risk of war going hot aside, the long term effect of this is fantastic for the rest of the world's industries

AWS, GCP and Azure looked unbeatable a month ago

but today, if you're a government official in the UK, Poland or Germany, would you be recommending AWS as your cloud provider?

absolutely not

they now have massive geopolitical risks associated with them due to being under the control of the increasingly unstable and authoritarian US regime that will sacrifice 80 years of foreign policy and soft power for a soundbite on fox news

This is an inherent property of closed source proprietary weapons. Which is why gun owners like stuff like the gen3 glock and ar-15 as everyone knows how to make the parts and the open source blueprints are put into manufacture by a gazillion companies to the point PSA shitwagon can compete with a Colt and interchange most the parts.

Maybe Europe should open source a fighter jet and let the world compete on how they'll manufacture it.

On tech side, personally I started to move my servers and personal infra to Europe, both physically and legally.

I'll not be able to leave some companies outright, but I'll be taking backups and reducing my reliance fast.

Even further, the US position is getting tougher.

Now there are new ideas getting pushed (through influencers like Musk): that Ukraine "should be sanctioned", that Ukraine "should give their minerals to the US", that Ukraine "should give up their lands", that Zelensky "should resign" and finally that "US should leave NATO".

With such allies, you don't really need enemies.

There is no sophisticated chess game being played here. These people are stupid as they are vindictive. No one in the US will benefit from this.

I think the administration is gambling on being able to consolidate global power before anyone is going to have a chance to build anything. Europe is completely reliant on the US and US technology for defense right now, these systems took decades and trillions of dollars to build and refine, and an 800 billion EUR investment does not magically create a military industrial complex overnight. Decades ago in my early career I briefly worked on some logistics software for the Joint Strike Fighter project and had some contact with a couple of the army of contractors working on the project. The scale and complexity of this effort blows away anything else I've ever seen in my career, which includes a number of multi-billion dollar infrastructure and nuclear power projects.

Trump talks about invading Canada or Greenland and people act like it is a joke. I don't think it is.

The US is in a position to completely dictate to Europe what they will or won't do, using Russia as a proxy for now. We are 48 days in. A couple of weeks ago I replied to someone suggesting the US could provide weapons to Russia with disbelief. I no longer consider that an impossible scenario. Europe stops buying F35s? Trump tells Europe that if they don't buy them he's going to sell them to Russia. I mean that's a relatively tame response compared to the options on the table.

Right now the only chance for Europe is to stop this madness in the US. We have this "take it down" act, the executive order to produce a report advising whether or not to declare martial law, the January 6th pardon of the Proud Boys who are now effectively a paramilitary force of thousands waiting for Trump to deploy. These are all familiar elements in history and I think we are in for a bloody, bloody summer. I think we're going to see government forces opening fire on protesters, martial law declared, and the implementation of Chinese style suppression and crackdown on dissent online. Maybe attempts to strip US citizens of their citizenship and "deport" them for good measure, anything to try to sow fear into average people to not step out of line. If the administration is successful in quashing the opposition and getting everyone to go back to work, Europe could easily next on the chopping block. Remember all the things Bannon said about the EU during the first administration.

No one should have placed their trust in the U.S to begin with.

Let's not forget that American history is riddled with interventionist failures, from Afghanistan to Vietnam, and CIA-backed operations that destabilized the Middle East and Africa, leaving behind suffering and chaos.

Meanwhile, American corporations have shown blatant disregard for local laws, privacy, and security while exploiting loopholes to dodge taxes, further eroding global trust. Europe literally had to fine them millions, just to get them to start paying _minimum_ attention..

The recent instability in American and the division between its own citizens has exacerbated the issue and now with Trump, I believe it has reach new heights, even causing conflict with its (arguably) closest ally and loving neighbor: Canada.

As a Canadian, it saddens me to write this, because I have nothing but love for American people.

Totally agree that Trump is trading long-term dominance for short-term gains.

I think that in a few months, we will see the U.S. economy doing very well and somehow rebuilding its industrial base. In the long term, U.S. influence and wealth will make up a much smaller share of the world’s wealth than it does today.

Anyone you buy equipment from can withdraw support. The US would only withdraw support if you turn against them, same as any other country selling such equipment.

How do they justify buying US war tech? By understanding what the US will do to their country if they don't buy it, and figuring out how to sugar coat this to their populace.