This is the source article (in Danish) for the bluesky posts:
https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/indland/groenland/danmark-forbered...
https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/indland/groenland/danmark-forbered...
Using F35 in this situation is like brining in a billion dollar paperweight to the battle.s
And the same goes for Canada, possibly worse. You don't go around threatening your allies unless you really have plans and that's why you don't elect senile old guys to positions of power.
They're wise to the fact that "the Stable Genius" isn't going to try anything violent with Denmark/Greenland, but they still want to prevent him thinking about just stealing territory "peacefully."
The idea was to make it as difficult as possible to invade, not to stop it, because that’s largely impossible.
Sometimes these billion dollar high tech things work.
So you don't attack Greenland. Because that would be wrong.
Unless all that stuff about shining cities on hills was nonsense. Instead of making America great again the US has ceded power to China.
The assumption was - and still is - that the USA wasn't posturing either.
We (and I realize I obviously don't speak for all of Europe but I have my finger on the pulse in many places here) are also not assuming that when Trump is gone the USA will go back to normal.
I can't say I know much about how the EU operates or how quickly their Open Digital Ecosystems initiative could take shape, but this is a really opportune time to build a better tech industry.
Anyone of principle would have been saying this before 2025, and far louder.
If mainstream media in the US showed this, I bet the politics would look different.
Didn't UK get really really annoyed with France in the one instance their kill switch Didn't work?
There was similar tough talk in 1940 and Denmark lasted 6 hours. Without capitulation the country would have been razed. But surrender saw it able to keep some level of control and thus extricate the Jewish population in relative safety which would not otherwise have been possible.
If the people voted Trump in to office twice, it’ll happen again. It’s a divided country where propaganda has a strong hold.
They were being discussed a year ago, too, they just got flagged. Make sure to check /active
People hated Americans in the 2000s invasion of Iraq. There were popular rock songs about it and students were hesitant to say they were American.
It seems to go in cycles. Next president many will forget.
Such is the power and fickleness of the American system.
True both outside AND inside the country.
Some people in Europe were not that happy when Biden told on public television that the Nord Stream pipeline will be blown up somehow, but luckily the media was good in not talking too much about it and later he listened to his own advisors better about how to communicate.
Covid showed us how economically dependent we are to major manufacturing countries like China. Paper money != ability to manufacture.
Russia broke any notion of peace that can be funded by cheap energy. It will always be a tool used against you, and Russia will not change.
The axis of US+Israel is breaking down the international system of laws and diplomacy. It’s going to be in a state even worse than the heights of the Cold War. Nukes are now a more favored instrument of peace compared to diplomacy.
Is it worth fighting for what we had, or should we fight for something better? Who knows.
(Edit: I don’t think non-Europeans can appreciate the whiplash suffered in our populations. In the span of around two years, European leaders drew red lines on political, economical and cultural decoupling from Russia based on human rights and the rule of law, then had to explain why preventable atrocities happening to civilians in the Mideast is not against our values and laws concerning human rights.)
The worst part to me feels like US has lost trust and such soft power loss is irrecoverable no matter what happens now :/
A common statement I hear from people, or maybe its just what I think, but its like "How can we trust US after this" and hey mind you, Trump still has 3 years in office, but even if political parties change, how can we trust the whole system for not having another Trump moment.
So this loss of soft power is quite a permanent loss. US has to now condition itself to live with it accordingly and live with some shame (which is something that I am observing too of people not being proud of being american anymore seeing the devastation caused by it)
Countries across the world will have to treat US as unpredictable from now on and treat its financial markets in the same way as well.
The worst part out of all of this is that it hurts the average day american the most not the people at the top who are doing all of this and the average person has no say in all of this seeing their country being destroyed by wreckless actions.
The sad part is that people did have many wake up calls to be honest, greenland was first joked about and then became so serious that denmark was preparing only to then move to iran now impacting the normal people's everyday life with oil price increases all across the world..
I do think that the people of US tried to stand up against the oppression by protests but some were shot (rest in peace) and others were detained.
The sad part is that the people tried their best but it still wasn't enough to stop all of this from happening. It was maybe too late after the election.
Thus, some lessons need to be learned again and again. Some rights fought for again and again.
Because US administration is compromised. Putin says jump, Krasnov asks how high.
And yes, it certainly has served America's interests to have a weak Europe that's dependent on it. But seeing that as "good will" seems like a distortion.
Rhetoric and public support aside, I honestly very much doubt that there will be a solid EU military response. For many countries like Baltic, Eastern Europe and Nordic countries (ironically DK included). US military support means life or death of their countries. I imagine they'd stall response like what Hungary did and hope that Greenland annexed become fait accompli.
Um, lots of us have doubts about that. The USA couldn't win against Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq; why do you think it could win against Greenland? Greenlanders actually have a lot of guns; and likely most of Europe and Canada would also go to war against the USA.
I’m not suggesting this is a good idea or anything but there’s a ton of other ways that something like this could play out which involves more difficult ways to counter than you might think.
> Instead of making America great again the US has ceded power to China.
What power has the US ceded?
I wonder which particular set of states that are united might have given people the impression that might work in recent times!
> There was similar tough talk in 1940
If your comparison there is intentional, we agree which side of history the current US regime is on. Unless it gets to write that history, of course.
And, Norway did fight back, and lost. How much worse did that work out for Norway than for Denmark?
The Post-American Internet
That being said, I don't think we can pin this particular expression of derangement on age, or at least not age alone. Trump has nothing to lose. He cannot run again. He doesn't care one whit about the common good or even tawdry partisan interests. This is his unhinged narcissism at work, abetted by a cultish, smarmy, obsequious coterie of yes-men that surrounds him.
So uh, threads with wrongspeak in them are still hidden.
