitive reasons but national security reasons. They like to control what people see which is something a Google, Meta or X cannot guarantee.<p>You can very much buy US software, e.g. <a href="https://www.microsoft.com/zh-cn/microsoft-365/buy/microsoft-365" rel="nofollow">https://www.microsoft.com/zh-cn/microsoft-365/buy/microsoft-...</a> etc.<p>You can buy a Prada bag, a Ralph Lauren sweater, the newest iPhone or Mac, a Model Y, adidas or Nikes, Adobe Photoshop... etc etc
> DJI got banned<p>Not sure how that statement squares against the fact that a lot of major US stores (Amazon, Target, Costco, Walmart, B&H Photo, Microcenter, etc.) have DJI products available for purchase, as well as that there is literally a physical retail DJI store[0] within a ~20min subway ride away from my apartment in the US.<p>0. <a href="https://maps.app.goo.gl/yAUyv6LcmKMbsSyX6" rel="nofollow">https://maps.app.goo.gl/yAUyv6LcmKMbsSyX6</a>
According to the "Huawei cyber security evaluation centre" (HCSEC) oversight boards annual report to the national security adviser of the United Kingdom (note: HCSEC was a joint lab between NSCS, GCHQ and Huawei with a lot of access to internal documentation and firmware source code and so on to check if they are telling the truth when they promised there is no backdoor for the chinese ministry of national security in the 5G equipment) their quality and basic security processes are so bad, that it is believable that all the vulnerabilities are unintentional. However they did improve in the years prior to being kicked out, so you are not wrong that it was somewhat of a bandwagon move following the us sanctions.
> Using this logic, every country should develop its own critical equipment from scratch, in terms of both hardware and software.<p>USA claims and treats Europe as the ennemy. Not every country treats every other country as the ennemy.<p>USA is, right now vicious and less trustworthy then China. Which is unfortunate cause China is not trustworthy.
> just scare-mongering from the US because it has no manufacturer of 5G equipment.<p>Even if that were accurate, which it isn’t, what exactly do you think the US stands to gain by Europe buying 5g from someone other than China (like the European providers Ericsson and nokia)?
Some people in the US deride it's close allies as "freeloaders" because they choose to use and buy US tech, reinforcing the US's position as a global powerhouse. (Meanwhile US tech is built on the shoulders of their allies.) Now we see these same allies are starting to look inward and invest in technology they own completely because the US is acting decisively not like an ally. Something unthinkable since WW2.<p>I don't see this news as anything but a good thing. For every technology out there, the EU needs a native alternative. It's clear the current US administration wants to make the EU worse based on a politics of grievance.
I agree, this is a good thing. Long term stable large contracts are great simulation for a market. Airbus obviously has a large amount of military work, and its data needs to stay in Europe.<p>What we also need is a faster acceleration of military spending so this can happen with more companies.
> thing. Long term stable large contracts are great simulation for a market.<p>They are not. It can hurt Airbus very much if a provider says they can provide a certain level of hardware/software for 10 years and in three years the RAM or storage goes through the roof and the provider is not big enough to absorb all the losses.<p>People don’t choose the hyperscalers because they are based in the US, they choose them because they are too big to fail and have pretty much unlimited resources and have multiplr streams of revenue.
I would expect a contract review for millions in hosting to review how the company will mitigate those costs. Normally you would expect them to contract away the risk themselves. In fact the current rise in RAM costs is due to exactly this, big hosters contracting for long term RAM certainty.
Airbus is ~30% government owned by France/Germany/Spain and others. It is funded both as a private business and as a European "champion" to compete with Boeing.<p>It is also likely to get the majority of the European civil, commercial, and military orders now.<p>There is no reason why Europe can't build a hyperscalar cloud service. The skills and the software and hardware are all transferrable technology.<p>European defence budgets are being ramped up, spending some billions on data centres and comms is a no-brainer as part of that.<p>European governments contracting to a European cloud provider would be more than enough to fund the provisioning.
There's a futures market for RAM prices if you want to hedge that risk. No different than corn.
