There is an even greater threat to U.S. tech companies that has gotten far less attention. In sharp contrast to today’s United States, the European Union has a strong commitment to the rule of law, obliging politicians to comply with judge’s rulings. The Trump administration’s scofflaw tendencies and tech companies’ increasing hostility toward European values may lead to the collapse of the EU-U.S. arrangements on which tech companies such as Alphabet, Meta, and Microsoft depend.
Schmidt worried a decade ago that an EU-U.S. data dispute might collapse the Internet. Snowden showed how U.S. intelligence agencies had illicitly accessed European social media and Internet search data, breaching European privacy rules. That dispute was patched over by an ungainly agreement, negotiated between the European Commission and the U.S. government. The EU agreed to allow data flows, as long as the United States committed to protecting the privacy rights of EU citizens and offered some means of redress if they were violated by U.S. surveillance agencies. The keystone of the arrangement was a 2016 U.S. commitment that Washington’s surveillance agencies would respect European privacy rights through a process overseen by an obscure U.S. body, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board.
This arrangement made nobody happy but provided legal and political cover for flows of data across the Atlantic. Meta continued to operate Facebook in Europe, and companies such as Amazon, Google, and Microsoft were able to host Europeans’ personal data on their cloud-computing platforms. For those companies, the stakes couldn’t be higher. Google alone makes over $100 billion in sales in Europe.
No disagreement there, mainly because as I mentioned it’s one of those things that is pretty much impossible to measure. However they were obviously a major factor, given the extent of their operations, so to postulate that they might have been THE deciding factor is not illogical either.
It would be a much safer claim if the gap in popular vote wasn’t so huge. Democrats just didn’t show up to vote but most claim it was the Republicans that were under the influence. Did Russians affect voter turnout positively? Maybe that was enough to help Trump win.
I don’t think they changed any minds however, since that’s near damn impossible these days. That means that the only thing that could be exploited by propaganda was something created by Americans for Americans and that had to come out sooner or later because it was ignored by everyone for 50 years now.
Who’s claiming that? A major part of the Russian playbook was to sow chaos and dissent among the opposition. How much of the controversy over Israel could be traced back to Russia? We know that was one of the major issues lowering Dem turnout.
Yeah, this would have happened sooner or later, I agree. The system was fundamentally open to manipulation.
But that dissent over Palestine is of Democrats making, it was absolutely correct both pragmatically and ethically to exact the cost of supporting genocide. Can’t keep on treating this like a football match and saying we need to support liberals no matter what. It’s the politicians who serve us and not us serving them, they need to earn votes by delivering on their promises, otherwise it doesn’t matter who’s in charge really.
That system is growing wealth inequality, currently at pre-Nazi Germany levels, and similar to then it’s also behind the rise of fascism. Some things are unavoidable at certain scale if you let them get this bad. I’d rather avoid it in Europe although some European countries are on that path already.
Disagree. Considering what Trump is doing, which we all knew was going to happen. The pragmatic choice would absolutely have been to hold your nose and vote Dem. Instead, we’ve got the Handmaid’s Tale playing out in real life.
That’s centrist nonsense. Things are a lot worse now than they’ve ever been, and potentially permanently broken.
What Trump is doing is hard to predict and even evaluate at this point. Last I’ve heard deportations were down compared to the numbers under Biden so it’s also important to compare what politicians say and what they do. Right wing politicians can deceive their voters same as any other and they need immigrants to keep economy going following this example. Honestly I don’t think Trump and his cohort are able to execute this revolution that they want due to their own incompetence. Whoever comes next will be much better at it, like Orban for example.
I’m very far from the center, far enough to see when some conflicts are destructive to democracy. For example, treating politics like a football match between liberals and conservatives means you don’t hold politicians accountable. So far it’s been ending up with politicians doing anything they want (like the Gaza thing) which leads to people mistrusting politicians in general and going for eccentric „outsiders” like Trump.
One major reason for that is that the majority of deportation numbers are actually happening at the border, with illegal crossings and attempts. For obvious reasons, much less people are trying to get into the country under Trump, hence deportations are down.
We can hope. I would not have wanted to wager the future of the US on the incompetence of a small group of people, however.
That’s usually true. But when one side is threatening to smash the system for good, that’s not the time to be game-theorying it.
Game theory is too simplistic to cover all of the factors that go into a political decision a voter makes. Some people are just angry because we ignored them for too long and you’re never going to regain credibility unless you reinvent yourself entirely and honestly. Some were taught that they need to be selfish to survive by market forces - if you didn’t go to uni it’s your fault your life prospects are so bad. Our politicians don’t want to change anything usually because they’re beneficiaries of the system that was set up with intent of enriching very specific people they’re dependent on.
We’re kind of screwed and the only thing that comes to my mind that can prevent further escalation is polarising across a different axis that can be a proxy for wealth inequality. That’s because this obviously favours normal people against ultra rich. Currently both liberals and conservatives work for the rich only and what happens to us is mostly a byproduct of free market whims. This can’t go on further, otherwise we’ll have to fight increasing numbers of Georgescus, Le Pens, Farages and the likes, until the dam finally gives and a wave of fascism storms. We can keep pacifying it through the judiciary but then a violent revolution becomes more likely.