Indeed, that wasn't a great decision. But... there is a serious lack of alternatives that makes it very hard to get around the United States and Israel when it comes to this kind of software. Of course the Dutch should have rolled their own but give that we can't even get our tax software sorted out (I think they've been at it for 30 years), had our digital notary services hacked and a number of other noteworthy items I think that maybe 'buy' instead of 'build' was the right decision.
It's very tricky, I would definitely not be able to claim that in his shoes I would have done better. As a prime minister he's done a fair job given the absolutely impossible situation in our government right now, and this decision is one of those where at least he's willing to make a stand (unlike many other EU countries).
This level of governing is always going to be an exercise in endless compromises.
10 guys in Northern VA are making those calls, not the forward deployed engineers and not your infra.
palantir dials home at some point to verify a license, right?
Enterprise software is licensed based on support contracts and audits. "trust" is actually more present because a large company or the government can't just vanish if they're in license compliance breach and can later be sued to recover costs.
This is basically Oracle and IBMs business model: let people install whatever they want, then request a spot check if usage and discover the license breaches which can be rectified by buying more of whatever now that it's business critical.
Then in 2024 the CrowdStrike BSOD screw up happened, and I was surprised to learn that no, not everything is airgapped. Apparently, businesses are okay with untrusted, unvetted, self-updating pieces of code that run in kernel mode.
This + corporate shit policies from departents disconnected from the needs on the terrain.
Trump isn't trusted by any intelligence service, but seems to only publicly distrust his own ones.
Also, if you think the US was a proper democracy, I have news for you - it wasn't. It has been an alternating two-party system that prevents the system from evolving beyond its current state. In a real democracy, information from the voter would be maximized, the first result of which would be to transform it beyond a rigid two-party system. The voting system would not be first-past-the-post. Superior forms of voting such as Ranked Choice and Range Voting would not be banned as they are in numerous red states; they would be welcomed. People would not be denied the right to vote. Gerrymandering wouldn't be a thing.
Wake up and see the truth for the darkness it is.
Sharing of information can be restricted though for various reasons, as has been suggested happened regarding Pearl Harbor.
So sure, there are probably some signals the USA won't receive, but they still get the bulk of it.
And this is already being criticized over and over again. With various German government organizations now actively moving away from Microsoft and demonstrating that you don't need Outlook & Office 365 to run a government, I would be quite surprised if the possibility of doing the same here won't at least be discussed any time something needs an overhaul.
People in high places only know Microsoft and they don't want to risk having to learn something new. National security isn't as big of a deal as having to spend a few afternoons of training, after all.
I always found the framing on this funny. Europeans will talk about data sovereignty and decreasing reliance on the Americans and simultaneously cry foul when the Americans threaten to take their ball and go home.
I am sure that you are aware that there are more than one person in Europe, and most of the countries there being democracies, those people are allowed to have different opinions. They even have the right to express them, go figure!
You won’t because your administration is not stupid and knows what kind of soft power it gives them. But I really, sincerely, wish they would fuck off.
> Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
Talk about irony.
You can still take your ball.
This is a nearly decade-old baseless conspiracy theory.
They are fighting against a country with something like 1/5th of their population so this reasoning is completely fallacious. You will use any advantage gained by Russia as evidence of collusion without demonstrating that the advantage was based on collusion. The intelligence agencies have tried and failed to prove this theory of Russian infiltrationism for more than 10 years now; you haven’t seen something that they’ve missed.
I remember the Mueller report explicitly stating they would say he was innocent if the evidence showed but that they could not indict a sitting president.
The theory might be incorrect be incorrect, but to claim it’s baseless is factually wrong
Source: I was inside one of their offices for a few Azure trainings.
"De Belastingdienst, met daarnaast ook de Douane en de Dienst Toeslagen, gebruikt momenteel eigen software voor kantoorautomatisering."
This is M365 so it's not to do with Azure. It says they used their own office software before that was not cloud. That's what I referred to.
I was not aware what they do with the more traditional cloud stuff but I'm not surprised they handed everything on a silver platter to the US though. The neolib party that has been in power for the last 20 years is super US centric and their previous prime minister is now acting as Trump's lapdog as general secretary of NATO.
Then as we grew the finance team, they found that Google Docs couldn't handle the spreadsheets they needed, and even Excel on Mac wasn't compatible.
So, the Finance team started running VM's where they could run Windows and native Excel. Then as they grew (in size and power) they found themselves using the VM so much that they started moving from Mac to Windows laptops. Then as our windows footprint grew, more and more departments started requesting Windows.
