[spicyusername]

Such a shame that so many U.S. citizens do not see the ramifications of their political decisions.

Each one of these actions is a stepping stone the world is taking as a direct consequence of U.S. political negligence. And however difficult it was to render this consequence, it will be tenfold, or hundredfold, as difficult to reverse course.

[quadrifoliate]

Shame that so many EU citizens do not see the ramifications of theirs.

EU citizens have elected ineffective leaders for decades -- leaders that ignored the potential to set up homegrown cloud providers, software suites or tech companies. They have elected leaders who were until very recently heavily dependent on Russian energy.

As a result, EU dependence on US tech is near-total. I remember hearing a few months ago that companies in the EU still have to use Dun & Bradstreet (a US company) for routine government filings!

Some minor headlines about civil servants stopping their usage of office sound impressive but isn't really making a dent in Microsoft's bottom line. If and when Microsoft's revenues from the EU start dropping by double digits or more, I am sure they will contribute large amounts of money to make the US government more civil and normal than it's being today.

> And however difficult it was to render this consequence, it will be tenfold, or hundredfold, as difficult to reverse course.

As a software consumer, if this takes off, I don't see any reason I would want the course to be reversed. More adoption and support of open software and standards is beneficial for consumers. It might even get Microsoft and the rest of US Big Tech to actively compete for a change rather than relying on their near-total monopoly.

[bborud]

leaders that ignored the potential to set up homegrown cloud providers, software suites or tech companies

Remarkable how it is the politicans who should have been doing this when it doesn't get done, and how everyone is quick to complain if politicians meddle in what the private sector should have been doing. This is a recurring theme in a lot of debates. And I think it has to do with our need to blame someone but ourselves.

Yes, one could solve this through procurement rules that favor domestic or regional products. And there are sometimes procurement rules that state that domestic vendors should be preferred. But I have seen that in practice and it doesn't actually work. One one project I worked on decades ago the military was sourcing a system for "local administration". A company that was effectively bankrupt, had the weirdest OS I have ever used, and the worst office support systems I've had the misfortune of trying to use, was the only domestic candidate. Yes, it did check the boxes in the procurement process, but everyone knew it was never going to happen.

Interoperability, product maturity, familiarity, feature completeness, quality etc tends to win out.

I think we have to realize that this has almost nothing to do with our political leaders and everything to do with our inability to create software businesses in Europe. We need to figure that bit out. And perhaps this is the kick in the behind we needed to get our act together.

[TulliusCicero]

Yup. Culturally, the EU has favored more regulations over supporting more tech growth to an absurd degree.

Not that I disagree in principle with most of the tech regulations; it does make sense to protect privacy and combat monopolistic abuses and so on.

But you also need to support your own tech industry at the same time, and the efforts there have been like quarter-assed at most.

[BrandoElFollito]

I am French. When I look at the EU I see great potentials but the effect is a huge bureaucratic mess that is advantageous for everyone involved.

About 25% of EU parliament parties are against EU. Theyt are paid by the EU to tell how much they hate this institution.

There are no two countries in the EU who are aligned. Some of them are not completely out of synch (mostly the Nordics), some are in schizophrenia mode (Poland, Hungary, Slovakia mostly) where they eat most of the EU funds (relatively and in absolute terms) but hate it.

With such an institution, there is no real hope of having a strong position backed by competent people. Just look at ENISA and the disgrace this organization is in the era of cybersecurity.

We also had a EU-wide referendum about daylight saving. 5 M peopel responsed (a few percent of the population). It was the largest response in the history of the EU. And then it was trashed.

The mountains of EUR we burn is insane.

[bdbdbdb]

> EU citizens have elected ineffective leaders for decades -- leaders that ignored the potential to set up homegrown cloud providers, software suites or tech companies.

It's not like there are people out there on the campaign trail every election saying "if I'm elected, I'll ensure we build homegrown cloud alternatives". Nobody campaigns on issues like that. The reality is you have to choose between people who want to kick the immigrants out and people who don't, people who want to enact green policies and people who don't. People who want a European army and people who don't. These big issues are what people vote on, even if we care that there should be a homegrown cloud industry. I really do care, but it's not something I can do anything about at the ballot box

[anon291]

Europe's main strategy these days seems to be blaming others instead of looking at themselves.

For example, they blame America for their own issue of lacking tech companies, despite Europe taking credit for having fewer work hours, more 'equitable' societies, etc.

They blame China for their own issue of lacking domestic manufacturing, despite their pride at having strong unions, supposedly good labor protections, and vacations.

They blame India for the bogey of 'buying Russian oil', instead of blaming themselves for being the LARGEST purchaser of refined oil products from India. As if India, one of the hottest countries on the planet, actually needs heating oil.

At this point, which country / region does Europe not blame? It's always someone else's fault. No one even thinks to look inside themselves.

[sam-cop-vimes]

> I remember hearing a few months ago that companies in the EU still have to use Dun & Bradstreet (a US company) for routine government filings!

Only to do business with US companies, or have a USD account with some payment providers such as Wise I think, not for anything else.

