I feel that those who fear the end of NATO aren't thinking far enough.
What's possible isn't an end of NATO, it's an EU-US war, with citizens of one in the other being interned, ships being prevented from leaving ports, complete embargoes à la WWII etc.
If Denmark is invaded, we're at war, and I don't see how it can take any other form than this in the initial phases.
Now this would be an interesting war. Regarding germany, almost all admnistrations from the smallest tows up to the government are busy uploading their data to US-clouds. They've just introduced the new e-health system where roughly 75% of all data (including encprytion keys) are stored on IBM systems (hello CloudAct) and so on, so the US can already access probably most of the country's data in a perfectly legally fashion. There wouldn't ever be a war because the US can simply shut down all the US OSses (long-term in a "nice" fashion by stopping export for software / security patches, or short-term by introducing nasty code in the updates). In practice, I wouldn't be surprised if they could shut down a typical country in a matter of hours if they'd really mean it.
Yes and no. Presumably people would remove them and install one of the very numerous alternatives on the first day.
I don't think it's a real barrier. The real barrier is the US troops in Germany, who could cause huge disorder. Many computers would of course have to be kept off to prevent updates from wiping everything though, so the first few days would be extremely interesting. Maybe immediate internet shutdowns to prevent malware updates while this goes on is the right solution, with people simultaneously sent out to help companies and individuals save their computers by installing some pre-checked OS.
I really want to belive this: That it's somehow possible to work around such a kind of digital meltdown when the US really, really want to cause some real damage using zerodays, backdoors and so on. I can't imagine that it's possible, but I also don't think it'll come this: There'll just be a call from Trump to ${SOME_HEAD_OF_STATE} stating that if they don't shut up regarding greenland at this very second, they're looking at deleting the entire nation's mail, data, have no iPhones, Androids and so on. No one will even consider taking such a kind of risk. And that's just one factor besides tariffs and everything else.
I don't think that's something people are going to care about in that situation.
Presumably we would grind up our Android and Apple phones on the first day-- i.e. actually take them out and physically crush destroy them as completely as possible, or at least remove the batteries and never use them again.
Europe doesn’t have a military that’s worth talking about. So it’s politically impossible for the EU to go to war with the US. They’ll do lots of protesting but that’ll be about it.
The US isn’t just going to straight up invade anyway. There’s lots of political this and that but it does want to keep the current world order to some degree.
It's perfectly possible for the EU to have a war with the US. Wars take time. The EU has better heavy industry, better ability to replace destroyed ships etc.
If we're going to have a war it will probably last at least half a decade, probably a little bit more. What you say of the EU could also be said of the US at the time of the attack on Pearl Harbour in 1941.
If we weren't open to the possibility, we wouldn't be sending tripwire forces to Greenland, as we currently are.
I can imagine it happening after many years, maybe after half a decade they’ll have built up a sizable military and political will to start considering military action.
Yes. The beginning phases of the war-- i.e. the first five years or so, would probably be limited to sea drones sinking EU and US shipping, with neither coming near the other's coast. There could be interesting actions around the Azores and Canary Islands, with the EU perhaps needing to do unconventional stuff to defend these.
Most dont consider, that skirmishes dont have to make use of all military capabilities. Take a look at india vs china [0]. To be clear, those sticks-and-stones fights still cost lifes, are totally unnecessary and for a power-corrupted US soldier maybe unthinkable but it does not have to be an all out war. Maybe some ghandian unarmed european opposition is all it takes for the US opposition to find some traces of a spine.
In Romania, far right figures have gone as far as calling for 2026 to be named "The Year of America" in Romania.
It's hilarious because the same types are yelling about Making Romania Great Again, "truly sovereign" (whatever that means) and not subordinate to other states.
> European outlets are absolutely terrified and pondering whether this is what will force the end of NATO.
Many people have secrets. I have employed a tactic where I am very public about my private life - in this way if someone leaks an embarrassing secret about me, most people in my social circle either already know it or don't care. If you're worried about your private life going public, do a preemptive strike and make it public yourself.