> There's a futures market for RAM prices if you want to hedge that risk. No different than corn.<p>Yeah, and that's a fine vehicle for insuring against this risk for a finance company or for an individual.<p>I am prepared to be wrong on the following take (as it is based on nothing more than just "it came to me in a dream"), but my hunch is that neither Airbus nor the EU state governments are currently even attempting to hedge the RAM price risk by accumulating a RAM futures stash on the market.
Of course it's a good thing. It's an excellent thing. Is there any European company or individual arguing otherwise?
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> <i>Almost all computer equipment companies are from US.</i><p>Made in a few Asian countries. I think it's kind of funny reading the contents of your post and how it ignores Asia, that's <i>actually</i> behind most of it. How much of a Dell PC is US-American?
Was it laziness and stupidity, or was it <i>protection money</i>. I thought the deal since WW2 was a US security guarantee, in return for letting the US have our money. A protection racket. Or perhaps it was more like Europe paying <i>tribute</i> to its colonial master.<p>Anyhow it is clear the protection is not to be relied upon, so it is time to stop paying. It is dangerous making deals with gangsters. It is perhaps more dangerous to change the deal. But when the protection is not there, it is time to build strength.<p>Well done to France for maintaining its independent nuclear deterrent through this era. Britain made a mistake letting that go
>Britain made a mistake letting that go<p><a href="https://thebulletin.org/premium/2024-11/united-kingdom-nuclear-weapons-2024/" rel="nofollow">https://thebulletin.org/premium/2024-11/united-kingdom-nucle...</a>
> <i>I thought the deal since WW2 was a US security guarantee, in return for letting the US have our money</i><p>No. The Marshall Plan was about rebuilding Europe so it could be a <i>military</i> ally against the Soviet Union. The trade stuff came afterwards.
Wait so the US is supposed to provide security at no cost forever? Are you talking about NATO or something else? The only thing I see a problem is all countries paying the same rate to be in NATO.
Wouldnt say its laziness.<p>The US has a long history of funding the Silicon Valley expansion using Darpa and other federal agencies for example.<p>Europe never had such a thing, and they had a fragmented market for a long time.<p>The big money is in the US, thats why the talent goes there.
Your words are displaying the mindset that is the main driving force behind the currently ongoing decline of the American empire. Incredible hubris paired with ignorance and a lack of self reflection. Great qualities if you want to go further down that line.
Almost all computer equipment is from China.
> More on the laziness and stupidity of their allies.<p>s/laziness and stupidity/corruption/g<p>See, for instance, what happened to Gemalto.
> Some people in the US deride it's close allies as "freeloaders" because they choose to use and buy US tech<p>This is a disingenuous straw man. The <i>allies</i> are derided for literally freeloading on US military protection while underinvesting in their own defense.
Freeloading?<p>My country spends less on defence as a percentage of GDP than the US. But it spends much of that with US companies. This is not Freeloading. It was a deal. Cancel TSR-2, and buy American and we will lend you some money. Cancel your nuclear program and buy US submarine launched missiles and we will help you look after yourself. Now let Visa and Mastercard skim off all your transactions and we will keep you secure to keep the money flowing. Sweetheart tax deals for US companies to operate, and we will keep you safe to keep the money flowing. It is not Freeloading, it is colonialism
Agreed those things exist, in most contracts one or both parties feel they are not getting a 'fair' deal and will renegotiate terms, this is very common.
I can hear the whoosh going over the head of anyone associated with Trump. Thanks for trying though.
The current U.S. President has insisted that Europeans are freeloading. Given that he’s been the primary proponent of this idea, and given that he’s been cutting off aid and has made cutting off this “freeloading” the central plank of his defense strategy, the U.S. defense budget must have gone down significantly right?<p><a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5656174-trump-signs-ndaa-act/" rel="nofollow">https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5656174-trump-si...</a><p>> The bill approves a record $901 billion in military spending for fiscal 2026<p>Oh…
Obviously faulty logic. This isn't a zero-sum game. In fact, the whole point is to <i>increase our combined combat power</i>.<p>For too long European NATO countries have kept token militaries lacking any substantial combat power. They have centered their national defense strategies around holding off Russia for just long enough for Uncle Sam to swoop in, fight the Russians, and save the day. But the US does not have the combat power to fight both Russia and China. So our total combat power must increase. Should the US bear this increased burden alone? Or should the rest of NATO finally get serious about funding and fielding effective militaries?<p>European states <i>have</i> been freeloading, and US defense budgets are not going to decrease just because Europe finally starts to take some responsibility for its own defense.
