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Germans can only blame themselves for kicking the can down the road for 13 years. They were naive with Russia for energy, they were naive with the U.S. for secu

Germans can only blame themselves for kicking the can down the road for 13 years. They were naive with Russia for energy, they were naive with the U.S. for security, and they were naive with China for its economic growth.

Mashimo 2y ago
And still don't understand anything digital.
rkarnal 2y ago
Unlike the U.S., Germany has no natural resources. U.S. LNG dependency means that it has another master. Except that the previous one never dictated anything to Germany, just like Saudi Arabia never dictates anything. They are not naive with security. Either they fully defend themselves and get nuclear weapons or they keep the status quo. Buying useless F35 (possibly with a kill switch) from the U.S. just enriches the MIC. Germany should have build up a "high tech" Internet industry so it could control which parts of the narrative get flagged and which ones stay up.
- marcinzm 2y ago
  So which boogey man controlled their uranium access and made them shut down all their plants?
  - rhatsf 2y ago
    If you judge by U.S. Russian uranium imports until well into 2024, the culprit would have been Russia: https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/russia-restricts-enriched-uranium-exports-united-states-2024-11-15/ https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/russia-restricts... The U.S. of course is a sovereign nation and can decide for itself how long it trades with countries that it calls "terrorist states".
    - marcinzm 2y ago
      The US imports uranium from 12 countries and has its own deposits. Plus you can stockpile it. It was probably more to prevent Russia from selling to terrorists than a dependency.
  - pydry 2y ago
    It was the opposite - the lack of a boogey man in ~2011. They were shut down because they weren't that reliant on it to begin with (the level to which electricity from nuclear power mattered to Germany is routinely exaggerated), because they were horrendously expensive to maintain and fix (nuclear power is always $$$$$$$$$) and because of Fukushima. Most countries that are build their own nuclear power plants or nuclear power plants in other countries (e.g. Sweden, France, America, Russia) either have expensive nuclear arsenals which they want a nuclear industrial base to help maintain or have a boogeyman that makes them want to be able to ditch the NPT and build a nuke in a hurry. For Sweden that's Russia, for Iran that's America, for Japan that's China. Poland has just recently gotten interested in building nuclear power stations, after having zero interest for a long time. You can probably guess which boogey man was responsible for that.
    - blibble 2y ago
      > because they were horrendously expensive to maintain and fix (nuclear power is always $$$$$$$$$) almost the entire cost of nuclear is the capital cost of construction, running costs are a rounding error germany shut down their nuclear because the russia successfully funded the greens over an extended period to convince germans that "nuclear bad"
      - pydry 2y ago
        Maintenance on aging plants is also very expensive (just ask the French) and German plants were getting long in the tooth. Decommissioning is also very, very expensive, and disasters like Fukushima are also very very very expensive (that one cost about $1 trillion). It wasn't some secret plot by Russia. Russia exported most of the uranium they used. Fukushima just made nuclear power more of a headache than it was worth, especially given the cost and pressure from the environmental movement (who had agency, despite what you might believe). The reliance that the US/Europe had on Russian uranium is, in fact, one reason why it was never sanctioned. The greens in Germany are mostly captured by America these days - that's why they shifted to becoming massive war hawks.
        2y ago
- Mashimo 2y ago
  > Germany should have build up a "high tech" Internet industry Could have been cool. But even project like a digital medical patient journal that other countries had for 2 decades they have trouble with.
  - rhatsf 2y ago
    There was a certain NHS fiasco in Britain ... Apart from that, Germany has still some data protection left and Germans like their privacy. Which is the real factor that prohibits large data collection brokerages. Additionally, if every country goes into the digital fluff economy, nothing real is produced and you are even more dependent on China (and Russia for resources).
    - tw1984 2y ago
      > if every country goes into the digital fluff economy, nothing real is produced and you are even more dependent on China funny that China itself has a huge digital economy while producing real stuff for the entire world.
    - blibble 2y ago
      I suspect the german state's total reliance on fax machines, notaries and and physical paper forms is what keeps german records out of giant electronic databases rather than "germans liking their privacy"
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- ckozlowski 2y ago
