[bambax]

> They won't invoke nukes to overturn the table

How do you know? Trump's frustration is on the rise; at some point he very well may threaten nuclear strikes.

Another scenario is, he tries to invade, an Iranian drone makes it through and sinks a big US ship, hundreds or even thousands of American soldiers die in a very short period of time. Now everyone's upset and the American public screams "revenge".

Then anything can happen, really.

[wiseowise]

> How do you know? Trump's frustration is on the rise; at some point he very well may threaten nuclear strikes.

Whole world will boycott USA if they use nukes.

[don_esteban]

Will they?

US can squeeze Europe/Japan as much as they want.

Just disable Microsoft/Google/AWS/Apple crap for them and they will be on their knees.

Although, I will give larger chances of Israel using nukes than then US.

[jacquesm]

> Just disable Microsoft/Google/AWS/Apple crap for them and they will be on their knees.

The dumb thing is that there are people in the US that actually believe this. Apparently including you. It would destroy the US as a trading partner and cause overnight implosion of the USD. If you thought brexit was an own goal this would be on another level entirely. But please, shout it around some more and prove the point that I've been making to every company that I've been involved with in the last decade: have a plan in case your cloud stuff isn't available anymore.

[don_esteban]

First, the US has recently done a lot of dumb shit and own goals. One never knows where is the boundary, especially if things escalate gradually.

Second, the spinelessness of 'the west' also seems unbounded (the failure to condemn Venezuela action, Iran war, or Israel's behaviour). Even after the Greenland fiasco. Carney's words at Davos seem very hollow, when one sees his reaction to Iran war. So, it might not even come to full stop of IT infrastructure, just 'a gentle warning'.

Third, the US has no problems screwing its partners, with those obediently bowing down; that is not a new phenomenon. Read on 1971 Connaly's statement "The dollar is our currency, but your problem."

[salawat]

Ah hahahaha. Yeah... No. Contrary to popular belief, the 2-300 year old upstart that is the United States doesn't have a magical lynchpin it can pull to get the other longstanding nations of the world to acquiesce entirely. If the U.S. really pushes things, it will soon find itself on the shit list of everyone else on whom we rely for implementing key links in the supply chain. I honestly do not understand where the gung ho America ooh rah comes from anymore these days. People, we sold out our industrial base. We sold out how to make things. We sold out everything that wasn't nailed down chasing cheaper payroll to undercut the American worker. This country is not as on it's own two feet as we like to believe. One need only look at the supply chain disruptions of the last decade to understand that.

So much goodwill. Just up in smoke. Smfh.

[don_esteban]

Well said.

Perhaps I should have formulated my post more precisely.

1) So much goodwill gone up in smoke. Yes.

a) Will the US stop wasting its goodwill? Well, that would be a new thing, so no. b) Will it exploit the dependence on its IT infrastructure muscle? Who knows? It exploited the dependence on it financial infrastructure, despite obvious long term consequences on trust in this financial infrastructure. c) Will it come to truly turning off IT infrastructure? Probably not, the threat of that is sufficient, plus see 2).

2) My main beef is not with the US (I am not from US), its with Europe, for its spinelessness and inability to break its US dependence.

[jacquesm]

> 2) My main beef is not with the US (I am not from US), its with Europe, for its spinelessness and inability to break its US dependence.

Silicon Valley has an 'unfair advantage' in terms of capital available and the talent pool (though the latter is changing). This means that if you're going to roll something out you have a very good shot at cleaning up the EU market besides your home market because you will have the ability to massively undercut any EU competitors to the point that it would have to be an existential risk (after all your other EU competitors can do the same) to not do business with the US tech giants.

That's not spinelessness, that's sheer survival in a world where the table is massively tilted.

Breaking US dependence means breaking SV dependence and that's not even something the other states in the US have been able to do (Seattle got a head start and still didn't manage).

The same goes for the rest of the world...

Now, as to whether or not the EU could do better: so far, not really, because the main reason the EU does what it does is because it is a strong subscriber to free market principles, both within and without (and for better or for worse). The US has now burned a number of bridges which for most people in the EU (present company apparently excluded) were beyond the pale not that long ago.

So the tide is finally shifting: doing business with the US for critical services is now seen as a massive liability. This opens the door to local competition but that local competition still has to deal with various realities: environmental laws, anti-competitive legislation (which is stronger than in the USA) and a fractured linguistic environment as well as a lack of available capital. Those are - each by themselves - massive challenges that will need to be overcome.

I'm too old to take the lead in any of this - assuming I even could - so I'm happy to stand back to see what is going to happen and to help people see what is to their advantage and what is not. But I'm going to reserve judgment because I think that if you want to solve a problem you're going to have to work with people rather than to blame them for any of the ruts they're in.

[don_esteban]

Well, yes, all is more obvious in hindsight.

The tilted table facing the Silicon Valley: Yes, definitively. The US is screaming murder regarding the others (China...) subsidizing their industries to gain monopoly advantage. That is exactly what US (via Venture Capital) is doing regarding the SV startups -- the whole model there is burning cash to scale quickly to market dominance.

If China and Russia have been able to (at least somehow) insulate themselves from US IT dominance, so should had Europe, at least for the most critical things. Hiding behind 'free market' ideology when the other (stronger!) side is not playing by the same rules is sheer stupidity.

Yeah, yeah, nobody could have foreseen the level US would abuse its power... if you wholeheartedly believed the spiel about the common values and interests. In reality, the US has always been very transactional and aggressive. Its just that with Trump the mask has come off.

[i_am_a_peasant]

passes him a german beer, silently nods