I can’t imagine how any country would think the US is trustworthy enough to be the place where everyone stores their data. If companies cannot comply with data sovereignty laws then they shouldn’t exist at all. Personally, even as a US citizen, I’m hoping tech companies in Europe and Asia become independent enough to no longer be beholden to US interests. It’s clear that the era where any one country has global hegemony should end.
I do not trust anyone with my data. This is just my preference but every year I move further and further away from using the internet for anything other than making comments on this site and watching a few vloggers. In a few years I will not have more than 3 to 5 logins on anything and those will be value add and must be within driving distance. All critical services I use will require walking into a building in person.
If I could find a reputable construction company to build my underground home I would be a true troglodyte.
> If I could find a reputable construction company to build my underground home I would be a true troglodyte
If you have the resources you could always buy an existing underground structure and renovate. Like a missile silo. Or buy an already renovated one:
https://washingtonmissilebase.com/
I imagine upkeep is pretty expensive, probably needs a lot of HVAC, dehumidifying, pumping, etc to keep you from dying due to weird mold and stuff lol
I looked at many of those. Plenty of people are indeed upgrading silos. I looked at the cost to repair and overhaul these facilities but it would be just a little more to do it right on my property with high performance high pressure concrete and do it right in a place outside of the nuclear sponge. Only challenge is getting the right people up here but I will not give up on the idea.
> I do not trust anyone with my data.
Then why give it up in the first place? "Because you have to" is probably going to be the argument, but I don't buy that.
I'm glad you agree. It will take more than you or I to put a stop to this for people not yet on the internet but I will ask the US government to help.
Usually, when you want to have people not know who built what, you use an LLC.
THEN the LLC hires the subcontractors in stages without them knowing about each other.
Youd take about 5 years, but itd be about as secure as you could be if you lost trust in soceity.
It’s a trope in survivalist fiction. The contractors hired to build a bunker are often the first to attempt a breach once a crisis hits.
I somewhat agree but if I get contractors they will likely be coming from one or two states away. If the fecal matter is splattering the fan it is unlikely they will make it this far. I will also have the design reviewed by multiple third parties to identify security weaknesses and have those addressed as part of the contracts. And then of course there will be party poppers long before they get close.
This is all just fantasy of course as I have not yet found a highly rated company within a few states that have vast experience with upper-end UHPC 60K PSI which has to be done right the first time and I need to get the designs baked first addressing all the "Errm Achtuwallly" memes.
Other comments talk about society collapsing. I am totally fine with that. I will set up a copy of HN and make silly comments on it then as admin give myself points and reply using alternate accounts. Then I will start some contrarian arguments and then ragebait the contrarian personality. Another personality will step in and calm everything down. Then 48 hours later another alt will make a totally unrelated comment and just after that there will be spam for bitcoin in Uganda. All of this powered by the Sun and my farts. Some poor bastard will happen across this site on internet over CB radio.
Yes, everyone who works on the bunker will know about it; and all these billionaires are trying to build their survivalist camps but dont actually consider any of the easily/practically broken parts of society they implicitly rely on.
Realistically, society we know it won't survive if it dwindles to beneath a couple of millions.
yeah but also realistically if you have the money you don't build a bunker, you build a pseudo military installation, and ex military is where you find your "handymen" to take care of "housekeeping." of course, your ex military pals should be consulted regarding real estate because even here its location location location.
As we know it, yes, but society in general will last until there's less than 2 people per kilometer or so
It seems to me that major US cloud companies are using politics to try to get more value from non-US data, which I believe will push the EU (and others) to accelerate the move to their own alternatives. This is another move that seems to sacrifice longer-term trust (and profits) to boost near-term profits.
Depends how much compromising information they already have access to on the politicians concerned :-)
Please don't stop us having access to your information, else we will destroy you with the information we already hold :-)
I'm a US citizen and I hope more of the world decouples because I think a lot of our issues are due to a lack of competition.
Even as a US citizen ... I have started to decouple from US business that hold my data.
Same. I don't trust the US as much as the rest of the world does not trust them. They want control with little to offer for it. My data and compute is safer offshore at this time.
Control is one part of it. The other concerning part is leaks and sharing it with third parties.
The two are linked, sadly – data brokers are a good way to conduct mass profiling.
where did you move your blog to? hetzner?
But we have our own issues outside of the US.
They reality is the average person is between a rock and a hard place.
Major US tech businesses are making money with analytics/ads though, so they would never roll out end-to-end encryption in a serious way. At least outside the US, a lot of E2E-encrypted services are popping up (Proton, Zeitkapsl, etc.).
I don't trust the small number of E2E US services at all. E.g., some of the companies that were/are in PRISM seem to have very convenient 'accidental' backdoors. E.g. WhatsApp doing backups on Google Drive without encryption by default on Android or Apple doing iCloud backups of iMessage that are not E2E encrypted unless you enable ADP. And even if you are wise enough to enable E2E in both cases, most people that you communicate with don't, because they use the defaults, so it's game over anyway.
There were four other countries in Five Eyes, and right now the UK and Australia have laws on the books that are ostensibly worse than the Cloud Act in the US if you're a foreign company with data hosted in those countries. That includes me, an American, who uses the Australian email service Fastmail.