  Oh, they were dictated to. It was simply implied. "Let us repress our people and reclaim our neighbors, and the pipes will stay open." Russia used that NG to bully and dictate to it's neighbors like Poland, Hungary, Romania, and others. Germany learned to keep it's mouth shut. Divide and conquer. It's very likely that arrangement would have still been in place had Russia's "special military operation" succeeded. Kyiv would have fallen in days, and by the time Germany and the others felt any sense of unease, it would have all been fait accompli. "Oh well, wasn't us, that's a Ukrainian matter." and life would have gone on for Germany industry. Only that's not what happened, and Germany and the others were forced to take a good long look at things and the ugliness behind it. Poland had been ringing the alarm bell for years, and they were right. Other notes: - There's a lot wrong with how the German economy doesn't reward risk, and that stifles their innovation. Economics Explained on YouTube has done a few videos on this, and it's more than just Germany. I think there's ways to German prosperity that doesn't require just another Google however, just as the U.S. economy isn't solely dependent on it's tech giants for it's GDP gains. - The "useless F35" argument is a tired and uninformed one which fails to understand much about how these platforms are developed and why they're developed in the first place. I'll direct you to a link here, which, while hardly academic, is spot on with it's examples and references. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxVsS9ZNUOU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxVsS9ZNUOU (TL;DW: Every plane goes through this stuff. No, drones won't replace everything; that ignores the role of the strike aircraft. And if the F35 is so bloody useless, why is China pursuing so many versions of their own? Because regardless of what the internet peanut gallery thinks, warfighters around the world know exactly what they need.)
  - throwaway18792 2y ago
    F35 are useful against insurgents. They are perfect for Israel. Contrast that with Ukraine, where there is a de facto no-fly zone for both sides because anti-aircraft missiles are too good. That is why there is the strange mixture of WW1 trench warfare, howitzers, drones combined with glide bombs and missiles launched from far away. China has other enemies than big ones. The Sukhoi 57 is also useless in a big power conflict, as we see now. Germany only has big power conflicts to worry about, so why does it need F35s? Saudi Arabia on the other hand might need them.
- pcthrowaway 2y ago
  They have rocks. They have arable land. What exactly does "no natural resources" mean in your view?
throw839449 2y ago
There was terrorist attack that destroyed most of Germany energy infrastructure. You can hardly blame Germans for not prediction that!
- CalRobert 2y ago
  The one that shut down their nuclear plants because vibes?
  - maxglute 2y ago
    Nuclear power isn't substitute/alternative for cheap gas as inputs/feedstock for German industry. German industrial model depended on cheap RU gas more than it does on nuclear power. Whoever took away that cheap gas (and it was unlikely to be RU), made that industrial / economic model unworkable. Germany has better industrial prospects re-exploiting its 150 years of coal reserves + RU natural gas than all the clean nuclear energy in the world.
pydry 2y ago
They're politically captured and lacking sovereignty more than they are naive. It's awkward and nobody wants to admit it but fundamentally they have a relationship with the US that is similar to the one Belarus has with Russia. That's why when the pipeline was blown up and they became dependent instead on more expensive American LNG they accepted their fate with a minimum of protest. It's why they've not demonstrated much interest in finding the culprit, despite the incredible economic damage it incurred.
- tw1984 2y ago
  the entire EU is a huge US colony nowadays. just look back 15 years, for all those emerging sectors that were/are hot during the period, how many new EU companies managed to rise? a few drug makers for sure, but everything else is just dead despite the fact that they have a huge economy and a relatively unified market with hundreds of million people. EU is dying a slow economic death, the US must be very happy for that.
  - Perceval 2y ago
    Having weak and moribund allies is not happy news for the United States.
  - RestlessMind 2y ago
    How much of that is because of US colonialism and how much is on the Europeans themselves who display some of the most conservative (with a small c) attitudes? Mario Draghi's report was a good rebuke to the EU mindset and culture.
    - tw1984 2y ago
      do yourself a favor, for all those emerging sectors considered as hot in the last 15 years, like 5G, mobile internet, renewable energy, EVs, drones, AI etc, just name one company that managed to rise to the very top and highly competitive with their US peers. care to explain why EU, Japan, Korea, Canada all stopped producing such companies? all mindset and culture issues?