If you have never seen war up close then I am happy to forgive you, but trust me, in 'actual war' there is no possibility of success for anybody, there are only degrees of damage and degrees of grief and illusions to the contrary are focused on the few people that manage to get out of war with the profits in their pockets. Everybody else suffers.
What are we supposed to do, just fucking give up?
Assume that Denmark's strategic success criteria is not "win up-front battles with US armed forces". And that they understand the difference between "lost battle(s), got occupied" and "nation permanently removed from existence".
Also, US service members are not slavishly loyal Clone Troopers. That I've heard, the greatest fear of most senior American officers is that the CIC will issue orders sufficiently offensive to the lower ranks that they will be disobeyed at scale.
Who is the leader in culture, business, technology? The only other contender I can think of is China.
And this is better?
Imprisonment would be a good starting point though. Together with education, regulation and reforming the political system. But this takes decades.
Just like Ukraine, Europe does not want war, doesn't want to see their kids die for the umpteenth time so that fat cats can line their pockets. But if push comes to shove we would be absolutely capable of doing it, either outright or by slower guerilla like means. Bombing shit is easy. Taking over territory and holding it is much, much harder, infinitely more so if the population holds a grudge. Note that the Dutch resistance killed more German soldiers than the army ever did. Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, lots of countries in Europe. Examples aplenty.
The war in Ukraine is literally at the EU's border. It could be destabilizing in many ways. It's not just about moral reasons. By the way, I see similarities between Putin and Trump as they both started wars against big countries without thinking ahead more than three days. It's one more reason to strengthen the EU.
It has strengthened us.
Nordics and the Baltics are very pro Ukraine, we have a common enemy now to focus on.
Poland has stepped up too militarlity.
Sweden where I am has seen a HUGE uplift in military spend, and the companies like SAAB and Bofors (heheh)
Germany is the big loser as they had cheap Russian energy and shut down their nuclear plants.
Where in Europe are you from exactly?
EU overall is pro Ukraine except for Hungary...
In summary, what are you on about? And post your passport.
Oh, and Israel is our ally. I am sick of EU being so pro Hamas and pro Iran. Thankfully our government cut down on grants to the MENA and increased to Ukraine!
Anyone who has studied American history knows the US has been unreliable. Just look at how they made and then broke treaties with Native Americans. It's part of the foundation of the country.
1. Geopolitics is always unpredictable. Maybe the US has been unreliable lately, but the idea that there are states out there which have been bastions of reliability is not historically accurate. All great powers have screwed people over or made disastrous decisions. It’s mostly just the US’s turn now.
2. This all happened 20 years ago with Iraq. All it really took was a charismatic president (Obama) to undo the 8+ years of bad international relations. All it will probably take again is a charismatic reliable president to set things back on track.
3. Which leads me to my third point, which is that most foreigners understand that the American government is separate from the people and separate from the corporations. And more importantly, changing the world system dramatically is really hard, and has a lot of friction. It will be a lot easier for states to go back to the pre-2024 status quo than to embark upon something entirely novel.
Not necessarily with similar judicial executions. Fair trials and fair and exemplary punitive measures would be enough for me.
I lost respect when Obama let Bush Jr administration off the hook. It essentially set the tone that it is ok to behave like that, that there would be no consequences.
Although given the current lunatic escapade it does seem like a good moment to remove him from office. There must be someone somewhere in the administration that thinks another forever war is a bad idea, even if they aren't worried about WWIII. I've never seen a presidency implode so quickly - this has to be the most illegal, unconstitutional, unmandated, immoral and ill-advised war of choice the US has launched in decades.
[0] https://www.newsweek.com/chart-shows-net-worth-us-presidents...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_presidents_of_the_Unit...
On the topic of manufacturing outside China, the YouTuber "Smarter Every day" (Destin Sandlin) has a series on manufacturing and feels strongly about manufacturing having moved out of the country. As an experiment he tried to manufacture something without China, but was unable to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZTGwcHQfLY
1. Denmark cannot win militarily
2. You are suggesting Denmark would not capitulate and indeed enter into a state of war
What do you think happens in this situation?
They're so close to getting it. So very, frustratingly close.
At least one of them got published somewhere recently, might have been The Atlantic. You just wish you could smack them with a clue-stick.
> Tutelage is a comfortable relationship for the senior partner, but it is demoralizing in the long run. It breeds illusions of omniscience on one side and attitudes of impotent irresponsibility on the other
Meant. They have begun to realize that this has changed and realize that if this were put to the test that the US military would likely not hold up their end of NATO.
What you wrote would have made good sense in 2015, but today it makes a lot less sense and with every passing day that gap is widening. The Baltics have become the voice of reason and ethics in Europe, Poland is much stronger than parties outside of Europe seem to realize, France is always going to be a force to be reckoned with and we have no doubt about where the UK stands, then there are Finland, Sweden and Norway who all are automatically on the side of anything that Denmark is involved in and I wouldn't be surprised at all if Canada would become part of it, because they too have a lot to lose.
There is a good reason why Putin has not risked engaging the EU and that's not just because the United States is still formally part of NATO.
If it was because of resources, then American companies are frankly free to extract them as long as they reach deals with Greenland about it. If the USA had waited a few years for Greenland to gain more independence then it would have been even easier.
Anyway, there’s actually an index for soft power. Eliminating USAID halved that index. China built the highways, hospitals and water treatment instead.
"to be an enemy of america can be dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal"
So yeah, America has never been trustworthy in a way but it still had its upsides and it still had some laws and checks and people still believed in some aspects of the American dream somewhat, Not anymore.
But now?,it has never been this less trustworthy either in a way to the whole world.
Our debt to the US has long been paid off. It was paid off when we submitted to their economic world order, when we bought their goods and their entertainment, when we bought their software and let our own software industry dwindle, and finally when we went to war on their side on their questionable military adventures.
