Comment by mdni007

4 days ago

As opposed to what? American servers with Isreali backdoors?

How about Spanish servers?

I will never understand this helplessness that comes from these European countries. They are choosing to be dependent on foreign powers.

  • It's expensive to home-grow your own solutions and if you try transitioning too many services at once the cost will be outrageous and you'll probably open other security holes. I am glad Spain is taking this step and I hope they continue this trend - but outright refusing to use any software built abroad requires a massive investment in domestic tech. That investment would likely pay economic dividends but it is a cost that needs to be measured against other investments Spain needs to make and in Spain's case resilience against global warming is especially important.

  • You know, we all thought you were allies. But you tricked us well.

    • > Fool me once, shame on... shame on you

      — George Bush, 2002

      The original saying: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

      I think an intellectually honest take is that it's advantageous and prudent to depend on allies and neighbors; leveraging each party's strengths for efficiencies over strategic autonomy. This trade-off is commonly debated with depending on US military hardware in favor of EU military hardware (e.g. France's long standing position for EU strategic autonomy), or vendor lock-in with AWS vs cloud-independent offerings.

      The problem is when an ally becomes inconsistent and/or uncooperative; a high stakes version of prisoner's dilemma. At which point do you replace an ally's offerings with more expensive, and often inferior, alternatives? The general populace rarely has the appetite for the short-term economic pain required to achieve long-term strategic independence.

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