On the other hand Apple can no longer off ADP in the UK.[0]
That some businesses are not trustworthy seems less a concern for me, than that many governments would like to make all business insecure by design.
[0] https://support.apple.com/en-gb/122234
I mean Europe just fundamentally doesn't think privacy should apply to the government.
In the EU, we have been fighting a bitter battle against Chat Control X.Y for some time now.
That won't change until Ursula von der Leyen goes. Her nickname in Germany (since 2009) is Zensursula, because she attempted to build a pan-German firewall.
She failed in Germany, but she may yet succeed in the entire EU.
This. When I look at why my life sucks and is on hard difficulty mode, it's not because I use US tech instead of EU tech. Most people and companies have bigger economic challenges right now trying to keep the lights on, than data sovereignty and domestic alternatives. My company just had a 3rd round of layoffs and its wasn't due to lack of EU SW.
The lack of data sovereignty does have large geopolitical consequences though. Without data sovereignty of EU government services and businesses, the US can blackmail EU continuously or even worse, in the case of e.g. a conflict over Greenland, cause chaos by turning off access to US tech. So for the EU, tech sovereignty is a matter of life and death.
Also, a lot of crap in Western countries is caused by tech broligarchs enriching themselves in favor of workers en destroying democracy for tech feudalism. So if we can bring down their sales Tesla-style, I'm all in for it.
>Also, a lot of crap in Western countries is caused by tech broligarchs enriching themselves in favor of workers en destroying democracy for tech feudalism.
Not true. The reason my Col is off the charts, salary low and housing unaffordable is due to EU central bank printing too much money leaving us holding the bags, government's zoning laws making housing expensive and them importing millions of immigrants despite record unemployment numbers to put downward pressure on wages and upward pressure on housing. None of this is done by US tech bros, it's all done by EU rulers and elites.
US tech bros is an orthogonal issue that distracts from the core issues.
The quantity theory of money is trivially shown to be nonsense just by considering what happens to savings (i.e. nothing). You need to up your analysis if you want to truly understand.
What happened to savings in Zimbabwe when they printed trillions of dollars? Did that do anything to what those savings would buy?
Here is a discussion of Zimbabwe more complete that I'm likely to write in a comment on HN: https://billmitchell.org/blog/?p=3773
You've made accusations but have not brought arguments to support that my take on EU leaders and elites being the ones fucking us, our CoL and purchasing power, is wrong.
And savings absolutely did eventually get obliterated by excessive Covid money printing, what are you on about?
I've not made any accusations, nor do I think that the elites are not to blame. I said that "money printing" is not the problem here. The reason it's not the problem is because the quantity of money simply reflects savings. By focussing on "money printing", you're missing the actual problems. Arguably, that's the point, since the elite tend to do well when money is considered a scarce commodity.
Sure, spending might cause inflationary effects, but that's orthogonal to quantity (flows not stocks), but then economics is the science of confusing stocks with flows.
"Currency printing" and inflation are exactly the same thing.
> I think a lot of our issues are due to a lack of competition.
I think a lot of our issues are due to a lack of cooperation.
>Unipolar worlds are safer than Bipolar. Multipolar is extremely dangerous.
Do you want more people dead? I assume you didn't know how dangerous the world is without a hegemon..
The competition is China and the US is becoming so hysterical about it that I genuinely hope that the PLA is prepared for a nuclear first strike.
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I can’t imagine such a thing either, but here in Europe plenty of organisations continue planning on increasing their reliance and lock-in on American tech corps.
Which is perfectly fine (albeit perhaps stupid, I agree) for private enterprise. It's the public ones that need to shift first and foremost.
I mean the other options are China and Europe but honestly it's probably way safer as a EU/European citizen to have your data in the USA vs Europe.
The last thing I want is Europe in control of any of my data they just fundamentally don't think privacy from the government should exist. Pair that with the frankly appalling lack of free speech I wouldn't want to risk it.
You are free to put your data whereever you want. But from a national security perspective, it is critical that Europe can run vital, public services on software and infrastructure under their own control
Safer to have my data in the country that tries to manufacture a casus belli against my country than in my country? Safer to have my data in a country where I have no influence on what the legislature has to say on the handling of my data? Safer to have my data in a country with almost no privacy protection laws? Are we living in the same europe?
Such a missed opportunity. We could have been to data privacy and protection what Switzerland is to Banking.
But no, our cooperate oligarch overlords just can't keep their hands out of the piggy bank.
The swiss have a long tradition of discretion.
America has a long tradition of selling anything to the highest bidder. There was never any chance they were going to change.
Swiss? Where money laundering is basically a given?
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Didn't the US jail a guy for making a joke about Charlie Kirk? Didn't Don Lemon get arrested for protesting? How about the US government making it illegal to monitor ICE's activity?
As a Canadian, I can't think of anyone getting arrested for comments they made online, unless they are truly hate/violence/threats which would get anyone arrested in similar countries such as the US.
Just this week there was a white nationalist group protesting in Hamilton, and no one was arrested.