We owe the US nothing. I will still help them when they actually want it, but not like this.
Which allied countries? And (I assume we are talking about the USA) why would it not exist?
Do Americans support this violent annexation and expansion? As a European I'm feeling threatened. Very few countries have Atom Bombs and can say NO to the USA.
>> And this is better?
Who says you need a leader in each of those? Maybe it's post-centralization, or in other words decentralization which people have been wanting for the internet for a while now.
Maybe the predecessor regime is corrupt. Maybe not. But the first thing the new regime always does is to arrange the show trials to establish their own bona fides.
Europe could easily defeat Russia without outside help (look at how well Ukraine is doing with far less!), but we still fear Russia because that's what we're used to. That's what we were told to do and what we have embraced. We need to grow out of that and stand on our own feet again.
This is the moment it helps to have allies. Like an insurance. Even if you can manage without, it hurts less if you have them.
To me it makes more sense to focus on that perspective.
Canada and the US share border and almost all meaningful infra of Canada is located in that thin border area. The US can obliterate much of Canada with artillery, various types of missiles, bombs etc. etc. Canada has nothing to counter it with. So no, I doubt Canada is that suicidal (I am Canadian btw).
It will cost a fortune, but nobody is going to go 500 miles over an ice pack to raid a US mining settlement.
Before this, we (large multinational infra company) were happily using AWS, microsoft and a bunch of other US based companies.
Now we are beginning the migration away, not because its cheaper or better, but because we just don't think that we can trust the contracts we have with them any more.
This isn't a sudden thing, we are not going to do it over night. But we are not renewing multi-million dollar contracts in the coming years for stuff that would have been a no brainer last year.
That was a signal, thankfully there are still adults in the USA who recognised it.
Seriously?
You live in a multi-polar world, there are three major power blocks and Europe isn't one of them, though that may change now (we're sick of war, but we're also sick of the threat of war, which one of the two will win out is up for grabs). There is - or rather, was, by now - Russia, China and the USA. Russia is unacceptable for many reasons, China is too clever for its own good in the longer term and the United States was historically our ally.
The United States has thrown away 80 years or so of very carefully and very expensively built up soft power because someone didn't understand the concept (apparently just like you). That doesn't translate into ownership and it doesn't in any way give you control but it ensures that things will, at least most of the times, go your way because of momentum and because it makes sense by default. Just like you may disagree on some stuff with your friends but you're not going to rob their homes, just because you can (and maybe just because they gave you the key to the back door).
You throw that away at your peril and because Russia is in no way capable of capitalizing on that the Chinese are. I wouldn't be surprised at all if in a decade or two the US$ is no longer the reserve currency. It could happen a lot faster than that. The US economy is teetering on the edge of the abyss and if you think that your ability to project power isn't diminished then maybe by the end of the Iran war you'll get it.
The US maximized its post-war power on the 10th of September 2001. Since then it has gone down hill very steadily and the fall rapidly accelerated with Trump. I see no reason to believe this will change, all institutions that were supposed to provide checks and balances have failed. And all China has to do is to look sane in comparison, that's not super hard.
Economic power (US will no longer be the world reserve currency).
The power of allies (see Trump begging for help in Hormuz).
All the soft power it ever had.
Israel is Europe's shame, not ally. The UK, France and the US share full responsibility for the creation of the state of Israel, and every day that Europe refuses to denounce Israel, its culpability for Israel's actions grows.
I think your argument falls apart here. The US built a coalition of on side allies before invading Iraq. They went to the UN too. There was significant opposition to the war, and I was a student at the time in the UK so was surrounded and involved in that. However, European countries were not politically blindsided. Some were going in with the US, including Denmark I believe.
Just count all the things that america did in the last year and try to imagine as a foreigner or foreign nation once as an exercise. All of the things that America has done in the past year is just quite so much to list here even.
No amount of charm within a president might fix or make the people of denmark/EU/even the world, forget the greenland crisis and many others.
This is fundamentally different, in my opinion.
> 3. Which leads me to my third point, which is that most foreigners understand that the American government is separate from the people and separate from the corporations. And more importantly, changing the world system dramatically is really hard, and has a lot of friction. It will be a lot easier for states to go back to the pre-2024 status quo than to embark upon something entirely novel.
Yea, we do but we can only tolerate so much at a certain point too. This goes to my point again but we are forgetting that US is still voted by its people. Yes the two party system corners the people and we are sympathetic of that, but the world/foreigners (atleast me) sympathesize with the american citizens but at the same time, can't trust them.
This isn't something even foreigner related issue but the people of America themselves don't trust their fellow neighbours now as I read the comments of this post and many others.
We sympathize with the people of America but sadly, the world doesn't trust America anymore, Trust is quite brittle and delicate thing so its quite an miracle we still saw trust bounce so many times but right now the glass of trust has shattered (as evident by Denmark preparing for almost war against America)
I can be wrong, I usually am but that's just my understanding.
https://www.britannica.com/question/Which-countries-fought-o...
We'd have been part of the German Reich or the USSR for sure.
I make a point of visiting the war graves every year, just to remind me not to take anything for granted.
I am doing what I can and then some, and to be complete I should mention I am aware of multiple other HN'ers doing their bit too.
China is far more reliable and dependable than dealing with a lying narcissistic paedophile and his cronies.
I can just imagine him saying, as he walks into the TV room in the Whitehouse, "I went to Glitterhoof's chamber and gave him a good tumble! It is good to be the king!"
> We owe the US nothing.
Hear hear. Well said
The brutality of the School of Americas might indicate otherwise.
Now rebranded as
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Hemisphere_Institute_f...
Civil forfeiture would do just fine. Such a wonderful tool. /s
For me, Dan Carlin said it perfectly - I want the America from the promotional material.
Soft power? Have you been sleeping during the 20th century? The formidable military power of the US comes from a constant state of war.
