> They are politically and societally paralyzed from building even basic things like datacenters which are essentially just industrial compute factories and the foundation for anything pertaining to data sovereignty and technology sovereignty.
No, they are not entirely blind to the consequences of this buildout and are trying to find a balance between environmental concerns and technological progress.
I agree that we should probably do more but to use words like 'societally paralyzed' is rather uninformed about what actual democracies look like.
edit: never mind, I just checked your comment history, this seems to be some thing that you are repeating over and over and getting the same kind of answers but you just keep doing it.
If Europe can't even build data centers, which come with low to moderate environmental impact, they won't manage to deploy a Starlink alternative either.
Even though they could use SpaceX launch capacity to deploy such a constellation, Europe has no such plans.
Your comment seems to reinforce the parent's opinion about societal paralyzation.
Europe can claim to be cleaner or more democratic, but it doesn't change that they get nothing done.
We're building data centres, there are several massive ones in my tiny little country (NL). We're also quite capable of putting satellites into orbit. We have swarms of these small satellites just not quite at the scale of StarLink and they're doing science.
Your claim makes as much sense as saying that the US can't even build airliners. Sure they can't build good ones. That was a decision to replace the technically capable management at Boeing with an army of MBAs. Sure Airbus are a decade ahead but the US can still build them.
The thing which many people forget was that, up until the current POTUS decided to reverse course, we were best buddies. We've invested a huge amount of money in US-based companies and generally worked together to increase the size of the pie for everyone.
> If Europe can't even build data centers, which come with low to moderate environmental impact, they won't manage to deploy a Starlink alternative either.
You must be trolling. Even US cloud providers have multiple regions in Europe, and the likes of Eutelsat precede SpaceX for a couple of decades and have been around for half a century already.
> Europe can claim to be cleaner or more democratic, but it doesn't change that they get nothing done.
I don't think you're noticing the US is plunging into self-imposed irrelevance. It can't even manage to properly fight a war anymore,as can be attested by the whole Iran fiasco. But keep parroting your alt right pipeline tropes pushed by Russian bots. Don't forget to complain how Europe is freezing and how minority rights are a societal problem.
>edit: never mind, I just checked your comment history, this seems to be some thing that you are repeating over and over and getting the same kind of answers but you just keep doing it
I've noticed this with people in tech who spend too much time on Twitter. They have a very weird view of Europe. It used to be the Fox New boomers but it has spread to people who you'd assume were pretty smart.
To be honest it's part of the reason I left Twitter and only visit this site rarely. Sucks as I've had some awesome discussions here in the past.
My suspicion is that it's related to the drop in standards in tech since the big ramp up in the 2010s and the way Meta and the crypto folks don't want regulation so a lot of their employees have a vested interested in bashing the organisation capable of actually introducing some good regulation.
Rayiner, you are not going to bait me into giving you a piece of my mind because unlike you when you cross the lines (repeatedly, egregiously) I would likely get banned from HN.
Propagandists have long figured out that you don't have to control people's thoughts and opinions. You just need to go into their public forum and say some outrageous shit, it doesn't have to be right, well thought out, you just need to shout some shit, so that you get to control the topics that people talk about.
Everytime something about EU tech sovereignty is posted, comments with sentiments like OP are posted within the first several minutes. Because they're outrageous (anger-inducing) they get a lot of comments telling them off, an resultingly will be presented prominently on the page.
How much effort and resources does it really cost to have some bots doing this kind of stuff on a couple of well-visited platforms? As techies we should understand that it's basically costs no resources, time and effort. Therefore we should expect these kinds of influence operations on public forums like these.
I'm not sure if those comments are even bots. The bots seem to only amplify those opinions and make them more visible. It's a vicious circle, once those opinions are everywhere, more and more people pick up on them and write new posts like that.
I think the claims about propaganda can often be nullified pretty easily, by simply turning it around. Were it remotely possible to push people in any direction whatsoever then the powers that be would be spending every possible effort, with 'insider access' no less, to tilt people in that direction. And, for the most part, they are. But it simply does not work, at least not on topics that people had any preconceived opinions of before at all. See: Israel/Gaza.