Europe is also not a country, it is a continent with many countries having different laws surrounding free speech.
> Europe...where they throw people in jail for social media posts? What do you think when they find out peoples' private convos?
When did this happen?
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp3wkzgpjxvo
https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/uk-court-jails-man-racist-tweets-s...
https://www.dw.com/en/germany-greens-habeck-presses-charges-...
https://reclaimthenet.org/germany-online-speech-raids-politi...
I'm sure you can find more; those were just the lowest hanging fruit in 2 minutes of searching.
Context on the first one, she wasn't jailed for the post itself. She pleaded guilty (against her own legal advice apparently) to the crime of inciting racial hatred which carries a prison sentence.
There were other people also arrested at the time who did not plead guilty to this and were not charged.
Also she did call for a hotel filled with migrants to be set on fire while people were actively trying to do just that.
First link
> The wife of a Conservative councillor has been jailed for 31 months after calling for hotels housing asylum seekers to be set on fire.
Saying she was put in jail for social media posts is like saying a murderer was jailed for breathing air.
Meanwhile a US citizen was jailed for a meme quoting Trump after Kirk death.
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/12/17/politics/retired-cop-jail...
> Meanwhile a US citizen was jailed for a meme quoting Trump after Kirk death.
And that was wrong, too. Also newsworthy because it is so unusual.
> First link
I think it's probably legal under US jurisprudence, but fine, you can have that one. How about the guy who got raided for calling Robert Habeck a "professional moron"? Or the 170 other people raided in Germany for their online speech?
This is not what actually happened; see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46431000
So you folks think just because it's internet we should be able to insult and call for racial action? Maybe you think in real life that should be acceptable too?
I support free speech through any media, including all noncommercial speech not including:
Even those few exceptions are dangerous to liberty. Certainly anything else is too easily twisted into political censorship.For example, under the guise of fighting "hate speech", the EU has already used the DSA to censor disfavored political speech like, "I think that LGBTI ideology, gender ideology, transgender ideology are a big threat to Slovakia, just like corruption"[0].
And yes, people obviously have the right to insult their politicians. It's honestly perplexing to encounter someone defending an early morning house raid because the guy called a politician a "professional moron". Are you actually Robert Habeck??
[0]: https://judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/republicans-j... (p. 19)
Even here on HN insulting other posters gets you banned. Same in many US media. There's quite a discrepancy between what people claim and the reality on the field, why you think? Yes I'm aware I'm shifting focus from Europe to the US, but you know, who should cast the first stone...
Private companies should have the freedom to ban/censor whatever content on their platforms they want. I’d prefer if they don’t, but we shouldn’t force governments to prevent companies from creating their own rules about how people can use their own software
Governments however should not interfere with citizen’s freedom of speech - there should be no fines/arrests for insulting politicians. Otherwise those governments are actually authoritarian and repressive.
It's 100% acceptable in real life that the whole concept of free speech. Seriously you can say shit like that all day every day in the USA and the cops probably won't even bother you.
Probably here lies the entire chasm between the US and Europe. In Europe insulting people on the street is not considered acceptable, also spreading neonazi propaganda and everything - ACLU or not (btw ACLU is also an US thing). So the US will jump at the idea of containing someone who publishes threats and insults, while the European will, well, try to contain them. I'm an European and call that respect for your co citizens, something not understandable for the US. Maybe that's also why social-democracy is here so well established, because we believe in a community, while the US advocates the person against everybody else. Just thinking loud.
Germany – Robert Habeck insult raids (2024–2025): Multiple citizens faced police raids, investigations, fines, or suspended sentences (jail risk if violated) for online posts calling Green politician Robert Habeck derogatory names like "idiot" or "moron," or sharing mocking memes, under Section 188 enhancing penalties for insulting politicians. https://www.dw.com/en/germany-greens-habeck-presses-charges-...
Germany – Friedrich Merz "Pinocchio" case (2025–2026): A pensioner faced criminal investigation (potential fine or jail under Section 188) for a Facebook post calling Chancellor Friedrich Merz "Pinocchio," prosecuted as an insult likely to impair a politician's public duties. https://www.facebook.com/60minutes/posts/dozens-of-police-te...
Germany – Ricarda Lang insult investigation (2024–2025): A citizen was investigated (potential fine/jail) for an online post calling politician Ricarda Lang "fat," charged as criminal insult under Section 185 protecting officials from derogatory remarks. https://nypost.com/2025/02/21/world-news/germans-cant-insult...
There are UK examples too
> Multiple citizens faced police raids, investigations, fines, or suspended sentences (jail risk if violated) for online posts calling Green politician Robert Habeck derogatory names like "idiot" or "moron," or sharing mocking memes [...]
The police raids were done because of the posted Nazi images, NOT because of the Habeck insults.
And here we are again, spreading lies right?
Robert Habeck was NOT arrested, he and his friends were investigated in the broader case of neo-nazi propaganda which they were spreading as well. Unless you consider neo-nazi freedom of speech, of course.
The Pinocchio case meant exactly one official letter sent to that guy, lol "arrests". The investigation was dropped and everybody criticized the investigation.
