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Escaping the trap of US tech dependence
- analyst74 9mo agoSounds good in principle, but I don't see any meaningful suggestions.
- throwaway_7347r 9mo agoIt has to start with buying the idea and trump has done excellent job in selling the idea.
- mikeayles 9mo agoIn a similar vein, I would recommend watching Cory Doctorow's presentation at 39C3,a post american, enshittification-resistant internet. https://youtu.be/3C1Gnxhfok0?si=uKDlYn33IIYevj8p https://youtu.be/3C1Gnxhfok0?si=uKDlYn33IIYevj8p
- hiichbindermax 9mo agoYou can also watch it at CCC directly: https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-a-post-american-enshittification-resistant-internet https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-a-post-american-enshittification...
- FpUser 9mo agoAs much as I am for freedom and hate that DMCI or whatever it is called the guy is delusional. Not because he propoese to repeal the act (I am all for it) but his ideas that one can have some profitable business doing circumvention and selling software / hardware that unlocks whatever one is trying to unlock. As soon as you try to sell one it will be hacked and released for free.
- cmiles8 9mo ago“You told me these were the best engineers in the world!!” “I said they were the best engineers in Canada” (Great quote from the BlackBerry movie). Rings true here. You can’t fight market forces. To push out the US tech you need to build something that’s better than the US tech. Anything else is just wishful thinking.
- estimator7292 9mo agoGood thing that US Tech is building the worst technology possible. Should make things a lot simpler
- FpUser 9mo agoNo, you have to build something that can work reasonably well, get rid of being fucking dependency slave in strategic areas and then try to catch up. Of course does not work for small countries
- shimman 9mo agoIs US tech even good anymore? Do none of us not encounter the massive amount of shit from companies like Google, MSFT, Apple, Amazon, etc as users? Truly terrible bugs or user flows from engineers that clearly don't care while everyone is just collecting their own share of blood. I can't think of a single thing that big tech has done to improve my life, or society for that matter, over the last 10 years. All US Tech has is the backing of the US government and that is likely to change in the coming decade, without the pressure of the US government would these companies be as competitive? We see what happens when others try to, rightfully I might add, regulate them: they throw extreme hissy fits and pressure the US government to force the countries to back off (by threat of sanctions or military action).
- kuerbel 9mo agoI sell/work as a consultant for m365 and azure and the services are definitely getting worse. AI translated garbage docs in which "plane" is translated as aeroplane (Flugzeug), Exchange as "Umtausch" (literal meaning of to exchange something) and so on. Obviously those are the ones I can remember because they were funny. There are also other errors that are not as obvious. And don't get me started on slopilot being everywhere.
- OGEnthusiast 9mo ago> I can't think of a single thing that big tech has done to improve my life, or society for that matter, over the last 10 years. Apple silicon has been pretty transformative for desktop/laptop-class chips.
- microtonal 9mo agoIt's only a small contribution, but last week we have ended our Dropbox subscription (12 * 20 Euro = 240 Euro) and moved our data to Proton Drive. We are also moving out photos out of Apple Photos (12 * 10 = 120 Euro per year for storage). And I have also moved my mail out of Fastmail (to Proton Mail), which is a nice Aussie company, but their main servers are hosted in the US, so too risky. We also just moved all our backups from Backblaze B2 to Hetzner + local (between me and my wife 12 * $15 = $180 per year). Besides moving to Proton and Hetzner, we are increasing donations to non-profits like Mastodon. I encourage everyone outside the US and in particular Canada and Europe to move your data out of the US and away from US cloud companies now. Putting your data there is not safe anymore and can and will be used for blackmail (see Microsoft cutting access of the International Criminal Court's (ICC) chief prosecutor's email). Trump is now blackmailing countries with tariffs to get them to back off support for Greenland (not going to happen), so things are going to get ugly. If you are heavily into tech or an activist, etc. it's also a good time to pick up an extra phone like a second hand Pixel to run GrapheneOS as a backup. Or (less secure) a phone that can be unlocked and run something like /e/OS. I know that it might take years to get all companies, governments, etc. off American big tech products. But that's not a good reason for not safeguarding your own data. Besides that, the more funding non-US alternatives get through enthusiasts, the better they are positioned to improve their alternatives.