As for Europe, this [1] is a graph of the EU's share of the global GDP, PPP adjusted. It's been in steady decline for decades. And so discussing the decline of Europe, at least relative to the rest of the world, is hardly outrageous.
Do you know what's behind that trend? It's because it's a graph of the global share. The share drops if the GDP of other members is increasing faster. Someone like, say, China.
China is doing brilliantly since the 80s, to the point it overthrew the US as the global hegemon. India is also doing well, albeit in a far less impressive way
> it simply does not work, at least not on topics that people had any preconceived opinions of before at all. See: Israel/Gaza.
Except it does work. Of course you're never going to make dyed in the wool supporters of Israel xor Gaza switch sides with propaganda. This is obvious, as you imply.
What propaganda does do is crowd out the middleground nuanced opinions, which will bounce back and forth between condemning Israel or Hamas based on what each one is actually doing, in favor of the "opposing" extremist views wherein each camp can do no wrong. The extremist views each then feed on the other's popularity to boost its own, ultimately supporting unrestrained maximalist actions by both sides.
Nice such lying with statistics, you should give a course.
Of course this little graph fails to account for the fact that the EU took on the burden of paying for 50 years of back maintenance in former USSR countries. And on balance the change has been very positive. It will take at least another 30 years to reach parity.
do you suppose that the average tech worker is socially perceptive enough to determine the occurence of their manipulation? seems to me that most tech workers cease consideration of consequences after accepting their role.
> Europe would first have to invest "tens if not hundreds of billions" themselves in order to develop any viable replacements and that is very unlikely to ever happen
It's _been_ happening. Why do you think something that delivers jobs, boosts the economy, and is an easier and easier political and popular sell everyday, is unlikely?
> They are politically and societally paralyzed from building even basic things like datacenters
That's also happening. It's just that we're not as gung-ho about doing things at any cost.
Unless your plan is to pay SpaceX to launch this constellation, 'it' (developing both launch and a constellation to rival starlink) has not been happening in europe
When I was checking earlier, it seems some European projects will use SpaceX to launch. Probably makes sense economically.
From what I saw Europe has no plan to launch a large constellation that could become an alternative to Starlink. The ambition apparently does not exist.
Trump may accidentally be the best thing that happened to Europe. (I think a lot of the Chinese give him credit, due to his behavior in his first term.)
The real question is the minimum temperature to make them respond. I hope that it's a much a lower setting than "Oh shit, the Russians are already marching towards Warsaw/Helsinki!"
> They are politically and societally paralyzed from building even basic things like datacenters
The only reason the US is not paralyzed is because the government is completely disregarding the views of voters on the topic. I struggle to see that as better.
(before someone says it: yes, I think the anti-data center sentiment is overblown. But the answer is convincing voters of why it’s good, not ignoring them)
Had you picked Ericsson or Nokia, there wouldn't even have been anyone comparable to put on the right side of the expression.
It's really strange to see that for so many people "tech" means just a handful of US megacorporations, none of which produce critical products like medical equipment or marine engines or industrial robots or railway signaling systems.
You are describing Europe as a homogeneous entity, that's not what it is.
While the overarching opinion of AI might be more negative, there's plenty of people pushing for exactly what you're describing, despite hurdles in regulation and also a fragmented market.
What's pretty clear from talking to companies of every size is that most leaders now understand how important it is.
I'm not sure where you got this information, but there are datacenters in the EU. In fact the EU colo/internet market is much more competitive than the US one. Maybe this makes it look smaller when measured in dollars because providers can't squeeze insane profits? Not sure.
I mean they do also provide US tech companies a lot of revenue (from EU customers).
Countries like China, Russia have largely blocked western tech and as a result domestic technology companies developed to suck up demand. Some things like having a unified capital market would help Europe. This is something they could work to solving, it's more a political question.
