Israel is the wedge and leverage to eliminating governments of Iran, Pakistan, China and then India and weakening Russia further.
Colonialism hasn't gone anywhere, evidence? Europe fully protects settlers and their ambitions despite what they say publicly. It is a long road but the most realistic one they have.
And do you think America would run their government on the software of European tech monopolies?
China and India? and Russia? Israel doesn't care about them.
Israel is using America and Europe to gain control of the middle east, so they want to eliminate Iran (and just like with Iraq, they want the US to do it for them).
Pakistan is somewhat friendly so not really a threat to Israel's control over the middle east.
US and Europe do not benefit from this. Europe actually suffers as instability in middle east causes a refugee crisis in Europe.
What we should instead focus on is digital sovereignty.
That's the kind of situation that gives CEOs lifelong reputations (that they think it's in a good way).
See the secret industry meeting from 1933 as the prime example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_Meeting_of_20_February_...
And the military higher-ups were bribed with constant personalized handouts. Hitler even paid a wealthy general’s entire divorce settlement from taxpayer funds, as mentioned here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bribery_of_senior_Wehrmacht_of...
” Such was the success of Hitler's bribery system that by 1942, many officers had come to expect the bestowing of "gifts" from Hitler and were unwilling to bite the hand that fed them so generously.[10] When Field Marshal Fedor von Bock was sacked by Hitler in December 1941, his first reaction was to contact Hitler's aide Rudolf Schmundt to ask if his sacking meant that he was no longer to receive bribes from the Konto 5 ("bank account 5") slush fund.”
With the level of corruption in the current US administration, it seems entirely possible that it’s heading in a similar direction. For example, why shouldn’t Trump award a billion units of his crypto coin to loyal military leaders? What law prohibits that and who enforces it?
And if you want to close your eyes and believe things aren't that dire (they are), at minimum you have to admit that this is a regime that is incredibly blatant and open in its corruption and embrace of the spoils system. You'd have to be an utter idiot[1] to not try to weasel in to get your hand into the public purse.
---
[1] Or hold on to something resembling moral principles when mountains of money and power is at stake, which in that part of the business world is a synonym.
Good news, that sort of behavior is technically illegal even if the current administration is wildly corrupt already. So give it 4 years and they open themselves to the possibility of being courtmartialed for their grifting.
He's not unpopular and many people do support him, unfortunately. Best case scenario, the silent majority didn't bother to prevent Trump and his lackeys from taking over the American government.
I don't think denying Trump's popularity is going to solve anything. America spoke out in support of this guy, twice, and it'll keep doing that unless the underlying issues are tackled.
As for election fairness: I haven't seen any credible proof of large-scale election fraud, not when Biden won, not when Trump won.
I'm not concerned about the fact that the election was close.
I'm concerned that, post election, the country is so deeply polarized. For the first time in my life, I fear there's a small but real chance that we're headed for civil war.
Though, as he absorbed Kennedy into his government, I would argue his current leadership gained 50.29% of the votes.
For the curious, based on [1], turnout in 2024 was 63.1% of the voting eligible population, compared to 65.3% in 2020, 59.2% in 2016, and 58.0% in 2012.
[1] https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/data/voter-turnou...
Also, Europe does seem cautious about poking this tiger since Tech is critical industry and it's possible that Europe going "WE ARE DONE!" could prompt massive backlash in tariffs and such.
They did appeal a few times, but this time it seems like they're no longer interested. To be fair, Trump could probably illegally deport half the Microsoft employees to a foreign prison camp if he'd feel like it and the courts seem powerless to stop him, so I don't blame Microsoft for falling in line.
I do blame the Dutch government for being blasé about the American threat and their refusal to move away from American technology for critical infrastructure.
So obviously microsoft will lose a lot of money in this. So if the decision is based on them making money, one has to wonder about the less obvious source of money that this decision serves.
I understand where you are coming from, but this also sounds like a way to remove individual responsibility from the people that make up a corporation.
No responsibility should be expected when there is no accountability.
Still, backed by pretty solid statutory authority[0] (one created by Democrats and signed into law by Carter, in point of fact). Congress wanted the President to have this power.