Most politicians are worried about their reputation. Trump isn't. He created a situation where his reputation is already garbage yet he remains the most influential person on Earth. Do you hate him? Draw a number and take a seat in the waiting line. This allows him to employ much riskier negotiation tactics than ever heard before, because he doesn't care about negative publicity.
Many Europeans are terrified that Trump might actually do something horrible, that he's a madman with a gun. And that's the point. This is literally the only way to force EU countries to up their military spendings, because until recently we were aware that no matter what happens, big daddy comes and rescues everyone, while Europeans can sit and complain about legality of actions that are morally dubious but strategically necessary.
As a European, I hate Trump as a person, but god damn I love him as a politician, because the end result is that other people finally believe "guys, it's for real, it's happening, we need to militarize". When Russia took Crimea in 2014 that should've been a warning sign for Europe that time of peace is over and we need to get our shit together. We didn't. Thank god that Ukraine managed to hold, because on the day of 2022 invasion the cards were stacked against it, and had Russia done a three-day operation as planned, which seemed likely, then the next move would've been to catch a NATO country with pants down, which was likely, and that would've spiraled into WW3.
Completely disjoint from what you think of Trump as a person and his domestic politics - we have to admit that EU armies are a joke and if we want peace in Europe we need to take the situation seriously and Trump being an asshole is a blessing in disguise because otherwise we'd let the situation stagnate further. EU does need some tough love and a reality check.
It’s been the right’s spin for a few years. Eg: it was peaceful, until an ex fbi guy told them to go in the capitol. The idea being the Biden fbi did this. While Trump was in office.
Also somehow antifa did this. And the violence was made up and exaggerated.
I’m just echoing talking points I’ve heard from friends who listen to the right wing channels.
It’s been the right’s spin for a few years. Eg: it was peaceful, until an ex fbi guy told them to go in the capitol. The idea being the Biden fbi did this. While Trump was in office.
Also somehow antifa did this. And the violence was made up and exaggerated.
I’m just echoing talking points I’ve heard from friends who listen to the right wing channels.
I’ve done it a few times. The gaming experience was lacking. I’m not a fan of virtualization and containers everywhere either, or having to enter my admin password every day.
I don’t want to deal with terminal. I don’t want to deal with entering my password. I don’t want to deal with snap. I don’t want to think about what aspects of my nvidia card won’t be supported. Those QOL aspects matter to me a lot.
That’s why I’m waiting for specifically the console version of Steam OS, all usable via gamepad.
Try LTSC in case you haven't already. It's the essence of Windows, without most of this user-facing bullshit. They release it for environments where people expect their things to actually work, "like hospitals or kiosks". But, I can attest that it works for gaming as well.
Activation can work with Massgrave, or by you spinning up your own activation emulator, or by pointing your Windows to the myriad other activation emulators across the web. You download the image from Microsoft, install, a bunch of console commands, and you're good to go. Long support and no bullshit.
Oh interesting, never heard of it. I do a bunch of emulation and gaming that sometimes requires esoteric drivers, does video streaming and ofc the latest nvidia driver. Does that windows let users mess with that part of the stack?
LTSC is basically a trimmed-down version of Windows. Whatever is possible in Home, Pro, Enterprise etc, is possible in the LTSC as well. Most of the LTSC surprise comes from the lack of features. For example, I installed the "LTSC N" version back in the day, and that didn't even had codecs, so when I opened Reddit in Firefox, the videos didn't play. But even that was easily amended by just installing a specific update.
In case you want a community around it as well, Reddit was helpful for me.
Thanks! If you have any extra pointers I’ll definitely explore.
Turns out all the Xbox UI stuff require the latest windows insider. If there’s an LTSC version that covers that, it’d be absolutely perfect for my use case!
https://www.reddit.com/r/WindowsLTSC/ for sure, massgrave.dev for activation (or vlmcsd, which I use, but now I'm reading that it's EOL). Unfortunately I cannot help with the Xbox stuff, but I'm sure there is help on the internet somewhere, people like to tinker with this system. I wish you luck!
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