Strongly disagree that centralized data centres are the foundation of technological sovereignty. Europe could, if it chose, strike a different course: inexpensive, locally-hosted systems. They could embrace personal computing and individual sovereignty instead of the American model of cloud-hosted surveillance tech that lives in giant data centres.
This is getting priced out of the market for the foreseeable future: thick clients are getting squeezed out of the hardware market because rhe componemt prices are surging - the datacenter builders are trying to gobble it all up.
Meaningful local computer power could only survive realistically if exceptionally high demand (multiples of that of AI data centers) could be generated within weeks/months to get the semiconductor companies to pivot and sell the components mainly though other channels.
64GB laptops are no longer in stores. 32 GB is probably going to get squeezed out soon. For prebuilt desktops it's the same. That's no basis for meaningful local, decentralized compute.
My vision includes native software that replaces Electron blobs using 32GB of RAM to display a text editor or a chat window. With the right motivation and moderate funding, it's possible to imagine a software ecosystem that is radically better than the current hyperscaling slopscape.
Collaborative native software that works peer-to-peer without servers, no large-scale data breaches because there are no giant databases of PII, for things that really do benefit from being hosted (e.g. photo sharing or community notice boards) they could be run by municipalities or local community groups.
I'm afraid that technological sovereignty is secondary to military superiority when the governments in question value might over justice. It seems that you can apply financial leverage to avoid violence but I think everyone has to play ball.
European countries have been embracing and funding free software at all levels of government and business at an accelerating rate, and doing so with the same ethos of personal freedom and autonomy. It would make sense to continue to that trajectory in other technological areas.
> Europe would first have to invest "tens if not hundreds of billions" themselves in order to develop any viable replacements and that is very unlikely to ever happen.
It seems you've been living under a rock. Europe is already started investing those billions on non-US providers, and the US is already complaining it's not fair.
> They are politically and societally paralyzed from building even basic things like (...)
You're spending too much time in your alt-right pipeline. Europe already mobilized to cover around 80% of Ukraine's external aid, and is providing Ukraine with long range missiles and even drone technology, which the US conspicuously lacks.
Even this week there were news reports that Ukraine was now looking at Eutelsat to replace StarLink.
Trump,remaining true to his Russian asset fame, has been undermining the US in multiple fronts including diplomacy and defence treaties, and is literally pressuring Ukraine to capitulate to Russia. The sole reason why this plan hasn't succeeded is the fact that, unlike your claim, Europe stepped up and silently filled the role and responsibilities that the US held previously in NATO and Europe's security infrastructure. Therefore, Trump's threats to withhold support now lack any weight, rendering these threats completely ineffective. Thanks to Europe.
Europe's work was so successful to the point where Trump himself is throwing desperate lifelines at Putin's regime with actions such as lifting self-imposed blockaded to buy diesel straight from Putin, and demanding Zelensky resigned for Ukraine's success in attacking Russia's critical infrastructure. That tells you all there is to know on how far Europe stepped up.
That statement made me laugh with the context of where we are as I'm sure more than a few users of this site are hosting something on Hetzner instances.
We're not paralyzed, we just delay and delay until it breaks and costs a lot more to fix.
For the cynical but factually curious look up the history of the ARC project, and NJ governor Chris Christie who canned it - this was to upgrade the tunnel that hosts the biggest train lines in the country (Northeast Corridor). Guess what - it has to happen, just at a much higher costs.
The United States fails at infrastructure because it's too decentralized. You don't build with anything four year terms and corrupt politicians. It's too short-term.
> Says the country that is to politically paralyzed to even maintain roads and sewers.
German here, to be fair, we have our difficulties with that too, thanks to 40 years of neoliberalism and tax-cutting orgies eroding the financial base making that possible.
Not replacing expensive infrastructure before it really needs to be replaced is simply the economically better choice. If you replace it earlier, you have all the same issues with not being able to use it while construction is ongoing and the same costs and so on, so all you achieve with a replacement ahead of schedule is to artificially cut short the lifespan of perfectly usable infrastructure.
