Europe has gone from 90% of U.S. GDP to 65% over the last 10+ years, that's a fact. And this doesn't really account yet for all the effects of the war in Ukraine.
One thing I have witnessed for sure is Europe have seen the entire computer / Internet revolution passing it by in the last 30-25 years. Keep in mind Western Europe was absolutely very well positioned to become a major actor at the time (as well positioned as the US in many regards). A lot of talents to who ended up emigrating to the US.
This failure cannot be blamed on the EU institutions but individual countries. The EU had in fact nothing to do with it, they were still busy thinking mostly about agriculture, industry and other things.
But there have been a growing interest from the EU institutions in digital in the last 10 years and quite some money spent. I have been involved in some of them, it is usually so twisted that nobody involved even believe in it.
In 2019 the EU cloud was supposed to be something called Gaia-X, now there is something called Eurostack.
There is a huge problem with the EU type that is they truly believe if they think of something, declare it, it will happen. It is very similar to Byrne's book idea "The Secret to the Law of Attraction".
I get very nervous when they apply this to defense. Because the EU has literately let its armies and defense industry die in the last 50 years, but suddenly get very belligerent (maybe for good reasons, I am not an expert) and at the same time rush into trying to rebuild its capabilities. I must have missed that chapter in Clausewitz and Sun Tzu.
Same with the Cloud & co, they have been very belligerent with Big Tech but have nothing to escape to right now, it is just another vision. The EU runs on the Microsoft stacks, last time we talked it was on MS Teams.
What I mean is the EU took a very central / leading role in many things in the last 5 years but it seems they have no idea what they are doing. It might actually be a system designed to integrate and fix economies post war (WWII and Cold war) but nothing more.
krunck•6mo ago
It goes on to say "Canada receives no mention in the Eurostack proposal" And it does 't say Canada has expressed any interest. But Canada should consider this.
The sooner countries prepare for a broken America the better off they'll be when it happens.
RamblingCTO•6mo ago
southernplaces7•6mo ago
This is very rich coming from the same Eurocrats who are pretty much persistently working to subvert private, secure communications, E2E encryption and other key privacy protections, all in the name of half-baked bullshit about stopping crime and protecting the kiddies.
Not that US bureaucrats don't do similar, but it's worth pointing to this kind of moral smugness about something non-existent.
Also, innovation-driven? So, how's that European start-up culture doing so far?