And the asset seizure would be for the proceeds of all the open bribery, at the very least.
Meanwhile they stand to lose a lot. There have been many NATO exercises that showed US aircraft carriers to be vulnerable to European submarines, so they can't park their fleet too close. They have to fly between NATO members Canada and Iceland. How would soldiers feel if they're forced to fight all their former allies? How would the US citizens feel?
No. But Denmark lacks the armored divisions, bomber wings, carrier task forces, etc. to pursue a "we've got a bigger stick" strategy. And undermining your opponent's will to fight was routine back when the Old Testament was written.
> Is rationality dead?
By a couple accounts I've heard, desperate senior US officers used the pre-February situation with Iran to lure Trump's attention away from Denmark/Greenland.
(If you want rational behavior from the current POTUS - um, yes, my deepest condolences, but...)
either they kill them early (delete them) or hn policy quietly changed
But China currently is a lot more stable and somewhat more trustworthy than the U.S.
Unless we go full evilmode and just run them with slave labor.
Actually, in a number of cases EU cloud is cheaper and better.
In terms of "better", spec wise it is not uncommon to get more bang for your buck in the EU cloud, especially around compute.
In terms of "cheaper", that too. AWS, Azure etc. will happily sit there all day nickle and diming you through obscure pricing structures with all sorts of small-print. Good luck, for example, figuring out if you're going to go over your "provisioned IOPS-month" on AWS EBS, whatever the hell that is. And have fun with all the nickle-and-diming on AWS S3. Meanwhile on EU providers a lot of stuff is free that the US providers nickle and dime you for, and the stuff that is charged is done in a manner where you actually CAN forecast your spend.
And then of course there is the real EU sovereignty. Not the fake US-cloud-in-Europe which despite what the US providers salesdroids try to tell you is still subject to CLOUD, PATRIOT and everything else.
Don't go around poking hornets nests if you don't want to get stung.
I just ordered a bunch of drone parts. The majority of those part were only available from China.
We need to prosecute both the Biden and Trump administration, the Israeli leadership, and the leadership of most European countries. Never again is never again.
Jan 6th 2021 was the turning point.
The one thing that is common about 'rationalists' is that they share a lot of the viewpoints with other ra*ists and that's not the world many of us want to live in.
Sure, you can take it. But can you afford to take it?
The answer is most likely you can't. And so far every attempt to show John Mearheimers superiority has been the equivalent of 'just relax and enjoy it'.
Guess what? We won't. Alliances are made voluntarily, not through conquest.
this kind of corruption and extortion, if in China, would see executions, e.g.
https://nordictimes.com/world/china-executes-senior-official...
Ukraine has received unbelieviable levels of aid from NATO, esp. the US.
10000+ Javelin missiles, WW3 levels of cluster munitions that were slated to be decommissioned in the US, multiple factories in the EU making shells that go straight to the AFU (e.g. Bulgarian 152mm), etc.
there is no way they'd have made it 6+ months let alone 4 years without the US' heavy backing.
I am curious how much of NATO's hardware originate from the / depends on the US and and what will suddenly stop working if the US decides to break military alliance.
Similarly, while it's great to take a principled stand here (it's yet again interesting how it's always a principled stand against American companies but never others), while you are busy spending time and money migrating away from AWS to a competing product that has worse features and is more expensive as you said, you should hope your competitors are too because if not, they're going to be delivering features faster and more cheaply. Something worth thinking about there.
I don't think Microsoft losing some European contracts is an example of the US ceding power.
There has always been a meddlesome quality to the USA that the rest of the so called developed world turned a blind eye to. Along the lines of 'their bastards, but at least they're our bastards'. Of course that does not make it good, but the balance calculation worked out in favor of toeing the line and being careful not to get pulled out of joint too much. 9/11 changed all that and effectively Bin Laden forced the USA to lower its mask for long enough that the world could no longer ignore the bad sides of Uncle Sam. Even that would have not been enough to seal it, but Trump has managed to accomplish this in record time.
We live in a multi-polar world. Sure. But I disagree with your assertion that there are three major power blocks. The US and China are the only two. Europe has a decent sized and advanced economy but it lacks military power and is politically fragmented and always will be. China is building military power but lacks the ability and will to project that power. Manufacturing and economic powerhouse rivaling the United States. No doubt about that.
Russia isn't a pole in this world. As President Obama said back in the 2010s I believe "Russia is a nuclear armed gas station". That was true then, and it's still true today.
> The United States has thrown away 80 years or so of very carefully and very expensively built up soft power because someone didn't understand the concept (apparently just like you).
Well, I don't think this is true for one. And secondly if it takes just a year or so to throw away that power then it was just a matter of time until the EU got mad at the US for doing something and threw it away anyways.
> You throw that away at your peril and because Russia is in no way capable of capitalizing on that the Chinese are.
What soft power is the Chinese capitalizing on? Is it their support for Russia and supplying money, weapons, and equipment for their war in Ukraine? Or is it the soft power they had in Venezuela, Cuba, and Iran that they have just lost because of US military action?
> I wouldn't be surprised at all if in a decade or two the US$ is no longer the reserve currency. It could happen a lot faster than that. The US economy is teetering on the edge of the abyss and if you think that your ability to project power isn't diminished then maybe by the end of the Iran war you'll get it.
The US ability to project power isn't being diminished by the Iran war, only being exercised. Talking heads for some reason think that when you launch an aerial assault against a country that is amassing ballistic missiles, drones (which they build and sell to Russia to go bomb innocent Ukrainians), and more that it should be over within 24 hours and that the enemy shouldn't be able to fight back. It's unrealistic.
Nevermind Iran launching these missiles at civilian targets in countries throughout the Middle East. I get the argument that if you hose a US military base that the base is a target, but there's no excuse for attacking civilian apartment complexes and such.
