They are usually incompetent on things that are not important, like keeping infrastructure from falling off the cliff, maintaining a good economy, or in general serving the people. They are pretty competent on things that are really important, like hacking into people's phones, killing other people.
After all you have to admit that getting killed is more serious than getting starved...
"The intelligence agency, called the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) discovered that some calls on Air Force One were unencrypted and it was able to tap into radio frequencies that were used for those calls, according to the book, "
No hacking or deployment of listening devices, just passive listening. Unless you have other sources?
EU member states do and often with collaboration with Israeli vendors - especially in the CEE and Southern Europe. It even became an ongoing scandal in the EU [0][1].
Northern and Western European states tend to use American products, but the difference between "American", "Israeli", "Czech", and "Indian" blurs because of how much overlap the industry has transnationally.
Italy, Czechia, Poland, and Netherlands all have significant domestic capacity in the space as well, but a large portion of it is via American and Israeli tech.
EU law enforcement agencies regularly buy this kind of software, even if illegal!
The Italian Carabinieri bought Paragon even though they can't legally use it, because mass surveillance is obviously illegal and against our constitution.
Don't get me wrong, I get why they want to and it is probably a justified security concern, but it's also things like that which will probably cause Europe's economy to continue to stagnate while the US's will probably continue to soar even with Trump (and perhaps, later, Vance) completely destroying our international reputation and credibility and our most important political and scientific institutions.
The fact that the US can continue to economically do so well relative to others despite currently being run by some of the stupidest and most abhorrent people possible is... sad.
Europe could be more competitive but then they snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Just in the past week they're meddling with the infinite scroll feature and then the unrealized taxes in the Netherlands. Why would a tech company wanna operate in such an environment?
Obviously one cannot simply accept any potential societal trade-off in favor of benefitting the economy, but going too far in the opposite direction eventually manifests as worse living standards for the average person, which is not beneficial to society.
"How does banning unhealthy food make society worse?" "How does banning unhealthy habits make society worse?" "How does banning harmful/hateful speech make society worse?" "How does banning things and, as a result, our economy stagnating, make society worse?"
> The fact that the US can continue to economically do so well relative to others despite currently being run by some of the stupidest and most abhorrent people possible is... sad.
It's not sad, it's strong evidence (I hesitate to call it proof, but...) that a federated model of governance with limited regulation is the most resilient and successful form of government.
All the EU states need to do is learn that regulation is not the solution to every theoretical problem any bureaucrat can imagine, and they too can experience meaningful economic growth.
I agree that if you want to pursue economic growth laissez-faire is possibly the best course of action, but economic growth isn't the only metric worth pursuing.
I have no idea where you got that idea from. If anything the EU has been focused way too much on the economy, hoping trade and economic growth will solve all problems.
1. Watching the standard of living in the US outpace the EU for decades and comparing their economic systems.
2. Basic common sense tells you that you need resources in order to fund a welfare state, a long list of positive human rights, and all the other things that the EU states want to do. Money buys resources, especially when you don't have direct access to them (which is the case for most EU states).
Probably one of these scissor statements where economic leftists think that obviously the problem is focusing way too much on [X] and the others saying the problem is focusing far too little on [X].