EPT
US Politics Mega-thread - Page 5407
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JimmyJRaynor
Canada17178 Posts
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dyhb
United States64 Posts
On January 04 2026 22:40 maybenexttime wrote: We should kick American troops out from Europe, cancel non-essential military equipment deals (and find alternatives to the essential ones ASAP), and decouple from American-based IT services. On January 04 2026 23:18 Simberto wrote: Europe ending NATO, because they don't like the US and don't think the US will honor its NATO commitments, was not something I anticipated here.He already has. NATO (or at least the US part of it) is gone. Does anyone really believe that Trump would honor the alliance? You're ending NATO while blaming Trump for it, but you might as well accept it. To keep relevant and save, the EU needs to be independent of the US. We need to be able to protect ourselves, using european weapons. And we really need to be independent of US tech, because anything we are dependent on is blackmail material for the US to force us to do things we really don't want to. I recall the Vance speech and new National Security Strategy document. They asserted that it was Europe distancing itself from the values it used to share with America. Now I hear that Europe feels the same way about America. So this might be mutually desirable. Europe resumes the burden of defending itself, and has greater capacity to tell the US to fuck off. America has little to complain about when Europe signs new laws imposing fines on American tech platforms, since simply discontinuing services on that continent would be the only recourse.The US has already stopped being an ally. They might not be a full opponent yet, but that could easily happen in the next 5 years. It is sad, it is stupid. It would be much better for everyone if the US had not gone insane. But they have. So that is the reality we now need to deal with. Closing our eyes and pretending the US of today is the US of 10 years ago is not going to work. We need european weapons, we need european IT infrastructure, and we need europeans nuclear deterrent. Anything from the US must be viewed as a potential weapon that will eventually be used against us. | ||
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Yurie
11993 Posts
On January 05 2026 04:04 dyhb wrote: Europe ending NATO, because they don't like the US and don't think the US will honor its NATO commitments, was not something I anticipated here. You're ending NATO while blaming Trump for it, but you might as well accept it. I recall the Vance speech and new National Security Strategy document. They asserted that it was Europe distancing itself from the values it used to share with America. Now I hear that Europe feels the same way about America. So this might be mutually desirable. Europe resumes the burden of defending itself, and has greater capacity to tell the US to fuck off. America has little to complain about when Europe signs new laws imposing fines on American tech platforms, since simply discontinuing services on that continent would be the only recourse. The values highlighted as separating away from US was fair elections and the rights of citizens over companies. Combined with allowing legal immigration and asylum. I think that EU as a whole is moving away from Christianity is probably also included there. EU was not enforcing the citizen protection laws against US companies in a lot of cases. Recently after US relations has kept souring previously frozen cases are slowly being acted on. US companies are welcome in the EU market, as long as they follow EU legislation. There are a few cases when that legislation is setup to favor domestic companies but as far as I know nothing as egregious as the US emission standards for cars. Edit, a big discussion point for EU is how to become less dependent on US IT. The Ukraine war has highlighted the need to not be dependent on somebody that does not share your interests and recently the US has not been doing that. There was even a question if EU nations could buy weapons to donate to Ukraine for a short period, that that was even a topic is insane. | ||
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Vindicare605
United States16116 Posts
On January 04 2026 16:59 Manit0u wrote: So, shortly after all those declarations Rodriguez was made the head of Venezualan state (with US support) and made a public speech where she went against Trump, demanding the release of Maduro and his wife. According to her Maduro remains the legal head of state. She announced that Venezuela will fight against US aggression until victory, instituted a state of emergency in the country and expanded the competences of army and other state services. Despite some of the citizens rallying and cheering for the end of dictatorship most of regime's administration and loyal soldiers have declared their will to fight. In other words, so far this US action has achieved nothing, if anything it might've galvanized the anti-US sentiments in the region and led to a prolonged chaos. Welp, this morning Trump threatened her in a telephone interview with the Atlantic where he said she would "if she doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro" if doesn't comply with US wishes. https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5671870-trump-threatens-new-venezuela-leader | ||
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maybenexttime
Poland5727 Posts
On January 05 2026 04:04 dyhb wrote: Europe ending NATO, because they don't like the US and don't think the US will honor its NATO commitments, was not something I anticipated here. You're ending NATO while blaming Trump for it, but you might as well accept it. I recall the Vance speech and new National Security Strategy document. They asserted that it was Europe distancing itself from the values it used to share with America. Now I hear that Europe feels the same way about America. So this might be mutually desirable. Europe resumes the burden of defending itself, and has greater capacity to tell the US to fuck off. America has little to complain about when Europe signs new laws imposing fines on American tech platforms, since simply discontinuing services on that continent would be the only recourse. Trump is literally threatening his NATO allies. Get a grip. It's the US that's quickly turning fascist, not Europe. | ||
