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The thing that gets me is the disingenuous parallel construction. Just say the truth. Europe wants to improve its economy by growing their consumer tech indust

The thing that gets me is the disingenuous parallel construction. Just say the truth. Europe wants to improve its economy by growing their consumer tech industry. Some of these products like Google Analytics (the example he is upset about) are really hard to replicate (writing to a database on every visit to your website is an expensive thing to do, significantly more expensive than hosting the website!). So they've been slowly increasing the tariffs (disguised as privacy regulations) on US tech firms. It's gone poorly, even EU governments (let alone EU businesses) still use products like Google Analytics, and US tech firms have been able to engineer their way around the regulations, again doing a better job than EU governments who have been busted countless times for breaking GDPR with their own systems. No one cares about any "data sharing agreement" or a "Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board" no one has ever heard of that has never done anything. Its a tariff with various ways to pick winners and losers. The only thing thats changed is there is a higher chance these privacy regulations will be recognized as tariffs by the US.

pm3003 2y ago
What you describe is true, and it can also be counterproductive vecause to be competitive you need the best and cheapest services, and raising the prices doesn't often result in a healthier tech ecosystem. Typical Eurocrat thinking. But EU citizens genuinely care about privacy, in part because of decades of totalitarian and near-totalitarian regimes. There is another risk underpinning this, I'm not familiar with this so it's mostly hearsay on my part, but foreign firms in the US routinely get completely screwed in US courts, and fear the seizing of their data in discovery processes or other ways. The data sharing agreement was made to provide some degree of clarity or assurances in this regard. I've met managers who are convinced that if they're not careful, their IP and business data will get stolen by their US competitors through various legal or less-legal means. EU executives have been detained for days at the border on suspicions of terrorism to coerce them into selling US assets. I can't judge if this is paranoia, and maybe those companies could make use of better protection against Chinese hackers but there's certainly some truth to that.
- cavisne 2y ago
  Are there any news stories about these specific claims (executives held by the US until they divest assets, EU companies losing their data in discovery and being copied)? The EU's biggest exports to the US are cars & pharma. I guess the VW diesel situation could be seen through that lens, or the GLP1 compounding rules.
- pjc50 2y ago
  > EU executives have been detained for days at the border on suspicions of terrorism to coerce them into selling US assets You're going to need a citation on that sort of thing, because I'd expect it to be a much bigger deal.

pm3003 2y ago

What you describe is true, and it can also be counterproductive vecause to be competitive you need the best and cheapest services, and raising the prices doesn't often result in a healthier tech ecosystem. Typical Eurocrat thinking. But EU citizens genuinely care about privacy, in part because of decades of totalitarian and near-totalitarian regimes. There is another risk underpinning this, I'm not familiar with this so it's mostly hearsay on my part, but foreign firms in the US routinely get completely screwed in US courts, and fear the seizing of their data in discovery processes or other ways. The data sharing agreement was made to provide some degree of clarity or assurances in this regard. I've met managers who are convinced that if they're not careful, their IP and business data will get stolen by their US competitors through various legal or less-legal means. EU executives have been detained for days at the border on suspicions of terrorism to coerce them into selling US assets. I can't judge if this is paranoia, and maybe those companies could make use of better protection against Chinese hackers but there's certainly some truth to that.

cavisne 2y ago
Are there any news stories about these specific claims (executives held by the US until they divest assets, EU companies losing their data in discovery and being copied)? The EU's biggest exports to the US are cars & pharma. I guess the VW diesel situation could be seen through that lens, or the GLP1 compounding rules.
pjc50 2y ago
> EU executives have been detained for days at the border on suspicions of terrorism to coerce them into selling US assets You're going to need a citation on that sort of thing, because I'd expect it to be a much bigger deal.