
US defence secretary says Europe should lead in defending Ukraine and that restoring pre-2014 borders is unrealistic

IISS assessment lays bare challenges facing Europe should US cut back Ukraine military support

https://archive.ph/h7acP
https://archive.ph/SOouy
Europe is now discovering why China has the digital firewall and spent time ensuring that domestic companies became dominant players building out digital infrastructure.
Europe's decades-long gamble on American patronage has finally come due, and the bill is a staggering $3.1 trillion. While the US and Russia make a backroom deal, Europe is left holding the check, scrambling to fund a war it can't win and a peace it didn't negotiate. European elites now face the humiliating reality of their miscalculation of relying on the US for security.
Meanwhile, Trump wields Europe’s dependence on NATO as leverage to strong-arm trade concessions, proving once again that being America’s ally is a sucker's bet. The transatlantic partnership was always just a protection racket and Europe just got the invoice. Kissinger's warning that it’s dangerous to be America’s enemy, but fatal to be its friend echoes louder than ever. Europe, having bet its future on Uncle Sam's hollow promises, is now reaping the rewards of its own naivety. It finds itself bankrupt, divided, and utterly expendable.
https://archive.ph/0dVoI
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues to affect the geopolitical landscape of the post-Soviet states. It has not only had a profound impact on Ukraine – and on Russia – but it is more broadly prompting changes to military partnerships, defence spending and diplomatic relationships in many countries...

True to form, the US is now making a deal directly with Russia over the heads of the supposed allies, and Europe finds itself demoted from being at the table to being on the menu. The continent that spent decades propping up US hegemony now finds itself locked out of the boardroom, its fate bartered by the same empire it subsidized. This is the true calculus of the “special relationship”.
Exactly, the oligarchs are largely disconnected from the realities of the world, and they don't understand that all the power they enjoy is just a social contract.
To be clear, I'm not arguing that this will work or that it's a smart strategy for the oligarchs to pursue. It's entirely possible that this all backfires in a spectacular way, but I do think this is the logic behind the whole thing.
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Italian company SIO, which sells to government customers, is behind an Android spyware campaign called Spyrtacus that spoofed popular apps like WhatsApp, per security researchers.

Pretty sure Europe would require basic things like industry and energy production to fight a large scale war.
you clearly are not
The fact that Europeans bet their whole future on a politically unstable country that can completely change its entire policy every four years will never stop being hilarious.
I love how you get downvoted for stating the obvious.
Around a galaxy just 590 million light-years away, astronomers have discovered a stunning example of one of the rarest phenomena in our skies: a perfect ring of light.

I definitely do think they have dreams of AI replacing workers and that's how they think they can catch up with China. That said though, they don't really need to be afraid of labor as long the security forces are on their side. Look at what happened in Germany or Italy in the early 30s. There was a far stronger labor movement than in US right now, and the rich paid fascist gangs to murder organizers, beat workers into submission, arrest union leaders, and so on. I imagine the oligarchs in US plan to do similar kind of stuff going forward.
Elon Musk is cashing in on Donald Trump’s presidency.

A phone call sparks fear and dread in Kyiv and other European capitals

The US predictably cuts Europe out of the decision making process.
The food bank system in one of Ontario’s largest cities says it’s been forced to lay off staff and cut programs in order to keep feeding the growing number of residents who rely on food donations.

China went from one of the poorest countries in the world to global economic powerhouse in a mere four decades. Currently featured in the news is DeepSeek, the free, open source A.I. built by innovative Chinese entrepreneurs which just pricked the massive U.S. A.I. bubble. Even more impressive, howe...
There is no fatal flaw in the system, and I don't why you assume it's harder to hold a single party accountable than multiple parties. Furthermore, the Communist Party of China is structured fundamentally different from western parties that are completely insulated from the public. The party in China is a grassroots party https://news.cgtn.com/event/2021/who-runs-the-cpc/index.html
The fact that people in the west have been brainwashed into thinking that voting is the only viable political action is absolutely surreal.
Exactly, they only care about personal gain. As Gramsci put it, the old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.
A WHAM score investigation into middle-class housing affordability

Instance PeerTube généraliste, une bonne alternative à YouTube et autres plateformes de streaming contrôlées par des géants du WEB. General PeerTube instance, a good alternative to YouTube and other streaming platforms controlled by WEB giants.

The thing is that the ability of the US to project imperial power is disappearing regardless what the US does now. This started with the rise of China as a manufacturing superpower, leading to new economic alliances like BRICS and BRI. This process cannot be reversed. That's the context for all this. Given that, the oligarchs in US have to adjust to this new reality. If they're unable to do exploitation around the globe as they did before, then they have to make the best of new realities.
The US is a very big country, it has lots of labor and resources, certainly more than enough to keep a handful of oligarchs comfortable. They don't need to go live on a colony on Mars.
I imagine they just plan to have their own fiefdoms like in medieval times. The super rich won't be personally affected by any of this. Look at places like Brazil today, the US could end up looking something like that. You'll have like 20% of the population that lives well and then the rest of the country lives in favelas.
It's not a direct comparison with Russia, but again consider how this will play out. There's going to be mass unemployment which will drive down the cost of labor down. Musk and the rest of the people involved will also get effectively unlimited subsidies from the government for future development projects. That's how I see things playing out.
The people who are going to be losers here are those who invested into ventures that relied on the US being able to project imperial power around the world. But that ability is already waning as we speak, and smarter oligarchs can see the writing on the wall.
@GlacialTurtle@lemmy.ml mind updating the link to xcancel as per https://lemmy.ml/post/25082354/16240704
that's the title lemmy extracted from the link, presumably from the metadata here
<meta property="og:title" content="Chinese GPUs outdo Nvidia chips nearly tenfold in supercomputer task"/>
Think about the rise of the oligarchs after the fall of USSR as an example. A few select people can become phenomenally rich in the process. Most people, including many oligarchs will absolutely get screwed in the process, but people driving these things will come out on top.
Thank you for taking your valuable time away from sniffing glue to write this insightful comment.