- mixmastamyk 9mo agoFairphone with Murena is another Euro-friendly choice on the mobile front.
- cudgy 9mo agoTrue. European countries will never violate privacy, prosecute citizens for their beliefs, or use blackmail operations against its citizens. Problem solved!
- palmotea 9mo agoThe easiest was of escaping the trap of US tech dependence, is to buy your tech from China. Everything they have is very advanced, and cheap to boot. Huawei instead of Apple, WeChat instead of WhatsApp, etc. Everyone wins except Trump.
- mixmastamyk 9mo agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46637463 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46637463 Euro tech already exists. Add in Nova custom and Star labs. I understand many components are still made in China but this is the first step.
- Loughla 9mo agoIs China a better country to rely on?
- bflesch 9mo agoRight now, China is still supporting the russian war machine. The russian people are openly at war against Ukraine and the European idea. Still China is a great alternative to US in terms of hardware, because all the things you would buy from the US is just made in China anyways. While the US are acting like foolish, uneducated hotheads China is silently benefiting from all parties involved.
- dekrg 9mo agoYou mean compared to the country that is bombing other countries, kidnapping their leaders while also threatening to annex territory of its ally?
- loeg 9mo agoWhich countries and leaders do you have in mind?
- dekrg 9mo agoOh sorry, right the US just kidnapped a singular leader this year while bombing and killing people. Glad you pointed that out and everything just peachy with the US foreign policy of just some bombing and kidnapping and threatening to annex Greenland! Go murrica!
- SilverElfin 9mo agoThis is written from a Canadian perspective, but even within America, there are good reasons to stop giving money to American tech companies and find alternatives. The founders and executives and investors of all of these companies have become wealthy and powerful. Now they are dismantling the country by funding a certain political group and looking the other way as that same group seeks to deport 100 million Americans (basically all non whites), invade allied nations, and terrorize people in the streets. There’s no escape from the reality that dollars given to American tech companies is dollars given to that same machine.
- bflesch 9mo agoDo you think a lot of US tech workers feel the same? From my personal interactions these past few days on HN it is very disappointing how ignorant and devoid of facts the arguments are which come from people who seem to be US tech workers.
- SilverElfin 9mo agoI think most are totally unaware. The ones that could become victimized by the administration are quietly terrified and worried about their future. But they can’t speak up because their CEOs are fans of the administration. One disappointing pattern I see is many tech workers downplaying what’s going on - I think it’s hard for them to imagine what the impact is when it doesn’t threaten them specifically.
- computerthings 9mo ago[dead]
- loeg 9mo ago> [Republicans] [seek] to deport 100 million Americans (basically all non whites), invade allied nations, You think these are statements of fact?
- emptybits 9mo ago
- ris 9mo agoTech dependence is nothing compared to the world's dependence on US financial infrastructure.
- yogthos 9mo agoHasn't really been true for the past few years with a whole separate infrastructure emerging around BRICS Now.
- mdhb 9mo agoThe EU has a plan to replace all of that in the pipeline already. That isn’t new, they are already like 5 years into it and I think looking to launch it next year. That one I actually don’t think is going to be a problem at all as a lot of it is already built and basically ready to go.
- gdulli 9mo agoGeopolitics aside, tech dependence in general has tipped from net helping us to hurting us. AI dependence is going to make social media dependence look like nothing.
- marcosdumay 9mo agoI have never seen some person or organization that couldn't ditch LLMs in an instant. Are you talking about some other kind of AI?
- Yoric 9mo agoBig Tech is trying to push forward a model in which technicians use LLMs without understanding them. That's where all these "you don't need to learn coding" PRs converge towards. That would be a nightmare scenario for almost everybody involved, but it's exactly the one in which the Trump admin believes and invests, and it is a possible future.
- lelanthran 9mo ago> I have never seen some person or organization that couldn't ditch LLMs in an instant. I read parent as "This is where they want to be", not "this is were they are right now".
- pseudony 9mo agoMade a Ask HN, but screwed it up by editing the text. Anyway, good ideas/tools for evaluating LLMs ? Naturally, as a Dane, I am moving away from Claude, but I’d like more than a gut feel about how much I may have given up to do so.