KwarK
United States43403 Posts
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GreenHorizons
United States23552 Posts
On January 05 2026 02:28 KwarK wrote: Canada, like Japan, is perpetually weeks away from having nuclear weapons. It chooses not to have an independent deterrent but that is just a choice. Probably want get that down to days/hours/minutes asap. I wonder if the Canadians would prefer to join in on nuclear proliferation, maybe having Trump (or someone worse) call their bluff anyway, or just officially be a "51st state"? | ||
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Acrofales
Spain18173 Posts
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KwarK
United States43403 Posts
On January 05 2026 04:37 GreenHorizons wrote: Probably want get that down to days/hours/minutes asap. I wonder if the Canadians would prefer to join in on nuclear proliferation, maybe having Trump (or someone worse) call their bluff anyway, or just officially be a "51st state"? If they choose to get a deterrent then weeks away becomes days away and then hours away. That’s how time works. | ||
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Simberto
Germany11706 Posts
On January 05 2026 04:49 KwarK wrote: If they choose to get a deterrent then weeks away becomes days away and then hours away. That’s how time works. The problem is that you need to make that decision quickly enough, because in case the US decides they want to invade you, you probably don't have weeks. | ||
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pmh
1392 Posts
European institutions have to much wealth tied up in the us. Europe is sort of stuck with the us, for better and worse. | ||
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Yurie
11993 Posts
On January 05 2026 04:55 pmh wrote: Europe cant ever disconnect from the us and start aligning itself in a different direction. European institutions (and private entities) have to much wealth tied up in the us. Norways sovereign fund has 1 trillion in the us already. There is all the gold,all the stocks,all the bonds,all the real estate,all the mortgages. Europe has way more in the us then the other way around. If you add all the pension funds and private wealth in europe then i wouldnt be surprised if the net balance was over 10 trillion in the advantage of the us but this is a bit of a guess. The us has shown the extend it is willing to go to keep everyone in their camp inline. There is no realistic way europe could ever disconnect. They are sort of stuck with the us, for better and worse. There is no way that the British pound could ever stop being the global trade currency. There is no way the US dollar could stop being the global trade currency or people disconnect from them. I don't see how it couldn't happen? It is slowly starting and if the current trend started in the US with being imperialistic and not doing diplomacy with its allies then it will continue. Will take 10-20 years, so the US has time to reverse trends but that isn't something Europe can decide. They can just act in either scenario. China has a huge opportunity right now. They are not trustworthy enough right now, but if the US trends badly and China well for 20 years things will flip. To be clear, that isn't what Europe wants. They want a US enforcing the world order, behaving rationally and not threatening to take land from allies. | ||
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pmh
1392 Posts
Maybe eventually it will happen but that would mean a very different world order. | ||
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Yurie
11993 Posts
On January 05 2026 05:07 pmh wrote: Well if you put it that way. With time and in extreme conditions everything is possible. But it is something that will be avoided even at a pretty high cost. If only because the alternative would be more costly. Maybe eventually it will happen but that would mean a very different world order. Agreed. The thing is that we are trending that way rapidly. The US is acting in such a way that they are burning trust. Why would somebody invest in an opponent that you don't trust? I would be sad if the new global trade language flips to Mandarin. I don't like learning new languages. (Though I think that unlikely due to India.) | ||
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SC-Shield
Bulgaria835 Posts
On January 05 2026 03:30 PoulsenB wrote: A lot of people like to talk about an European collapse/stagnation, but the European Union as a whole had higher GDP than China in 2025. Also setting AI as an example of Europe falling behind is laughable, yes it is very bad that we haven't staked our entire economy on a speculation bubble revolving around an unproven technology that has so far failed to produce any real profits and remains unreliable for most applications as it hallucinates facts and data and always tries to please the user. AI is just an example. Europe doesn't have any significant cloud provider like Azure, AWS and Google Cloud. Europe doesn't have a notable OS invention unless you consider Linus Torvalds is from Europe. My point is a lot of what is used in IT is American. US IT industry is a lot bigger than Europe's one. | ||
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dyhb
United States64 Posts