Lol. Change the mindset. Russia is getting similar results (controlling drones at a distance) without spending much of anything. Russia is using mesh radios to create and maintain communications over similar distances without any space assets.
Your enemy is always your best teacher. Pay attention when they demonstrate a new skill.
Trump and his tech bros have alienated Europe and other democracies in the world.
What the US is currently doing by openly supporting far right movements in Europe (and Brazil) while serving Putin's wishes have revealed a US on the wrong side of history.
The remnants of American democracy is paralysed and US is sliding into fascism.
Boycott US will be a fast growing movement in democracies all over the world.
> that is very unlikely to ever happen.
It's already happening.
> They are politically and societally paralyzed from building even basic things like datacenters which are essentially just industrial compute factories and the foundation for anything pertaining to data sovereignty and technology sovereignty.
No, they are not entirely blind to the consequences of this buildout and are trying to find a balance between environmental concerns and technological progress.
I agree that we should probably do more but to use words like 'societally paralyzed' is rather uninformed about what actual democracies look like.
edit: never mind, I just checked your comment history, this seems to be some thing that you are repeating over and over and getting the same kind of answers but you just keep doing it.
If Europe can't even build data centers, which come with low to moderate environmental impact, they won't manage to deploy a Starlink alternative either.
Even though they could use SpaceX launch capacity to deploy such a constellation, Europe has no such plans.
Your comment seems to reinforce the parent's opinion about societal paralyzation.
Europe can claim to be cleaner or more democratic, but it doesn't change that they get nothing done.
We're building data centres, there are several massive ones in my tiny little country (NL). We're also quite capable of putting satellites into orbit. We have swarms of these small satellites just not quite at the scale of StarLink and they're doing science.
Your claim makes as much sense as saying that the US can't even build airliners. Sure they can't build good ones. That was a decision to replace the technically capable management at Boeing with an army of MBAs. Sure Airbus are a decade ahead but the US can still build them.
The thing which many people forget was that, up until the current POTUS decided to reverse course, we were best buddies. We've invested a huge amount of money in US-based companies and generally worked together to increase the size of the pie for everyone.
3 replies →
> If Europe can't even build data centers, which come with low to moderate environmental impact, they won't manage to deploy a Starlink alternative either.
You must be trolling. Even US cloud providers have multiple regions in Europe, and the likes of Eutelsat precede SpaceX for a couple of decades and have been around for half a century already.
> Europe can claim to be cleaner or more democratic, but it doesn't change that they get nothing done.
I don't think you're noticing the US is plunging into self-imposed irrelevance. It can't even manage to properly fight a war anymore,as can be attested by the whole Iran fiasco. But keep parroting your alt right pipeline tropes pushed by Russian bots. Don't forget to complain how Europe is freezing and how minority rights are a societal problem.
>edit: never mind, I just checked your comment history, this seems to be some thing that you are repeating over and over and getting the same kind of answers but you just keep doing it
I've noticed this with people in tech who spend too much time on Twitter. They have a very weird view of Europe. It used to be the Fox New boomers but it has spread to people who you'd assume were pretty smart.
To be honest it's part of the reason I left Twitter and only visit this site rarely. Sucks as I've had some awesome discussions here in the past.
My suspicion is that it's related to the drop in standards in tech since the big ramp up in the 2010s and the way Meta and the crypto folks don't want regulation so a lot of their employees have a vested interested in bashing the organisation capable of actually introducing some good regulation.
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Rayiner, you are not going to bait me into giving you a piece of my mind because unlike you when you cross the lines (repeatedly, egregiously) I would likely get banned from HN.
[flagged]
Sclerotic eh?
Wow.
"grown rigid or unresponsive especially with age"
As opposed to what?
What's next, a 'greed is good' sermon?
2 replies →
So what, we just let corporations steam roll people even more than they already do?