- istanbulbebesi 9mo agoJust go for Qwen or Deepseek. They are both very good.
- microtonal 9mo agoOr Mistral, it is French and has been great for my day to day queries (haven't tried for programming yet).
- sillyfluke 9mo agoMistral has made a pivot from small model focus to large model focus by getting into bed with Microsoft. I don't know how sticky their deals are but, taking a quick look at recent Microsoft press releases, Mistral still seems to be prioritizing releases on Azure.
- microtonal 9mo agoDon't let perfect be the enemy of good. They are currently the most (if only) serious non-US Western player.
- mcbetz 9mo agoYou might benefit from LMArena's Leaderboard. It does not have Danish (yet), but German and English evaluation might help: https://lmarena.ai/de/leaderboard/text/german https://lmarena.ai/de/leaderboard/text/german Openrouter.ai shows the location of providers, you can find just a few European services, but also Singaporean and Canadian. Unfortunately, I could not find a way to filter easily.
- istanbulbebesi 9mo agoHere are the migrations we been doing to with my extended family to get rid of our US dependencies: - Gmail -> ProtonMail - Whatsapp -> Telegram - I installed Linux to my parents laptops. They like it. - YouTube App -> Newpipe and Smarttube Also, my next car will be a BYD. The current one is a Ford.
- solidsnack9000 9mo agoFord actually makes vehicles in Europe. Does BYD? If push comes to shove and Europe needs to part ways with the USA, to greater or lesser degree, there will still be machinists, mechanics, and actual facilities in place to keep making Fords. That is a positive from the standpoint of European sovereignty. The EU probably has rules in place to strongly encourage US manufacturers of automobiles to put facilities in the EU. The US has similar rules and many Toyotas, Hondas, &c, are made in the US, using US suppliers for parts. It's not hard to imagine an approach to digital services that trends in a similar direction. In the EU or Canada, the US parent company would supply technical data, software, specifications, &c, to a domestic company with its own facilities and operations. It probably requires a combination of regulations and regular stress tests; but nothing prevents the domestic company's operations from being as de facto severable as a car factory.
- istanbulbebesi 9mo agoFord is American, BYD is not. That is enough for me.
- solidsnack9000 9mo agoThis might be less about sovereignty for you, then.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- tzs 9mo ago> Ford actually makes vehicles in Europe. Does BYD? Not yet. They are in the process of opening a factory in Hungary. The production line equipment arrived in December, with trial production scheduled for Q1 2026, and mass production in Q2, with capacity ramping up over two years. They are also doing a factory in Turkey. Their plan is for all of the EVs they sell in Europe to be made in the EU by 2028. They aren't the only Chinese car maker interested in producing in Europe. Chery is building a big plant in Spain. Geely is looking at options in Poland or Hungary but hasn't decided on a site yet. SAIC is planning to make cars in Hungary.
- ta9000 9mo agoPlease, just leave already. Stop talking about it and just do it. It’s like people talking about how awful social media is. Just don’t fucking use it. Nothing would make Americans happier than an alternative. Europeans, go build your own big tech that can compete and win against Microsoft/Copilot. It’s not a big lift.
- mixmastamyk 9mo agoIt's already built, now it only needs to be used.
- Sytten 9mo agoIf we want to meaningfully reduce our dependency we "just" need more capital. All founders in Canada will tell you that Canadian VC suck: they are risk averse, their due diligence is painful and their terms are made so they can't lose. It is not rare in Canada for ex-founders of failed startups to be hundred of thousands of dollars in debt. That's why we are always advised to go seek funding in the US. In Canada we like to give money to big established monopolies, that's our thing. The SR&ED program is a prime example of that, as a bootstrap business it took us 3 years before we could apply since we didn't have enough money to front full salaries for 1.5y before receiving a grant. It is not really a complex problem to solve, the entrepreneurs know the solutions but our politicians and wealthy people are so small c conservative it's pathetic.
- ambicapter 9mo agoI mean it’s their money, not yours. Stands to reason that if you have a silly amount of money you can afford to spend it in silly ways (and if you don’t, you don’t). Sometimes you even hit it big then you get to tell everyone how much of a genius you are!
