Comment by pu_pe
12 days ago
> If the EU repeals Article 6 of the Copyright Directive, some smart geeks in Finland could reverse-engineer Apple's bootloaders and make a hardware dongle that jailbreaks phones so that they can use alternative app stores
Apple could easily block this, and in the situation described here of a complete rupture with the US, they would no longer operate and sell phones in the EU. If Google decided to do the same, that essentially leaves Europeans without smartphones. Microsoft could "brick" the rest of the EU's digital infrastructure overnight if they so wished, or were compelled to do so.
This makes the transition described in the article much more difficult. Although likely more urgent, from an European perspective.
What I think most US people don't realise, is this would overnight start the slow but complete collapse of the US and it's economy.
Europe can make alternatives to US tech, and with it's track record it will probably be more open with more legitimate options and less predatory monopolies.
Once that is established with a home grown market of 450m people it will start competing with US in all the other markets.
Let's not forgot how many EU people work for US tech.
I suspect the wheels are in motion for many such transitions away from US dependency, in software and other fields.
Whenever trust is massively breached, and I believe much of the EU feels strongly that the US has breached trust, the natural action is to regroup and then gradually begin figuring out how to not be vulnerable to the same risk again.
If the US continues escalating the Greenland situation I expect that process will speed up massively.
Europe can make alternatives to US tech
Then why are there approximately no European tech companies? You remember that FT graph....
We did have alternatives to US tech, they just lost competition (fair or not) to US companies, and because tech is a winner takes it all industry, they ceased to exist. Should US companies leave EU though, we absolutely are in a position to have our own tech again.
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The article discusses many of the (unfair) tactics which have lead to US tech dominance.
The easy part of a smartphone to create for EU is the part that is done in the US.
The difficult part is the hardware. That is also why the iPhone is produced in Asia. Replacing TSMC is much more difficult than the software.
> iPhone is produced in Asia. Replacing TSMC
iPhone chips are largely produced in Arizona, and TSMC's 2nm fabs are scheduled to come online by 2028. 30% of TSMC's global production is schedule to be produced in America.
USA has been strategically re-homing TSMC to the USA mainland for a long time now.
Contrast with the EU which has done nothing to become self-reliant, and really just has no ideas. It is unfortunate.
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Creating good smartphone software is not easy. Only Apple has achieved it. Google is close. The rest are so far behind in the race they think they are leading.
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Technically, sure, but as long as the US dollar is the 'world reserve currency' any attempt to do so that would threaten to be a success can be easily 'bought out' by the US just by creating a few more bits on a ledger.
USD is about 2/3 of foreign exchange reserves. Which definitely is the lion's share. However, the more the US prattles about, the lower that ratio will become, the less soft power the US has.
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It's only one of many; I think (armchair gut feeling etc, not an economist) that the euro was one of the best economic decisions in recent history. Unless Europe falls apart - which currently many outside forces are trying to achieve - the euro will remain one of the safest currencies to use.
Except that the US Dollar is declining as a "world reserve currency" [1].
[1]: https://www.jpmorgan.com/insights/global-research/currencies...
Well, two issues here:
1) The moment US decides to completely exit EU and brick their devices, China will step in and provide the alternatives. Or it will trigger some tech arms race inside Europe, and we will see European providers rise up.
2) US Tech companies can't afford to pull out. They might do some short-lived performative black-outs to show European customers how dependent they are, and they will for sure run to the government, who in turn will start trade wars. But in the end they simply can't afford to just pull out completely.
As others have mentioned, not only is it a danger to their own revenue, but the US stock market is being carried by these tech companies.
The US has always profited the most from providing products / services which are better and cheaper to Europe, to such a degree that organic growth has been naturally suppressed.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
> 2) US Tech companies can't afford to pull out. They might do some short-lived performative black-outs to show European customers how dependent they are, and they will for sure run to the government, who in turn will start trade wars. But in the end they simply can't afford to just pull out completely.
Yep, case and point is current situation in Russia, where US companies "pulled" out due to sanctions, but not really.
The EU is a bigger market than the US when it comes to smartphones. So Apple would block this about as much as they would block moving over to USB-C.
