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How can any reasonable national leader justify building their military on American systems anymore? Especially now that the U.S. government is also talking abo
by addicted 2y ago
How can any reasonable national leader justify building their military on American systems anymore?
Especially now that the U.S. government is also talking about not living up to its NATO obligations.
This is not gonna hurt the rest of the world. Defense is where the U.S. exports a lot. So cutting back on U.S. weaponry will only help other nations.
The same is true of Tech. Currently the tech industry is global, but expect it to become increasingly national. Considering this is one of the biggest and fastest growing industries in the U.S. and one of its biggest exports, again, this is only gonna hurt thenUS economy.
And the US’s dominance in this space is so high the rest of the world will simply push for open source at no loss to their own economies, since it’s only the US’s profit making will be hurt.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- rvnx 2y agoEven further, the US position is getting tougher. Now there are new ideas getting pushed (through influencers like Musk): that Ukraine "should be sanctioned", that Ukraine "should give their minerals to the US", that Ukraine "should give up their lands", that Zelensky "should resign" and finally that "US should leave NATO". With such allies, you don't really need enemies.
- seanmcdirmid 2y agoIt’s really bizarre that we are looking at a near future where our best ally is Russia and West Europe/Canada and everyone else who was our friend is now our enemy. You literally couldn’t write this up as fiction and be taken seriously a decade ago.
- yuliyp 2y agoIt really makes you feel like you're in the middle part of the 1980s.
- davidw 2y agoI lived through the 1980ies, and I still have trouble processing the idea that the anti-Soviet, rah-rah patriot types that loved movies like Red Dawn are now in bed with the Russians. It's just bizarre.
- jcgrillo 2y agoIt used to be that fascists and communists were our most hated enemies. How the tables have turned! EDIT: more seriously, though, throughout the 20th century America hewed much closer to fascism than communism. It's always been there, if not always out in the open.
- pmontra 2y agoThey are more or less the same thing. Fascism in its original form (with that name) in Italy one century ago had an anti communism flavor because communists were its internal enemies to the road of power. Remove that and you are left with nationalism, control of society (what you can say in pubblic, how to behave) and control of economy even in something as thin as do as you please but do not challenge the big boss with the influence you gain with your money (see what happened in China a few years ago.) Communism had an internationalist phase but that was over by the middle of the cold war. It started as an ideal, then become a way to rationalize the USSR's grip on the East, then it died out as countries started to realize they would be better off with the other bloc. Edit: of course communism had more ideals than internationalism. For example it did not include the authoritarianism part. However they disappeared after it was implemented as a way to rule a country and were replaced by the means that allowed the ruling group to stay in power.
- wat10000 2y agoIt is, but it also makes sense. The enemy wasn’t really Russia, it was communism and, more broadly, leftism. Modern Russia resembles the USSR in some respects: oppressive government, not particularly wealthy, over-militarized. But it’s definitely not communist. If freedom and democracy is your thing then that part doesn’t matter. But if your thing is anti-leftism, conservative morality, militarism, powerful rulers, and white people, modern Russia looks pretty good.
- rayiner 2y agoYou must have been traveling in some neocon circles a decade ago. But normalizing relations with Russia and disengaging with the rest of the world military was the goal for us liberals back then: https://youtu.be/T1409sXBleg?si=svqMzx1aAIKgMd13 https://youtu.be/T1409sXBleg?si=svqMzx1aAIKgMd13; https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0372588/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0372588/
- wat10000 2y agoSure, back when Russia looked vaguely like a democracy for about ten minutes.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- rayiner 2y agoWe are allied with lots of non-democracies, including ones that invade their neighbors (like Saudi). That part is irrelevant.
- hdjjhhvvhga 2y agoWell, there was a point when everybody, including European politicians, wanted to normalize relations with Russia. But the guy had a different view and chose to invade Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014. At that point some people still chose to believe that he can be civilized. It backfired badly in 2022. So now Trump trying the same thing and pretending to be Putin's buddy and trying his best to make Ukraine miserable is just sad.
- versale 2y agoYou'd better report your wrongthink. We, Oceania, have always been at war with Eastasia, Eurasia was always our ally.
- bad_user 2y agoUS's Republicans have been so afraid of '1984' that they took it as an instructions manual.
