Escaping the trap of US tech dependence
disconnect.blog
disconnect.blog
From my personal interactions these past few days on HN it is very disappointing how ignorant and devoid of facts the arguments are which come from people who seem to be US tech workers.
You think these are statements of fact?
Re/ deporting 100 million Americans: The actual number would be 53 million and I'll explain. The USA Department of Homeland Security made an official statement two weeks ago which included an image of a classic American car on a beach with blue sky and the headline "America after 100 million deportations."[1][2] According to the US Census there are fewer than 47 million people living in the USA who are foreign born.[3] So even if every single immigrant is deported, including legal residents and naturalized citizens, hitting the government's goal of 100 million deportations would require deporting approximately 53 million people born in the USA who are, according to the 14th Amendment, entitled to citizenship. The Supreme Court has said the exceptions to this citizenship right are 1) children of foreign diplomats, and 2) children of an occupying enemy force. I'm going to say #1 is tiny and #2 is zero. DHS appears to have a goal to deport approximately 53 million Americans.
Re/ invading allied nations: For months the world has listened to the American president and republicans threatening to annex and control allied nations, such as Canada and Greenland. I don't think that claim even requires a citation, does it?
[1] https://www.instagram.com/p/DS8Tx3XCRLQ
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/03/homeland-sec...
[3] https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/POP645223#PO...
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/dhs-100-million-deportations-...
As for invasions of allies that have been proposed by the administration - Canada, Mexico, Greenland.
You're running Linux? Oh fine... on which hard- and firmware? Intel? AMD? Apple Silicon? Qualcomm? All US.
You're using the Internet? Via Cisco routers?
Europe and other regions would have to put in huge efforts to really gain independence.
It will take time to untangle the mutual dependencies and become more independent. That said, ARM also designs full ARM64 cores (until recently Qualcomm cores were based on ARM cores, until the new cores based on the NUVIA acquisition) and they can be fabbed in Taiwan (TSMC) and South Korea (Samsung), and hopefully Europe in some years.
Besides that, it's true that if you are running Linux, you rely on US firmware and Intel/AMD chips, but assuming that Intel ME doesn't have a bad remote kill switch, you can continue to run on existing hardware.
There's a lot of stuff in big cloud that is genuinely hard to duplicate especially with network effects, but I don't see why they can't throw a billion or 3 at ensuring you've got a homegrown stack that can do VMs, S3, function, container registry, database, block storage, firewall etc - with guaranteed funding, clear licenses, handful of local options perhaps with some sort of local guaranteed certification etc.
Baby steps are better than no steps & a lot of things can be made to run on those building blocks
Yes. EU citizens should not let others (or themselves) talk them down. Yes, it will be an enormous job, but it's how you tackle any job - step by step. And there are a lot of things that can already be moved, like e-mail, code forges, databases, etc.
...
> VMs, S3, function, container registry, database, block storage, firewall etc
You think those are building blocks? I think that those are the very tippy-top of the tech stack!
Because, okay, lets say you have already got those things I quoted.
What are you going to run them on (CPU, RAM, storage, etc)? How are they going to talk to each other (Routers, switches, etc)?
It makes no sense, IMO, to have all your software but nowhere to run them. Better to throw that money at ARM/RISC-V development, and you'll literally get startups starting up to build the software for that hardware.
All you're proposing now is (re)building software for a US stack.
From the users perspective yes.
EU doesn’t need cloud tech to have cloud tech for the sake of it but rather to build an ecosystem on top of it. The cloud is just the missing plumbing not the end goal
> All you're proposing now is (re)building software for a US stack.
AWS has like 200 services. My point is with the right combination of half a dozen you can cover a big chunk of needs
The cloud is the stuff on top off the plumbing - the cloud is the porcelain.
> My point is with the right combination of half a dozen you can cover a big chunk of needs
And my question is still "On what would you run this, and how would it talk to other machines?"
It's not that impressive to say "We're rebuilding our US-based tech stack so that it is still based on US tech", is it?
- Gmail -> ProtonMail
- Whatsapp -> Telegram
- I installed Linux to my parents laptops. They like it.
- YouTube App -> Newpipe and Smarttube
Also, my next car will be a BYD. The current one is a Ford.
If push comes to shove and Europe needs to part ways with the USA, to greater or lesser degree, there will still be machinists, mechanics, and actual facilities in place to keep making Fords. That is a positive from the standpoint of European sovereignty.
The EU probably has rules in place to strongly encourage US manufacturers of automobiles to put facilities in the EU. The US has similar rules and many Toyotas, Hondas, &c, are made in the US, using US suppliers for parts.