How's that? How many Middle Eastern refugees are America sheltering from the fallout of American aggression and the regimes it props up?<p>The US isn't anywhere close to paying its way.
Pray tell, how much of, say, the latest Afghanistan war did the US pay and how much do their allies need to bear? The rebuilding of a whole country, the reinstatement of the Taliban regime, the destabilization of the region, and the still ongoing stream of refugees? The political aftermath of which is still felt in Europe.
> <i>The allies are derided for literally freeloading on US military protection while underinvesting in their own defense.</i><p>1. No one forced the US to spend a bajillion dollars on defense.<p>2. The US did so out of their own free will, <i>and</i> out of self-interest: their power hegemony allowed for peaceful trade routes that benefited the US economy and US corporations.<p>3. Their own defense against what? What threats, until fairly recently, did the Europeans face that they needed to spend money protecting against?
> Their own defense against what? What threats, until fairly recently, did the Europeans face that they needed to spend money protecting against?<p>Same ones the US built the most expensive army in the world to defend against
Let's not pretend this was something the US didn't want for most of the last seventy years.
Guess which country had never any interest in a strong (politically and militarily) Europe, to maintain the world hegemony?<p>A Europe with an independent defense is dangerous competition for the US. Maybe it means that some international trade will be done in Euro. Maybe it means foreign policies in Europe's interests.
It seems every single comment in the thread is understanding "cloud" here to mean AWS vs Hetzner. But it's clear from the first paragraph of the article that what they actually mean is MS 365 Dynamics vs SAP. They primarily want a managed ERP + CRM solution, not servers.
Cloud must be the most uselessly overloaded term ever. I have no way of knowing what you are actually talking about when you use it.
SAP needs servers though, if they buy SAP hosted in AWS that kind of defeats the purpose.
Indeed. And SAP has no cooperation with any European cloud providers, afaik. It's the big three plus alibaba. SAP wants to move away from on-prem, but I guess it has a solution for critical applications. Maybe that can be shoehorned onto OVH or something.
Not entirely true. You can do SAP RISE on Telekom (not Open Telekom Cloud, forgot the name of the thing) and as far as I know STACKIT is currently in beta. Apparently the AWS Sovereign Cloud will be possible as well. Its just way more expensive because Microsoft and AWS use their monetary power to give SAP better offers (just guesswork obviously, its not like SAP would tell you).
It seems OVH does support SAP. <a href="https://www.ovhcloud.com/en/solutions/sap/" rel="nofollow">https://www.ovhcloud.com/en/solutions/sap/</a><p>How good/bad it is, I have zero expertise.
SAP runs its own cloud/IaaS in addition to running its workloads on the hyperscalers. It's been doing that for years internally, and that SAP cloud is now being extended to be open for direct consumption by other companies:<p><a href="https://learning.sap.com/learning-journeys/exploring-sap-converged-cloud/introducing-sap-infrastructure-as-a-service" rel="nofollow">https://learning.sap.com/learning-journeys/exploring-sap-con...</a>
I will be servers as well. Eurostack cloud providers. We are involved in one of these - a large car company doing the same.
As far as I know SAP is more capable and widespread, so I don’t know why they were using Microsoft in the first place.