Mashimo 2y ago

And still don't understand anything digital.

rkarnal 2y ago

Unlike the U.S., Germany has no natural resources. U.S. LNG dependency means that it has another master. Except that the previous one never dictated anything to Germany, just like Saudi Arabia never dictates anything. They are not naive with security. Either they fully defend themselves and get nuclear weapons or they keep the status quo. Buying useless F35 (possibly with a kill switch) from the U.S. just enriches the MIC. Germany should have build up a "high tech" Internet industry so it could control which parts of the narrative get flagged and which ones stay up.

marcinzm 2y ago
So which boogey man controlled their uranium access and made them shut down all their plants?
- rhatsf 2y ago
  If you judge by U.S. Russian uranium imports until well into 2024, the culprit would have been Russia: https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/russia-restricts-enriched-uranium-exports-united-states-2024-11-15/ https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/russia-restricts... The U.S. of course is a sovereign nation and can decide for itself how long it trades with countries that it calls "terrorist states".
  - marcinzm 2y ago
    The US imports uranium from 12 countries and has its own deposits. Plus you can stockpile it. It was probably more to prevent Russia from selling to terrorists than a dependency.
- pydry 2y ago
  It was the opposite - the lack of a boogey man in ~2011. They were shut down because they weren't that reliant on it to begin with (the level to which electricity from nuclear power mattered to Germany is routinely exaggerated), because they were horrendously expensive to maintain and fix (nuclear power is always $$$$$$$$$) and because of Fukushima. Most countries that are build their own nuclear power plants or nuclear power plants in other countries (e.g. Sweden, France, America, Russia) either have expensive nuclear arsenals which they want a nuclear industrial base to help maintain or have a boogeyman that makes them want to be able to ditch the NPT and build a nuke in a hurry. For Sweden that's Russia, for Iran that's America, for Japan that's China. Poland has just recently gotten interested in building nuclear power stations, after having zero interest for a long time. You can probably guess which boogey man was responsible for that.
  - blibble 2y ago
    > because they were horrendously expensive to maintain and fix (nuclear power is always $$$$$$$$$) almost the entire cost of nuclear is the capital cost of construction, running costs are a rounding error germany shut down their nuclear because the russia successfully funded the greens over an extended period to convince germans that "nuclear bad"
    - pydry 2y ago
      Maintenance on aging plants is also very expensive (just ask the French) and German plants were getting long in the tooth. Decommissioning is also very, very expensive, and disasters like Fukushima are also very very very expensive (that one cost about $1 trillion). It wasn't some secret plot by Russia. Russia exported most of the uranium they used. Fukushima just made nuclear power more of a headache than it was worth, especially given the cost and pressure from the environmental movement (who had agency, despite what you might believe). The reliance that the US/Europe had on Russian uranium is, in fact, one reason why it was never sanctioned. The greens in Germany are mostly captured by America these days - that's why they shifted to becoming massive war hawks.
      - 2y ago
Mashimo 2y ago
> Germany should have build up a "high tech" Internet industry Could have been cool. But even project like a digital medical patient journal that other countries had for 2 decades they have trouble with.
- rhatsf 2y ago
  There was a certain NHS fiasco in Britain ... Apart from that, Germany has still some data protection left and Germans like their privacy. Which is the real factor that prohibits large data collection brokerages. Additionally, if every country goes into the digital fluff economy, nothing real is produced and you are even more dependent on China (and Russia for resources).
  - tw1984 2y ago
    > if every country goes into the digital fluff economy, nothing real is produced and you are even more dependent on China funny that China itself has a huge digital economy while producing real stuff for the entire world.
  - blibble 2y ago
    I suspect the german state's total reliance on fax machines, notaries and and physical paper forms is what keeps german records out of giant electronic databases rather than "germans liking their privacy"
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
ckozlowski 2y ago
Oh, they were dictated to. It was simply implied. "Let us repress our people and reclaim our neighbors, and the pipes will stay open." Russia used that NG to bully and dictate to it's neighbors like Poland, Hungary, Romania, and others. Germany learned to keep it's mouth shut. Divide and conquer. It's very likely that arrangement would have still been in place had Russia's "special military operation" succeeded. Kyiv would have fallen in days, and by the time Germany and the others felt any sense of unease, it would have all been fait accompli. "Oh well, wasn't us, that's a Ukrainian matter." and life would have gone on for Germany industry. Only that's not what happened, and Germany and the others were forced to take a good long look at things and the ugliness behind it. Poland had been ringing the alarm bell for years, and they were right. Other notes: - There's a lot wrong with how the German economy doesn't reward risk, and that stifles their innovation. Economics Explained on YouTube has done a few videos on this, and it's more than just Germany. I think there's ways to German prosperity that doesn't require just another Google however, just as the U.S. economy isn't solely dependent on it's tech giants for it's GDP gains. - The "useless F35" argument is a tired and uninformed one which fails to understand much about how these platforms are developed and why they're developed in the first place. I'll direct you to a link here, which, while hardly academic, is spot on with it's examples and references. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxVsS9ZNUOU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxVsS9ZNUOU (TL;DW: Every plane goes through this stuff. No, drones won't replace everything; that ignores the role of the strike aircraft. And if the F35 is so bloody useless, why is China pursuing so many versions of their own? Because regardless of what the internet peanut gallery thinks, warfighters around the world know exactly what they need.)
- throwaway18792 2y ago
  F35 are useful against insurgents. They are perfect for Israel. Contrast that with Ukraine, where there is a de facto no-fly zone for both sides because anti-aircraft missiles are too good. That is why there is the strange mixture of WW1 trench warfare, howitzers, drones combined with glide bombs and missiles launched from far away. China has other enemies than big ones. The Sukhoi 57 is also useless in a big power conflict, as we see now. Germany only has big power conflicts to worry about, so why does it need F35s? Saudi Arabia on the other hand might need them.
pcthrowaway 2y ago
They have rocks. They have arable land. What exactly does "no natural resources" mean in your view?