Ricarda Lang case was a request to the well-known network Gab to identify who insulted the politician, because in Germany insults are a crime. Maybe in the US insulting is a popular free speech pastime, but this is not US. Gab refused to identify the person and that was that.
So, again, I can see when we are spreading lies to support some ideology, but they are just that: lies.
I did not spread any lies
^ I did not say Robert Habeck was arrested
Re the other cases: in a good democracy, insulting politicians should not be a crime and there should be no investigations for someone insulting a politician.
That is your POV. I fear that democracy erodes when there's insults, belittling, ... instead of exchange of arguments and the contest of ideas. Because at some point insults turn into ugly actions. Whether it's Charlie Kirk or Melissa Hortman.
There is a reason the founding fathers put freedom of speech as the first amendment
Insults should absolutely be protected speech.
In countries that make insulting politicians illegal, all a politician has to do to become a dictator is say that speech criticizing them/their behavior is insulting and therefore illegal
Would you like if Trump arrested anybody who insulted him?
Where is that good democracy? This is not a rhetorical question.
> Unless you consider neo-nazi freedom of speech
I mean that's why it's called free speech. Probably the most famous case the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) fought for was to make sure Nazi's could hold a rally and march through Skokie, Illinois, USA an area famous for being predominantly Jewish.
>China...where you cannot criticize the CCP?
I'd be more worried about the data being stolen and resold even faster than elsewhere tbh. staying out of the way of the ccp as a random guy on the other end of the world should be doable.
Can you explain what happened to Larry Bushart?
> Or the US where even the mainstream media can challenge the president?
The same US that was banning reporters from the press secretary's office (this isn't even new to Trump, Clinton also tried to pull the same shit back in the day)? The one where people were denied their entry visas because of memes of JD Vance? Where the white house has an official list of "Media Offenders"[0]?
Also we can't really ignore the US actively turning extremely hostile and talking about annexing territory belonging to its ex-allies when discussing things like this. That by itself makes the case pretty obvious for anyone, because why would you do business with a nation led by a sub-zero IQ petulant dementia patient that actively threatens annexation?
> Europe...where they throw people in jail for social media posts?
People in some EU Countries (Because "Europe" is a continent that encompasses many different countries with different laws and regulations, including EU and non-EU ones with very different laws and regulations. Denmark and Hungary could not be further from one another in pretty much every regard, for example) have been arrested for posts on social media, but who has actually been jailed for this? Where does this claim even come from, is it just a weird hope from USA-ians so they can portray "Europe" as some sort of free speech hell where you can't say anything without big brother knocking on the door?
To be abundantly clear I don't support people even getting arrested for the dumb shit they say online, but no one's going to prison because of this (that I'm aware of anyway).
Here in the Netherlands, the favorite pass time of most people was shitting on Rutte when he was PM, not to mention Geert and the absolute clown show that his cabinet was. The King and royal family in general gets shit all the time from every side of the political spectrum. Nobody has even been arrested here (as far as I know anyways, could be wrong) for that kind of speech. Notice how I'm not quivering in fear of talking shit about my government?
[0] https://www.whitehouse.gov/mediabias/
Also the Reporters Without Borders ranking:
https://rsf.org/en/index
US 57th place, the first non-European country is at position 16 (New Zealand).
> Or the US where even the mainstream media can challenge the president?
Can you name the last time this actually had an effect on a Republican-leaning president?
There's a reason the acronym TACO exists - every time Trump goes after the really deep money the backlash forces him to change his tune. If only the tariffs disproportionately affected the rich then we would have been done with them within a week - instead the most effected individuals and companies just got carve outs.
> I’m hoping tech companies in Europe and Asia become independent enough to no longer be beholden to US interests
What tech companies?
At the end of the day, it's all about capital and IP.
American domiciled VCs and companies can outinvest just about any other competitor, and much of the core IP for vast swathes of critical next-gen technologies (high NA EUV, Foundation Models, Quantum Computing) is in the US, but American companies are fine transferring technology abroad (often with American government backing [3][4]) and moving jobs abroad.
China has a similar ecosystem but prefers to invest domestically and for IP to remain within China.
Meanwhile Japan, Taiwan, and Korea continue to back the US no matter what due to tensions with China and North Korea along with existing fixed asset investments in the US.
When companies like Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, and others are able to invest tens of billions of dollars in India [0], Poland [1], Israel [2], Portugal [5], Ireland [6], and others it makes them more open to collaborate with American capital and IP instead of dealing with alternatives who cannot deploy similar amounts of capital and transfer IP.
[0] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-12-11/india-dra...
[1] - https://www.gov.pl/web/primeminister/google-invests-billions...
[2] - https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/sjcwdmxxzg
[3] - https://www.state.gov/pax-silica
[4] - https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/20...
[5] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-11-11/microsoft...
[6] - https://www.irishtimes.com/business/2025/11/27/microsoft-has...
The world respected IP because the alternative was being tariffed. Now that we already are, the US can take it's IP laws and shove 'em for all I care.
Tariffs existed before a year ago, whether you knew about them or not.
The US bullying other countries to follow its interests has also existed before a year ago. People are just waking up to the idea that it's going to get worse and not better.