Much of what people call cloud is a commodity at this point. If you need vms, object storage, load balancers, vpcs, etc., which is what most people would need, that works in a lot of solutions. And you can usually also find managed databases, redis, and a few other bits and bobs. If you like Kubernetes (I personally don't), the whole point of that is that it kind of works everywhere.<p>People over pay for AWS mostly because of brand recognition. And it's not even small amounts. You get a lot more CPU/memory/bandwidth with some of the competitors. AWS makes money by squeezing their customers hard on that. Competitors do the obvious thing of being a bit more generous. Companies could save a ton just switching to competing solutions. Try it. It's not that hard. Some solutions are obviously not as complete.<p>This not about US vs. EU but about sovereignty. If you are married to AWS, that's a weakness in itself. Ask yourself how hard it would be to move to Google cloud. Or Azure. Or whatever. If that's very hard, you might have a problem when Amazon jacks up the prices or discontinues a product.<p>We use a mix of Google Cloud and Telekom Cloud for some of our more picky customers in Germany. Telekom Cloud is not very glamorous. But it's essentially openstack. Which is an open source thing backed by IBM and others. I wouldn't necessary recommend Telekom Cloud (it has a few weaknesses in support and documentation). But it does the job. And unlike AWS, I can get people on the phone and they are happy to talk to me.
> If you are married to AWS, that's a weakness in itself<p>I have tried Lambdas and then got this "oh-shit moment" when I have realized that if AWS would be to kick me out, I would be absolutely screwed.<p>Now I am slowly dispersing and using VMs instead and avoiding all the AWS-specific stuff as much as I can.
Most cloud providers have a similar offering to AWS Lambda, plus it is not that hard to convert your code from the event handling pattern impose by AWS Lambda to a long running container running in K8s or VMs like you are doing yourself<p>IMO the lock-in fear is overblown as the top cloud offerings (S3, Lambdas, K8s as a service etc) are already commoditized among the top providers, the exception being specialized databases like DynamoDB, Spanner, Cosmos …<p>Not saying there wouldn’t be some major work to switch your operations from eg AWS to GCP, but it is also not a hard lock-in
If your threat model is AWS deciding you break their AUP, the issue is with you doing AUP breaking stuff. This ain’t your personal Google Play account.
It is amazing how quick a country can turn into a corrupt dictatorship.<p>Airbus has the ability to move their data to another location, but it is very problemetic that all people with a social account can't. Sure, you can delete your Facebook account but it will take years for you profile to be gone because we all know your data is sold to other parties.<p>My only option is to keep in mind that everything I put online will one day be read by some evil entity. Even my IP address that Hacker News might store (I don't know, but servers log stuff).
> It is amazing how quick a country can turn into a corrupt dictatorship.<p>I know, watching the fall of the UK and European countries has been really depressing to see. It's unfortunate, but it seems the US will have to carry the torch alone going into the mid-to-late 21st century.
At least we agree that a country turning into a corrupt dictatorship is depressing to see.
I hope this is satire, especially in the light of these latest news.<p><a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/cbs-60-minutes-story-trump-deportees-el-salvador-bari-weiss-rcna250441" rel="nofollow">https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/cbs-60-minutes-story-tr...</a>
I really hope regulators don't back down on this.<p>Half a billion people shouldn't be reliant on whether a guy with clown makeup is having a dementia moment.<p>Key infra (gov, utilities, news etc) has to be in house or at least in a EU country. Actually in house not big tech EU "sovereign" cloud wink wink nudge
> Key infra (gov, utilities, news etc) has to be in house or at least in a EU country.<p>For some EU functionalities there is eu-lisa which develops and hosts services - mostly for police, immigration, biometrics and a slew of others.<p>The problem is that they are very closed environments with a lot if bureaucracy involved and the development is done at snail pace.
Good, and them get ride of Palantir as a "data manager".
It's a step in financing EU sovereign cloud providers.
this might be rather unrelated to the article, but I hate seeing companies being bought up by the US in europe and it especially makes me upset to see that the american president has the audacity to claim that european countries are just leeching off the US when in reality the whole world feeding the US is what allows it to do things that would cause any other country to go bankrupt.
