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I 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

I 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 ago
This 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.
- throw__away7391 2y ago
  Well I hope you are right. All of those things were already either done or tried by Trump during his last term. The trajectory is leading towards further escalation. The protests will escalate in the summer, when the weather is warmer, more time has passed for awareness of what is happening to soak in, and students are on school break.
- dboreham 2y ago
  There have been street protests here in Montana (red state) already (because he fired large numbers of national park and forest service employees and said any foreign students who made online comments supporting Palestinians should be deported).
- AtomBalm 2y ago
  The most delusional comment is quite an achievement on this goofy corner of the web.
rapjr9 2y ago
>Europe stops buying F35s? Trump tells Europe that if they don't buy them he's going to sell them to Russia. Actually Europe would stop supplying components for the F-35's so the US would not be able to build any more or keep the ones they have working, let alone sell them to Russia. Russia would never buy them anyway, how could they trust that the next US president wouldn't pull the plug on spare parts? Would they trust that Trump is going to become dictator for life? (And what happens after he dies?) Russia has their own fighters that may not be quite as capable in some ways, but are good enough. Russia sells jet fighters themselves, they do not buy them. >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. Europe already has a large local military industrial complex. Half of what Ukraine has received has come from Europe. They would only have to expand what they have, not develop new technologies, except perhaps for a replacement for the Patriot missile system. They'd get a boost from converting their existing factories from building US weapons components to building EU weapons components as well. I'm actually surprised that the US military industrial complex (MIC) is not screaming bloody murder about some of this. They stand to lose sales of replacement weapons for those sent to Ukraine, to lose support contracts for F-16's, and to lose a whole lot more if the US pulls out of NATO. Even if the US does not pull out of NATO, the NATO countries have already started investing in their own defense industries, which is going to severely cut into US MIC profits. They should be terrified.
- holoduke 2y ago
  The US has so many options to bully Europe. What about turning off cloud providers and other services like word, excel etc. Or restricting hardware like GPUs or other consumer stuff. There are a thousand options to bring europe to its knees. And there is nothing Europe could do.
  - bamboozled 2y ago
    Or restricting hardware like GPUs or other consumer stuff. Look up ASML, make America great again :)
bambax 2y ago
Yes the US may have a second civil war coming. The good guys won the last one; they should win this one too, but it may take some time. In the end though they should go for a "reconciliation"; MAGA will show no mercy -- the good guys shouldn't either.
- refurb 2y ago
  According to HN seems like we’re going to have a civil war ever 4 years. I guess we’ve been lucky so far?
  - nebula8804 2y ago
    70% of the country is fat/obese. If its going to happen, it might end up looking comical: angry people of walmart riding around in their scooters then deciding to go back home: this civil war stuff is too much effort, whats on Netflix?

philwelch 2y ago

This 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.

throw__away7391 2y ago
Well I hope you are right. All of those things were already either done or tried by Trump during his last term. The trajectory is leading towards further escalation. The protests will escalate in the summer, when the weather is warmer, more time has passed for awareness of what is happening to soak in, and students are on school break.
dboreham 2y ago
There have been street protests here in Montana (red state) already (because he fired large numbers of national park and forest service employees and said any foreign students who made online comments supporting Palestinians should be deported).
AtomBalm 2y ago
The most delusional comment is quite an achievement on this goofy corner of the web.

rapjr9 2y ago

>Europe stops buying F35s? Trump tells Europe that if they don't buy them he's going to sell them to Russia. Actually Europe would stop supplying components for the F-35's so the US would not be able to build any more or keep the ones they have working, let alone sell them to Russia. Russia would never buy them anyway, how could they trust that the next US president wouldn't pull the plug on spare parts? Would they trust that Trump is going to become dictator for life? (And what happens after he dies?) Russia has their own fighters that may not be quite as capable in some ways, but are good enough. Russia sells jet fighters themselves, they do not buy them. >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. Europe already has a large local military industrial complex. Half of what Ukraine has received has come from Europe. They would only have to expand what they have, not develop new technologies, except perhaps for a replacement for the Patriot missile system. They'd get a boost from converting their existing factories from building US weapons components to building EU weapons components as well. I'm actually surprised that the US military industrial complex (MIC) is not screaming bloody murder about some of this. They stand to lose sales of replacement weapons for those sent to Ukraine, to lose support contracts for F-16's, and to lose a whole lot more if the US pulls out of NATO. Even if the US does not pull out of NATO, the NATO countries have already started investing in their own defense industries, which is going to severely cut into US MIC profits. They should be terrified.

holoduke 2y ago
The US has so many options to bully Europe. What about turning off cloud providers and other services like word, excel etc. Or restricting hardware like GPUs or other consumer stuff. There are a thousand options to bring europe to its knees. And there is nothing Europe could do.
- bamboozled 2y ago
  Or restricting hardware like GPUs or other consumer stuff. Look up ASML, make America great again :)

bambax 2y ago

Yes the US may have a second civil war coming. The good guys won the last one; they should win this one too, but it may take some time. In the end though they should go for a "reconciliation"; MAGA will show no mercy -- the good guys shouldn't either.

refurb 2y ago
According to HN seems like we’re going to have a civil war ever 4 years. I guess we’ve been lucky so far?
- nebula8804 2y ago
  70% of the country is fat/obese. If its going to happen, it might end up looking comical: angry people of walmart riding around in their scooters then deciding to go back home: this civil war stuff is too much effort, whats on Netflix?