Sure this could happen but that seems like a very last resort. The only reason the US economy is still competitive is tech stocks so cutting off ~35% of your income seem like it would cause a lot of downstream effects
Microsoft, yes and that would be catastrophic.
For security quality reasons, I hope Apple have made that suggestion impossible, but for law enforcement reasons I doubt it and anticipate a backdoor exists.
Google wouldn't block enough of Android to matter: Core is open source, EU forks/alternatives are likely already under development, and even if not a complete rupture with the US also likely means rapidly getting comfortable with China despite everything, and China already have Android forks.
However, Google docs/sheets/etc are a common business alternative to Microsoft, and therefore such a transatlantic rupture also cuts that. FWIW, I've never encountered a business using LibreOffice etc.
Security is a fallacy here because, being a US company, it is technically not secured by default as it has backdoors (or one has to assume it has backdoors and those cannot even be audited). Then it is just about the sense of security which is based on the threat model you consider threatening to you. You do not chose who you are the enemy of though and in fascist countries with no regards to the rule of law like the USA, this becomes a fairly important threat model to take into account.
Libreoffice is used quite a bit in administrations across EU. I would expect more stickiness to microsoft caused by legacy applications that requires windows to run rather than office.
ASML could also "brick" their machines running in the US.
no
Explain?
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The USA basically owns ASML since they invented the tech it's why they have to ask the USA congress permission to do stuff.
? EUV lithography was an international undertaking, some US research projects sure, but also Japanese (Hiroo Kinoshita, 80's), Russian (Georgiy Vaschenko, who is on all the patents for the 13.5 nm laser used (https://patents.google.com/?inventor=Georgiy+Vaschenko)), Dutch (of course), etc.
It's kind of ironic to think of a company as state controlled by the US given how anti-state-controlled the US can be when it comes to companies. ASML has majority shareholders in US companies like Intel and co, but that doesn't mean the US government has a say in it.
I mean they do because of international politics - just like the Dutch government has a say in things - but still.
> Apple could easily block this, and in the situation described here of a complete rupture with the US, they would no longer operate and sell phones in the EU. If Google decided to do the same, that essentially leaves Europeans without smartphones. Microsoft could "brick" the rest of the EU's digital infrastructure overnight if they so wished, or were compelled to do so.
All the more reasons to go scorched earth on American companies. There's a point in every blackmail where the only way forward is through.
I think this is partly why the EU is trying to invest in native semiconductor technologies/companies Which is strange, because usually the EU doesn't make strategic moves like this (compare it to China, where nearly every thing it does is strategic).
The idea of Apple and/or Google just stop selling phones in the EU seems ... unlikely. A quick search tells me something between a fourth and a third of Apple revenue is in the EU, you really think they'd just stop selling in the EU?
Gotta also remember, that even if the EU would allow this, your average phone user would not use it. Just like your average phone user doesn't root their android smartphone or installs Lineage/Graphene/eOS/whatever. Even if it were made easier (or possible) for more phones, the vast majority would not use it and Apple and Google would still make a lot of money.
But in the proposed scenario, there wouldn’t be any technical hurdles or effort required by the phone’s owner - you could have this be a service offered by businesses. Maybe even the place that sells the phone would pre-jailbreak it for you.
Not only that, but also... only a small percentage of people actually wants this and / or would do this, the vast majority of consumers doesn't mess with their stuff even if they could.
Same with the alternative app store support, it reminds me of when the EU mandated Microsoft to offer a Windows without Media Player. It didn't sell, because consumers don't actually care much - Media Player wasn't obnoxiously in the way.
> that essentially leaves Europeans without smartphones
... for about 20 minutes before China steps in. Or Samsung with de Googled Android models.
Or maybe… Finland? There is linux phones already, so perhaps Apple and Google f-king off might not be a bad thing.
The new Nokias are Android with Google services afaik. It may take a bit to de google them and take out all the non open source parts out of the OS.
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Lol thank God there are so many companies outside of Europe producing technology
In case bricks will be thrown, the response from the receiving party will likely skew to the argument presented here--circumvention of technical locks.
You'd catch the brick, sand it and repurpose so it'll fit your home.