I'll get scorched for this, but: I never once read a word of complaint about separation-of-powers, when Biden was sanctioning objects left and right for his own, self-declared, national-security emergencies. I don't recall reading once, i.e. at the time of the sweeping China or GPU sanctions, a peep of protest along the lines of, "This should *not* be something a President should be able to do unilaterally! That's far too much discretionary power in the hands of one person! Congress should have to debate it". We didn't invent an imperial presidency in 2025; it's the agglomeration of decades of civic apathy.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Emergency_Econom... ("International Emergency Economic Powers Act"; C-f "14203" for the current topic)
Few people imagine something like a Department of Mis/Disinformation not being such a good thing if its their person in charge and don't imagine a situation where someone else takes over later on something like the Israeli/Palestinian conflict where there's a schism within parties about what is "misinformation". Instead they'll cheer lead it and downvote or debate detractors and accuse them of being an otherside shill because its immediately good for them. They don't take an adversarial view of how can this be abused, and if not by whose in power now, who maybe 5-10-20 years from now.
Here’s an example article from Reuters that details the potential national security implications with regard to Nvidia GPUs, novel AI technology, and military advancement.
https://www.reuters.com/technology/biden-cut-china-off-more-...
Fear-mongering aside, that’s much more digestible reason than muzzling someone rightfully investigating war crimes commanded by the leaders of our proxy state.
Unfortunately for the US, we’re stuck with what Israel decides to do. A lot of Americans are in favor of supporting Israel for one reason or another. If Irsael is somehow controlling the United States via lobbying or whatever, that kind of invalidates the whole client state idea.
US is the most powerful country in the world but that doesn’t mean we directly control our allies as client states.
Virtually unconditional support is provided on the global stage, and clearly, we are comfortable with starting another regional war. But saying we're "stuck with what Israel decides to do" sounds a bit fatalistic, no?
0. https://www.texastribune.org/2022/01/31/texas-boycott-israel... 1. https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4254384-brian-mast-israel...
Damn right. Strong evidence that Europe should look after their own, and not rely on the good old US of A. Written by an Australian who thinks we should do the same down here.
Our goal is to offer a privacy-focused, vendor-neutral alternative to platforms like Microsoft Exchange.
The EU got INCREDIBLY lucky after Microsoft's rise. Linux gained marketshare. Linus Torvalds and a team. So you could probably get away by paying 100x less to Linux and really make things happen.
Did they do anything? Support it, say with half the money they paid to Microsoft? No. Anything at all? Perhaps, but not worth mentioning.
Yes. They immediately tried to push extra expenditures on Linux. To solidify the position of Microsoft. Tried to declare Linux illegal due to supporting copyright infringement/piracy. They tried to force "software warranty". Tried to make software without accessibility features illegal.
Oh wait! Linus Torvalds got paid! But ... by a US company. Plenty of companies tried to push Linux. All but one are US companies (the only real one that tried, SUSE Linux, was not just not supported, it was bought out by a US company after effectively going bankrupt).
So now we're here: if the US wanted to force Linux to implement sanctions against the ICC, they are in a much better position to do it than the EU is to stop them. No US or US ally is allowed to furnish the ICC with a Linux distro ... so who would do it? The EU doesn't control THEIR OWN BANKING SYSTEMS!
This is a repeating problem in the EU, not just for software. They utterly, absolutely, completely refuse to pay for any software at all, and as a result the EU economy pays more by literally a factor of millions. Then they refuse to see this as a problem ... and effectively US companies levy a tax on EU business, for decades. Where's the problem with that?
And this is actually an underestimation of the problem. The Microsoft ecosystem isn't just the software. It's the network, it's the applications by other firms. It's even the CPUs. SAP, Oracle, Adobe, Intel, AMD ... spending should be added to to the total. As should the spending on computers. Fucking Taiwan is in a better position than the EU when it comes to software independence.
And the EU "is working on replacing them" by spending less than ONE software engineer makes in Bangalore? Sorry, no.
They aren't.
This just means the EU doesn't care about software independence, and doesn't even care that the US taxes all software and hardware in the EU. Also they don't have a chance in hell to change it at this point. It would have been extremely cheap to do it 20 years ago, but now it'll cost tens of billions at minimum.
