Comment by alephnerd

17 days ago

The EU has the capacity, but will be working closely with other partners like India, Japan, South Korea, Israel, Vietnam, and the UAE as capital and/or technology partners.

For example, Eutelsat - which is providing the backbone for GOVSATCOM and IRIS2 - is a three-way partnership between India's Bharti Group (Sunil Mittal), the French, and the UK. Or GCAP where Japan's Mitsubishi Group is acting as both a technology and capital partner to Italy and the UK.

This was also a major driver behind the EU-India Defense Pact and the EU-Vietnam Comprehensive Strategic Partnership - both of which were overshadowed by the EU-India FTA.

A multilateral organization like the EU has the muscle to integrate and cooperate with other partners, which is something that shouldn't be underestimated, as this builds resilience via redundancy.

Edit: Interesting how this is the second time [0] in the past few weeks where an HN comment I wrote that was optimistic about the EU's capacity was downvoted. There's a reason the PRC is still conducting industrial espionage on EU institutions [1].

[0] - https://www.intelligenceonline.fr/asie-pacifique/2026/01/14/...

8 comments

alephnerd

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Fnoord  17 days ago

> Interesting how this is the second time [0] in the past few weeks where an HN comment I wrote that was optimistic about the EU's capacity was downvoted.

Nothing new there, but I wouldn't assume Chinese bot army being behind it. The Russians, American MAGA, European alt-right each have an interest in such suppression (and RU and USA also conduct industrial espionage on EU). You may assume each of these parties is present in a thread about European sovereignty, but either way the mods discourage any discussion about moderation. You're best off emailing one of them.

sajithdilshan  17 days ago

But then again it won't be sovereign. EU has been doing the same with US companies and now they are switching US for a different country/countries

  • alephnerd  17 days ago

    Sovereignty doesn't mean autarky - it means having the capacity to maintain operations and pivot should a black swan event arise.

    The EU is a transnational bloc that has had experience helping it's member states find niches of competitive advantage and take full advantage of that.

    Germany doesn't need to fully replicate Denmark's biopharma pipeline nor does Denmark have the need to fully replicate Germany's nuclear submarine IP because both can and have continued to coexist with each other and build resilience through additonal partnerships which prevent one from dominating the other.

    This is the modus operandi of EU soverignity - integrate players into following a set of collective norms and aligning each other's incentives with the larger collective.

    This is why EU's grand strategy incorporates the industrial base of other regional powers like Japan, SK, India, Vietnam, Canada, Australia, UAE, Israel, etc because it increasingly aligns all these regional powers against domination from either the US or China.

baklavaEmperor  17 days ago

If trust is the constraint, Israel’s track record makes it an odd choice for EU sovereign systems.