Propagandists have long figured out that you don't have to control people's thoughts and opinions. You just need to go into their public forum and say some outrageous shit, it doesn't have to be right, well thought out, you just need to shout some shit, so that you get to control the topics that people talk about.
Everytime something about EU tech sovereignty is posted, comments with sentiments like OP are posted within the first several minutes. Because they're outrageous (anger-inducing) they get a lot of comments telling them off, an resultingly will be presented prominently on the page.
How much effort and resources does it really cost to have some bots doing this kind of stuff on a couple of well-visited platforms? As techies we should understand that it's basically costs no resources, time and effort. Therefore we should expect these kinds of influence operations on public forums like these.
I'm not sure if those comments are even bots. The bots seem to only amplify those opinions and make them more visible. It's a vicious circle, once those opinions are everywhere, more and more people pick up on them and write new posts like that.
I think the claims about propaganda can often be nullified pretty easily, by simply turning it around. Were it remotely possible to push people in any direction whatsoever then the powers that be would be spending every possible effort, with 'insider access' no less, to tilt people in that direction. And, for the most part, they are. But it simply does not work, at least not on topics that people had any preconceived opinions of before at all. See: Israel/Gaza.
As for Europe, this [1] is a graph of the EU's share of the global GDP, PPP adjusted. It's been in steady decline for decades. And so discussing the decline of Europe, at least relative to the rest of the world, is hardly outrageous.
[1] - https://www.statista.com/statistics/253512/share-of-the-eu-i...
> As for Europe, this [1] is a graph of the EU's share of the global GDP, PPP adjusted.
That's fun, here's the US's version of that graph.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/270267/united-states-sha...
Notice that both show the same downward trend?
Do you know what's behind that trend? It's because it's a graph of the global share. The share drops if the GDP of other members is increasing faster. Someone like, say, China.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/270439/chinas-share-of-g...
China is doing brilliantly since the 80s, to the point it overthrew the US as the global hegemon. India is also doing well, albeit in a far less impressive way
https://www.statista.com/statistics/271328/indias-share-of-g...
3 replies →
> it simply does not work, at least not on topics that people had any preconceived opinions of before at all. See: Israel/Gaza.
Except it does work. Of course you're never going to make dyed in the wool supporters of Israel xor Gaza switch sides with propaganda. This is obvious, as you imply.
What propaganda does do is crowd out the middleground nuanced opinions, which will bounce back and forth between condemning Israel or Hamas based on what each one is actually doing, in favor of the "opposing" extremist views wherein each camp can do no wrong. The extremist views each then feed on the other's popularity to boost its own, ultimately supporting unrestrained maximalist actions by both sides.
Nice such lying with statistics, you should give a course.
Of course this little graph fails to account for the fact that the EU took on the burden of paying for 50 years of back maintenance in former USSR countries. And on balance the change has been very positive. It will take at least another 30 years to reach parity.
Accusations like these are against the HN guidelines by the way.
They are often unfounded and obviously incorrect when made towards old accounts with established history of posting.
do you suppose that the average tech worker is socially perceptive enough to determine the occurence of their manipulation? seems to me that most tech workers cease consideration of consequences after accepting their role.
Assuming their not actively engaging in it in the first place.
> Europe would first have to invest "tens if not hundreds of billions" themselves in order to develop any viable replacements and that is very unlikely to ever happen
It's _been_ happening. Why do you think something that delivers jobs, boosts the economy, and is an easier and easier political and popular sell everyday, is unlikely?
> They are politically and societally paralyzed from building even basic things like datacenters
That's also happening. It's just that we're not as gung-ho about doing things at any cost.
Unless your plan is to pay SpaceX to launch this constellation, 'it' (developing both launch and a constellation to rival starlink) has not been happening in europe
When I was checking earlier, it seems some European projects will use SpaceX to launch. Probably makes sense economically.
From what I saw Europe has no plan to launch a large constellation that could become an alternative to Starlink. The ambition apparently does not exist.
IRIS² and Ariane 6 would like a word with you.