It also misses the fact that, we've seen this movie before with North Korea. Except if Iran gets a nuclear weapon they also have control over your oil supply and it would kick off a nuclear arms race in the region because Saudi Arabia and others certainly aren't going to let Iran be the only one with nuclear weapons.
These are tough problems to deal with, and from the sidelines it's easy to think about how simple the solution is or point out all the mistakes, but the alternative headline here is the US does nothing, all of these Middle Eastern countries get nuclear bombs, Iran loads up on ballistic missiles, and then who knows exactly what will happen? Do they nuke Israel and Israel nukes them back? Do they extract a toll on oil passing through the Straight of Hormuz like they are as of today declaring they will do?
Well, the west disagrees with you.
What country in Europe are you in and who do you vote for?
And then they ridiculed us for that.
And then asked for help in another war they just started.
Oh, there is plenty of circumstantial evidence, but nothing that would constitute proof without access to the results of a detailed medical examination. Source: watching the decline of family members, and others in the care home my mother is currently in.
The increasing randomness and apparent lack of concentration, the “resting his eyes” in some meetings, the leaning, etc. A lot of the signs could be other things of course, like just plain ol' age related decline. But if the people close to him don't at least have concerns, would he have been subject to the cognitive tests he is so proud of “winning”?
This is such a long-standing problem that people no longer even notice the crimes happening right in front of their eyes. It's just become normal.
As a reminder, reserve currencies are just currencies that are held in large amounts by national banks and other important institutions. The USD, like the Euro, Yen, Pound, and others are all reserve currencies.
The USD is the dominant currency, in part because the US is in the Middle East right now doing exactly what it is doing by using the military to enforce trade for oil in USD. But if the US loses that "status" it just.... reverts to being more like the EU? Doesn't seem so bad to me.
There's also pros/cons with being "the reserve currency".
> The power of allies (see Trump begging for help in Hormuz).
See Europe begging for help in Ukraine. I don't think this is a good argument. If 4 years of Trump being mean was all it took to erase all soft power the US ever had, then it never had it in the first place and it wasn't worth caring about.
So, most of the planet (1)
(1) Well, excluding Ethiopia because they still thought it was cool to have slaves.
Where I don't agree is that 1) this is somehow irreversible 2) that it really affects American citizens on the personal level – from personal experience, as an American living in Europe for the last decade, I've had basically zero negative interactions with people or hostile accusations. Most people do understand that the American government is a bit out of control, and American culture is in a tumultuous period. If anything I'd say it tends more toward sympathy than anger.
So while this is definitely a big, huge, giant problem, it's also a problem that I think the Europeans and Japanese want America to solve, and would basically rather America solve it than do anything else. Especially when there aren't really other geopolitical options at the table, the EU can't have a coherent singular opinion on Russia or Ukraine, etc.
PR spin aside, it was largely a force for global stability (a few notable and disastrous military quagmires aside). "Free trade" isn't much of a philosophy to hang your hat on but it is an ideal of sorts, and it allowed a more connected world.
Now? Brazen corruption, kleptocracy, hostility towards allies...
It's certainly fair to say the US never lived up to the ideals it espoused, but now it's not even espousing those ideals and seems to actively be working against them.
Bay of Pigs, regime changes all over including Iran, South Asia wars, Afghanistan (not the recent one, the one in the 80s), all the cold war stuff, etc etc.
Its about operational risk.
right now AWS is a key dependency, if that get turns off, we're fucked. we have mixed estate of end user devices, so its hard to turn them all off at once.
Personally I have a Lenovo laptop (China) running Ubuntu (UK), on an LG monitor (Korea) with a logitech (Switzerland) mouse on an Ikea (Denmark) desk connected to a Mikrotik (Latvia) router.
What I find more troubling is that Trump has popular support. It's just not Trump. The rot goes far deeper.
Where is Guthrie's guitar ?
Our president should be boring and relatively quiet. Congress should be our focus, not the president.
That's a weird statement. Like all it was were some empty words. The current system, which you don't think is worth caring about, has been exceptionally good for the US. The US is the wealthiest nation in the world. Do you think this is simply because Americans are superior human beings?
Also,
>See Europe begging for help in Ukraine
..what, exactly, are you trying to say here? Other than yes, the US does in fact seem to be siding with Putin in spite of a few attempts at acting neutral.
All the MENA countries are victims (besides Israel, they are evil)
https://cdn.ihsmarkit.com/www/images/0421/mapoverviewofchine...
https://africacenter.org/spotlight/china-port-development-af...
Two maps that show a small selection of Chinese infrastructure projects in Africa. See all those harbours?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_power_of_China
For example, one-third of the top 100 mobile games in Japan currently come from China.[20]
I'm short on time right now, so no more examples.
At most, old Singapore style corporeal punishment added to the mix perhaps.
Yes
> And of course he can be declared national threat and foreign agent
There is no evidence of that he is a foreign agent and there is no legal procedure (nor should there be) for declaring someone a "national threat."
> When there’s choice between the bad (block Trump and allies) and the worse (his ideas stay alive even if he is no longer in business)
This is inevitable and any government that tries to act against holders of an idea is a tyranny
> Legal matters are secondary, as long as majority is convinced that justice is served.
That is mob justice
However, if China does come to occupy a majorly influential seat at the table it will not be the for the first time. The last time it did, it did not impose it's will beyond its boundaries.
It is to be seen whether that repeats.