I do not understand what this is supposed to be about.<p>What is this "Euro Cloud" and what does it have to do with "ERP, manufacturing execution systems, CRM, and product lifecycle management (aircraft designs)"?<p>For example I am not aware that Microsoft, Amazon or Google offer any PLM services. The companies offering those would be Siemens, Dassault and so on. Is the issue that those PLM providers are themselves running on Microsoft, Amazon or Google Services? But then the issue is with Airbus needing to force their suppliers into changing where there services are delivered from, but AFAIK these PLM providers offer on prem services, so it seems like a relatively trivial issue.<p>What exactly is the "Euro Cloud" supposed to mean here, what is the actual issue with Airbus switching their PLM to on prem? TO be honest I find it hard to imagine that this isn't already the case. So what is going on here?
> estimates only an 80/20 chance of finding a suitable provider<p>It would be nice to know what the requirements are.
There are plenty of providers in the EU happy to sell cloud services
He is my free advise for Airbus:<p>1/ First migrate out your "17 years Accenture veteran" executive vice president of digital [0] (who probably sold you MS and Google cloud in the first place)<p>2/ Then appoint any inside good engineer and ask him to investigate this: "As one of the most prominent and sensitive aerospace corporation, do you think we can setup servers and run our software on it?"<p>If the answer is no, Airbus might not be fit for the 21th century.<p>- [0] <a href="https://www.airbus.com/en/about-us/our-governance/catherine-jestin" rel="nofollow">https://www.airbus.com/en/about-us/our-governance/catherine-...</a>
do you really suppose replicating the technical requirements of a security-sensitive company of this size in-house would be so easy? I've been doing infrastructure for 25 years and wouldn't want anywhere near this project. but what you will no doubt find is a pool of overconfident volunteers creating exactly the kind of risk outsourcing the problem allowed them to avoid in the first place
The way I understand it is today is when I board on an Airbus I enter an hybrid of a mechanical and digital machine.
I understand there is a lot of complex and sensitive software embedded/hosted on that plane that hopefully are not gonna kill me.<p>So computers are actually core to their business. They probably almost invented things like PLM too.<p>Nothing Airbus does is easy, this is why there are only about 2 companies like that in the world. This is why I do not see why their hosting have to be outsourced...
You had me right up until 21th
This administration has done more to undermine US power than probably any in history. This isn't a new statement either (eg [1]). Personally, I think that's not such a bad thing because we are the bad guys. I know people get all in their feelings when you say stuff like that but the number of democratically elected governments we've overthrown, just to get their resources, is indefensible.<p>This week it broke that China is pretty far along in duplicating EUV litthography. The US restricts ASML, a Dutch company, from exporting their best machines to China and Korean, Japanese and Taiwanese companies from exporting their chips to China. The second one was a massive mistake. Why? Because it created a marekt for China to produce chips because they had no other choice.<p>Geopolitically I think this is very similar to the USSR copying the atomic bomb in just 4 years after WW2 where US leaders either thought it was impossible or would take 20+ years.<p>The US has become unpredictable and unreliable. Ukraine is a big part of this because Europe is waking up to them having to be responsible for their own defense and that ultimately will undermine US power projection through NATO.<p>Since very early in this administration, probably back when the tariff nonsense began, I believed that Europe would be forced to distance themselves from US tech giants and at some point the EU would require cloud storage to be within EU borders and eventually require European companies to own and run that cloud rather than US companies.<p>China has their own version of virtually every tech company. I can see the EU moving in this direction for key functions and cloud is likely the first of those.<p>What's really precarious is the entire US economy is now essentially a bet on US companies owning a global AI future and I honestly don't think it's going to happen, mainly because China won't let it happen. DeepSeek was a shot across the bow for this and only the beginning.<p>What you really need to remember about the current administration is we're not even 1 year into a 4 year term with everything that's happened and the entire foreign policy is kleptocratic not strategic in nature.<p>[1]: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45775985">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45775985</a>
I wonder if this includes Skywise, the Palantir-built data lake and design stack that they use for many many internal operations (design, airline support, manufacturing). Not sure what difference it really makes where the data is hosted if the folks doing the hosting call home to Colorado…
From what I've seen of Skywise, it is just a glorified SharePoint. Different systems upload CSV files that get turned into database tables. Then you can define views across these tables that other systems can consume by having them dumped to CSV and dropped on an SFTP.<p>Performance is not great, so you need middleware and batching anyway. As far as I am concerned, it wouldn't be a great loss if Skywise disappeared and just the SFTP with CSV:s remained.
