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Comment by citywide-fondue | Hacker News Reader

I am a bit surprised to hear that the U.S. government can still order around Dutch police like a butler. Maybe the Dutch regime is struggling to actually effectively decouple themselves from the U.S.? Would love to hear an expert weigh in.

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Replying to myself: my current theory is that the Dutch regime weighed the risk of political potential blowback from the U.S. (specifically executive office), and did not consider it worthwhile protecting the final servers of a group that is winding down anyways.

Again, would love to hear a domain expert weigh in! Also because I walk past this data center every day :)

Big assumption the Dutch gov did not ask for something in exchange.

They can't and that's not what happened. The Dutch government believes Antifa to commit illegal acts. Enough for them to at least consider classifying them a terrorist organization about a year ago.

The thing is the moment antifa is mentioned it is most definitely politics. Antifa as a single cohesive organisation doesn't exist, the fact they even considered it might do is a political position. What does exist is radical left organisations some of which cross the legal line, and these can be targeted by mutual legal assistance requests. It'll be interesting to see if anything actually comes of this or it's a damp squib, these groups, esp the more militant anti-capitalist lot have learned to practicing opsec the hard way, e.g. getting nicked.

> The Dutch government believes Antifa to commit illegal acts.

"antifa" does not exist. It is a handwavy word used by the far right as a placeholder for anything they don't like and want to destroy. But there is no such organization or group.

This is easily searchable and we can see several left-wing groups calling themselves antifa

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antifa_(Germany)#Contemporary_...

Pulling the "does not exist" card might work with uninformed people, not here

Calling themselves antifa is the same as calling themselves left wing. It's not an organization per se and it IS an hand wavy word used by american fascists to describe their enemies.

The Netherlands is a pretty pragmatic place, at the end of the day. America is a massive trading, investment [1] and security partner to it. (Going back to our founding.)

And Dutch voters’ views on policing are currently tending right: “84 percent of Dutch adults believe police struggle to maintain authority. Ten percent disagreed, and 6 percent said they had no opinion” [2].

[1] https://www.government.nl/latest/weblogs/the-work-of-the-min...

[2] https://nltimes.nl/2026/07/12/80-dutch-think-police-authorit...

The Dutch are with 17 million people and all our stuff runs on MS. Even a judge from the international criminal court had an Amazon Echo in her living room. We, on average, don't know and don't care.

All this sovereignty stuff is still quite contained in our nerd bubble I feel.

Well it‘s been the second most talked about topic on any German govtech conference I’ve been to in the past two years.

We will see the impact of this in a few years..

Five years ago it became its own official federal IT architecture guideline: https://nationale-it-architekturrichtlinie.gov.de/2_Architek...

The french government is planning its move to Linux, so there's that

ASML weighs in on this, they get a key component from the US (a lens iirc). There is no real possibility of complete decoupling in the modern world. You would have to go back to a much less modern world for true decoupling.

Wow, what a bad take.

The EUV lenses are made by Zeiss in Germany AFAIK. But to even suggest that ASML is dictating US-Dutch diplomacy, two NATO members with similar values and goals, is hilariously off.

I heard the lens thing from another HN comment, it looks like that person misremembered lens vs light source.

> The light source as a whole is engineered by Cymer, a San Diego company ASML bought in 2013 specifically to control this piece.

https://www.makesureiknowit.com/blog/who-supplies-asml

I'm not suggesting dictation, just that there are deep ties in the global supply chain that make decoupling impossible.

but wow, way to read way too much into this and extrapolate into hyperbole?

I understand that there are complex global supply chains, but my expectation is A) that these are somewhat mutually beneficial relations and B) that their day-to-day operation is somewhat confined to non-governmental spheres.

From my reading of the article, it seems like the U.S. was able to order around the police in Amsterdam without going through a system to check if the Dutch government approves of the action. That’s mostly my confusion.

Why should the fact that these two entities are NATO members have bearing on whether America can demand Dutch citizens be arrested?

If they're willing to go to war for each other, I'd say they're willing to take down a server or two for each other too.

Obviously not a perfect analogy but it shows that US-Dutch relationships very much predate ASML and extend far beyond commercial interests. I have a similar problem with the Taiwan "silicon shield" meme that's been going around, as if the US hasn't supported the republican Chinese forces since the 30's, including with troops on the ground.

NATO is supposed to be a defensive action protecting Europe militarily.

Why is it allowed to impose its force on the civilians it is protecting?

Is it because A/I are "terrorists" and "terrorists" are NATO responsibility?

> Why is it allowed to impose its force on the civilians it is protecting?

I don't think co-operation on this type of crime is part of the treaty itself but the treaty doesn't mean much if the two countries don't have a good diplomatic relationship.

> Is it because A/I are "terrorists" and "terrorists" are NATO responsibility?

Wtf are you on about?

This has nothing to do with NATO. This same kind of thing happens with the US and non-NATO countries as well. It often takes the coordinated effort of several countries to take down, in example, botnets.

Light source, not lens.

as stated in my peer comment made prior to yours

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50091084

Your comparison doesn't hold. ASML depends on components owned by the US, but US companies also depend on components created only by ASML. It is a mutual dependency. It doesn't imply that Dutch police should go around doing the bidding of a foreign government. This is much worse and should be protested.

please see my comment one level deeper in the tree

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50091084

I agree and find my country's behavior unacceptable as well. Some of us are doing what we can under the current regime, but it is not easy and comes with real risk. America is not in a good place right now.

"Your comparison doesn't hold."

Yes, it does. Dependence may be mutual, but the leverage is not equal. Trump could make a Truth Social post tomorrow and erase billions of ASML market cap, and they know he's irrational enough to do it. ASML and the Netherlands can't reciprocate such force without inflicting great harm on themselves.

I'm not arguing that's right or just. Only that it is. If you doubt it, go figure out why ASML shares dropped ~5% last April 7th. These people hang on the US government's every utterance.

Something to think about when selecting a host nation for your international hacktivist IT operation.

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