> from personal experience, as an American living in Europe for the last decade, I've had basically zero negative interactions with people or hostile accusations. Most people do understand that the American government is a bit out of control, and American culture is in a tumultuous period. If anything I'd say it tends more toward sympathy than anger
Imagining that America attacked Greenland Thus Denmark/EU and the fact that Denmark was genuinely preparing for this, Just imaginging America attack Greenland and I do feel like that the sentiments might change. (This is what had happened to Muslim people not even people of specific country but negative interactions against whole religions after 9/11)
I would agree with you if this was the last day of Trump administration, but far from it. We have to handle so much more of this current administration. It's literally only been a year to see so much shift. I hope you realize it that for the most part, America is busy with the Iran war but any assurances about the sovereignity of EU or any country in the world for that matter isn't made by America and everything is off the table and anything might happen. I am sure that both of us wasn't predicting an Iran war or a greenland invastion but here we are.
It just feels natural to me that if a single year can have this much impact and you have four years for something like this and the most important fact which I want to highlight again, people technically voted for this and can still technically vote for it again , there are no safeguards and the most important part was a belief that if shit hits the fan, then American Judiciary or checks and balances or congress would stop something like this from happening but we all saw how nothing really happened.
My point is, 3 more years, let that sink in, into this level of turbulent times when an war is currently active and gas prices are rising all across the world solely because America and Israel started the Iran war :/
I can only have so much patience but if gas prices are double the price because of America/this war, Sadly I might lose my patience.
I lost my patience somedays ago when I heard that the local fast food shop was talking about the gas price increases and how it hurted them. I had true resentment to this war and America/Israel for starting it and having this poor guy suffer so much from the gas prices. I know that America and American people are different but till how long/how much especially if some people are still supportive of such war. It sort of left me speechless when he was talking about how hard it is to stay in this business.
To think that the world will forgive America so easily might not be accurate, that's all I am saying.
My point is, Even if party changes next time from red to blue, It's just really really hard to undo all this harm that it has done to its soft power.
Make of that what you will, but if I were you I wouldn't go around poking the hornets nest that has an explicit sign "these hornets will sting" attached to it.
On those specific parts:
Motors: T-Motor F90 1300KV - $119.60(incl shipping) + Tariff
ESC: Holybro Tekko32 F4 50A - $88.97(incl shipping) + Tariff
FC: Matek H743-SLIM V4 - £88.12(incl shipping + VAT) + Tariff
Radio: Radiomaster M2 $95.99(incl shipping + sales tax)
The FC was from a UK store but it originated in China. I already had the radio so I don't have current prices on it.
I'd love to find a list of vendors that have comparable parts, in stock, and without being insane multiples of those prices.
edit: formatting
See, this is what is so dumb about this: you are treating this as if it is some kind of board game. It is exactly why the US gets into these messes over and over again, the incredible overconfidence that because they somehow have battlefield superiority they can do whatever they want. You are exemplifying precisely where the rot in the USA is located.
First and foremost, Apple is still an American company and even if it isn't repatriating some amount of income because it doesn't want to pay taxes on it American shareholders still get the benefit of the reported cash position. Apple still owns the assets.
Second, the products are manufactured/assembled in a variety of countries including China, Taiwan, and more - US obviously designs the products and all that. But in each step of the way Apple is paying suppliers, suppliers pay other suppliers and so forth and when you finally go to Apple Switzerland AG and buy your MacBook Pro you're just paying the sum total costs of the profit for Apple, each individual supplier, and manufacturer. All that money has left Europe, Apple Switzerland is just charging you the diff on the imported product and what profit margin they want to make. Maybe it's $250 or something, of the supply chain that is pretty much all that stays in Europe, of course subtracting out where European companies are suppliers.
You're going to have to specify a framework if you want to make statements about legality.
Well you can say the same about Putin then. All nice and dandy
Indeed it is true. But it is also changing, the stockpiles are growing.
The EU treaty has a clause that calls for assistance for part of the members (who are not neutral) but there's no military structure outside NATO.
There's also a perpatual public debate about whether EU should become a military alliance. eg https://theloop.ecpr.eu/can-the-eu-form-an-autonomous-milita...
In practical terms, in event of a invasion, only NATO has a organisation set up for coordinated response.
If AWS gets "turned off" (the implication being the US is doing some big mean thing against all of Europe) for European countries then something absolutely catastrophic has happened and you're going to be hoping you have heat, electricity, food, and water.
If AWS gets "turned off" your MacBook Pro isn't going to work anymore because obviously the US will just whoops turn that off too! Your Google OS on your Android phone won't work anymore, and if you turn it on bam drone strike! Gotcha! Meta will shut down your WhatsApp, and you'll have to import all of your oil from Russia or something.
I don't think there's anything wrong with European countries or the EU as a whole looking to build more homegrown products and restore their manufacturing capacity - that's what we're looking to do in the US too in various ways and I encourage it. But I do think there's a problem with this fantasy, and indeed it is a fantasy of somehow decoupling from American tech companies or being isolationist or whatever and it's not good for you. We have global supply chains and in those supply chains you're going to have American products whether you like it or not. You can work on building better businesses in the EU and you should, but lay off the grandstanding, otherwise you just sound like the freedom fries enthusiasts.
The problem is: over time the US grew so powerful, that the definition of "war" became blurry. "No, we are not at war, our soldiers are just dropping bombs on Iran for fun and profit".
EDIT: Another problem, of course, is that current member of Congress have no balls to stand up to Trump and reclaim their constitutional powers.
Who do you think designs the MacBook, chipsets, and more? Who designs and builds the semiconductors for your Lenovo laptop?
What Trump has is oligarch support - an unholy alliance of weird and cranky tech billionaires, old(ish) money, foreign money, media owners, and insane white supremacist patriarch-wannabes, some of whom operate through think tanks, some through megachurches.
The media are doing an excellent job of normalising this, not least - but not only - sanewashing Trump's obvious mental and physical decay.
China is indeed taking the mobile game world by storm. Go to Akihabara and you will see these huge billboards of Chinese games like Genshin Impact or Honkai Star Rail. China is starting to outplay Japan at their own otaku game.
