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Comment by michaelt | Hacker News Reader

The true extent of the damage has yet to be seen.

The Trump administration is a shot across the bows for Europeans, undoubtedly.

But do they have to up their defence spending a bit, engage in some tough talk, reduce their dependence on imported energy, and gift Trump some gold-plated furniture?

Or do they have to do that and eliminate their dependence on Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Intel, AMD, nvidia, Apple, Mastercard, Visa, Google, Microsoft, AWS, Oracle, Facebook, Youtube, Netflix, Reddit, Twitter, Instagram, Juniper, Cisco, Qualcomm, Broadcom, Adobe and Uber?

Because the latter won't happen spontaneously, it'll need deliberate, decisive leadership. And Trump will be out of office long before it's done.

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> Or do they have to do that and eliminate their dependence on Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Intel, AMD, nvidia, Apple, Mastercard, Visa, Google, Microsoft, AWS, Oracle, Facebook, Youtube, Netflix, Reddit, Twitter, Instagram, Juniper, Cisco, Qualcomm, Broadcom, Adobe and Uber?

Some of those are not like the others. Some are B2C and will face (indeed, are facing), tougher regulations. Some are B2B or B2G and there are already companies squaring up to take some of that pie. Many are ultimately reliant on ASML tech which I think Europe is prepared to weaponise in a trade war if they need to.

And yes, it'll take leadership, and constitution of the United States, or constitution of the physical body: one of them is taking that man out of the White House in the next 10, 20 or however many years.

But the tone has been set. Trust takes years to build and seconds to destroy. The direction of travel has been created, and while it might take a generation to get to an end goal, the process has started already.

We will up the defence spending until Trump doesn't have the "card" of removing Ukraine support anymore.

Then having a digital services tax starts looking like free money with few downsides to the EU. And the defence spending increases funding requirements.

The dependence would be eliminated by taxing it away.

And then there is the question of how much net worth of these EU elites is tied to U.S. stock market wealth, itself hugely big tech. We know they are EU elites because there is a culture of going to the best schools where you learn culture and start in big business circles right away like your parents did. These aren't freedom-fighters looking for independence. I remember fondly Gerhard Shroeder, the leader of the SPD, later becoming a Putin ally and making millions sitting on boards of Russian energy companies. Is it any wonder that the country which moved away from nuclear and is a big environmentalist haven is one of the most dependent on Russian gas?

My fear is with these types of issues of sovereignty (or corruption), the reaction is often right-wing or left-wing populism. The type of thing that got Trump there in the first place.

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