throw839449 2y ago

There was terrorist attack that destroyed most of Germany energy infrastructure. You can hardly blame Germans for not prediction that!

CalRobert 2y ago
The one that shut down their nuclear plants because vibes?
- maxglute 2y ago
  Nuclear power isn't substitute/alternative for cheap gas as inputs/feedstock for German industry. German industrial model depended on cheap RU gas more than it does on nuclear power. Whoever took away that cheap gas (and it was unlikely to be RU), made that industrial / economic model unworkable. Germany has better industrial prospects re-exploiting its 150 years of coal reserves + RU natural gas than all the clean nuclear energy in the world.

pydry 2y ago

They're politically captured and lacking sovereignty more than they are naive. It's awkward and nobody wants to admit it but fundamentally they have a relationship with the US that is similar to the one Belarus has with Russia. That's why when the pipeline was blown up and they became dependent instead on more expensive American LNG they accepted their fate with a minimum of protest. It's why they've not demonstrated much interest in finding the culprit, despite the incredible economic damage it incurred.

tw1984 2y ago
the entire EU is a huge US colony nowadays. just look back 15 years, for all those emerging sectors that were/are hot during the period, how many new EU companies managed to rise? a few drug makers for sure, but everything else is just dead despite the fact that they have a huge economy and a relatively unified market with hundreds of million people. EU is dying a slow economic death, the US must be very happy for that.
- Perceval 2y ago
  Having weak and moribund allies is not happy news for the United States.
- RestlessMind 2y ago
  How much of that is because of US colonialism and how much is on the Europeans themselves who display some of the most conservative (with a small c) attitudes? Mario Draghi's report was a good rebuke to the EU mindset and culture.
  - tw1984 2y ago
    do yourself a favor, for all those emerging sectors considered as hot in the last 15 years, like 5G, mobile internet, renewable energy, EVs, drones, AI etc, just name one company that managed to rise to the very top and highly competitive with their US peers. care to explain why EU, Japan, Korea, Canada all stopped producing such companies? all mindset and culture issues?