- rayiner 2y ago[flagged]
- whatshisface 2y agoThe present administration isn't really planning to cut military spending, they just want to redirect it. $4B of military aid was recently approved for another country. Here's the budgetary outlook: You'll notice that defense spending is projected to have a slight increase in real terms, or a slight (0.1%) decrease in terms of fraction of GDP. https://www.cbo.gov/publication/61172 https://www.cbo.gov/publication/61172
- Jtsummers 2y agoYep. DOD spending is likely to shift, but not be reduced. The major firms are probably going to see some contracts cut or tougher competition from the likes of Anduril in certain domains. DOD spending in IT-related efforts may also shift, Palantir will be a major contender here.
- pharrington 2y agoAre you the mythical "ethical consumer under capitalism" I've heard so many legends about? addendum: sibling comment's point is more relevant
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- ck2 2y agoThe shift to bailout Russia is no surprise to anyone taking notes, there is a long LONG history https://reddit.com/comments/j6z8eh https://reddit.com/comments/j6z8eh
- hyperman1 2y agoIt was idiotically unbelievable fiction until literally the day before Trump took office, even with project 2025 readable on the internet. In fact, we discussed how the whole idea of an USA ex-president calling up a personal militia, trying a coup that could reboot a civil war, giving up half way, and not ending up in jail or even politically castrated was garbage fiction until 5 jan 2021.
- dragonwriter 2y ago“Our best ally is Russia” is a nightmare scenario; ask anyone else in the CSTO how responsive Russia is to allies’ needs.
- bojan 2y agoAnd a bit further back, ask anyone who the Red Army helped liberate in WW2 what has happened later, and how long it took the Red Army to actually withdraw.
- BrandoElFollito 2y agoFor a generic village in Poland during WWII having the Red Army show up was an order of magnitude worse outcome then the Germans. What was expected were rapes and thefts so people preferred to flee. It was really the nightmare scenario.
- riehwvfbk 2y agoFound the Nazi.
- ahartmetz 2y agoThe Manchurian Candidate was along these lines, though it has an (early) happy ending, before the candidate becomes president, at least in the movie. I haven't read the book.
- fakedang 2y agoThe game Tom Clancy's End War is basically about a quadripolar world (you play as Russia, USA or Europe), where Russia hacks the EU WMD network and uses it to attack an American space-based weapon, using that as a false flag operation to make America go to war with Europe. Russia "joins" USA in an alliance and attacks the EU from the east while the US attacks from the Netherlands and Denmark.
- freehorse 2y agoThere were people saying that, but you are right that they were not been taken seriously. Maybe they should have had.
- tmn 2y agoI think this is a popular but unrealistic take based on real observation.Real observations being. Increase friendliness towards Russia. Decrease friendliness towards Europe/canada. Don’t confuse inflection points with the actual position.
- rapjr9 2y agoLeaving NATO is not a one way street. If the US leaves NATO, then the NATO countries can also stop supporting the US. How many components of US weapon systems are made in the EU?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- _DeadFred_ 2y agoThe US cannot support it's military projection without allies. If every US base has to be ran as 'fortress USA' the budget will break. Even just losing a few strategically located bases will greatly increase the cost of power projection. All Europe has to do is stop all local support for US bases and force all resupply to be done via the US military and the bases existing infra, not via ANY civilian infrastructure (no civilian airports, no civilian trucking, no civilian shipping). That's just one pain point in the USAs soft underbelly that we didn't have to worry about before because we had allies.
- fallingknife 2y agoI think that's kind of the point. The Trump admin takes a very isolationist view of things, so I don't think they even want all those international bases.
- _DeadFred_ 2y agoIt's not the point for the MAGA types. They want the power AND deference of the good old days, not actual feeble pullback and irrelevance. They think Europe paying it's share means Europe will pay for OUR military presence. Add on their kids no longer having access to military jobs/path to education and those communities will start to freak out. Trump wants to project power in the middle east. That's current done out of European bases.
- warrenmiller 2y agotell that to Greenland.
- bayindirh 2y agoOn tech side, personally I started to move my servers and personal infra to Europe, both physically and legally. I'll not be able to leave some companies outright, but I'll be taking backups and reducing my reliance fast.
- rwyinuse 2y agoSame here, it's a massive risk to trust any important data or services to be handled by American companies now. Thankfully I was already fairly decoupled from US big tech, so the transition took just a couple of days.