The ICC will be working without email, the EU can't change that and it's 100% the EU's fault. Hell, EU politicians have chosen to pay hundreds of billions EACH YEAR for the privilege of having the US control EU computer usage!
Expecting to make several times the national average gets you ousted as an evil greedy capitalist pig that wants to gentrify society, even though EU is full of stealthy elite royals and billionaires who own most of the continent's wealth, cosplaying as average people. So as long as you have a financial/tax system and a social contract that vilifies those seeking enrichment and upwards mobility through work and innovation, you're not gonna get FAANG competitors sprouting up thin air.
China could do it and become independent of US tech and they started off financially way worse than the EU. So the EU's tech failure is 100% self inflicted from policy short sightedness and mismanagement, by catering policies to the well off boomers and retirees, instead of the youth.
Stop taxing income, and start taxing inherited wealth more and you might see a change, just get off your asses politicians and actually do something, less talking and more doing. Otherwise keep buying American software running on Chinese hardware, while you hold grandiose speeches of tech independence.
There are reason why Linus Torvalds, Bjarne Stroustrup, Guido van Rossum, Anders Hejlsberg packed their toys and moved to the US to work for big-tech, instead of enjoying the amazing quality of life back home in Europe. Maybe the EU should talk to them and put them in charge of EU tech leadership, instead of the clueless unelected career bureaucrats like Von der Leyen and their lobbyists who's biggest success is selling the most diesel engines.
A 10 million per year grant starting in 2000 would easily have done it. That it's such an amount is entirely, 100%, the EU's own fault. Taking linux and developing it, plus an office suite for it could easily be done for 100x less.
And both are centre-right governments to boot! If the White House is the clownshow in the circus, the EU is the acrobatics act.
You were saying?
EU funded Microsoft to the tune of 234.26 billion USD per year
???
The relevant number is probably the EU only fraction, and maybe just the EU governments' part. Which I'd guess is at least like 1/10 or smaller? Idk
('Linux distros' get into the HN zone where nobody needs dropbox because they could write a shell script. Or install a crappy webmail package on a VPS. Google is entirely Linux and that's not what you are suggesting. It's irrelevant to the larger picture.)
It has been popular lately to complain about European states military spending, which is more than just naive given that NATO decides what can exist and an alternative to NATO would be unrealistic, especially in the shorter term.
If the EU really threatened the US in any manner, that situation would be rectified in a heartbeat. That may sound violent, but it mostly isn't. A lot of it is just the free market at play, but it is a market in harmony with US interests.
And of course they cannot be trusted. (Same applies for Google, Apple and any other entity in the US that can be served with a gag order and a subpoena.
The masks sometimes drop and we see the true face of who is what. And when Microsoft pulls a fast one like that it shows us the real face/where the loyalty is (and it is never to the client).
https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/13/danish_department_dum...
It is possible using IPv6 to make end to end connections without having to do weird hole punching through NAT, etc.
This sounds like security nihilism: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27897975
> Even if you build from source, your compiler might be compromised
This problem can be solved by the bootstrappable builds: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41368835
> or you buy a cool new usb peripheral and plug it in- boom! Compromised.
This is why Qubes OS has been developed (my daily driver). It isolated the usb devices into a separate VM.
> Your sniffer and firewall? Compromised.
Try security through compartmentalization: Qubes OS. Last time a VM escape in the modern Qubes implementation was discovered in 2006 by the Qubes founder: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Pill_(software)
[1] https://codeberg.org/forgejo-contrib/federation/src/branch/m...
A: The Europeans grow restless that we are suspending email accounts of Trump's political enemies.
B: What are they going to do, host their own email servers?
[maniacal cackling]
His official work email was suspended because he's suspended from the organization...
Look at this article discussing the allegations, by AP, from last year: https://apnews.com/article/war-crimes-international-criminal...
Sounds like Trump’s EO had nothing to do with with suspending the account?