Obviously. What's your point? Do you mean to tell me nothing changed in how the US tariffs their imports?
No, I'm saying what you said was misleading at best, because tariffs already existed.
> What tech companies? At the end of the day, it's all about capital and IP.
It's not just about capital and IP. It's now about a halo of related things, like everyone using US payment networks - if the US unbanks you, even banks in your own country can't do business with you[1]. Or everyone using a US-based messaging platform (WhatsApp) because its been subsidised by a BigTech to cost $0, whereas text messages are still not free...
[1]: https://english.elpais.com/international/2025-12-28/the-comp...
>American domiciled VCs and companies can outinvest just about any other competitor,
Because every investor in the world put their money in the US. They knew the best companies and people would centralize around that hub.
When the US is a rogue, isolated idiocracy -- already true, but the world takes time to adapt to this new reality -- how much of that money do you think will flow to the US?
Much of the capital is US originated and domiciled.
American public pension funds alone hold $6 Trillion in AUM [0] and American endowment funds hold a little under $1 Trillion in AUM [1], and tend to be the LPs for most VC funds as most institutional investors follow the Yale Investment Model.
[0] - https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2025/2024-ann...
[1] - https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=73
>Much of the capital is US originated and domiciled.
Neither of your citations has any relevance to this at all. That endowments and pensions funds have money...what is your point? Ah, the old HN "look I've provided citations so upvote me, even if they don't support my contention".
Canadians alone hold almost $4 trillion dollars in US securities. Because the US was the centre of the capital universe. Just like we saw it as the centre of the media and music universe. Americans mistook the free world basically anointing the US into some confused notion that it was actually some earned accomplishment.
It's to highlight the depth of capital within the US.
When we in the VC/PE space raise a fund, we are investing other people's money. Most of that money is of American origin and American domiciled.
You do see some large players like in Canada and Europe, but even they are not similar in size to American pension funds and endowments, let alone other American institutional investors.
Edit: Can't reply
> these will often end up being national level and will look individually much smaller than the ones from the US, purely because the US has more people.
Absolutely! And that's what makes it so difficult for Europe to decouple from the US or China.
Most attempts at EU federalization are undermined by national level politicans as the keys to hard power (defense, foreign policy, FDI attraction) remain under the purview of individual European states, becuase push comes to shove, an American employer or fund can threaten to leave and that country's entire political apparatus will work to appease us at the expense of Brussels.
This is how Meta and Amazon have been able to neuter the GDPR thanks to Ireland [0] and Luxembourg [1] respectively.
Even India got the FTA with the EU by using the carrot on France [2] and Italy [3] and the stick on Germany [4].
Europe is in a very tough position because the incentives of a politician who wants to build their career in Brussels is different from one who wants to build their career in Berlin, Bucharest, or Bratislava.
[0] - https://www.euractiv.com/news/irish-privacy-regulator-picks-...
[1] - https://www.aboutamazon.eu/news/policy/amazon-leaders-meet-l...
[2] - https://www.reuters.com/world/india/india-signs-74-billion-d...
[3] - https://www.lagazzettamarittima.it/2025/10/30/rixi-in-india-...
[4] - https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/volksw...
> You do see some large players like in Canada and Europe, but even they are not similar in size to American pension funds and endowments, let alone other American institutional investors.
Look, I haven't dug into this, but if one wants a fair comparison, then you need to account for the size of an economy. If 330mn people need pensions, then you'll obviously see much larger pension funds. If 400mn people across 27 countries want pensions, these will often end up being national level and will look individually much smaller than the ones from the US, purely because the US has more people.
Unfortunately most European countries don't pension funds. It's a pity...
(Anyway to put another argument: the US can outflow. Why should people invest to a Trumpland?)
> Unfortunately most European countries don't pension funds. It's a pity...
Many Europeans prefer bank deposits to investment in markets, that's true. I assure you though, there are lots and lots of pension funds in Europe, as well as many, many insurance companies who represent similar capital profiles.
Which EU countries don’t have any pension funds?
> Neither of your citations has any relevance to this at all.
it's a common pattern in GPs comments
pretty certain he just asks the "AI" for citations on whatever he's written
(for a VC he sure has a lot of time to waste shit-posting on the internet)
> When the US is a rogue, isolated idiocracy
This reads like wishful thinking from a butthurt European. I am not a fan of many of Trump's policies and I think ex-US investor sentiment has definitely soured. But it's not like the USA is now DPRK.
> how much of that money do you think will flow to the US?
If there's one thing you can be sure of about aggregate investor behavior, it's that investors seek good risk-adjusted returns regardless of any moral or political objections.
So long as capital flows remain unimpeded, property rights are respected, and US companies have good expected future returns, investors' money will continue to flow in to the US.
> But it's not like the USA is now DPRK.
I'd say the perception is probably worse
kim is simply not a threat
he also hasn't threatened to invade us, and he's not kidnapped any foreign leaders (recently)
Exactly. These guys have blinders.
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> This. Companies like Nvidia, Google et-al and investors, don't care about and won't leave the US over morals, they'll go and stay where the money is good as long as it lasts. Trying to lecture them about morals from the EU won't change this. Otherwise they wouldn't be using slave labor in Congo and sweatshop labor in China.