1 reply →
You'd be surprised at how much is suddenly possible in the EU once politicians feel real fire under their butts.
I really hope so. Honestly.
Trump may accidentally be the best thing that happened to Europe. (I think a lot of the Chinese give him credit, due to his behavior in his first term.)
The real question is the minimum temperature to make them respond. I hope that it's a much a lower setting than "Oh shit, the Russians are already marching towards Warsaw/Helsinki!"
> They are politically and societally paralyzed from building even basic things like datacenters
The only reason the US is not paralyzed is because the government is completely disregarding the views of voters on the topic. I struggle to see that as better.
(before someone says it: yes, I think the anti-data center sentiment is overblown. But the answer is convincing voters of why it’s good, not ignoring them)
The amount depends on the margins to a degree. Now that tech XYZ exists, building a mimic probably requires less R&D, no?
Airbus > Boeing
Had you picked Ericsson or Nokia, there wouldn't even have been anyone comparable to put on the right side of the expression.
It's really strange to see that for so many people "tech" means just a handful of US megacorporations, none of which produce critical products like medical equipment or marine engines or industrial robots or railway signaling systems.
In civilian aircraft, yes; freight no; military no
https://theflyingengineer.com/boeing-vs-airbus-orders-2026/
Depends on criteria. Flying doors? Boeing wins
Graduate engineer > Boeing
You are describing Europe as a homogeneous entity, that's not what it is.
While the overarching opinion of AI might be more negative, there's plenty of people pushing for exactly what you're describing, despite hurdles in regulation and also a fragmented market.
What's pretty clear from talking to companies of every size is that most leaders now understand how important it is.
I'm not sure where you got this information, but there are datacenters in the EU. In fact the EU colo/internet market is much more competitive than the US one. Maybe this makes it look smaller when measured in dollars because providers can't squeeze insane profits? Not sure.
I mean they do also provide US tech companies a lot of revenue (from EU customers).
Countries like China, Russia have largely blocked western tech and as a result domestic technology companies developed to suck up demand. Some things like having a unified capital market would help Europe. This is something they could work to solving, it's more a political question.
Strongly disagree that centralized data centres are the foundation of technological sovereignty. Europe could, if it chose, strike a different course: inexpensive, locally-hosted systems. They could embrace personal computing and individual sovereignty instead of the American model of cloud-hosted surveillance tech that lives in giant data centres.
This is getting priced out of the market for the foreseeable future: thick clients are getting squeezed out of the hardware market because rhe componemt prices are surging - the datacenter builders are trying to gobble it all up.
Meaningful local computer power could only survive realistically if exceptionally high demand (multiples of that of AI data centers) could be generated within weeks/months to get the semiconductor companies to pivot and sell the components mainly though other channels.
64GB laptops are no longer in stores. 32 GB is probably going to get squeezed out soon. For prebuilt desktops it's the same. That's no basis for meaningful local, decentralized compute.
My vision includes native software that replaces Electron blobs using 32GB of RAM to display a text editor or a chat window. With the right motivation and moderate funding, it's possible to imagine a software ecosystem that is radically better than the current hyperscaling slopscape.
Collaborative native software that works peer-to-peer without servers, no large-scale data breaches because there are no giant databases of PII, for things that really do benefit from being hosted (e.g. photo sharing or community notice boards) they could be run by municipalities or local community groups.
2 replies →
How could a disparate network of personal computers ever hope to compete with the centralized data centres? you’re just asking to lose the race.
~IBM, 1977
I'm afraid that technological sovereignty is secondary to military superiority when the governments in question value might over justice. It seems that you can apply financial leverage to avoid violence but I think everyone has to play ball.
They _could_ but is there any reason to suggest Europe is any more likely to embrace this approach than the US or China?
European countries have been embracing and funding free software at all levels of government and business at an accelerating rate, and doing so with the same ethos of personal freedom and autonomy. It would make sense to continue to that trajectory in other technological areas.
> They are politically and societally paralyzed from building even basic things like datacenters
Last I checked they were everywhere in Europe.
