9 ms·

I saw a lot of EU policy makers moving towards an "independence from USA" goal in the last 2-3 years. The army is just one, but even in software some of the re

by yulaow 7y ago

I saw a lot of EU policy makers moving towards an "independence from USA" goal in the last 2-3 years. The army is just one, but even in software some of the research projects in which part of my group is coordinating/participating with the EU are gonna receive an unbelievable amount of money in the next ten years to build a complete internet infrastructure independent from any us software and hardware. I'm talking about 10-50x more funding than usual until now, and it's gonna grow. I cannot say a lot because most of the projects are tba and under a formal "keep it secret" clause right now, but one of the main ones related to eu cloud infrastructure is supposed to get around 100 billions euros in 5 years and involve around thirty big software companies and universities in eu. It's really a good time to be a sw researcher here right now.

ben_w 7y ago
I know it can be tempting to be chatty, but if you know about projects that should be kept secret, do you really think it wise for you to say how much money is involved?
- rapsey 7y ago
  Nothing of that could be much of a secret with the amount of non governmental institutions involved.
- yulaow 7y ago
  The technical content of the projects is still under secrecy. The money involved is not, also because it is publicly negotiated between all member states.
phire 7y ago
The 2016 US election has done major long-term damage to the US's position as a superpower. Even if the next election "puts everything back to normal", this whole episode has made everyone question the wisdom of relying on the US for anything.
- rapsey 7y ago
  It has not changed the aspects of superpower. It has however changed the notion of the US being a stable and reliable partner.
  - close04 7y ago
    It’s not who you are but who you know. The US still needs the EU and other countries to validate their actions in conflict. It’s the difference between waging terror war and righteous war. This image and support (even if just in the media) costs the US. They have to be bodyguards for the rest so they don’t go to China or Russia to seek alliance. And the difference between superpower and superterrorist is just a headline in newspapers.
    - rapsey 7y ago
      Superpowerdom has always been defined as military capability and the ability for others to do your bidding. The US has this through military strength and the US dollar being the reserve currency. Justifications and perceptions are secondary and only follow the real source of power.
      - close04 7y ago
        Historically speaking. But these days having that is not enough. Russia is still technically a superpower but see their actual power on the world stage. Without public support and strong economical and political ties you’re just a madman with the biggest gun. So unless you’re willing to use it against everybody and go to war with the world your status as a superpower is fluid. Do you think the US is dumping all those resources in Europe out of the kindness of their heart? Why would a superpower do it if it didn’t need it? These days military power can only be used sparsely if ever against the civilized western world so it has to be “monetized” in other ways. By offering it as a service in exchange for service (or servitude, depending on interpretation).
        rapsey 7y ago
dpflan 7y ago
Is this funding coming from an EU level mandate and trickling down to nations and then national research programs or is it treating the leaves of the research tree as part of "EU Research" as a whole? I'm not familiar enough the political mechanics of EU research so forgive me if my analogy does not hold.
- yulaow 7y ago
  The second one.
- aothms 7y ago
  The EU is very visible in their research programmes, see for example https://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/en https://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/en and https://ec.europa.eu/research/fp7/index_en.cfm https://ec.europa.eu/research/fp7/index_en.cfm And one of the aims of these programs are for EU research institutes to collaborate transnationally.
- ben_w 7y ago
  The EU-as-an-instituion has a budget of 1% of the member states’ GDPs: 1% of ~15 Tr/y, or 150 Bn/y. Given that, 100 Bn/5 years sounds implausible for a single project for the EU-as-an-institution, so I’d assume it would be EU-as-a-region with the EU-as-an-institution as one of the project partners.
orbifold 7y ago
Well other big European projects like the HBP turned out less than ideal. If any of the past track record is an indication any EU led project will be a huge political mess, with ~20% going to administrative overhead and only 1/10th of the promised budget will actually materialise.
- ivan_gammel 7y ago
  Look at Russia: their new prime minister is allegedly corrupt and became rich while managing federal tax service. However his digitalization projects appear to be very successful, even if corruption overhead consumed large part of the budget. If EU allocates enough money (and they can put much more than Russia in this), they can achieve the goals.
  - orbifold 7y ago
    I don't know how that relates to EU projects. I'm not alleging corruption, just stating facts. The flagship projects were promised 1 billion in funding over 10 years. A lot of that money was spend in Switzerland, which isn't even a EU member state. The last funding period will now actually involve 20% in administrative overhead, spend on administrators mostly located in Switzerland. I've seen some of the planning diagrams for future European cloud initiatives especially in the HPC sector. Most of it is just shuffling around funds from one budget to another, that is they relabel existing HPC infrastructure and university compute resources to be now part of a "European Research Cloud" (https://ec.europa.eu/research/openscience/index.cfm?pg=open-science-cloud https://ec.europa.eu/research/openscience/index.cfm?pg=open-...) Another aspect is that as soon as a university is involved, you get lots of cheap basically black labor by gullible university students. Take https://qt.eu https://qt.eu for example, they promise 1 billion in funding over 10 years and 5000+ researchers. That works out to 20000€ per researcher per year. A PhD student in Germany makes roughly double that, if he has a fully funded position. So this figure relies on: - Paying people half the normal salary, but expecting them to work full time, which is common practice in European academia. - Significant additional funds being provided by member states and universities, all the while the European Union has the leverage to call the shots on research direction and funding.
zmb_ 7y ago
> one of the main ones related to eu cloud infrastructure is supposed to get around 100 billions euros in 5 years This does not sound right. The entire proposed EU Research & Innovation investment programme for the next 5 years is 100B euros (Horizon Europe [0]). This is the funding that pays for all EU funded research projects in all fields, among other things. [0] https://ec.europa.eu/info/horizon-europe-next-research-and-innovation-framework-programme_en https://ec.europa.eu/info/horizon-europe-next-research-and-i...
- yulaow 7y ago
  When we talk about EU sponsored projects we include both the EU funding, which comes directly from EU budget, and the estimation of the required additional public and private investment to the project which must_be/has_been secured. This is common for all eu sponsored projects I worked in.
barry-cotter 7y ago
What’s the most successful EU project in IT or CS ever? Maybe Galileo which replicates the US’ GPS? I’m not aware of anything else worth mentioning. What’s the closest Europe has to AppAmaFaceGooSoft? SAP, probably. The talent is obviously there, but there’s no real reason to believe the organizational talent is. If one player’s constraint is “Make it and make it work.” and the other’s is “Make it. Make it work. Make it with substantial contributions in all major and some minor European countries.” the latter group is much more likely to fail just due to coordination problems.
- yulaow 7y ago
  I totally agree with you. I still think it is worth to try and try again.
- Youden 7y ago
  The EU doesn't have ginormous behemoths that try to do absolutely everything the way AppAmaFaceGooSoft do but I don't see that at all as a bad thing. There are plenty of smaller EU companies that have successful businesses, such as Spotify, Zalando and Supercell. It's just that where in the US those would all be sub-products of an enormous megacorp, in the EU they're separate companies.
  - yostrovs 7y ago
    You must be under the impression that there are no successful businesses smaller that Google in the United States.
- mnm1 7y ago
  You make it seem like it's desirable to have monopolies. I think the EU disagrees. The lack of FAANG type companies is indicative of a healthy economy and society. The fact that they exist in the US is indicative of the opposite. Of course, if one is ingrained in US culture and its propaganda, it's easy to see how one could value monopolies over a healthy economy. Most people outside the US, however, have no delusions of becoming a billionaire (or even a millionaire), of monopolies being positive for society, or of the massive inequality created by such monopolies being positive for society. Don't get me wrong. Monopolies still exist outside the US. They are just not as fetishized by the masses everywhere as they are here.