Nobody will leave over morals (well except possibly the Norweigan sovereign wealth fund), but it's worth noting that for non-dollar investors, the US markets have basically been flat since the start of 2025, because the dollar has declined.
It's entirely possible that the US no longer takes in more global capital, if this continues. It's very unlikely that all the foreign investors will leave quicker, but it's much more likely that they'll leave as they sell their investments over time.
If investors leave, where will they go though? Most of EU economy isn't doing amazing right now either, with the economies of France and Germany being propped up on life support by government spending, and there's more political turmoil at the horizon. Asia?
Large European pension funds are rapidly decreasing (as rapid as a pension fund can without causing too much panic, devaluing remaining assets). E.g. some large pension funds have removed 1/4th of their investments in the US in less than a year. That is pretty unheard of.
(Most of them are reinvesting in Europe.)
>some large pension funds have removed 1/4th of their investments in the US in less than a year.
I saw the news about the danish fund dropping some of their US investment and on closer inspection, in absolute terms it was a drop in the bucket. Mostly an optics maneuvre.
Again, non dollar investors are flat since start of 2025. This isn't just politicisation (although that's part of it), it's that other markets are doing better than the US for now.
This will be a slow process, but the direction seems pretty clear (I fully expect to see a major economy introduce capital controls within the next twenty years).
> it's that other markets are doing better than the US for now.
Which? US currently has a rocky status due to Trump's interference, but Trump will pass while the likes of EU and Japan won't be able to fix their structural issues of low birthrates, crazy high debt welfare speeding, etc.
> Which? US currently has a rocky status due to Trump's interference
In non-dollar terms, the US markets have been flat since 2025 (so basically since "liberation day").
> fix their structural issues of low birthrates,
This is a problem basically everywhere. It's definitely worse in Europe than in the US, but the US is on the same trajectory (modulo immigration).
> crazy high debt welfare speeding
Where exactly are you talking about? The US government has been spending more than it takes in for the past decade at least, mostly on entitlements (i.e. welfare spending).
A single Dutch pension fund that was much larger (ABP, IIRC one or two orders of magnitude) retracted 1/4th (10 billion). But they only found out after journalists checked out a year report. Most pension funds just don't talk about it, because (1) they do not want the value of their assets drop too much as long as they haven't moved them; and (2) they do not want to draw the ire of the Trump administration in the meanwhile.
So what you're saying is, we can buy the dip?
> the economies of France and Germany being propped up on life support by government spending
The US government is running (and has been for at least a decade now) a substantial deficit, which is basically propping up the economy with government support.
> there's more political turmoil at the horizon
Again, look to your own house. Even if you ignore all the Trump noise, the attempted politicisation of the Fed is very dangerous for the US economy.
> Asia?
Asia & Europe. It's beyond absurd that the US stock markets have 65% of total value, and was never going to last forever. All this craziness from the government is just speeding up something that was always going to happen.
>Even if you ignore all the Trump noise, the attempted politicisation of the Fed is very dangerous for the US economy.
Yes, but Trump is a passing issue that will eventually go away, and won't be able to fuck with tarries and the economy anymore just so his friends can do insider trading.
>Asia & Europe.
why do you think so? Japan's economy has no great future prospects, and neither EU's with many German bankruptcies and companies relocating abroad. Chinese companies and workers outside of the largest metro areas have bad time too.
I'm from Europe and have no idea what "democrat" is. Do you mean the US party? I didn't know they publish in Europe. Do you maybe mean everything not-MAGA? Now that's quite a blanket statement then, applying I'd say to 90% of Europeans - I'd be scared if 90% of the continent sees you like DPRK (hint: no, they don't). So please, either explain, or just cut back on useless sensationalistic metaphors.
>I'd be scared if 90% of the continent sees you like DPRK
Sees me? I'm European, and am speaking to how I see other Europeans see the US, which comes from the local media which is heavily anti-US as it twists and omits facts to maintain a constant anti-Trump narrative no matter the facts since people lap it up without doing any due diligence or research online.
Remember the BBC famously clipped Trump's speech to make it seem like he said something he didn't actually say on Jan 6.
It's funny how the BBC makes one mishap (I agree that it was bad) and we hear about it for months. At the same time Fox and others are spewing constant disinformation. Similarly, watch MSNBC for a day and you'll learn that most European media are a gold standard for journalism in comparison.
Talk about using double standards.
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Please don't break the site guidelines like this. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
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Can you please stop breaking the site guidelines so we don't have to keep banning you?
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
And what rule did I break exactly? Please show it to me and point out which of my comments broke that rule.
The GP comment broke the rules against (1) snark, (2) name-calling, (3) fulmination, and (4) ideological battle, for starters.
Thanks
"idiocracy" ... wow ... such a cool word! And so true.
Thank you.
If the comment is not sarcasm (I can't tell reliably anymore), there's a movie called Idiocracy. I think the word comes from the movie, or at least its wide adoption was heavily influenced by it (because someone somewhere probably coined the word before the movie was made).
