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Comment by chvid | Hacker News Reader

Yes. And couple that with the latest Nord Stream stuff. Fair to say that the Germans are pissed of with the Americans at the moment.

And what will come of this?

A highly capable purely non-US produced phone using a set of cloud services running in Europe on under european law. That is my guess.

Why do people assume that the Chinese military wants to spy on random european citizens? If they can just prevent the US from their systematic data collection, I am sure that they will see that as a major strategic win.

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The "Nord Stream stuff" is also pissing off some of the Europeans, especially those from Central and Eastern Europe who are geographically close to Russia and wouldn't want Germany to be even more dependent on Russian gas than it already is.

Because it has become tiring to always rely on the United States, half a world away, whenever Russia feels like playing the imperialist card, instead of just keeping them in check with the help of the Germans. And as long as the Germans depend on Russian gas they will have no incentives of seriously saying no to Russia. Source: me, living in an Eastern European country that is geographically close to Russia.

Sure you can find europeans who are concerned about Nord Stream just as you can find europeans who are against the use of Chinese technology. The question is who gets to decide? Us or the americans.

It's not "us vs the americans", it's us vs the Americans vs the Russians. And I'd say that our best bet is to choose the Americans over the Russians, as history has proved us that that was the best available choice for Europe in the last 100 years or so.

There are some Europeans who would prefer we chose the Russians (including a recent German chancellor who is now employed by Gazprom), I think that that would be a disastrous option. Going at it alone is also not a very good decision, as proven by the fact that the mighty French and British were not even capable of bombing almost defenseless Libya all by themselves, they needed the help os US tanker aircrafts.

The problem that EU international politics has been boiling down to two options so far:

1) (Reluctantly) do what U.S. tells.

2) (Eagerly) subvert to whoever offers a good deal.

I'd really love EU having a consistent stance on human rights, democracy, international law and free trade worldwide, and there are even some steps in that direction (like European army project), but until we're not there, I'd rather prefer option 1) to being corrupted by Chinese or Russian regime.

> 2) (Eagerly) subvert to whoever offers a good deal.

The amount of head bowing to Putin and Xi from European politicians is, troubling.

You dont have to look hard to find them, 1/3 of EU members are against the second Ribbentrop/Molotov.

>Why do people assume that the Chinese military wants to spy on random european citizens?

Same reason(s) they or anyone spy on their own?

I dunno about you, but I don't trust either the US or China. Doesn't matter what their publicly stated intentions may be.

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