France's largest semiconductor company got nationalized in plain sight (2022)

- Flerovia is a rival, and diplomatic relations are rocky. They could cut off your critical widget supply, or raise the price, at any time. You want protection against this scenario.

- Slebovistan is a poor and undeveloped country. All your domestic manufacturing industries are terrible compared to rivals. If you don't build up at least a few of them, you will remain poor and undeveloped forever.

- Scientists believe that with sufficent R&D, they will be able to create new widget technology called "blidgets" that will revolutionize the world economy. Whoever gets there first is guaranteed endless riches. You want to win the blidget race.

- etc…

Again, there is no sacred doctrine here. Market competition usually produces some good incentives, but the invisible hand of the market is not the hand of God and from time to time it needs a nudge.

That has been a complete shitshow in Sweden and the UK, which are the examples I know of. Nothing is coordinated and actors blame each other.

Generally, for us ukraine is just another afghanistan mixed with cuba... there are some geopolitical interests and on the other hand, a "foreign superpower" is stepping on the front yard of nother superpower. A short war with maybe a regime change, maybe some lines on the map move, some angry stares, and that's it.

I live in a small eu country (slovenia), and even we helped with afghanistan, and our army is almost nonexistant. Also with syria. Other european countries did the same, lybia, iraq, etc. France is occupying or atleast strongly interfering with a bunch of african countries... and israel-palestine conflict is such a daily thing, noone even remembres it's happening anymore (except the people who die.. well, the people who lose friends and relatives due to it).

And now... instead of angry stares and maybe some basic sanctions, the european economy is getting fucked, we're at the brink of WW3, the german minister directly said that "we're at war with russia", energy prices are skyrocketing, industry is closing down, a food crisis is coming, and instead of a few dead and some destroyed vehicles, we're in six-digit numbers not even couting the wounded. Someone also destroyed the nord stream, it wasn't the russians, and somehow the media has forgotten about that.. the politicians either don't know and don't care who did it (very bad), or know and don't want to tell their people (even worse). And the "normal people" get fucked the most, as always.

Europe could have let putin have this and instead build an inpenetrable defensive wall at the eastern eu border as a response to that... but instead, we're at the brink of WW3. On the other hand, we're sending weapons and replacing them with new ones, we cannot afford... mostly from americans, buying gas at too-high prices... from americans, and getting deindustrialized and demilitarized in turn.

Here's an example:

The EU has backed the Ukraine, a war that was mostly created by the US pushing NATO boundaries outwards and backing Russia's dictator into a completely untenable corner.

The EU did this at its own detriment, with very questionable legitimacy (the EU was never given a mandate to deal in such geopolitical issues) plunging the entire continent into an energy crisis the like of which hasn't been seen since the oil crisis in the 70s.

Ask any small to medium company in Germany how they plan to pay their gas bills in the coming 2 years other that declaring bankruptcy.

You're conflating the interests of a bunch of - maybe large but overall not that important - US corporations and the geopolitical interests of US as a nation.

These simply aren't on the same scale.

Things like the Digital Markets and Services Acts are at most mild irritants to the US.

They're also useful in the sense that they allow the EU to believe they're still in control of their destiny.

War-in-Ukraine level geopolitical events are what ultimately matter to the US as a country, not things that make Google grumpy.