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The Post-American Internet

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141–150 of 479 posts

Re: The Post-American Internet

#141

European countries are de facto vassals of the US. Not because they have to be, not because it benefits them, but because this is what the politicians and their voters want. Instead of taking care of Ukraine themselves, and providing security guarantees to Ukraine themselves, they expect the US to do it. Instead of supplying Ukraine itself, they need the US to do it. And all of this against an opponent, Russia, that…

> entirely dependent on US It's more of a co-dependence. When it comes to military we have fallen behind significantly, but the EU member states also doesn't want to spend a trillion euros a year on it. It may seem one sided, but the EU has a lot more to gain if there was a hard split between them and the US. It will be significantly more painful for the EU, for a long time, but ultimately it would be the undoing of…

I'm very conservative and in principle really aligned with Republicans in the US, but this is rotten deal. The end result is in practice worse for everyone, because the American voters do not understand why they should be underwriting out security, and their security underwriting in practice is not very reliable or good from our point of view. It has not deterred Russia, it has not countered China, and I don't think it's going to last, because American voters don't understand what they are getting for it, and neither do I.

Europe will be much better off if we can guarantee our own security. I'm not suggesting for something dumb like withdrawing from NATO without first having the next thing in place, but we need to be in a position where Putin (and his eventual successor) does not feel like they can push us around as much as the Americans will tolerate, which is precisely what Putin thinks.

We can and should be in a position where we push Russia around as much as China and India allows, and we dictate terms to them instead of cowering while they dictate terms to us. We should be in a position where if we say we are going to incorporate Ukraine into a defensive alliance that the Russians praise us and bow out of fear that we will take more of their things, instead of the reverse.

Re: The Post-American Internet

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I think most US people don't realise, is this would overnight start the slow but complete collapse of the US and it's economy. Europe can make alternatives to US tech, and with it's track record it will probably be more open with more legitimate options and less predatory monopolies. Once that is established with a home grown market of 450m people it will start competing with US in all the other markets. Let's n…

The easy part of a smartphone to create for EU is the part that is done in the US. The difficult part is the hardware. That is also why the iPhone is produced in Asia. Replacing TSMC is much more difficult than the software.

[deleted]

Re: The Post-American Internet

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> entirely dependent on US It's more of a co-dependence. When it comes to military we have fallen behind significantly, but the EU member states also doesn't want to spend a trillion euros a year on it. It may seem one sided, but the EU has a lot more to gain if there was a hard split between them and the US. It will be significantly more painful for the EU, for a long time, but ultimately it would be the undoing of…

I'm very conservative and in principle really aligned with Republicans in the US, but this is rotten deal. The end result is in practice worse for everyone, because the American voters do not understand why they should be underwriting out security, and their security underwriting in practice is not very reliable or good from our point of view. It has not deterred Russia, it has not countered China, and I don't think…

I'm not sure how you get Europe to that position. Do you have any thoughts? Usually the more conservative people in Europe seem to be pro-Russia at the moment.

Re: The Post-American Internet

#144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

They're clearly not being replaced, as a look at the numbers indicates, but what is true for most European countries is that if the low birth rates stay far below 2.1 their populations will continue to decline and their economies will shrink, if they don't manage to offset that trend with controlled yearly immigration. To clarify: Although it follows mathematically with constantly low birth rate, dying out is, of cou…

>controlled yearly immigration.

IMO the problem lies with this statement. For people like OP any "control" of immigration is going to be responded with the same criticisms. Because if you take a stance hard enough, any of these controls can be spun into anti-immigration.

Re: The Post-American Internet

#145

I've spent a couple of decades in the Danish public sector of digitalisation and in the private sector for global green energy. 10 years ago people would've laughed if you talked about leaving Microsoft and iOS in enterprise. Now we all have contingency plans for just that, and a lot of organisations are already actually doing it. So I would argue that there is more of a crack, but I'm not sure the post-american inte…

The idea that EU surveillance is greater than US surveillance is almost certainly mistaken.

In fact, a huge reason that the EU is looking to move away from U.S. commercial providers is that they can’t guarantee they won’t be giving the U.S. govt information about EU users even if they setup completely independent EU based entities.

