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If I was Russia and/or China and I wanted to eliminate EU as a potential rival economically and militarily, then I don't think I could have come up with a bette
by flanked-evergl 1y ago
If I was Russia and/or China and I wanted to eliminate EU as a potential rival economically and militarily, then I don't think I could have come up with a better way to do it than EU regulations. If it was not for the largess of the US, then EU would become a vassal of Russia and/or China. And I think the US is running out of good will very rapidly. The EU could, of course, shape up, but it won't.
- Cthulhu_ 1y agoI'd rather be free and my data safe than be an economic world leader. False dichotomy, I know, but I don't mind the people before money mindset.
- flanked-evergl 1y agoThis is a false dichotomy, you can have privacy and still be militarily and economically relevant. But say that you were right, and you have to choose between privacy and relevance, if you choose privacy, then once you are entirely economically dependent on Russia (Europe is still paying more in energy money to Russia than in aid to Ukraine) and China — when Europe is a vassal — it won't be able to make its own laws anymore.
- ekianjo 1y agoWith chat control you won't get either.
- londons_explore 1y agoAlmost every country or group of countries today is either a world leader, nearly a world leader, or a vassal state of one of the first two.
- staplers 1y agoI'd rather be free and my data safe than be an economic world leader. You often need the latter to maintain the former.
- jimbokun 1y agoIt's not clear that the inscrutable process described is providing either.
- suddenlybananas 1y agoThe EU is a vassal of the US, that is its entire raison d'être.
- falcor84 1y agoWhat? How did you arrive at that?
- suddenlybananas 1y agoTo be honest, it's so blatantly obvious (especially with the recent meeting of European leaders and Trump) that I find it difficult to understand your surprise. I mean Christ, Europe is teeming with American bases.
- falcor84 1y agoraison d'être means "reason for existence" and none of what you said supports that assertion
- llbbdd 1y agoYeah I don't know how this isn't just the common understanding of the situation. The EU/UK is constantly working around whatever the US wants to do, and the US does whatever it wants.
- wredcoll 1y agoAt the risk of trying for nuance online, therebis a rather large difference between america being (the only) superpower and a country being a vassal.
- lawlessone 1y ago>(especially with the recent meeting of European leaders and Trump) I got the same impression seeing Trump meet Putin. The US is a vassal state of Russia.
- t43562 1y ago
- OtherShrezzing 1y agoI think you have an over-aggrandised opinion of Russia's geopolitical, military, and economic power.
- myhf 1y agoIn the 1940s, the CIA wrote the Simple Sabotage Field Manual [1] explaining methods to damage their rivals' operations through largely bureaucratic means. Today, we have fully automated the methods from this manual in the form of LLM Chatbots, which we have for some reason deployed against ourselves. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_Sabotage_Field_Manual https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_Sabotage_Field_Manual
- cedilla 1y agoIt's hard not to react sarcastically to this. But I will try: There's nothing special about EU regulations vis-a-vis other laws. China, Russia and the US also have laws, many of which are also perceived as overly bureaucratic.
- rafaelmn 1y agoIdentifying something as a critical competitive industry, then place a bunch of hurdles in front of it's development, and sit confused when we get left behind - that's the EU special.
- cloudrkt 1y agoLeft behind on what exactly? Privacy laws? Consumer rights?
- cooper_ganglia 1y agoTechnology, AI, semiconductors, cloud computing, consumer electronics, social media, app ecosystems, e-commerce, military technology, energy independence, venture capital, unicorns and scaling, banking innovation, space exploration, biotech and pharma...
- airstrike 1y ago...to name a few
- chpatrick 1y agoNovo Nordisk has a market cap of 250 billion last I checked.
- cooper_ganglia 1y agoNovo is a success story, sure, but it's not uniquely dominant. Eli Lilly is more than 3x bigger in the same space, and J&J, Merck, Pfizer all rival or surpass it. Pharma as a whole is still dwarfed by the trillion-dollar US tech giants that the EU has no equivalent of. One standout doesn't change the broader lag.
- viccis 1y ago>then EU would become a vassal of Russia Russia is currently struggling to make inroads on invading its relatively small neighbor, so I really doubt it would be able to make a bunch of nuclear powers who have a nuclear alliance its "vassal" I understand that Russia's not fighting just Ukraine but rather Ukraine with massive US and EU assistance but my point still stands.
- flanked-evergl 1y agoIt's not struggling as much as Ukraine. Russia, if it was struggling, would accept a negotiated peace. It's quite clear that the last thing Russia wants is peace.
- wredcoll 1y agoI love how the constant comeback to this is "well they're sorta-kinda winning the war" as if maybe barely defeating ukraine is some kind of mark of global dominance.
- bigbadfeline 1y ago> winning... defeating...dominance People really don't understand war and death, they treat them as some silly sports game. As a result they completely miss the boat not only about military conflicts but also about peace politics.
- wkat4242 1y agoIt's because lives are meaningless to the Russian government. They'll just throw more literal bodies at the problem. Nobody's going to stop them as they're a dictatorship. And now they're even getting North Koreans as extra cannon fodder. Ukraine doesn't have that "benefit".
- holoduke 1y agoUkraine is used by the west as connonfodder by western institutions that control western politicians. The west literally doesn't care about life's of ordinary citizens. Specialy if its outside of its country. From supporting cruel regimes, to supporting genocide in Israël, to cheap labour without worker rights and so on. The west isnt a grain better than anybody else.
- bee_rider 1y agoWe’ll see if these LLMs end up having a real use, once the “giving away investor money” business model dries up. They really might! But it seems early to say that the EU has missed out on anything, before we see what the thing is. In general, it is hard to compare the US and the EU; we got a head start while the rest of the world was rebuilding itself from WW2. That started up some feedback loops. We can mess up and siphon too much off a loop, destroying it, and still be ahead. They can be setting up loops without benefitting from them yet.
- jimbokun 1y agoThey seem to be improving a lot on their defense spending, at least. Will take them a while to get out from under the US umbrella. But acknowledging the problem is the first step.
- flanked-evergl 1y agoI'm grateful that Europe is increasing defence spending, but I'm cynical regarding Europe because so far, it's been absolutely no hindrance to Russia's expansionism, and in some ways it has inadvertently provided Russia with material assistance while Russia engages with expansionism. Spending on defense is not the same as. Norway is spending more on everything all the time and getting worse outcomes all the time. We spend more on police than ever, even per capita, and crime is up, we spend more on military than ever, and our actual metrics are down. I think with most of Europe the defense spending is the same, I hope I'm wrong, but if you up regulation then you have to spend more to get the same results, and Europe has runaway regulation in addition to people who try to hijack institutions for other purposes.
- lawlessone 1y ago>If I was Russia and/or China and I wanted to eliminate EU as a potential rival economically and militarily, then I don't think I could have come up with a better way to do it than EU regulations. Personally I'm not too worried anyone is going to become a global superpower from generative AI slop.
- thenaturalist 1y agoComments like yours remind me that while HN is a competent technological forum, it's best to never, ever, engage in serious macro-economic/ int. politics discussions as the average user engaging in the latter topics is so far off base with common knowledge in these areas, any insider wouldn't find common ground. Overconfidence bias is real. Knowing your circle of competence is a gift.
- wredcoll 1y agoAh yes, famous industrial/scientific powerhouse... russia???