It's not hard to imagine an approach to digital services that trends in a similar direction. In the EU or Canada, the US parent company would supply technical data, software, specifications, &c, to a domestic company with its own facilities and operations. It probably requires a combination of regulations and regular stress tests; but nothing prevents the domestic company's operations from being as de facto severable as a car factory.
Not yet. They are in the process of opening a factory in Hungary. The production line equipment arrived in December, with trial production scheduled for Q1 2026, and mass production in Q2, with capacity ramping up over two years.
They are also doing a factory in Turkey.
Their plan is for all of the EVs they sell in Europe to be made in the EU by 2028.
They aren't the only Chinese car maker interested in producing in Europe. Chery is building a big plant in Spain. Geely is looking at options in Poland or Hungary but hasn't decided on a site yet. SAIC is planning to make cars in Hungary.
For BYD the batteries and drive units will come from BYD factories in China. The steel is going to come from Europe and they are working on getting more of the non-EV specific stuff made in Europe.
They are in negotiations to build a battery plant in Europe, saying that this is crucial to scaling up.
Replacing one non-ally by another. We have a VW ID.3 and it's great. Some people will argue that the on-board system is better on a Tesla or BYD, but a small loss of convenience, but a huge win for independence and the internal market. (Most of the criticisms are also outdated, the platform improved a lot since earlier generations.)
Are you talking about some other kind of AI?
That would be a nightmare scenario for almost everybody involved, but it's exactly the one in which the Trump admin believes and invests, and it is a possible future.
I read parent as "This is where they want to be", not "this is were they are right now".
I encourage everyone outside the US and in particular Canada and Europe to move your data out of the US and away from US cloud companies now. Putting your data there is not safe anymore and can and will be used for blackmail (see Microsoft cutting access of the International Criminal Court's (ICC) chief prosecutor's email). Trump is now blackmailing countries with tariffs to get them to back off support for Greenland (not going to happen), so things are going to get ugly.
If you are heavily into tech or an activist, etc. it's also a good time to pick up an extra phone like a second hand Pixel to run GrapheneOS as a backup. Or (less secure) a phone that can be unlocked and run something like /e/OS.
I know that it might take years to get all companies, governments, etc. off American big tech products. But that's not a good reason for not safeguarding your own data. Besides that, the more funding non-US alternatives get through enthusiasts, the better they are positioned to improve their alternatives.
In Canada we like to give money to big established monopolies, that's our thing. The SR&ED program is a prime example of that, as a bootstrap business it took us 3 years before we could apply since we didn't have enough money to front full salaries for 1.5y before receiving a grant.
It is not really a complex problem to solve, the entrepreneurs know the solutions but our politicians and wealthy people are so small c conservative it's pathetic.
Anyway, good ideas/tools for evaluating LLMs ? Naturally, as a Dane, I am moving away from Claude, but I’d like more than a gut feel about how much I may have given up to do so.
Openrouter.ai shows the location of providers, you can find just a few European services, but also Singaporean and Canadian. Unfortunately, I could not find a way to filter easily.
Euro tech already exists. Add in Nova custom and Star labs. I understand many components are still made in China but this is the first step.
Still China is a great alternative to US in terms of hardware, because all the things you would buy from the US is just made in China anyways.
While the US are acting like foolish, uneducated hotheads China is silently benefiting from all parties involved.
Glad you pointed that out and everything just peachy with the US foreign policy of just some bombing and kidnapping and threatening to annex Greenland! Go murrica!
China is a good alternative for a lot of hardware, but in terms of software it is not an option.
I guess if you consider that “winning” then definitely continue to support Chinese dominance.
Nothing would make Americans happier than an alternative. Europeans, go build your own big tech that can compete and win against Microsoft/Copilot. It’s not a big lift.
“I said they were the best engineers in Canada”
(Great quote from the BlackBerry movie).
Rings true here. You can’t fight market forces. To push out the US tech you need to build something that’s better than the US tech. Anything else is just wishful thinking.
I can't think of a single thing that big tech has done to improve my life, or society for that matter, over the last 10 years.
All US Tech has is the backing of the US government and that is likely to change in the coming decade, without the pressure of the US government would these companies be as competitive? We see what happens when others try to, rightfully I might add, regulate them: they throw extreme hissy fits and pressure the US government to force the countries to back off (by threat of sanctions or military action).
And don't get me started on slopilot being everywhere.
Apple silicon has been pretty transformative for desktop/laptop-class chips.
A lot of the Apple Silicon magic is also due vertical integration with the OS IMHO.
"Transformative"? Were you perhaps being sarcastic (I misread sarcasm sometimes).
Europe has been struggling and behind on tech and investments way before Trump. It’s policy and over regulation that prevents Europe from making any inroads
Cars are cheaper and better outside America, the so called car capital of the world.
