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Comment by fspoettel

10 days ago

Europe generates ~20% of revenue for US big tech which is a large part of its stock market. With how precariously coupled US growth is to these companies, it absolutely needs that market.

But can the Europe survive without the US big tech. Imagine the worst case US bans any sort of export from big tech to Europe, all startups and even every tech reliant company in EU would collapse without AWS, Azure or Google cloud. Also imagine ban on exports from Apple and Google, from tomorrow onwards both iPhones and Android phones stops working because software services are banned in EU.

It’s so easy to argue on putting tariff on US tech, but we forget how much Europeans depend on it and it would be like shooting one’s own foot.

One could argue that over the time EU can build their own infrastructure and alternative, but who is going to invest for it? The governments? With tax payers money? And who is going to build it? EU is one of the fastest aging continent in the world and what can they offer to attract young talent?

  • that would actually spark a new golden age.

    aws et all are just extracting rent. we all know this.

    telcos have some ownership of the android firmware they distribute, and could easily spin up and fund alternatives like replicant or even go full partnership with Chinese versions.

    simply moving email providers from Microsoft would make threeletter agencies work much more difficult, and it's a 2min dns change.

    any way you look at it, the impact would be positive. i don't think your example is the example you think it is. like trump, you're ignoring agency to every other player in the systems and ignoring some obvious consequences.

    • Either you’re stupid or ignorant. What do you mean by easily spin up alternative android? And who is going to fund that? EU spend millions of Euros for a corona Warn app, and spinning an android alternative would cost billions, with tax payers money. Also everyone that uses iPhones, what are they going to do? Are they gonna get free android phones?

      Forget about phones, all the companies that uses RDS would lose their data and that would be catastrophic.

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