On January 05 2026 04:08 Yurie wrote: I don't think that's an accurate reading of either the speech or the document. Certainly, you did correctly note the issue with appearing delighted after nullifying an election. But you missed all the infringements on speech rights and overall censorship. Indeed, the criminalization of silent prayer. See Pages 16, 17, 18, 19 and 20 of the speech transcript.The values highlighted as separating away from US was fair elections and the rights of citizens over companies. Combined with allowing legal immigration and asylum. I think that EU as a whole is moving away from Christianity is probably also included there. EU was not enforcing the citizen protection laws against US companies in a lot of cases. Recently after US relations has kept souring previously frozen cases are slowly being acted on. US companies are welcome in the EU market, as long as they follow EU legislation. There are a few cases when that legislation is setup to favor domestic companies but as far as I know nothing as egregious as the US emission standards for cars. All from the perspective of the current administration, mind you. You could have a new one in 3 years that cheers all these measures as combating extremism, protecting certain rights to not be offended by hate speech, and all that. Or at least tolerating Europe's approach without comment. I think those are the major breaks and predate the most recent. The newest one is the DSA fines on X, which is new and thus prominent. The issue is that some segment of Americans get riled up when Europe declares that an American private business must open itself up to European academics & censors in order to operate in Europe under threat of fines. Of course, the offenses are selected by bureaucrats that weren't voted in by ordinary citizens. If they were subject to the democratic vote, people might judge that the nature of the offenses is a pretext to its actual intent. To maybe suppress perspectives that have not been filtered through bureaucrats, academics, or media professionals; views that go against the received wisdom of policymakers; and views that have not been vetted and found to be acceptable by governments. I prefer acknowledging this breach, from a certain perspective, rather than pretend that Americans agree with EU bodies on why they did it and what the consequences are. | ||
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Acrofales
Spain18173 Posts
On January 05 2026 05:22 SC-Shield wrote: I don't understand why some people from Europe act like it's the end of the world. Yes, Trump is bad. Yes, he was president from 2016 to 2020 and we survived that. We'll survive his 2nd term as well. No one was complaining as much when Biden was president and I'm hopeful next US president would be a democrat. AI is just an example. Europe doesn't have any significant cloud provider like Azure, AWS and Google Cloud. Europe doesn't have a notable OS invention unless you consider Linus Torvalds is from Europe. My point is a lot of what is used in IT is American. US IT industry is a lot bigger than Europe's one. That is a bit irrelevant though. Absolutely Europe dropped the ball on building IT infrastructure under their own control, but on the other hand, none of the software that runs AWS, Azure, Google or Meta datacenters is particularly difficult to clone and there's plenty of datacenters physically built in Europe. If shit really hits the fan we don't need to have built our own datacenters. We just nationalize the existing ones. And if shit doesn't truly hit the fan, then we're quite okay leasing that stuff from US' IT companies for a while longer. I do absolutely agree that Europe needs to get with the program and consider IT infrastructure and software as an aspect of critical national infrastructure in much the same way airports and power plants are. Running critical government systems on software that nobody within the government understands, can fix, or maintain, on servers that are often not even under government control, is about equally stupid as having a powerplant your enemy could switch off remotely without having any chance of switching it back on yourself. The main question isn't really about corporate ownership. Europe has plenty of know-how and involvement in almost all modern technology. It just generally happens in US-owned offices or labs. As long as we're all friends that isn't really a problem for anybody. I am perfectly happy using ChatGPT or Gemini. But I am hesitant about Deepseek and would never consider giving my data to a Russian LLM. That may change. But Mistral's models are already up there in performance. It takes a lot of compute and a vast amount of data to build excellent models. But Europe really isn't far behind, even if when looking at stock value it seems that way. | ||
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hitthat
Poland2294 Posts
On January 05 2026 04:52 Simberto wrote: The problem is that you need to make that decision quickly enough, because in case the US decides they want to invade you, you probably don't have weeks. With 40 milion people and so wast territory, you do. | ||
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KwarK
United States43403 Posts
On January 05 2026 05:22 SC-Shield wrote: I don't understand why some people from Europe act like it's the end of the world. Yes, Trump is bad. Yes, he was president from 2016 to 2020 and we survived that. We'll survive his 2nd term as well. No one was complaining as much when Biden was president and I'm hopeful next US president would be a democrat. AI is just an example. Europe doesn't have any significant cloud provider like Azure, AWS and Google Cloud. Europe doesn't have a notable OS invention unless you consider Linus Torvalds is from Europe. My point is a lot of what is used in IT is American. US IT industry is a lot bigger than Europe's one. Because you can’t just stop. It’s like cheating on your wife. If America elects a Democrat that doesn’t suddenly undo everything that happened before. Let’s say President Walz asks Denmark for an expanded US military presence in Greenland to contain Russia. It’s a very reasonable request and not intended as part of a nefarious plot. The answer is still no. | ||
Liquid`Drone
Norway28730 Posts
In all seriousness there's a world of difference between the US deposing of Maduro and inserting a puppet so the can control Venezuela's oil riches and them invading Canada. This is, of course, a serious breach of international law and morally abhorrent and all that - these are constantly justifiable criticisms of the Trump regime - but it's not uncharted territory for the US. If anything, this is fairly standard cold war stuff. | ||
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