I will not judge the responses. Just curious.
From that perspective, the current "emperor is naked" development might be positive in the sense that Europe can relatively soon have enough military power to be taken seriously, and at the same time become impossible to drag into an offensive war because none of its countries wants any war and we only went there because US pressured us into - but now that the USA has became unreliable, there's no reason to sacrifice oneself.
This isnt a conspiracy. Epstein was an israeli agent and him and trump were bffs for years. Trumps family is also heavily in debt to Russia and theyve been very open about it.
You seem to be a weird trump supporter who is mildly trolling by saying false stuff like the iran war isnt illegal when it very clearly is. Your comments are either very ignorant or youre trolling. The only folks still defending trump are p silly folks. The evidence is overwhelming at this point.
My interpretation is that you're asking "which Holocaust won't survive historical revisionism", and there are two options (both are red flags):
- you're deliberately trying to dilute the designation of Holocaust, by stating there are other "holocausts", by which you're probably referring to other genocides - when in reality the Holocaust is the name given to the genocide at the hands of Nazis; it's the same has asking "which Holodomor?" in the context of my statement.
- you're implying the Holocaust didn't exist, as if there was a list of "many holocausts", some historically true, others historically false;
They definitely can vote for another Trump-like guy and they have proven it by voting Trump back the second time. Honestly this is crazy to me this can even happen after Jan 6. The Brazilian Trump-like President went to jail, yet Trump returns to the White House. My take is this trust issue takes at least 10 years to recover, most likely more.
How many of them have a wealthy hegemon and wealthy minor partners?
It's <<extremely>> rare for that to happen and the US managed that for about 80 years.
Ignore all the propaganda and look at the results. Actions, not words.
In the modern era there are basically 0 wealthy Russian (similar story for the Soviets) or Chinese allies.
Nobody would have agreed more with you than me, two years ago. But with Trump, the only thing that is completely clear is that nothing can be safely assumed about the US any longer. The explosion of corruption and corrosion of the legal system screams "liability". Hopefully his power will soon diminish but the damage that has been done, especially to trust, is going to last a lot longer.
As near as I can tell, the vast majority of the parts are made in China. When I look at the few alternatives, they're full of Chinese circuitry. If I look at circuit components, they're all made of Chinese raw materials.
Both Ukraine and Russia are planning to deploy (and use up) several million drones over the next year. Iran just joined them as a major procurer.
Where are all the US and EU component factories?
In the 1990s everybody was eager to believe that war was finally and forever over. Some held on to that delusion for a bit too long, but not anymore.
There are four different mutual defense pacts in Europe and there is an umbrella one and they all operate independently of NATO. And then there is NATO, with or without the USA.
Right now if I want to process data in compliance with GDPR, I need to make sure there are sample clauses that provide equivalence in data protection standards.
Those clauses only hold if the US and EU agree that they won't fuck with them.
but thats fairly fragile.
That would be so funny if it wasn't clear that you are serious.
> Who do you think designs the MacBook, chipsets, and more? Who designs and builds the semiconductors for your Lenovo laptop?
Why don't you tell us?
I will however grant you that my sampling is no where close to uniform.
They are adults now (rare commodity), but can still be pushed around, have their leash yanked.
They have to come to terms with their islands of racist tendencies.
My hope hasn't died yet
A nation that invades us is not friendly.
Being at the other end of colonialism, we are aware of many holocausts and acknowledge them if not equally we don't identify any one as 'the holocaust'.
Don't get me wrong, I suspect our values mostly agree.
I literally have a 3ft by 3ft Anne Frank's photograph as a poster in my bedroom as a reminder. Lest we forget.
I wrote the code myself to enlarge and distribute, with minimal pixelation, a small photograph of her at her desk. I printed it out split over multiple letter sized sheets. I did not have access to a wide form factor printer then. I still remember figuring out the libpgm libppm libraries from source. Assembled and glued the jigsaw puzzle and framed the result. There are some millimetric misalignments due to printer roller slips.
This was from many decades ago, when I was in college. It is still there on my bedroom wall.
They were tried after being beaten militarily, who will lead the rebellion against Trump and the American military backing him? The military doesn't dislike what he does and those are the main ones that could oppose him.
Arctus asks you to contact them just for product info. It seems they just raised 2.6M in seed funding 3 months ago. It's great that there are startups in NL but that's not even close to a replacement for China's scale yet.
Both of these may change the landscape in the future. For now, neither of them is a practical way to get drone parts without China.
I assume the contradiction you refer to is that EU has this clause but it's still not considered a military alliance? Maybe you read the term differently. It doesn't mean it has zero defense dimensions, it's that its mission or capability are not military. That's why NATO is the one a would-be invader needs to worry about wrt military consequences.
Thus, US law, too, defers to international law.
Please at least read the legal framework you're so confidently misdescribing.
The balancing act is to increase stockpiles whilst supplying Ukraine which is consuming almost as fast as we're producing. Precision weapons you are right about, those are dwindling, but at the same time this is the one area where Ukraine internal production is beginning to outnumber imports (and their motivations are not so much quantity as 'no strings attached', which is very understandable).
Artillery shell production is up, 2.2 million shells/year or thereabouts, but here too the Ukraine war is consuming them very fast, either way, it is sixfold or so of what it was prior to 2022. Many new factories have been built and opened and are since a few months adding their output to the stream.
I think what held things back for a bit is that the EU was - wrongly - under the impression that Putin would back off but now that it is clear that that is not the case the longer term investments make sense. But it took a while for that to get underway.
Sure ok - tell me what I'm missing.
> Why don't you tell us?
Are you unaware that Apple designs the MacBook and A/M series chips?
But ultimately, it's the people of the US who have to do this. You're absolutely right that nobody else is going to do it for them.
Well I disagree.