[Jean-Papoulos]

>EU citizens have elected ineffective leaders for decades -- leaders that ignored the potential to set up homegrown cloud providers, software suites or tech companies.

France has been doing this since De Gaulle. That's why they're able to do this now, as well as produce almost everything they use that is defense-related.

[MrDresden]

> I remember hearing a few months ago that companies in the EU still have to use Dun & Bradstreet (a US company) for routine government filings!

Could you name which European nation this was?

I would genuinely be interested in knowing.

[burningChrome]

>>> Such a shame that so many U.S. citizens do not see the ramifications of their political decisions.

Most US Citizens are not voting on what you think they're voting on. Most are worried about things that affect their day-to-day life like cost of eggs, the cost of gas, taxes going up, my 401K going in the dumpster.

I live and breathe tech everyday. I see the dangers of it all around me. Day in and day out. You try and talk to people about how dangerous some of this stuff is. Unless people feel it somehow like having their identity stolen and they spend three years trying to fix it all? Nothing will ever change.

People are 100% immune to this stuff now. Its the old frog in boiler water analogy.

[lotsofpulp]

> Most are worried about things that affect their day-to-day life like cost of eggs, the cost of gas, taxes going up, my 401K going in the dumpster.

Are they? It seems to me like they’re worried about things like women having access to too much healthcare, too many non white people, and too many women leaders. They voted for a guy that wants to make the most expensive purchase of most people’s lives even more expensive:

https://youtu.be/ToJxd3HBviE

Not to mention the enormous tax increases by way of getting rid of the expanded ACA premium credits.

[budududuroiu]

This is why I personally believe that the "anyone is allowed to vote for anyone" style of democracy is really dumb, and Chinese "democracy" (whatever that is), is superior for governance.

[toomuchtodo]

Well, that's the problem, these people are wildly uneducated and unsophisticated. They are voting their feelings. Prices levels do not come down without a depression, even if inflation slows. Their only solution is wages going up. Do they have a mechanism to push wages up? Taxes must go up, they have been too low for too long and the debt has accumulated (~$38T in US treasuries alone) and will need to be paid back or defaulted on. Insurance costs continue to rise due to rapidly increasing costs of materials and labor, as well as climate change (the US is currently spending ~$1B/year on climate driven events). Growth is over because the US population is not growing (tangentially, total fertility rate is below replacement rate in more than half of countries in the world, and this trend will continue). 401ks predicated on the S&P500 are held up by AI investment (which is outpacing consumer spending, the primary driver of the US economy, over the last year to the tune of ~$400B) and the Mag 7. When this stalls, everyone is going to be sad and not feel as wealthy as they did previously (“wealth effect”).

Happiness is reality minus expectations, and the future is not going to be as good as the past, based on available data, evidence, and trends Everything is downstream of that. The vibes might be bad, but they ain't gonna get better.

Financial Times: The consumer sentiment puzzle deepens - https://www.ft.com/content/f3edc83f-1fd0-4d65-b773-89bec9043... | https://archive.today/nFlfY - February 3rd, 2026

(some component of price increases has been predatory monopoly gouging covered extensively by Matt Stoller on his newsletter https://www.thebignewsletter.com/, but for our purposes, we can assume this admin isn't going to impair that component of price levels and inflation with regulation for the next 3 years)

[skippyboxedhero]

Failing to make xenophobic choices when it comes to...enterprise software, is the issue?

The US has spent tens of trillions defending Europe indirectly subsidizing social policies despite this the US has persistently been unpopular with Europeans because, obviously, they are a political target for domestic politicians (btw, you see this almost everywhere...if country A gives country B subsidies, you will almost always find that country A's people are virulently hated by a significant proportion of country B's population, the US was more unpopular than Russian before the Ukraine invasion in Germany...let me just repeat: a country which invaded Europe was more popular than a country which gave hundreds of billions a year in defence subsidies).

Acting as if xenophobia towards the US hasn't always been part of the European political climate is not based in reality. Europe has been trying to protect its own market for decades, unsuccessfully. What is more, there is very limited trade WITHIN Europe in certain industries because of the hurdle of national xenophobia and protectionism. Europe has made an industry out of failure and greivance...and, for some reason, part of this narrative is that no country contributes as much as Europe.

Reality? Iran...continued to break US sanctions for years so that failing European defence companies could sell their junk, investigations of Iranian politicians bribing EU parliamentarians. Russia...continued to break US sanctions after Ukraine invasion, had an extremely subservient relationship with Russia despite being repeatedly told by the US that NordStream 2 would lead to Ukraine invasion, former German president actually works for NordStream. On and on, the same mistakes being made all the time because there has never been any real strategy apart from extreme short-term political advantage to protect continued failure to generate social or economic gain in most of Europe (not all tbf, but the executive polling numbers that you see in some countries is incredible, you wouldn't think they have elections).

[jabwd]

I think you are failing to realize the billions the US has made from "defending" europe. Regardless, once the US is no longer colonizing the entire planet and the dollar isn't the only currency anyone cares about your opinion will change realllll quick. You'll have forgotten this wall of nonsense you wrote though by then I'm sure.