How did they get there in the first place if they're so allergic to them?
> Europe would first have to invest "tens if not hundreds of billions" themselves in order to develop any viable replacements and that is very unlikely to ever happen.
It seems you've been living under a rock. Europe is already started investing those billions on non-US providers, and the US is already complaining it's not fair.
https://www.euronews.com/2026/09/30/us-ambassador-slams-eus-...
> They are politically and societally paralyzed from building even basic things like (...)
You're spending too much time in your alt-right pipeline. Europe already mobilized to cover around 80% of Ukraine's external aid, and is providing Ukraine with long range missiles and even drone technology, which the US conspicuously lacks.
Even this week there were news reports that Ukraine was now looking at Eutelsat to replace StarLink.
Trump,remaining true to his Russian asset fame, has been undermining the US in multiple fronts including diplomacy and defence treaties, and is literally pressuring Ukraine to capitulate to Russia. The sole reason why this plan hasn't succeeded is the fact that, unlike your claim, Europe stepped up and silently filled the role and responsibilities that the US held previously in NATO and Europe's security infrastructure. Therefore, Trump's threats to withhold support now lack any weight, rendering these threats completely ineffective. Thanks to Europe.
Europe's work was so successful to the point where Trump himself is throwing desperate lifelines at Putin's regime with actions such as lifting self-imposed blockaded to buy diesel straight from Putin, and demanding Zelensky resigned for Ukraine's success in attacking Russia's critical infrastructure. That tells you all there is to know on how far Europe stepped up.
There are several datacenters in the EU.
There are thousands of datacenters in the EU.
https://www.eunews.it/en/2026/08/12/data-centres-nearly-2800...
These comments insisting the EU is hopeless compared to the glorious might of the unstoppable US tech-empire strongly suggest the opposite.
1 reply →
That statement made me laugh with the context of where we are as I'm sure more than a few users of this site are hosting something on Hetzner instances.
> They are politically and societally paralyzed from building even basic things
Lmao. Says the country that is to politically paralyzed to even maintain roads and sewers.
Hey not fair! We’re building a really big wall right now ok!!!! It’s super important.
We're not paralyzed, we just delay and delay until it breaks and costs a lot more to fix.
For the cynical but factually curious look up the history of the ARC project, and NJ governor Chris Christie who canned it - this was to upgrade the tunnel that hosts the biggest train lines in the country (Northeast Corridor). Guess what - it has to happen, just at a much higher costs.
The United States fails at infrastructure because it's too decentralized. You don't build with anything four year terms and corrupt politicians. It's too short-term.
Hey, roads are the only thing we actually maintain
We have the best stroads in the world.
hi, it’s Hammersmith Bridge and every water company in the UK on line one for you.
The UK famously left the EU (likely due to the same external pressure that delivered trump to the US)
8 replies →
> Says the country that is to politically paralyzed to even maintain roads and sewers.
German here, to be fair, we have our difficulties with that too, thanks to 40 years of neoliberalism and tax-cutting orgies eroding the financial base making that possible.
Not replacing expensive infrastructure before it really needs to be replaced is simply the economically better choice. If you replace it earlier, you have all the same issues with not being able to use it while construction is ongoing and the same costs and so on, so all you achieve with a replacement ahead of schedule is to artificially cut short the lifespan of perfectly usable infrastructure.
1 reply →
Lol. Change the mindset. Russia is getting similar results (controlling drones at a distance) without spending much of anything. Russia is using mesh radios to create and maintain communications over similar distances without any space assets.
Your enemy is always your best teacher. Pay attention when they demonstrate a new skill.
[dead]
Trump and his tech bros have alienated Europe and other democracies in the world. What the US is currently doing by openly supporting far right movements in Europe (and Brazil) while serving Putin's wishes have revealed a US on the wrong side of history. The remnants of American democracy is paralysed and US is sliding into fascism. Boycott US will be a fast growing movement in democracies all over the world.
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Someone ban this account please.