When I left around 25% of the ~1000 person company was on Windows (almost all on the corporate admin side, engineering remained overwhelmingly on Mac), and the Windows support team was twice as large as the team that managed the Mac infrastructure.
For other office apps, the alternatives work, although I don’t know how, for example, LibreOffice fares with collaborative editing.
Microsoft could have worked to make access more accessible to non technical users. But they didn't bother.
We will probably have fusion power first.
But even knowledge that your department must support non-Microsoft way is good, as it helps getting at least some parts vendor-neutral.
Same as security -- there's no perfect security, but the grade matters.
But even knowledge that your department must support non-Microsoft way is good, as it helps getting at least some parts vendor-neutral.
Same as security -- there's no perfect security, but the grade matters a lot.
The solution isn't going for a few cloud products, or Libre Office, the solution has to be the whole stack like during cold war days when almost every nation had their own computing stack.
That said, the current American administration probably doesn't see Russia as a threat.
America has always been spying on Europe, making it a bit harder by not willingly providing intel is a step in the right direction at least.
That's just pabulum for the masses which you're better off not repeating so as not to appear so easily fooled. Keep your friends close and your enemy closer [1] rings a bell I assume?
[1] https://www.thehistoryofenglish.com/keep-your-friends-close-...
That this is the strategy being deployed is so far without meaningful evidence as far as the rest of the world is concerned.
It appears far more scattergun, corrupted, ignorant, incompetent and focused on the aggrandisement of US leadership than really at any time in US history.
Gee, you think? https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/pete-hegseth-tie-causes-...
The entire Trump administration is indistinguishable from a deliberate -- and very successful -- attack.
No, if they did, they'd know about certain attacks or planned attacks earlier [1]. So they should but they don't.
[1] https://www.amazon.nl/Het-oorlog-maar-niemand-ziet/dp/946381... - not an affiliated link, just the first one I could find.
Many residents would rather see the American ships leave than arrive. Curaçao traditionally maintains close ties with Venezuela, and residents fear the island will be drawn into a geopolitical conflict. [...] The Dutch government determines the course in these areas under pressure from Washington, while Curaçao itself has little influence.
https://nos.nl/artikel/2580380-curacao-voelt-spanning-tussen...
Compared to the early years of the Donbas invasion, having a leader full of hot air is small potatoes.
There's always room for spies to get what they want. It's just a matter of what that will be.
[0] https://www.gasunie.nl/en/gas-infrastructure/blog-247-energy...
[0]: The Slochteren field still has plenty of gas remaining. It was shut down due to pushback from the inhabitants of Groningen, whose houses were being destroyed by earthquakes - caused by soil subsidence as a result of gas extraction. If there were to have been a serious war with Russia at that point, The Netherlands could've trivially shut off all gas imports by scaling the extraction back up.
The problem with earthquakes is no one wants to be held accountable when a house is destroyed and people die.
> Considering Europe didn't yet view Russia as a genuine threat it's not exactly surprising that importing Russian gas was seen as a viable short-term strategy.
That's exactly what I'm talking about. Everything should have told Europeans that Russia was reverting back to its old autocratic imperial ways. Everything. Ukrainian politicians and internal dissidents were being poisoned with dioxins and radioisotopes almost 20 years ago by Russian agents. Putin was stacking on more and more repression as the years went by. Hacking campaigns have been a constant problem in the West for decades with strong evidence to suggest the Russian government as a threat actor. The Russian military was building weapons specifically designed to counter NATO, which is the backbone of strategic defense in Europe. And that's before you take into account things like the South Ossetia war which saw the Russians literally invade another country for wanting to move towards a Western sphere of influence.
What was funding all of this? Purchases of Russian petroleum products by Europeans who were told over and over to stop by American allies, only to be caught with their flies unzipped when the tanks started rolling into the Donbas three years ago.
I have no reason to think that the continent will behave any differently when faced with a Trump administration that would give them benefits to look the other way. The damage he could do to the continent is insignificant compared to what Putin did.
</sarcasm>
I've never seen one human being own another human being so completely yet it seems to be a complete non-story.
Or what does that even mean to you. Is socialism when state exists? You are not first American to say that, and every time it happens, I'm genuinely surprised. (I mean, rhetorical question. I suppose that's what socialism is to you. And you are a part of a problem too, because you are growing up internally people who genuinely believe that socialism is good because it means healthcare and higher education. Words no longer have meaning to you in America.)
I've lived in the US and in Europe and the UK. Shared culture is still very significant. If anything, maybe even closer now than in the 90s.
