Our elites and politicians share a similar playbook when it comes to doing exactly what they want while pretending to struggle to do anything else.

Technology is important for making the government run more efficiently and the US tech sector has historically provided the tools for making that process more efficient. It was easier to use the tools available from a close ally than it was to devote the resources towards building up a domestic technology sector.

We're in a different world now, both politically and technologically. The US government has been using this dependency to gain advantage in other areas by spying on our allies. The trend towards right-wing nationalism also creates a real danger that this could escalate into even more coercive tactics.

Now, the cost of cultivating a domestic tech sector is now much lower than the cost of having all of your government functions held ransom by a foreign power. Especially when everyone can see how rapidly the US's posture towards allies has changed.

That being said, it takes time to build a tech industry and swap to domestic production. The US's tech sector growth was subsidized by the entire world and built over decades. It will take time to replicate that in the EU (and even longer if there isn't a unified initiative).

Until then, your governments cannot help but be dependent on Microsoft and other US technology companies who are using emerging technology to enable new capabilities (i.e. Palantir).

As one commoner to another, I hope your country is shocked by the turmoil that we're going through and can build something better.

Not much better in Estonia.

"Let's investigate technical independence from the US"

But let's keep everyone on Teams (including pushing contractor companies to use Teams to communicate with government employees) and let's make sure everyone's using Windows.

I'm a USian and also have worked in tech for decades. I hope Europe succeeds, there needs to be competition.

The US is in a similar position when it comes to manufacturing. The various business interests have sold our country's capabilities in exchange for short-term profits.

Offshoring was wildly profitable for decades, why pay people domestically to do a thing when you can pay less to people in another country to do the same thing. Thanks to this, we now import the vast majority of things from overseas because we have little to no domestic manufacturing capability. The massive industrial manufacturing base that carried the US economy after WWII was deconstructed in a few decades

Most of the money that was being poured into US tech companies from all around the world was funneled back out into foreign manufacturing centers who now control the market for electronics hardware. Apple has spent hundreds of BILLIONS investing in SE Asia's electronic hardware manufacturing industry because it was cheaper. This helped create an entire industry that renders any attempt to create domestic production unprofitable.

The US made a lot of billionaires and not much else. Today our tech sector is largely just software running on hardware that was manufactured elsewhere and imported. (It would be a shame if someone invented a thing which could create software at scale)

The only reason that the US remains dominant in these fields is because we've strong armed every other country into accepting our Intellectual Property laws which subordinates your laws and regulations into a system for enforcing our monopoly.

Once that link is broken, and the EU imports their own hardware and writes their own software irregardless of US IP laws then the US tech sector will collapse.

Here's Cory Doctorow explaining what that would look like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39jsstmmUUs

That is just the constant issue these people put in the public trust are learning but have to held to task to.

I think the people who've gained a career in politics understand the rent seeking game and it is the people who have forgotten what the stakes are.

I don't buy for a minute that these highly educated people with degrees from prestigious universities don't understand the historical context that they're living through. The amount of corruption on public display is shocking to anyone who is paying attention.

We've just become complacent and have, collectively, forgotten what the stakes are.

You're right, the people who are able to make decisions are able to make objectively bad long term decision and the amount of people who want to hold them to task is so massively diluted by a bunch of people who've grown complacent due to being born in and living through a period of time that has, historically, been largely positive.

(( Huge asterisks there, obviously. I mean there's no world wars, widespread slavery or feudalism. Totalitarianism is limited to corners of the world where we're largely discouraged from thinking about. North Korea is, objectively, an ongoing crime against humanity but most people living in western democracies have no context to understand that reality so it's feels like a fantasy setting in a movie or TV Show. ))

There are still functioning democracies that haven't gone off the cliff despite everything and the Internet has given us an organizational tool that has never existed in human history. We're living through Interesting Times, but there's still hope.

It's viable because all of the important components are open source. That's the entire genius of open source, if you're capable enough then you're immune to future changes. You can fork a project and take over development. It only costs developers and that's well within the budget of a modern western country.

Any country who is going to undertake the effort to move away from Windows will have the resources to support distros which align with their country's interest or create their own. Even North Korea has their own distro of Linux, I'm sure the EU countries can find the talent required to ensure their software meets their needs.

As an individual, you're right. You're largely at the whims of the people who volunteer their time to the kernel, the software ecosystem and the individual distributions. If you have infinite money then those problems become a line item in your budget.