- gip 2y agoTotally agree that Trump is trading long-term dominance for short-term gains. I think that in a few months, we will see the U.S. economy doing very well and somehow rebuilding its industrial base. In the long term, U.S. influence and wealth will make up a much smaller share of the world’s wealth than it does today.
- fifilura 2y agoHe does not rule out recession. Why do you think the US economy will be doing very well because of his policies? https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-recession-fox-news-tariffs-b2711750.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
- gip 2y agoI do think there will be a recession yes. But within 6 to 18 months, the recession could be over with and growth will come back as the US rebuilds some of its industrial base. US imports and exports will decrease over time. Note: it is my prediction at 70% (e.g. I think there is 70% that it will happen).
- tpm 2y agoIt could be over, but it won't be over, because he can't be trusted, changes position on important issues every night, and this does not create environment welcoming to investors. Nobody sane will commit to longterm investment. No investment, no growth. > US imports and exports will decrease over time. So prices will rise and and government expenditures will fall. Where exactly will that growth come from?
- gip 2y agoI think companies who want to access the large U.S. internal market will have an incentive to have factories in the U.S. That will likely fuel growth. The growth will be coupled with less imports and exports given nationalism and tariffs. And if it is what the Americans want why not. But as the U.S. take this new direction, let's make sure former allies are treated with respect and given proper notice of the changes so that they can adapt their economies and defense postures.
- ty6853 2y agoThis is an inherent property of closed source proprietary weapons. Which is why gun owners like stuff like the gen3 glock and ar-15 as everyone knows how to make the parts and the open source blueprints are put into manufacture by a gazillion companies to the point PSA shitwagon can compete with a Colt and interchange most the parts. Maybe Europe should open source a fighter jet and let the world compete on how they'll manufacture it.
- bayindirh 2y agoEurope's weaponry is already somewhat "open source". Many big things like aircraft and missile systems are designed and built with pan-European consortia. As a result, every country knows how to build these things. Heck, even Italian Agusta sold some of their platforms to a NATO ally with build/iterate/export permissions...
- aerostable_slug 2y agoLook up the F-35 sometime. For Germany's F-35 fleet, Rheinmetall was going to build the fuselages and do final assembly in Germany. Splitting up the work like this isn't unique to products from Panavia or similar EU-only consortia.
- jandrewrogers 2y agoAs an observation, when the US originally licensed out the AR-15 to other countries they often also had to license aluminum foundry tech at the same time. We take it for granted now because that tech is old. The ability to scale advanced or exotic materials science at will was a cornerstone of why US weaponry is difficult to copy. People always underestimate this aspect but it is a major reason why manufacturing of state-of-the-art hardware is not fungible.
- blibble 2y agorisk of war going hot aside, the long term effect of this is fantastic for the rest of the world's industries AWS, GCP and Azure looked unbeatable a month ago but today, if you're a government official in the UK, Poland or Germany, would you be recommending AWS as your cloud provider? absolutely not they now have massive geopolitical risks associated with them due to being under the control of the increasingly unstable and authoritarian US regime that will sacrifice 80 years of foreign policy and soft power for a soundbite on fox news
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- dh2022 2y agoAWS and Azure have regional data centers in each one of the countries. Data in EU stays in EU. The CAPEX risk is entirely borne by US companies while being operated by locals following local laws. These states can easily nationalize these data centers if, say, US does something really bad to them. So the geopolitical risk for using AWS or Azure seems low to me.
- throwaway48476 2y agoThe risk isn't geopolitical but economic decoupling. American tech valuations will take a bath.
- forgetfreeman 2y agoWho cares about tech stocks? Have a look at what happens when the dollar loses it's status as reserve currency.
- throwaway48476 2y agoAlmost all of the S&P gains have been tech stocks.
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- riehwvfbk 2y agoHow do they justify buying US war tech? By understanding what the US will do to their country if they don't buy it, and figuring out how to sugar coat this to their populace.
- ashoeafoot 2y agoCountries do have choices and many did choose the us as security provider. Some thirld world countries recently switched away from russia and/or started to built versions of their own design of previously in license produced weaponry. Examplw: India
- riehwvfbk 2y agoAnd Turkey buys from both. But India and Turkey have a degree of independence that small European nations do not have. The latter are entirely reliant on NATO for their security, and until recently this meant being friends with the USA.