[lkjvkbn]

Stop with this nonsense. You know it is false.

USA is not defending Europe from anyone.

[giantg2]

How someone voted has almost no bearing on the dangers of tech. The dangers were there before the last election and none of the candidates had strong positions regarding tech privacy. Microsoft would still be doing what it has been doing regardless of the election outcome. I wouldnt hold my breath that a European Teams/Zoom replacement will have robust encryption and privacy protection based on all the backdoor stuff I've heard being pushed in some European countries.

[iancmceachern]

Many of us see them and are fighting the fight if our lives against it

[wrqvrwvq]

The US has openly spied on nato allies via msft for decades, and this was widely reported long before Snowden. All us tech is a tool of government surveillance and has always been. msft has also been repeatedly sued and sanctioned for corruption and bribery and coercive practices across europe over the past two decades. The fact that europe views trump as the threat but not the system he represents is cynical but the move towards autonomy is long past due. aws and msft etc all get away with overcharging for often terrible services is largely due to a lack of viable competition. europe has had great open-source offering for many years, but has "strategically" starved all of them of funding and credibility. This is as much a result of eu scleroticism as it is msft's bullying and anti-competitive practices. If trump makes it easier for them to get their act together it is to his credit.

[lenerdenator]

1) Most US citizens don't care for what's happening right now. That's why there's people protesting while armed in major cities.

2) Continental Europe has shown a willingness to continue dependency on other countries in the face of far, far worse national behavior. NordStream 2 planned after the invasion of Georgia and was still under construction after Putin had invaded and annexed Crimea. Not "threatened" to do so, he had actually done it. There was a body count involved. So it's not too far off-base to think that despite all of the foolishness from the Trump administration, the US could seek some slack for its technology sector. It's not like you need Teams to keep your factories running and to avoid freezing to death in the winter, but that was the sort of integration with the Russians that Europeans were seeking to maintain while Putin was redrawing the map, at least until the Ukraine invasion, and even then, it took clandestine activity to permanently take NordStream offline.

People like Trump will almost certainly point at this and say that this shows Europeans to be allies of convenience, not true partners. People like him love to cry about double standards.

[8note]

note: the europeans didnt particularly mind maduro's kidnapping, and crimea isnt a part of the EU nor NATO.

putin still has not gone to war, nor threatened to invade the EU yet to the point of international incident. the US has both sent politicians and other operators to try and fail at formenting rebellion in greenland against denmark, and has readied troops to invade

[alamortsubite]

I remember a conversation I had with my uncle before the 2024 election during which I told him Donald Trump's leadership would result in a no-less-disastrous American version of Brexit, if he were somehow elected a second time. My uncle's an avid Fox News/Newsmax watcher, and had absolutely no idea what I was talking about.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

A reminder that in the last presidential election, the winner was decided by one of the smallest margins ever, and the winner only won a plurality, not a majority.

Almost as many people voted against the current US administration as voted for it, so although it is true that "so many US citizens do not see the ramifications", there almost as many who do (or some version of them).

[MiiMe19]

Almost as many, but not more than :)

[bryanrasmussen]

I mean this is essentially the same situation anyone is in when they have vendor lock in, they know it's a problem, but it is always just not worth it to get out, only this vendor lock in is all vendors from a country lock in and now it is not just worth it but imperative, absolutely necessary.

And of course once you have gotten out of vendor lock in, you never go back. If you do go back to that vendor that locked you in before, because of some sweetheart deal, you make sure to set up all sorts of escape hatches so if you need to bounce quickly you can.

The vendor lock in of the EU to the US for so many things is being dismantled.

[maxloh]

One thing I’ve learned over the years is that people don't necessarily vote for the "best" candidate. Instead, they vote for the candidate who is "least bad" and do the minimum amount of damage to their interests. It is always a matter of compromise.

As a counter-example, you cannot expect an LGBT person to vote for a right-wing conservative who advocates against their own rights, even if that candidate makes the "right call" on every other issue.

[klaff]

>As a counter-example, you cannot expect an LGBT person to vote for a right-wing conservative who advocates against their own rights, even if that candidate makes the "right call" on every other issue.

I can't think of a candidate that fits this description.

[PeterStuer]

I do not think many U.S. citizens were consulted on the decision to blow up Nordstream.

[adventured]

The French have created Mintel. May the world tremble.

It's a shame the Americans don't see the ramifications of their political decisions.

[palata]

Minitel, when it was created, was great technology. Sounds like you are proudly uninformed.

[nradov]

Why did the French never follow up and improve Minitel?

[alamortsubite]

It's fun to think about what Minitel might have become if it had been born when today's Leopards Eating People's Faces Party had been in power, rather than the early 80's when Silicon Valley was dunking on everybody. It was way ahead of its time.

[mesk]

Being Great doesnt comes with Best to Live with, Best to Work with, Best to make Business with etc...

US will be Great like all Giants are - terrifying and alone ;-)