There's probably other reasons to think about the why and how of alliances than these.
I'm not a big fan of the UK, I grew up there and left. But this whole UK is authoritarian thing is totally overblown in the US media and HN comments. Having free speech restrictions implemented by an elected government isn't authoritarian. You could even say that having totally free speech imposed by a non-elected government is authoritarian if people don't want it. These things are separate. I listen to UK media quite often (topical comedies mostly) and my feeling is that these laws are generally supported. There's a lot of negativity about social media from bullying up to incitement of violence.
So is the EU, btw: Hungary, Turkey, and Israel.
Which European countries would you consider to be socialist? Or perhaps a better question is what makes a country socialist?
Which personal freedoms are different in the US vs Europe?
I've lived in both US and Europe, and have an opinion on this, but really would like your take.
> socialism vs capitalism
What is different is that there is more opposition and cultural resistance to hyper capitalism. Think monopolies, corporatism, live-to-work, hustle-culture.
With regards to any messaging about "freedom" in the USA, be vigilant, I do think people will be unpleasantly surprised about what has been transacted away. Personal freedoms are indeed extremely important, so zero Schadenfreude here. And yes, those lobby groups in the EU fail to get their stupid anti-encryption laws passed, but they keep trying, so it is frightening. Citizens and visitors of the Five Eyes have lost any privacy already, but we need all of us to fight back.
TLDR: it is better to cooperate around common causes than to fight imaginary opponents. We are in the same boat.
In other words, you mean there isn't any country that you think could be an ally to the US?
Can you name any?
Me and my generation (born in the 80s) of Western European have grown up admiring the US. Listening to your music, watching your movies, wearing your brands. And we still do, mostly.
The unease seems to have started some time after 9/11 though. European countries joined various wars, that turned out to be mostly a grab for control of oil states. (WMD anyone?)
And the US basically just stopped leading the way on international cooperation. Instead of cofounding the Internation Court of Justice, the US threatened to invade The Hague because of it. Instead of leading the way on averting climate change, having the tech, the global power and the money to do so, the US chose to block much of the initiative coming from elsewhere. And there've been many similar things.
So yeah, to me at least the US feels kind of like an old friend that's been derailed. By 9/11, perhaps.
I'd love to be proven wrong. I'd love to come back to visit the US more often in the future. But with this administration, I just won't risk it. And also.. I just don't want to, at the moment. :-/
(Kind of) Changed my mind award <3
The only hope is that the next administration will be a bit less eager to cut ties with all its allies and might fix some of the self-inflicted damage.
I mean, the US was paying for the ability to project both force and influence all over the world. Clearly, the US isn't willing to pay for either thing at the moment.
More than usual? Not really
Source?
We do have evidence that he stepped down after his first term.
Edit: I know about January 6th, I thought OP was talking about something else, my mistake.
Considering he was prosecuted for other things, I'm guessing there was not any actual evidence to support even a prosection?
Here is an event that happened on Saturday, 7 million plus people took to the streets.
One side says this was a Hate America rally made up of marxists, hamas supporters and protestors paid by George Soros. The president shared an AI video of himself in a crown flying over the protesters he is supposed to represent dumping shit on them.
Every news outlet on the other side says it was a peaceful protest against authoritarian overreach.
Call me a biased leftist but the misinformation and divisive bullshit is severely tipped to the right side of the scale.
I am less inclined: “he did leave though” as evidence of innocence was a typical bad faith sea-lioned argument throughout election season.
You don't have to guess, there was.
So much so that the special counsel that was shut down when Trump won re-election took the extraordinary step of declaring publicly that he had more than enough evidence to secure conviction of Donald Trump for Jan 6th.
https://www.npr.org/2025/01/14/g-s1-42358/trump-jack-smith-e...
[1] https://www.reuters.com/resizer/v2/SNVVJFX2IVP2NLXEUPMJJMH2S...
And making excuses for political violence guarantees that there will be more in the future. It should never be tolerated.
The attack on the Capitol wasn't meant to overthrow the government itself. It was meant to stop the certification, which it did, so that the rest of the plan could take place.
Under no circumstances take my word for it all of this is freely available.
What I mean is - yes, the document you linked seems quite plausible, I hadn’t read about that before. But, based on the reaction I see to January 6th from the public, I have trouble believing that the public reaction is driven by an understanding of the alleged plot and not from media driven hysteria. Are we saying that the media is drumming up hysteria based on the actual plot, but since the common man doesn’t actually understand such things typically that the media doing so is justified?