- aerostable_slug 2y agoThis simply isn't true. Various countries bought F-35 even after recognizing it's far more of a geopolitical PITA than Rafale or Gripen because F-35 is world-beating. It is that much better than the competition that putting up with various restrictions is almost always worth it. Where the competition is less slanted, yes you see countries selecting Leopard for their MBT over Abrams (the US won't sell the advanced Abrams armor packages). But when it's F-35 vs. literally anything else, the competition is for second place. You only really choose something else when F-35 isn't an option at all. Threats aren't needed when you just have to do a fly-off.
- throw__away7391 2y agoI think the administration is gambling on being able to consolidate global power before anyone is going to have a chance to build anything. Europe is completely reliant on the US and US technology for defense right now, these systems took decades and trillions of dollars to build and refine, and an 800 billion EUR investment does not magically create a military industrial complex overnight. Decades ago in my early career I briefly worked on some logistics software for the Joint Strike Fighter project and had some contact with a couple of the army of contractors working on the project. The scale and complexity of this effort blows away anything else I've ever seen in my career, which includes a number of multi-billion dollar infrastructure and nuclear power projects. Trump talks about invading Canada or Greenland and people act like it is a joke. I don't think it is. The US is in a position to completely dictate to Europe what they will or won't do, using Russia as a proxy for now. We are 48 days in. A couple of weeks ago I replied to someone suggesting the US could provide weapons to Russia with disbelief. I no longer consider that an impossible scenario. Europe stops buying F35s? Trump tells Europe that if they don't buy them he's going to sell them to Russia. I mean that's a relatively tame response compared to the options on the table. Right now the only chance for Europe is to stop this madness in the US. We have this "take it down" act, the executive order to produce a report advising whether or not to declare martial law, the January 6th pardon of the Proud Boys who are now effectively a paramilitary force of thousands waiting for Trump to deploy. These are all familiar elements in history and I think we are in for a bloody, bloody summer. I think we're going to see government forces opening fire on protesters, martial law declared, and the implementation of Chinese style suppression and crackdown on dissent online. Maybe attempts to strip US citizens of their citizenship and "deport" them for good measure, anything to try to sow fear into average people to not step out of line. If the administration is successful in quashing the opposition and getting everyone to go back to work, Europe could easily next on the chopping block. Remember all the things Bannon said about the EU during the first administration.
- philwelch 2y agoThis might be the most delusional comment I’ve ever seen on HN. Crackdown on dissent online? That’s the explicit policy of our “democratic” European “allies” that the Vice President openly criticized in Munich. Opening fire on protestors? What protestors? And this talk of a thousands-strong Proud Boys “paramilitary” is paranoid nonsense.
- swat535 2y agoNo one should have placed their trust in the U.S to begin with. Let's not forget that American history is riddled with interventionist failures, from Afghanistan to Vietnam, and CIA-backed operations that destabilized the Middle East and Africa, leaving behind suffering and chaos. Meanwhile, American corporations have shown blatant disregard for local laws, privacy, and security while exploiting loopholes to dodge taxes, further eroding global trust. Europe literally had to fine them millions, just to get them to start paying _minimum_ attention.. The recent instability in American and the division between its own citizens has exacerbated the issue and now with Trump, I believe it has reach new heights, even causing conflict with its (arguably) closest ally and loving neighbor: Canada. As a Canadian, it saddens me to write this, because I have nothing but love for American people.
- xnx 2y agoThere is no sophisticated chess game being played here. These people are stupid as they are vindictive. No one in the US will benefit from this.
- bamboozled 2y agoImagine how many people are going to die from this. It's quite sickening to think about. The president of peace who is not interested in war, but something much crueler, extortion and retribution which seems to be positioning the world for a real WW3. Not a Fox news theortical "Biden" inspired one. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy83r93l208o https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy83r93l208o "Poland announces military training plan for all men"
- wakawaka28 2y agoAnyone you buy equipment from can withdraw support. The US would only withdraw support if you turn against them, same as any other country selling such equipment.
- spookie 2y agoOh, Ukraine "turned against" the US. When did that happen exactly?
- brokenmachine 2y agoThey didn't even wear a suit!! And when was the last time they said thank you??
- wakawaka28 2y agoZelenskyy is the highest paid actor ever.
- brokenmachine 2y agoHe's done a fantastic job acting like a leader who wants to prevent his people being genocided.
- wakawaka28 2y agoToo bad it's an ACT!
- wakawaka28 2y agoWhen the US decided to end the war, and Ukraine kept trying to escalate. This has been going on for a while.