I'm sure there are 10 other things nearly as bad. No reason not to start the journey.
And not just Airbus. Very quietly there is a lot of stuff being moved out of the US and away from MS, AWS, Google etc. Trump has absolutely no idea what he's doing and comes across as the proverbial bull in a China shop.<p>History books a hundred years hence will have some choice things to say about how we all stood by and let this happen.
In case any SME-sized companies here are wanting to do something similar but are looking askance at the risk/investment/hiring required, then we'd [0] love to talk to you.<p>We specialise in doing this but on a smaller scale. Eg. 10-100 person companies that have 0-to-a-few DevOps engineers. Included is DevOps time each month to use as you wish, we're on call for SLAs, around 50% reduced cost vs AWS/Google/Azure, etc.<p>Somewhat differently to most, we deploy onto bare metal. In addition to dropping costs we typically see at least a 2x speed-up overall. Once client just reported a 80% reduction in processing time.<p>CTOs like us because we're always on-hand via Slack (plus we're the ones getting woken up in the night), and CFOs like us because billing becomes consistent.<p>Anyway, blatant pitch complete.<p>[0]: <a href="https://lithus.eu/" rel="nofollow">https://lithus.eu/</a><p>adam@ above domain
It always puzzled me that big corps don’t have their own infrastructure. Surely there’s a point where hiring a team to manage it properly becomes economical at a certain point, and they take a lot of security risks out of a third party’s hands.
> estimates only an 80/20 chance of finding a suitable provider<p>I must be terribly fussy but this genuinely tripped me up while reading. What does this phrasing even mean? Is it an 80% chance of success? This seems like someone has heard the phrase "80/20 rule" and applied it somewhere it makes no sense.
Ultimately this plays into China's hand. They have been promoting "sovereign internet" for many years now (to justify their tight control and the GFW). See the Wuzhen "World" Internet Conferences.
Trusting the US is a bad idea.<p>Just ask Ukraine.
Sounds like they're adopting EU cloud but will continue to use Google Suite. Surely there are viable EU based alternatives further up the stack?
The headline is misleading. They hope to hope to move on-prem stuff to a European provider, but not all the stuff that is already on US clouds.
Good, but how independent of US service providers is S/4HANA in practice?
I mean, they are offering their own, European cloud: <a href="https://news.sap.com/2025/11/sap-eu-ai-cloud-unified-vision-europe-sovereign-ai-cloud-future/" rel="nofollow">https://news.sap.com/2025/11/sap-eu-ai-cloud-unified-vision-...</a>
Weird.<p>If it matters so much, run your own computer systems don’t use any cloud.
So which one, scale way, hetzner... Tell us who wins ?
> The aerospace manufacturer...now wants to move key on-premises applications...to the cloud.<p>most of the discourse here is missing the point. it is not to migrate a cloud resource away from (assumed) US-based services, but rather moving to the cloud for core services.<p>now "sovereign" is the hot word in these parts, and of course it would be a priority. but if it ends up running American HW/SW, is it really being independent? regardless, the article also mentions Google workspace, which is not in the scope of migration.<p>regardless of which part of the fence one is in, things are easier said than done especially when IT services is a cost to the company rather than revenue stream.
Given it was revealed that CIA specifically targeted 200million deals and above, it was political naivety amounting ti gross negligence on behalf of Airbus executives that it took them 10 years. Same for many other large organisations and countries, unbelieveable.<p>Why did it have to be Trump to make them take action?<p><a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-france-wikileaks-economy/u-s-spy-agency-wiretapped-two-french-finance-ministers-wikileaks-idUKKCN0P92QT20150630/?utm_source=chatgpt.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-france-wikileaks-economy/...</a>
Quite frankly, I'm astonished that large players like Airbus are/were still relying on US infrastructure providers at all, given public knowledge of ECHELON in the 90s and the BND-NSA espionage in the 00s.