Wait till you see the movie.
> What tech companies? At the end of the day, it's all about capital and IP.
it's a critical industry, so can be regulated to prevent foreign interference
airlines aren't granted freedom of the air unless they're domestically owned
and exactly the same approach can be applied to tech companies
Japan is a terrible example for you, they are focused on ditching the US.
>It’s clear that the era where any one country has global hegemony should end.
Unipolar worlds are safer than Bipolar. Multipolar is extremely dangerous.
I imagine you didn't know that more people will be killed if the US doesn't have hegemony.
Don't worry, China is coming out pretty far ahead so I'm sure we'll still be in a unipolar world when this is all over, and you can sleep safe at night. I imagine you didn't know.
You better be Han Chinese or you're cooked.
At least the US has the benefit of not really having a core ethnic class.
(To stem off the haters, the US has a "massive problem with racism" exactly because we have such a mixed society. Most monoracial places are obscenely and shamelessly racist, but never has a chance to arise)
Tell that to Steven Miller and Trump.
> Don't worry, China is coming out pretty far ahead so I'm sure we'll still be in a unipolar world when this is all over, and you can sleep safe at night. I imagine you didn't know.
With their current demographics? Doubt it.
I don't know man?
The Chinese are clearly doing some "rebalancing" lately. Some would even say that "rebalancing" is not a strong enough word. "De-linking" is a word a lot of those people are more comfortable with using to describe what we're seeing.
You can't really have a unipolar power if that power simply "takes all their marbles and goes home" so to speak.
I think we need to really do some strategic planning around scenarios where China or Europe simply withdraws from the rest of the world. Or decides they only need subsaharan Africa for instance.
Or, the nightmare scenario; where China, Europe, and subsaharan Africa actually figure out that together they don't really need anything from the rest of us.
assuming the hegemon is benevolent. if the hegemon isnt, you have nowhere to run. welcome to the labor camp, please leave your belongings here, the showers are to the right.
saying unipolar is better is like saying absolute monarchy is better. sure it is, as long as the good king is alive.
I don't care if they go sovereign, but the GDPR crap is annoying. Would be funny if the US just forced them to get rid of it.
If you're not in the EU, what even is the impact on you that was caused by GDPR? You're essentially not affected by it unless you run a business, which now you need to take greater care of the personal data you store. Is that what's annoying you or what?
The EU is to blame for cookie banners on basically every website on the internet.
I wish the US had something similar, and that there was more enforcement of disallowing "accept all" buttons without an equivalent "reject all" option. I also recognize that websites don't need the banner if they aren't trying to track me, but lets not pretend there aren't annoying consequences.
Companies could just reduce the amount of tracking data they're trying to harvest - then they wouldn't need a banner. If you're annoyed then be mad at the company - not the law trying to offer you some way to protect your data.
I don't care if the company does that
> I also recognize that websites don't need the banner if they aren't trying to track me
And I recognize that there is a non-trivial cost to knowing if you need the banner or not, and people are likely to ask their web designer/dev "Hey, where's the cookie banner?" and then pay for the subsequent cost of implementing that because it's cheaper than expensive lawyers.
It is like blaming government for policy to make cigarette packaging unappealling.
Every company wants to spy on you using cookies and sell you data or target ads. cookies banners are warnings to protect your data from these greedy companies.
> The EU is to blame for cookie banners on basically every website on the internet.
Yeah, just like it's the EU's fault sometimes that the police cuts of roads when a drunk driver collides with another car, it can impossibly be the fault of the driver themselves.
Maybe try to point the blame in the direction of the ones that are A) showing you the banners in the first place and B) refuses to remove them and instead decide to inconvenience you
You know, like we do with every other single thing.
Besides, GDPR has nothing to do with those cookie banners, you're yet another example of people not understanding how any of these things work, yet find it valuable somehow to point blame in some direction, even if they don't understand the fundamental reasons things are the way they are.
I'm sure you also think EU is the same as Europe, as that tends to also be a common misconception among the people who don't understand the cookies banners or GDPR.
First, cookie banners are associated with a totally different legislation, not GDPR, and they began appearing long before GDPR existed.
Second, the EU is not to blame for cookie banners. Companies doing tracking via cookies are to blame. They always have the option to not have a cookie banner--just don't do the things that require cookie banners. They deliberately choose to do these things, and then people complain about the banners.
In California, where everything can give you cancer, do people consider that a failure of the companies putting the notices on everything, or a failure of government?
That's a failure of government because the law mandates the notice in so many places that it becomes pointless noise.
Cookie banners are not analogous. It's easy to make a web site that doesn't need cookie banners. It's actually easier to make a site that doesn't need them than to make one that does. Adding in the tracking that requires banner takes effort. But companies prefer to put in that effort and annoy their users so they can have that tracking. That's 100% on them, not on the government.
> But companies prefer to put in that effort and annoy their users so they can have that tracking.
This is making the assumption that the company has already paid the significant legal fees to see if they need the banner or not. Or ignoring the companies that think it is easier to add the banner than pay a law firm to review it's data usage.