I don't think the Holocaust took away the word "holocaust" and stripped it off from it's meaning, and from being able to be used to describe other events. I also don't think that was the intent behind the choice.
So much so that I've capitalized the Holocaust.
If it's the right choice or not to name it, I trust the institutions that studied this event.
I also don't think it takes away from the crimes against humanity and genocide of other cultures, some from colonialism, others from racial and ethnic hate.
There's still genocide and colonialism happening to this day, for example at the hands of Russia we have the current genocide in Ukraine and attempt to colonize it. Or what's happening in Gaza.
Maybe it's a cultural difference, but the word "genocide" to describe these crimes strikes me as a very loaded and meaningful word, and accurate word - the Holocaust was a genocide, it carries everything that the Holocaust, Holodomor, native American, Chechens, Armenian genocide, and many other cultures suffered.
Also genocide not only has a definition as a word, but also has a specific legal definition.
While holocaust has its own definition which I don't think it applies to all genocides and crimes against humanity.
They absolutely do.
> Arctus asks you to contact them just for product info.
You can order as much as you want from them, the price is right and the quality is extremely high.
Indeed, they're not on AliExpress, but that's roughly the difference between being a producer in Europe and in China, and that is precisely the difference that you should be happy with.
And that's just the direct allocation, not the under water part including venture funding of some of the defense industry (obvious overlap: anything including AI & drones, it's pure VC bait).
Upvoted because I think your comment was downvoted out of emotions this topic triggers.
Now the rug pull... you've been operating this way for the last 50 years, and suddenly the US is out to extract as much from you as possible no matter how close an ally you are or how friendly to their corporations you are.
I'm tired of the both-sidesing that I see on places like HN to justify the current administration's actions. The US historically didn't shake every country down (even allies!) under the implicit threat of its military might, because global stability and prosperity was good for US business interests.
It did try to overturn unfriendly regimes but it was far less brazen and reckless about this, operating over longer timelines, and the instability caused by those disastrous interventions seemed like it was a lesson learned (but now has clearly been forgotten).
This shit is terrifying.
Its easy to verify that Motor-g does not ship outside of Ukraine. I just put 4 of their motors in a shopping cart and tried to check out. The drop down menu for destination country has a single option, Ukraine.
Arctus does not list a single price on their website. That's also easy to verify. Every single product on their website only says, "request product data", or "coming soon".
First, not US but Presidency and second, breaking Constitution is not very legal last time I checked but I could be wrong... /s
I do not have access to information from the military other than what gets published but that's good enough for me as long as I don't see contradictions.
Here is one article from a while ago:
https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2025/04/07/rheinme...
They were aiming for a 100% supply to Ukraine + stockpile increase for 2026 and I see no reason to disbelieve that other than your comment, if you want me to re-calibrate my position on that you're going to have to supply some sources.
That's obviously not how things work. If you don't obey the law, you are a criminal. That's the whole point of laws.
I was just going off what you wrote. I buy locally handmade furniture and haven't bought anything from Ikea since college. Anyway, Sweden doesn't build all of this stuff either.
> ARM comes from a long line of UK products?
Again, global supply chains when it's convenient for your argument.
All I did was mail the manufacturer, asked for a quote, got a mail in return, they sent an invoice, I paid the invoice and they sent me the goods. Just like I would expect.
The Persian Gulf states (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE).
Israel also wasn't developed in 1947.
Let's not ignore facts when they're inconvenient.
In the Western Hemisphere the US track record has been a total mess but in the Eastern Hemisphere I'd say about 30% of the time US allies tripped on their own feet on the way to prosperity.
While they satisfy the technical requirement of, "there exists an alternative" neither of them is generally available as a viable alternative to China.
As for EU motivations, Orbán is the visible blocker, but the Western states are even more constraining than Hungary. It’s Spain, Ireland, Germany, France, etc. that have no appetite for war or economic upheaval, which would immediately topple governments across the bloc. EU defence policy requires unanimity across states, and it doesn’t exist.
Rhetoric is strong but thin, and almost everybody apart from yourself sees it. Let’s come back to this in a year, when production figures and defence spending for 2025 become public and see.
Can you demonstrate a process that others can follow?
again, you are saying something is legal that is both clearly illegal and unconstitutional. you can say "it is illegal but we have no way to enforce since our congress and senate do not work for the people but are simple extension of a given political party in power" but you can't say that it is legal
If "for me" is limited to some rich guy in the Netherlands, that doesn't solve the problem "for anyone else."
The magnets are almost certainly from China.
The top copper producer in the EU is Poland so that's a possible source of copper. They're pretty far down the list though so it's likely that a large part of the copper is coming from places like Chile (top producer in the world).
Mostly Latin America afaik but copper re-use is so high that it is hard to tell what the original source is.
> Is the wire made in the EU and coated with insulator there too?
Not in the EU but close by.
> Are the motors wound in Europe?
Yes, there are multiple drone motor manufacturers in Europe now. Annual production is in the millions.
And 'some rich guy in the Netherlands' is a nice target for you but I know plenty of people that are in other parts of Europe that seem to have no problem ordering from both of these. You asked for alternatives, you got them. You could have just left it at that but you feel the need to explain why those alternatives are not the alternatives you wanted. What did you expect? A 1-900 number and someone taking your credit card?
"Some rich guy in the Netherlands" isn't about being a nice target. You keep saying it works for you but you can't demonstrate any way that works for others.
I can point you to a number of places that sell any number of Chinese drone parts that don't involve a "1-900 number". You can find them on Amazon. Any number of drone vendors sell them through normal sales portals. The manufacturers will ship them directly.
A handful of companies that require a bespoke procurement process and are operating at a tiny fraction of the scale do not have any appreciable impact on the market for drone parts today.
You might not care about the rules, but the rest of the world takes notice. This is how you break a world order carefully designed to further your own interests.