Like to me an authentic negative reaction to reading about the plot would be something like disappointment that the type of legal strategizing that happens in courtrooms has made its way into politics. And I think even you personally are using the language “insurrection” and “attack”, which doesn’t really line up with the alleged plot at all, does it? This is what I’m confused about.
To this claim that "5 people died" - how many were shot by the "violent insurrectionists"?
The answer: none.
1 policeman had a stroke and 4 committed suicide. You cannot blame the J6ers for the policemen's pre-existing conditions or suicidal tendencies. None of the suicides were coerced. The only person who was killed was the aforementioned pro trump woman.
You do know they were convicted in court?
You can start an armed revolt, but you have no idea what's going to happen afterwards.
I'm not a fan of shameless whataboutisms, but this one is particularly bad. The attempted insurrection on January 6th had nothing to do with Black Lives Matter riots (Funny, you can never say those words. It's always an abbreviation).
It was a premeditated attack on the Capitol at the exact time and place the new president was being certified.
It is the most cut and dry example of an attempted coup this country has seen in decades, and it was organized and executed by the sitting, and current President.
There's no reason for you to try to remake history. Your guy got back into power and made all of his legal problems disappear.
He has not avoided prison because he was somehow not guilty. He avoided prison by overcoming the legal system.
> He avoided prison by overcoming the legal system.
100%. He found a flaw and exploited it to escape justice, which is different than not being guilty of the crimes he clearly committed.
He was in the process of being tried in multiple cases in multiple jurisdictions regarding his attempts to compromise an American election, each time with overwhelming, nearly comical evidence against him.
Saying he's innocent until proven guilty not only ignores the reality that the cases against him, even based on what is publicly available evidence, were airtight, but also the fact that these cases only went away because he won re-election and made them go away.
That's not justice.
Only for once he didn’t chicken out.
Trump’s obvious, incandescent anger at Pence not doing his bidding makes it clear what that whole “protest” (along with Trump’s own plan to join it) was all about.
Any other interpretation is really a ludicrous, bad faith reframing of quite commonplace behaviour in attempted overthrows.
You could have just said you didn't read the John Eastman memo and left it there. Or any of the Jack Smith findings. There was a coordinated top-down plan to violate the Electoral Count Act, its not even hidden. Just say you have no clue what you're talking about next time
Show me where exactly in the Eastman memo, the so called "coup plot", it calls for a group of protesters to go into the Capitol?
Spoiler: It doesn't. So it's actually you who hasn't read the memos. If anything, it shows Trump sought to remain president by legal means, a gray area at worst, but nothing to do with the "violent insurrection" claimed.
> Jack Smith findings
You mean the cases that were thrown out by the courts? And another that he closed himself? In other words, they had 4 years and found nothing. You are innocent until proven guilty, and ultimately he proved nothing.
Just say you have no clue what you're talking about next time.
Really cynical stuff. The Eastman memo was the blueprint on how to actually stop Biden's certification. That was the paperwork, the legal attack. January 6th was the kinetic attack.
Just because both actions were not detailed in the same piece of paper does not mean they weren't both part of a clearly coordinated action (of which the special counsel agreed).
https://cdn.cnn.com/cnn/2021/images/09/20/eastman.memo.pdf
> You mean the cases that were thrown out by the courts?
Wrong again. His findings were not thrown out. He ended the case himself because he knew Trump would shut him down anyway once back in office.
Look, I get it. This is a narrative that is very important to you. You can't believe that your side are the violent ones or your president is the lawless one. So much of this is a waste of time.
Just know that this is your narrative and it has no connection to reality.
You do realize John Eastman himself literally says he would lose 9-0 [1] when heard in the supreme court, admitting he is illegally violating the ECA with no sound legal argument. And he was literally disbarred for this behavior. [2] How do you reconcile with this cognitive dissonance?
> In other words, they had 4 years and found nothing.
So you just admit you have never heard the Jack Smith report. Just say that next time, why lie?
[1] https://www.nationalreview.com/news/eastman-admitted-bid-to-... [2] https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/17/california-court-jo...
Anyway, this is why I usually avoid talking about politics.
I'm sorry for the consternation that I caused.
“I don’t kid. Let me just tell you. Let me make it clear”
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/23/trump-joking-slowin...
While I highly doubt that Dutch Intelligence is significantly more accountable tothat the American ones are, and therefore don't assume that any meaningful intelligence will actually be withheld (or at least, if is being withheld, it isn't because of the decision being discussed in this piece), BUT it is at least interesting that they made this announcement, which suggests some element somewhere in the European deep state is at least trying to pressure Washington in some way.
josefritzishere•3mo ago