by yulaow 7y ago

ben_w 7y ago

I know it can be tempting to be chatty, but if you know about projects that should be kept secret, do you really think it wise for you to say how much money is involved?

rapsey 7y ago
Nothing of that could be much of a secret with the amount of non governmental institutions involved.
yulaow 7y ago
The technical content of the projects is still under secrecy. The money involved is not, also because it is publicly negotiated between all member states.

phire 7y ago

The 2016 US election has done major long-term damage to the US's position as a superpower. Even if the next election "puts everything back to normal", this whole episode has made everyone question the wisdom of relying on the US for anything.

rapsey 7y ago
It has not changed the aspects of superpower. It has however changed the notion of the US being a stable and reliable partner.
- close04 7y ago
  It’s not who you are but who you know. The US still needs the EU and other countries to validate their actions in conflict. It’s the difference between waging terror war and righteous war. This image and support (even if just in the media) costs the US. They have to be bodyguards for the rest so they don’t go to China or Russia to seek alliance. And the difference between superpower and superterrorist is just a headline in newspapers.
  - rapsey 7y ago
    Superpowerdom has always been defined as military capability and the ability for others to do your bidding. The US has this through military strength and the US dollar being the reserve currency. Justifications and perceptions are secondary and only follow the real source of power.
    - close04 7y ago
      Historically speaking. But these days having that is not enough. Russia is still technically a superpower but see their actual power on the world stage. Without public support and strong economical and political ties you’re just a madman with the biggest gun. So unless you’re willing to use it against everybody and go to war with the world your status as a superpower is fluid. Do you think the US is dumping all those resources in Europe out of the kindness of their heart? Why would a superpower do it if it didn’t need it? These days military power can only be used sparsely if ever against the civilized western world so it has to be “monetized” in other ways. By offering it as a service in exchange for service (or servitude, depending on interpretation).
      - rapsey 7y ago

dpflan 7y ago

Is this funding coming from an EU level mandate and trickling down to nations and then national research programs or is it treating the leaves of the research tree as part of "EU Research" as a whole? I'm not familiar enough the political mechanics of EU research so forgive me if my analogy does not hold.