The reason why it might appear that the EU is more heavy handed is because the EU is actually passing limited tailored laws, publicly, that explicitly state the limitations of those laws.

The US govt, on the other hand, has already passed broad blanket laws that allow them to get any data from any U.S. corporate entity with the flimsiest of warrants which those entities are not even legally allowed to publicly reveal.

The U.S. govt doesn’t need to pass any surveillance laws because they already essentially have unlimited power over the data being collected by US corporations.

Re: The Post-American Internet

#146
post #137

I've spent a couple of decades in the Danish public sector of digitalisation and in the private sector for global green energy. 10 years ago people would've laughed if you talked about leaving Microsoft and iOS in enterprise. Now we all have contingency plans for just that, and a lot of organisations are already actually doing it. So I would argue that there is more of a crack, but I'm not sure the post-american inte…

>There is a saying about how us citizens trust companies but not their government, and how Europeans trust their governments but not their companies. This is a Danish blindspot, Europeans do not trust their governments in large (France is fractured, Southern Europe has endemic corruption, Germany is increasingly authoritarian in order to keep heterodox parties out) and this is in part the source behind the flare up o…

> The EU is also not interested in strengthening the domestic software market by engaging in selective protectionism like the Chinese, because of the extensive lobbying by foreign and domestic actors which are the incumbents and see no interest in a competitive and dynamic environment which would destroy them.

They don't need to though, just require all government software to be released under a free software license, with limited exceptions for national security. The US does very well in software, so the EU should commoditise their complement and focus on free software services. This is both cheaper than the current services, and produces lots of employment for EU based tech people (probably at less money though, unfortunately).

This is basically what China is doing with their open weights models.

Re: The Post-American Internet

#147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, it's not an uncommon thing to hear from people when performing community outreach (think door knocking). External push, definitely, but it's also being repeated by the demographic this narrative is being pushed to. I can't comment on whether or not they believe it, but it's certainly repeated by some here in Ireland.

> but it's certainly repeated by some here in Ireland. To be fair to Ireland and history they have a valid complaint going back centuries wrt outsiders taking their lands, language, governance, food and labour all while debating "the Irish Question" and reaching for eugenic "solutions".

> To be fair to Ireland and history they have a valid complaint going back centuries wrt outsiders taking their lands, language, governance, food and labour all while debating "the Irish Question" and reaching for eugenic "solutions".

Odd then, that they didn't notice when this happened post GFC when basically all of the land banks and large assets were sold off to (predominantly) US based private equity funds.

And honestly, Irish anti-immigration sentiment is far more driven by both our complete failures at building infrastructure for a growing population (which we've never had before) and the fact that all refugees are housed in poor areas (which already had much worse services).

But it's very important that no residents of South Dublin should be inconvenienced, even at the cost of our society.

Re: The Post-American Internet

#148

I've spent a couple of decades in the Danish public sector of digitalisation and in the private sector for global green energy. 10 years ago people would've laughed if you talked about leaving Microsoft and iOS in enterprise. Now we all have contingency plans for just that, and a lot of organisations are already actually doing it. So I would argue that there is more of a crack, but I'm not sure the post-american inte…

For computers we have linux, ok, but how are iOS and Android being replaced?

Mobile phones are baffling to me. I heard a story recently that the Venezuelan government is stopping people on the street and inspecting mobile phones for dissident content. In such an environment, why are people relying on phones for anything? Why trust it at all? This stupid device _could_ get you taken to prison for merely having the wrong ideas, but you've still _just got to_ use it! I'm starting to think that if mobile phones gave parents' children rapid, aggressive brain cancer, all anyone would be talking about is "regulation" and "minimizing usage."

And I know someone's going to say "not using a phone might look _more_ suspicious!" I suppose but the needle does need to turn at some point, right? This risk was pretty easily foreseeable. If you got arrested for what was found on your phone during an arrest would you ever look at the device the same way again? In 5 years, would you be using it for meaningful or private communication whatsoever?

Re: The Post-American Internet

#150
post #56

It does seem like something will need to be done. Not just on this but other world order matters too. The US centric version is no longer viable

Agree, privacy lovers can flock to EU and China where surveillance never happens

Misguided as EU rules often are on implementation I do still have more faith in that then the American system where rule of law seems to be fundamentally breaking down
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