Sovereign from the EU regime?
Having worked with all major European clouds: Good luck, have fun opening a lot of support cases for things that should work ootb.
One of the reason is a lot of those "EU Sovereign Clouds" were malicious cash grabs.<p>It happened several times in the last decade:<p>- First politicians raise the alarm about "digital sovereignty"<p>- Then some create new EU sovereign clouds that are pitched/forced on corporations<p>- They usually do not work, get consolidated and then the scam is revealed<p>The biggest reveal was when we discovered and warned one of our client the Orange "Sovereign Cloud" (French telco partially owned by the government !) and built to host European most sensitive worloads was just handed over and run by Huawei [0] [1].
They were not the only one who did something like that.<p>I don't want to put actors like Hertzner in the same bag as they seem to be honest and really compete to offer a cheaper alternative to hyperscalers.<p>- [0] <a href="https://www.huawei.com/en/huaweitech/publication/winwin/29/orange-business-services-cloud/" rel="nofollow">https://www.huawei.com/en/huaweitech/publication/winwin/29/o...</a><p>- [1] <a href="https://www.techmonitor.ai/hardware/cloud/orange-introduces-public-cloud-service-with-huawei?cf-view" rel="nofollow">https://www.techmonitor.ai/hardware/cloud/orange-introduces-...</a>
Did you ever do it while waiving a $50m cheque though?
It's better than having the rug pulled from under your company one day. This is the point in history we're at unfortunately.
I do, works perfectly if you know what you're doing. If you have no clue, jump to AWS and enjoy the lockin, if you do, jump to a EU provider, and enjoy not being locked in, and a vastly lower cost.
"if you know what you're doing"<p>lol my team has worked with every major cloud provider for a decade, but sure it's all our fault because incompetence.<p>good luck man.<p>edit: I never even implied that AWS lock-in something positive. I'm getting paid to move companies from cloud to on-prem because that's true sovereignty.
Great - an anecdote. Most company leaders just want to focus on their core business on top of proven tech that works.
"sovereign Euro cloud", ah good chuckle
Airbus is putting all its design on internet? wow...
You can have the data safely on-prem, connected to computers that are connected to the internet, or safely in the cloud, connected to computers that are connected to the internet. The threats are not that different.
Managing product data on the cloud does not mean public internet access, unless someone messes something up big time.
You'd be fooling yourself if you think any moderately complex company still hasn't moved to the cloud or isn't thinking about it (with <i>rare</i> exceptions)
Yeah, not really sure how a globally distributed manufacturing operation with a complex supply chain and customers all over the world that need access to data for their operations is supposed to function effectively without it.<p>(and I say that as someone that used to sell commercial aviation data that came on CDs...)
I don't think this is related to that "critical" stuff.<p>It seems there is a misunderstanding over the classification of 'critical' stuff.<p>We may all have a very different definition.<p>All I know: the second your are connected to internet, you are cooked.
I'm not sure what the 'critical' stuff is either or what the details of Airbus' network hosting and knowledge compartmentalization strategy is, but you're not going to run a globally distributed manufacturing business with complex supply and maintenance requirements without having technical specs, CAD files, diagnostic criteria customer records etc sitting on computers connected to the internet.
You do know that the Internet and "the cloud" are not the same thing, right?
> Airbus is putting all its design on internet? wow...<p>Not only Airbus. You see, cloud is secure, information is encrypted and only you have access to your data.
It would be reasonably "secure" if it is encrypted on a physically private network using in-house _modified_ _mainstream_ encryption algorithm, then after an over-the-air transfer then you can store it on a third party could under the control of foreign interests. Oh, don't forget the file names have to be encrypted too.<p>Everything else is, I am sorry to say, BS.
> in-house _modified_ _mainstream_ encryption algorithm<p>Why would a company without cryptographic expertise modifying an existing algorithm without any particular goal in mind just to be different, produce something more secure than the winning solution in an open cryptographic competition?<p>> directory names<p>And file structure too, preferably. Incremental sync could be done with XTS mode.