[ilikerashers]

Europe has just been catastrophically slow in developing anything related to it's own tech infrastructure. Its doesn't back itself.

Given how poor it's responding to things like the Draghi report, I wouldn't anticipate success. Just more flailing around and working groups.

[pydry]

There are plenty of european hosts (e.g. hetzner) and with payments systems the technology is rarely the problem it's the politics. I imagine EPI will have no problem succeeding.

The major problem Europe has (mentioned in the draghi report) is with industrial competitiveness and strategy and access to cheap energy.

With the former it's not like the US is doing any better though. I dont think anybody in the west even has an industrial strategy.

[jongjong]

Yes, it's glaringly obvious to me that they've been actively suppressing their own tech sector. Feels like a lot of EU politicians owned shares of US tech companies.

This effect of politicians making decisions based on what corporate shares they own is ubiquitous now.

In the other direction, I even wonder if US threats about Greenland were related to this trend of Denmark moving off US big tech. I feel like the real game is military coercion dressed up as economics.

I suspect if people knew the real reasons behind each political decision, they'd be shocked. I'm sure it's all 100% about money; about taking as much as possible whilst giving as little in exchange as possible; filling the gap with pure coercion.

[Thlom]

It's a racket. The US have provided military protection in exchange for Europe tying itself to the mast of the US empire. Some of it is unspoken, some of it is contracted, especially concerning military hardware.

[tonyedgecombe]

Yes, I always think it's quite rich for Americans to complain about European defence when the current state is exactly what America wanted for the last seventy years.

[ilikerashers]

Yeap. I worked in the UK public sector and I watched the UK gov briefly back their own cloud company (Skyscape) then ditch them when they had some minor issues.

Completely captured by US tech

[pjmlp]

Europe isn't a country, and as such each nation has its own agenda, and political relations.

For bad or worse, not all European national governments see the world through the same glasses.

[wolvesechoes]

9/10 conversations on things happening across Europe can be thrown into trash bin, as they treat EU, or even Europe as a whole, as a single political entity. I could somehow accept that Americans can display such ignorance, but amazingly pretty often this mistake is being made by people declaring themselves as European. Like, are they blind to the political reality that surrounds them?

[pjmlp]

I can understand talking about us as a wide group, given how we share many cultural points of view, ways of working are still closer that across the pound, many being polyglot, having seen the same cartoons as kids and so on, regardless of the differences that remain, however we are still quite far away from turning into United States of Europe. The growing rights sentiment, is exactly because many nationals don't want going that far, among other issues.

Also not everything that gets regulated in Brussels, gets adopted by local goverments, and additionally there are plenty European countries that still aren't part of EU organisation.

Yeah, cannot understand this misunderstanding when coming from Europeans, as you mention.

[mytailorisrich]

Cynically, my view is that this is actually on purpose and pushed by the EU itself. My is happening in with Russia, Ukraine, the US is used as a narrative tool to push for EU federalisation. This means pushing for more EU control, which we are seeing, and minimising references to individual countries. Even the "sovereignty" push is fully through the lens of more EU oversight (which is oxymoronic but a powerful political narrative).

[ExoticPearTree]

I don't think that is going to happen anytime soon. First thing the EU is that it needs to be reformed from the ground up and have elections for the general commissioner and its cabinet. Commissioner positions should be handed over to every country just because. The whole of Europe should vote who they want for agriculture, who they want for foreign relations and so on. The way it works now is very very wrong and a big disservice to EU citizens.

[trinsic2]

We will see. My guess is 5 to 10 years these anti-competitive regimes will collapse as more and more people move away from bad actors like our current administration.