Go to one of these SoCal car conventions, it’s amazing how all the car reviewers go wide eyed at the Chinese cars in display.
Not true at all, a perfect example from the ride-sharing world. Lyft and Uber left Austin a decade ago over a city ordinance requiring background checks, so a couple local tech folks pitched in a very small amount of money, relatively speaking, and built a non-profit version of Uber. Everyone loved it, drivers got paid more, it was cheaper overall because it was a non-profit, the app worked just fine, etc. The app buildout was somewhere in the seven figure range.
All was good until Lyft and Uber came back, artificially undercut the non-profit app until it died, and then drove prices back up.
And that was ten years ago. Today, a rockstar infra expert and product engineer could easily stand up a scalable ride-share clone. And if people are mad enough (and it sure seems like people are getting mad at the US), then the energy is there for users to make a change.
Most of the work is in network effects so you have a large pool of drivers willing to work below minimum wage and a large pool of riders interested in paying you a lot more than that.
I do think more infrastructure should be non-profit, but if someone makes a for-profit version that beats you there’s not really much to do other than hoping the government has your back.
Americans when their government blasts their companies full of money for random unnecessary defense projects: "so free, much market, wow"
Enforcing laws, like requiring background checks, makes the market MORE free
The only thing that works is throwing up huge barriers against dumping. This is the norm for physical goods. US big tech, and really Silicon Valley, is based on dumping - burning VC cash to become a monopoly. This is not a hair better for a domestic industry than being flooded by physical goods that are cheap thanks to burning through (let's say Chinese) government cash. In the latter we love to call this "artificiallly cheap", though for some reason I've never heard this adjective used for US tech based on monopolizing by burning VC cash.
"Confidentiality", "Integrity", and "Availability" are a foundational concept of security (the CIA triad).
For non-US citizens "Integrity" and "Confidentiality" have been compromised for a long time, but these things have no day-to-day impact. They are only relevant as kompromat material once you become powerful and they want you to act in US interests.
What's new are serious, escalating threats and actions against "Availability". This is the most important pillar of security, and a whole different beast. Microsoft has blocked email accounts of international court of justice due to political pressure. Buffoons in US tech leadership such as Cloudflare CEO feel so emboldened that they openly threaten to cut off Italy. After TV performances by Musk, Thiel, Tim Apple, Zucky and Bezos in favor of trump there is no doubt they would cut off another country as form of pressure - and if it is only for a week.
In this week, our markets would be offline and nonfunctional. The market has a very high incentive to untangle from this mess of shitty bootlickers and impulsive convicted criminals.
It will take some time, but the market forces are clearly following the new incentives.
What surprises me here on HN that people who are seemingly US tech workers are quite ignorant to how it feels to be on the receiving end of this totally reckless, unprompted and idiotic behavior.
This isn't new. You just haven't been paying attention.
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-55615214
Or maybe it is fine when it happens to people you disagree with.
Amazon dropping Parler, a shitty US-based right wing social network nobody outside the US ever heard of, is totally on the same level as US waging economic warfare against Europe and laying claim on sovereign countries like Canada and Greenland. /s
Thanks for proving the point.
There's a docuseries about the US called "The Righteous Gemstones" - I can highly recommend it.
I fully understand why you whine about Parler but you are not a credible actor by any means. There is no reason to take any of your bad faith arguments serious.
The US tech power is a bit like the US political soft power, it's there because it's huge and has momentum but it's not like it'll be here forever, especially given the current trajectory
It has to be better
The risk we need to mitigate is that some right wing doofus in the US gets triggered by a twitter reply and decides to block our use of all US software and services.
In that case, having libreoffice installed locally does not seem so bad.
This is the risk we are worrying about.
At the very least, you want domestic oligarchs determining your governments. Their power is based in your country, and they might have a bit of sentimentality on top of that. Leaving it to "market forces" is just watching, not participating.
If some guy in Canada builds something better than current US tech, he's going to sell it to a US oligarch and probably move there, too.
edit: "Our ambition cannot stop there though. In far too many cases, our governments, universities, schools, and other public institutions—not to mention private businesses—are run on Microsoft or Google services. Now is the perfect time to get governments off Microsoft 365 and schools off Google Classroom by properly resourcing a new public agency or Crown corporation dedicated to building technology in the public interest."
This has always been the only answer, but it requires a relatively clean government. The government has to maintain ownership of these things, and cannot subcontract out the work.
If other countries want to stop their reliance on US tech then they need to build better tech. Your BlackBerry quote shows that playing out in reverse. A non-US company dominated the market, a US company built something better (the iPhone) and the non-US company imploded.