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Comment by flumpcakes | Hacker News Reader

Some people in the US deride it's close allies as "freeloaders" because they choose to use and buy US tech, reinforcing the US's position as a global powerhouse. (Meanwhile US tech is built on the shoulders of their allies.) Now we see these same allies are starting to look inward and invest in technology they own completely because the US is acting decisively not like an ally. Something unthinkable since WW2.

I don't see this news as anything but a good thing. For every technology out there, the EU needs a native alternative. It's clear the current US administration wants to make the EU worse based on a politics of grievance.

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I agree, this is a good thing. Long term stable large contracts are great simulation for a market. Airbus obviously has a large amount of military work, and its data needs to stay in Europe.

What we also need is a faster acceleration of military spending so this can happen with more companies.

> thing. Long term stable large contracts are great simulation for a market.

They are not. It can hurt Airbus very much if a provider says they can provide a certain level of hardware/software for 10 years and in three years the RAM or storage goes through the roof and the provider is not big enough to absorb all the losses.

People don’t choose the hyperscalers because they are based in the US, they choose them because they are too big to fail and have pretty much unlimited resources and have multiplr streams of revenue.

I would expect a contract review for millions in hosting to review how the company will mitigate those costs. Normally you would expect them to contract away the risk themselves. In fact the current rise in RAM costs is due to exactly this, big hosters contracting for long term RAM certainty.

There's a futures market for RAM prices if you want to hedge that risk. No different than corn.

> There's a futures market for RAM prices if you want to hedge that risk. No different than corn.

Yeah, and that's a fine vehicle for insuring against this risk for a finance company or for an individual.

I am prepared to be wrong on the following take (as it is based on nothing more than just "it came to me in a dream"), but my hunch is that neither Airbus nor the EU state governments are currently even attempting to hedge the RAM price risk by accumulating a RAM futures stash on the market.

Airbus is ~30% government owned by France/Germany/Spain and others. It is funded both as a private business and as a European "champion" to compete with Boeing.

It is also likely to get the majority of the European civil, commercial, and military orders now.

There is no reason why Europe can't build a hyperscalar cloud service. The skills and the software and hardware are all transferrable technology.

European defence budgets are being ramped up, spending some billions on data centres and comms is a no-brainer as part of that.

European governments contracting to a European cloud provider would be more than enough to fund the provisioning.

Of course it's a good thing. It's an excellent thing. Is there any European company or individual arguing otherwise?

Country of Ukraine? Those suckers who bought F-35s or at least paid for them? And few other cases.

Long term, I agree with you.

What's the problem with F-35s? Israel actively uses them and appears to be very happy. They provided them advantage no one platform could.

The problem is about politic, not F35s capabilities: US is a strong ally of Israel but many don't feel the same in Europe.

> What's the problem with F-35s?

They will not be very useful in a conflict against the US, since the US can basically disable them remotely.

> Some people in the US deride it's close allies as "freeloaders" because they choose to use and buy US tech

This is a disingenuous straw man. The allies are derided for literally freeloading on US military protection while underinvesting in their own defense.

How's that? How many Middle Eastern refugees are America sheltering from the fallout of American aggression and the regimes it props up?

The US isn't anywhere close to paying its way.

Freeloading?

My country spends less on defence as a percentage of GDP than the US. But it spends much of that with US companies. This is not Freeloading. It was a deal. Cancel TSR-2, and buy American and we will lend you some money. Cancel your nuclear program and buy US submarine launched missiles and we will help you look after yourself. Now let Visa and Mastercard skim off all your transactions and we will keep you secure to keep the money flowing. Sweetheart tax deals for US companies to operate, and we will keep you safe to keep the money flowing. It is not Freeloading, it is colonialism

I can hear the whoosh going over the head of anyone associated with Trump. Thanks for trying though.

Agreed those things exist, in most contracts one or both parties feel they are not getting a 'fair' deal and will renegotiate terms, this is very common.

Let's not pretend this was something the US didn't want for most of the last seventy years.

Pray tell, how much of, say, the latest Afghanistan war did the US pay and how much do their allies need to bear? The rebuilding of a whole country, the reinstatement of the Taliban regime, the destabilization of the region, and the still ongoing stream of refugees? The political aftermath of which is still felt in Europe.

Europe could have simply denied entry to the refugees and avoided their entire refugee problem. It's especially silly to blame the US when most EU states strongly supported the downfall of Qaddafi and Assad.

That's the thing though. Most European states (inside and outside the EU) consider the US their strategic ally, and they will support whatever it takes to make that strategy work. Policy at international level is made for strategic reasons, and you have to look at what countries do, not at what they say.

The strongest state, economically and military, can get away with a lot others wouldn't, since everyone else will want to be on their good side. The new US administration has clearly shifted in terms of what they say, but not yet much in terms of what they do. Maybe Ukraine will be the exception here.

The current U.S. President has insisted that Europeans are freeloading. Given that he’s been the primary proponent of this idea, and given that he’s been cutting off aid and has made cutting off this “freeloading” the central plank of his defense strategy, the U.S. defense budget must have gone down significantly right?

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5656174-trump-si...

> The bill approves a record $901 billion in military spending for fiscal 2026

Oh…

Obviously faulty logic. This isn't a zero-sum game. In fact, the whole point is to increase our combined combat power.

For too long European NATO countries have kept token militaries lacking any substantial combat power. They have centered their national defense strategies around holding off Russia for just long enough for Uncle Sam to swoop in, fight the Russians, and save the day. But the US does not have the combat power to fight both Russia and China. So our total combat power must increase. Should the US bear this increased burden alone? Or should the rest of NATO finally get serious about funding and fielding effective militaries?

European states have been freeloading, and US defense budgets are not going to decrease just because Europe finally starts to take some responsibility for its own defense.

> The allies are derided for literally freeloading on US military protection while underinvesting in their own defense.

1. No one forced the US to spend a bajillion dollars on defense.

2. The US did so out of their own free will, and out of self-interest: their power hegemony allowed for peaceful trade routes that benefited the US economy and US corporations.

3. Their own defense against what? What threats, until fairly recently, did the Europeans face that they needed to spend money protecting against?

> Their own defense against what? What threats, until fairly recently, did the Europeans face that they needed to spend money protecting against?

Same ones the US built the most expensive army in the world to defend against

Guess which country had never any interest in a strong (politically and militarily) Europe, to maintain the world hegemony?

A Europe with an independent defense is dangerous competition for the US. Maybe it means that some international trade will be done in Euro. Maybe it means foreign policies in Europe's interests.

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