Man, we're so fucked. Even if we wanted to, we couldn't build a sovereign EU could without either relying on US chips or Chinese chips.
The *entire* economy relies on chips.
What the fuck are we supposed to do here??
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@iamkonstantin I agree, saying goodbye to globalization won't benefit anyone.
But currently the EU has almost no leverage. US and China need each other. Realistically speaking, nobody really needs the EU. Of course, it'll be a bit of a pain for them to stop relying on our exports, but in the grand picture, they'll be fine. Other way around? Not so much.
If we want to be taken seriously, we need to contribute something of value to global trade, or we need to come up with our own alternatives fast. Otherwise we'll be the pet of either US or China, and we can wave goodbye to our European values.
@can I don't think that's true. EU amounts of 20% of global GDP. We're also the biggest exporter of goods and services (especially to China and the US). EU regulations are also exported and applied in other regions with oversight from within the EU. So the picture is just a bit more complex, not a zero sum game so to speak - there are plenty of levers and dependencies. But regardless, I don't think the world works well when we have to isolate baddies via tradewars and such. It's bad for everyone
@iamkonstantin I understand where you're coming from, but the imbalance is immense, and it affects every negotiation.
If he wanted to, Trump can literally shut down the *entirety* of EU *tomorrow.* He could just call up AWS, Google, Cloudflare and Microsoft and demand them to turn off their EU data centers. Tomorrow. Not one single company in the EU would be able to operate anymore. We wouldn't be able to pay anything besides the few Euros we have on hand. Supermarkets would not be able to resupply. Our civilization would collapse completely and immediately within a week.
Obviously Trump will not do that. But he could. And our European leaders know that. It's the equivalent to having nuclear weapons in the digital age. We have nothing to counter that.
Yes, it would be nice if we would all just work together and not have to think about things like this, but these times are over. This is reality.
@can and there is also research and innovation in general - while the news is focused on VC money and unicorns, most tools and gizmos we use today are in fact researched and created here... we just don't have the hyperscale mindset some folks go to look for elsewhere (and I think that's also OK, once again, we don't need to replicate every mechanism in every country).
@can What US chips? "Designed in California" is still made in China/somewhere else. Or do you mean the corps that sell the gadgets? I think complex industrial pipelines require global effort and integration. It's not sustainable to try to rebuild copies of everything all the time. These are global challenges so for me the "solution" is to find renewed momentum for things like globalisation. China gets EU research and infra to build chips, we get chips from China - doesn't sound too bad.