- am3141 9mo agoThis is 100% true.
- Havoc 9mo agoI really wish the EU leaned heavily into the cloud basic building blocks. There's a lot of stuff in big cloud that is genuinely hard to duplicate especially with network effects, but I don't see why they can't throw a billion or 3 at ensuring you've got a homegrown stack that can do VMs, S3, function, container registry, database, block storage, firewall etc - with guaranteed funding, clear licenses, handful of local options perhaps with some sort of local guaranteed certification etc. Baby steps are better than no steps & a lot of things can be made to run on those building blocks
- cudgy 9mo agoDidn’t moving to the cloud exacerbate the problem in the first place?
- microtonal 9mo agoBaby steps are better than no steps & a lot of things can be made to run on those building blocks Yes. EU citizens should not let others (or themselves) talk them down. Yes, it will be an enormous job, but it's how you tackle any job - step by step. And there are a lot of things that can already be moved, like e-mail, code forges, databases, etc.
- lelanthran 9mo ago> I really wish the EU leaned heavily into the cloud basic building blocks. ... > VMs, S3, function, container registry, database, block storage, firewall etc You think those are building blocks? I think that those are the very tippy-top of the tech stack! Because, okay, lets say you have already got those things I quoted. What are you going to run them on (CPU, RAM, storage, etc)? How are they going to talk to each other (Routers, switches, etc)? It makes no sense, IMO, to have all your software but nowhere to run them. Better to throw that money at ARM/RISC-V development, and you'll literally get startups starting up to build the software for that hardware. All you're proposing now is (re)building software for a US stack.
- Havoc 9mo ago> You think those are building blocks? From the users perspective yes. EU doesn’t need cloud tech to have cloud tech for the sake of it but rather to build an ecosystem on top of it. The cloud is just the missing plumbing not the end goal > All you're proposing now is (re)building software for a US stack. AWS has like 200 services. My point is with the right combination of half a dozen you can cover a big chunk of needs
- steve1977 9mo agoI think many people don't realize how big this dependence is. You're running Linux? Oh fine... on which hard- and firmware? Intel? AMD? Apple Silicon? Qualcomm? All US. You're using the Internet? Via Cisco routers? Europe and other regions would have to put in huge efforts to really gain independence.
- tadfisher 9mo agoI think there are different forms of dependence that result in more or less severe carrying costs. Hardware is only a problem when you need to replace it or create new installations, so its carrying cost is rather low. The Microsoft 365 Copilot app is subscription-based, induces vendor lock-in with a whole software/hardware ecosystem, and is updated on a whim from the vendor with next to no customer control; its carrying cost is enormous.
- microtonal 9mo agoThe thing is that we had been allies for many decades. So the US and the EU are very entwined. You only mention one side, those chips are made using ASML machines from The Netherlands (with lenses from Germany), the latter two use an architecture licensed from a UK company (owned by a Japanese conglomerate). It was a very successful cooperation between two continents, but since the US wants to throw that under the bus, we have to become self-sufficient. It will take time to untangle the mutual dependencies and become more independent. That said, ARM also designs full ARM64 cores (until recently Qualcomm cores were based on ARM cores, until the new cores based on the NUVIA acquisition) and they can be fabbed in Taiwan (TSMC) and South Korea (Samsung), and hopefully Europe in some years. Besides that, it's true that if you are running Linux, you rely on US firmware and Intel/AMD chips, but assuming that Intel ME doesn't have a bad remote kill switch, you can continue to run on existing hardware.
- jsiepkes 9mo agoAll that hardware (with chips) is made by machines from ASML. Mobile devices? That's all ARM. Mobile infrastructure like 5G? Mostly Nokia or Ericsson.
- colinnordin 9mo ago
- mixmastamyk 9mo agoThis story is getting penalized, pushed off the front page, because it has more comments than points. It's important, so please upvote.
- throwaway_7347r 9mo agoAll the countries now going local. I hope there is lots of redundant jobs b/w countries and increase employment. We don't need any more efficiency, all we need is to work sane hours without stress and die in peace.