> Microsoft said the decision to suspend Mr. Khan’s email had been made in consultation with the I.C.C. The company said it had since enacted policy changes that had been in the works before the episode to protect customers in similar geopolitical situations in the future. When the Trump administration sanctioned four additional I.C.C. judges this month, their email accounts were not suspended, the company said.
That sounds exactly like it was because of Trump‘s EO but MS doesn’t want to do it anymore
And he also lost his bank account, that’s hardly because of the allegations
At my organization, if an employee is suspended, I don't expect Microsoft to manage it. We have to do it ourselves. It is different elsewhere?
I think most of the activists know the drill (not to use gmail/outlook/icloud... in their activism-related communications).
They might start spending the time and money to move away from Microsoft's control, but there's few solutions that reliably work at that scale and for their needs, and I honestly wouldn't fault them for assuming that the arrangement that worked for decades wouldn't suddenly fall apart.
Until recently I'm sure people at the heart of the western political establishment saw the US as essentially trustworthy with regard to fundamental things like not stealing their emails.
Just like they wouldn't have expected the executive to deny them access to the product. Now it's clear expectations need to be updated.
Not great news for the US tech industry...
US tech dominance has long been seen as a benefit and this administration is ruining that position.
this administration is ruining many things. China doesnt even have to fight to win new soft power - the US is doing it to themselves.
DOGE? Absolutely performative. Even things like USAID are a trival amount of money and miss the point that it's a very cheap way of getting influence. Plus I'm sure there's some CIA money buried in there too.
Abusing the power in such a trivial manner like suspending this account does nothing but hasten this downfall.
It's always worth adding that 20+ years ago the US passed a law colloquially known as the "Hage Invasion Act" [1], which not only authorized but requires the US to invade the Hage if ever any US servicemember are brought up on charges to the ICC. And this extends to servicemembers and leaders of allies.
Empires don't die quietly or quickly. This is going to be long, drawn out and chaotic.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Pr...
Europe only has two modes: 1. Time-limited research funding (which funds basic sciences) 2. Classical "planned" funding (which funds classical industries)
Both are symptoms of low-risk taking ability, the first one is bound on risk by time, the second one by planning. It doesn't have any institution that it can trust that can hand out funding which creates a bridge between the two. The real reason is that there's no EU-wide institution that has the trust and power of the EU-wide population for that purpose. And the fractured democracy is part of the reason for that.
Europeans live in a fairy land dream and need to wake up.
That's an issue with America. For all American businesses.
The dumb actions by the current US Administrations give the EU a big incentive now to buy their services elsewhere in the future, so Trumps fever dream about the disbalance might come true thanks to his own actions
"Who allowed you to live like that"...
Some previous discussions:
Microsoft blocked the email account of Chief Prosecutor of the ICC
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44039719
Microsoft's ICC blockade: digital dependence comes at a cost
So I won’t say it’s all just the US coming in and buying everything up. It was partly European investors wanting to make a profit.
But the point remains that the EU also innovates. So to suggest that it doesn't and its reliance on US tech is somehow its own fault for not trying, is missing the detail.
You don’t stop investigating war crimes and bring charges just because the accused is currently unavailable. The latter may change, and has already changed in the past. Furthermore, the mere act of investigating can already put pressure on the investigated.
Netanyahu or Putin accidentally wandering into a hostile country sounds like a ludicrous scenario but if that ever happens to any signatory they are treaty-bound to arrest him and extradite him to The Hague. What's the plan for dealing with the blowback? Either the host country violates the Rome statute or they have initiated a war with a hostile, well-armed foreign entity.
> Microsoft said the decision to suspend Mr. Khan’s email had been made in consultation with the I.C.C. The company said it had since enacted policy changes that had been in the works before the episode to protect customers in similar geopolitical situations in the future. When the Trump administration sanctioned four additional I.C.C. judges this month, their email accounts were not suspended, the company said.
> Microsoft and other U.S. companies have sought to reassure European customers. On Monday, Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s chief executive, visited the Netherlands and announced new “sovereign solutions” for European institutions, including legal and data security protections for “a time of geopolitical volatility.” Amazon and Google have also announced policies aimed at European customers.
https://politiken.dk/viden/tech/art10437680/Caroline-Stage-u...
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