- CEOs of European technology companies told CNBC at the Web Summit technology conference this week that the continent should adopt a “Europe-first” approach to tech, after U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s election victory.
- Andy Yen, CEO of VPN maker Proton, said Europe should “step up” and “be aggressive” to counter U.S. Big Tech firms’ tight grip on many important technologies, such as web browsing, cloud computing, smartphones — and now artificial intelligence.
- Thomas Plantenga, CEO of Lithuania-based used clothing app Vinted, urged Europe to take the “right choices” to ensure it doesn’t get “left behind.”
Ugh, more balkanization, protectionism and jingoism.
It’s a bad idea for the US. It’s also a bad idea for everyone else.
How is that ‘protectionism’ if you develop your own technology to gain independence? As someone already wrote in this thread, Europe can support Open Source projects, decentralization. That’s good for everyone.
Don’t get me wrong, everybody should be trying to manufacture some microchips inside their own borders - access to microchips is a national security concern for every country.
How is that ‘protectionism’ if you develop your own technology to gain independence?
Any actions taken to promote domestic industry over foreign is protectionism, by definition. If a government encourages the growth of domestic producers via tax incentives, grants, tariffs, etc (anything that adjusts the balance really) that is literally protectionism.
@NaibofTabr@infosec.pub No, investing your money into your own hardware and software isn’t protectionism. That’s obviously the right thing to do, even more so with regard to the current geopolitical landscape.
Okay, you say anything that promotes securing domestic industries is protectionism. Fine.
But then you say protectionism is bad across the board but don’t give any reason.
At least you need to give some arguments why protectionism that is constituted of securing critical infrastructure, providing safe® access to technology, developing independent, decentralised and open technology, etc would be worse than keeping sucking on the tits of US megacorps.
Why is the dependence on US tech corps different than the dependence on russian gas in the past (which I hope we can agree was bad)?
So when the EU says Europe first it’s totally okay, but if the United States says America first it’s totally toxic? Seems a bit two-faced to me.
Huh, I didn’t know the heroin dealer from Pulp Fiction was a tech CEO
Good luck with that. How many times have we tried? Like almost every country in the EU tried to create the Silicon Valley of Europe and non of them are truly successful. Most Europeans just lack a Pan European attitude. Like every country rather wants to do it on their own and create a tech center in their own country and most Europeans are not willing to move abroad for work. In order for Europe to create a tech sector that can compete with the US and China it needs all of Europe’s brightest minds concentrated in one area competing with each other. Like how it is in the Bay Area or Shenzen. Sure there are jobs that can be done remotely but a lot of innovation happens in the lab or on the shop floor.
Europe just lacks the advantage the US and China have. A large single market that speaks the same language, is culturally pretty much the same and has cheap shipping. Like every European country has their own Amazon knock off that is only used within its borders because they failed to expand in Europe mostly due to the language and culture barrier and expensive international shipping. And now Amazon and AliExpress have swooped in and these local companies can’t really compete and have zero chance to grow internationally now.
Best our politicians can do is to give our money to Google, Microsoft, and Amazon to store all our data in the US.
If you don’t like it you can let them know through any of Meta’s social networks or X.
Vote for different people (Pirate Party for example), sign petitions like EU-Linux, use Linux and opensource yourself, and talk to your friends and family about it. Nothing will change if we do nothing.
I once campaigned to have a law that says the Portuguese institutions have to use open standards to store information. The law is in the books for 13 years (and now I feel old), and very little changed because the organisations that were supposed to enforce it don’t give a fuck.