yulaow 7y ago
The second one.
aothms 7y ago
The EU is very visible in their research programmes, see for example https://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/en https://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/en and https://ec.europa.eu/research/fp7/index_en.cfm https://ec.europa.eu/research/fp7/index_en.cfm And one of the aims of these programs are for EU research institutes to collaborate transnationally.
ben_w 7y ago
The EU-as-an-instituion has a budget of 1% of the member states’ GDPs: 1% of ~15 Tr/y, or 150 Bn/y. Given that, 100 Bn/5 years sounds implausible for a single project for the EU-as-an-institution, so I’d assume it would be EU-as-a-region with the EU-as-an-institution as one of the project partners.

orbifold 7y ago

Well other big European projects like the HBP turned out less than ideal. If any of the past track record is an indication any EU led project will be a huge political mess, with ~20% going to administrative overhead and only 1/10th of the promised budget will actually materialise.

ivan_gammel 7y ago
Look at Russia: their new prime minister is allegedly corrupt and became rich while managing federal tax service. However his digitalization projects appear to be very successful, even if corruption overhead consumed large part of the budget. If EU allocates enough money (and they can put much more than Russia in this), they can achieve the goals.
- orbifold 7y ago
  I don't know how that relates to EU projects. I'm not alleging corruption, just stating facts. The flagship projects were promised 1 billion in funding over 10 years. A lot of that money was spend in Switzerland, which isn't even a EU member state. The last funding period will now actually involve 20% in administrative overhead, spend on administrators mostly located in Switzerland. I've seen some of the planning diagrams for future European cloud initiatives especially in the HPC sector. Most of it is just shuffling around funds from one budget to another, that is they relabel existing HPC infrastructure and university compute resources to be now part of a "European Research Cloud" (https://ec.europa.eu/research/openscience/index.cfm?pg=open-science-cloud https://ec.europa.eu/research/openscience/index.cfm?pg=open-...) Another aspect is that as soon as a university is involved, you get lots of cheap basically black labor by gullible university students. Take https://qt.eu https://qt.eu for example, they promise 1 billion in funding over 10 years and 5000+ researchers. That works out to 20000€ per researcher per year. A PhD student in Germany makes roughly double that, if he has a fully funded position. So this figure relies on: - Paying people half the normal salary, but expecting them to work full time, which is common practice in European academia. - Significant additional funds being provided by member states and universities, all the while the European Union has the leverage to call the shots on research direction and funding.

zmb_ 7y ago

> one of the main ones related to eu cloud infrastructure is supposed to get around 100 billions euros in 5 years This does not sound right. The entire proposed EU Research & Innovation investment programme for the next 5 years is 100B euros (Horizon Europe [0]). This is the funding that pays for all EU funded research projects in all fields, among other things. [0] https://ec.europa.eu/info/horizon-europe-next-research-and-innovation-framework-programme_en https://ec.europa.eu/info/horizon-europe-next-research-and-i...

yulaow 7y ago
When we talk about EU sponsored projects we include both the EU funding, which comes directly from EU budget, and the estimation of the required additional public and private investment to the project which must_be/has_been secured. This is common for all eu sponsored projects I worked in.

barry-cotter 7y ago

What’s the most successful EU project in IT or CS ever? Maybe Galileo which replicates the US’ GPS? I’m not aware of anything else worth mentioning. What’s the closest Europe has to AppAmaFaceGooSoft? SAP, probably. The talent is obviously there, but there’s no real reason to believe the organizational talent is. If one player’s constraint is “Make it and make it work.” and the other’s is “Make it. Make it work. Make it with substantial contributions in all major and some minor European countries.” the latter group is much more likely to fail just due to coordination problems.

yulaow 7y ago
I totally agree with you. I still think it is worth to try and try again.
Youden 7y ago
The EU doesn't have ginormous behemoths that try to do absolutely everything the way AppAmaFaceGooSoft do but I don't see that at all as a bad thing. There are plenty of smaller EU companies that have successful businesses, such as Spotify, Zalando and Supercell. It's just that where in the US those would all be sub-products of an enormous megacorp, in the EU they're separate companies.
- yostrovs 7y ago
  You must be under the impression that there are no successful businesses smaller that Google in the United States.
mnm1 7y ago
You make it seem like it's desirable to have monopolies. I think the EU disagrees. The lack of FAANG type companies is indicative of a healthy economy and society. The fact that they exist in the US is indicative of the opposite. Of course, if one is ingrained in US culture and its propaganda, it's easy to see how one could value monopolies over a healthy economy. Most people outside the US, however, have no delusions of becoming a billionaire (or even a millionaire), of monopolies being positive for society, or of the massive inequality created by such monopolies being positive for society. Don't get me wrong. Monopolies still exist outside the US. They are just not as fetishized by the masses everywhere as they are here.