It's like 'Hey, I make T-shirts. I want to sell them to anyone who visits my website. Do I need a cookie banner? I don't know. I do collect personal information to facilitate the transaction. I do retain the information for refund purposes. I do log IP addresses. Is this covered without a banner? Am I 'safer' to just make a banner saying we are saving their data and using it? I can't afford a lawyer to review everything we do, but I can afford a developer to make a banner like they did on other sites. Even if they implement it incorrectly, I think it's worth the cost to have the banner because I probably won't be liable if I attempted to follow the law. And maybe I'm wrong there because again, I have no idea what the letter of the law requires. I just make t-shirts and want to sell them.'
Tossing up a banner doesn't really help. You're required to allow users to opt out of anything that's not essential to the service being requested by the user. So regardless of whether you're going to have a banner or not, you have to identify what's essential. And once you've done that, you could stop there and not have anything non-essential.
How easy is it really, seeing how nearly every website ends up having them? Even if they don't think it's needed, seems the legal risk isn't worth.
It’s not the legal risk, it’s the desire to track users. How often have you seen a cookie banner that says “we only set cookies when it’s essential to the site’s functionality so there’s nothing for you to opt out of”?
Case in point, GitHub & Gitlab (I think, not 100% sure) don't have cookie banners, one would hardly call those two sites small
If you want to be pedantic, the companies who track us across the internet with all of these third party tracking cookies on every website are the enemy here, not informed disclosure and consent.
I want to be pedantic. It's not the company making my browser store/serve cookies, the browser is doing that itself. If you really care, you can turn that off or wipe after session. And third-party cookies in particular are already globally disabled in Firefox and Safari because they're almost useless besides tracking, but Chrome still has them.
Yes, the EU passed the ePrivacy directive in 2002. It was terribly broken (didn't actually address the problem it meant to), and resulted in malicious compliance of "cookie banners".
The EU then learned from these mistakes and passed the GDPR in 2016. The GDPR is quite on point - it directly addresses the problem, preempts the foreseeable ways which companies could sidestep such regulation, and didn't succumb to lobbyists looking to install backdoors.
The US could learn a thing or two from the EU regarding legislation.
> The EU is to blame for cookie banners on basically every website on the internet.
This is the most low-rent complaint imaginable and it boggles my mind how I keep seeing it made straight-faced. One time I literally timed how long it took me to dismiss a EU cookie banner, it was about 350ms and only needs to be done once per site. All this outrage is over 350ms and I cannot take it seriously.
Also, why would you not want cookie banners? I prefer being able to choose to opt out of them, even if it's annoying
I think the general vibe I get from some Americans is that they're OK with some abuse, as long as you don't tell them about it or do it to your face, and they would rather have some abuse than none but having to make their own choices. Of course, small subsection of people, but plenty of HN commentators make that exact case over and over whenever the discussions about cookie banners come up.
Seems to be the case as well. Theres also a bit of apathy in that its become so normalised people dont even care
So every article on some site I try to read doesn't throw a full-page modal, sometimes with a delay. At least reader mode will sometimes ignore those banners.
You don't have to interact with GDPR if you don't use EU companies?
Not even that, if they aren't living in the EU the GDPR doesn't affect their lives in any way.
unless your customers are EU citizens.
Can't have the cake (EU money) and eat it (ignore EU laws), too.
If the EU announced that non-EU entities aren't subject to GDPR, I think that would substantially defuse and perhaps entirely eliminate the conflict. Their current guidance is precisely the opposite (https://gdpr.eu/what-is-gdpr/): "the GDPR applies to you even if you’re not in the EU". They even have a details page to make sure it's 100% clear (https://gdpr.eu/companies-outside-of-europe/): if you're a Colorado company with more than 250 employees, selling mainly to other Colorado businesses, the GDPR applies to you in full and the EU claims the authority to levy fines against you for violations.
Why would they need to defuse it? If you want to do business in our market, abide by our laws. If not... just leave and miss out on the huge market?
I cannot understand the constant whining of Apple and other companies, whereas if the PRC asks to jump, they ask 'how high'?
I don't understand your response. As I said, the EU's position is that it doesn't matter whether you "just leave", because the GDPR still applies to companies who are not located in the EU and do not do business in the EU.
If you are selling to EU residents you are doing business in the EU, no?
I get why people find this hard to believe, because it is kind of a crazy rule, but I repeat once again that this does not matter. Even if you have never sold a single product to an EU resident, and never plan to do so, the EU says as my original comment detailed that you are subject to the GDPR the instant an EU resident provides you with personal data.
(And of course, it's also the case that "selling to an EU resident" is substantially broader than "doing business in the EU" - EU residents do often travel to foreign countries and provide personal data to stores they transact with while there.)
I've read your links and you're misreading them.
1. GDPR applies to EU residents in the EU. The protection does not apply to EU residents going on trips to the US.
2. Based on the examples they've presented, there is a SUPER clean solution to your concerns. Geo-blocking. Problem solved, bye bye GDPR. But don't go crying for EU citizen money, can't have it both ways.
Just read the examples they present, they're fairly well written.
I'm pretty sure this is right, except does geo-blocking legally release you from the liability of an EU citizen using a VPN?