Crises precipitate change. That's no reason to induce a crisis, but you'd be a fool to let a crisis go to waste. Donald Trump is the greatest crisis of our young century, and the EU looks set to squander the opportunity, to its own terrible detriment.
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2026/04/04/digital-subjugation/#greenlands-next
1/
For more than a decade, it's been clear that the American internet was not fit for purpose. The whistleblowers Mark Klein and Edward Snowden revealed that the US had weaponized its status as the world's transoceanic fiber-optic hub to spy on the entire planet:
US tech giants flouted privacy laws, gleefully plundering the world's cash and data with products that they remorselessly enshittified:
https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/30/zucksauce/#gandersauce
2/
American companies repurposed their over-the-air software update capabilities to remotely brick expensive machinery in service to geopolitical priorities:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/08/about-those-kill-switched-ukrainian-tractors/
Then Trump and his tech companies started attacking key public institutions around the world, shutting down access for senior judges who attempted to hold Trump's international authoritarian allies to account for their crimes:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/10/20/post-american-internet/#huawei-with-american-characteristics
3/
To steal Greenand, Trump doesn't need tanks or missiles. He can just tell Microsoft and Oracle to brick the Danish state and all of its key firms, blocking their access to their email archives, files, databases, and other key administrative tools. If Denmark *still* holds out, Trump can brick all their tractors, smart speakers, and phones. If Denmark *still* won't give up Greenland, Trump could blackhole all Danish IP addresses for the world's majority of transoceanic fiber.
4/
At the click of a mouse, Trump could shut down the world's supply of Lego, Ozempic, and delicious, lethally strong black licorice.
Now, these latent offensive capabilities were obvious long before Trump, but the presidents who weaponized them in the pre-Trump era did so in subtle and deniable ways, or under a state of exception (e.g. in response to spectacular terrorist attacks or in the immediate aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine).
5/
This let bystanders assure themselves that this wouldn't become a routine policy.
After all, America profited *so much* from the status quo in which America and its trading partners all pretended that US tech wouldn't be weaponized for geopolitical aims, so a US president would be a fool to shatter the illusion.
6/
And even if the president was so emotionally incontinent that he demanded the naked weaponization of America's defective, boobytrapped tech exports, the power blocs that the president relies on would stop him, because they are so marinated in the rich broth that America drained from the world using Big Tech.
7/
This is "status quo bias" in action. No one wants to let go of the vine they're swinging from until they have a new vine firmly in their grasp - but you can't reach the next vine unless you release your death-grip on your current one. So it was that, year after year, the world allowed itself to become *more* dependent on America's easily weaponizable tech, making the tech both *more* dangerous *and* harder to escape.
8/
Enter Trump (a crisis) (and crises precipitate change). Under Trump, the illusion of a safe interdependence crumbled. Every day, in new and increasingly alarming ways, Trump makes it clear that America doesn't have allies or trading partners, only adversaries and rivals. Every day, Trump proves to the world that American tech isn't merely *untrustworthy* - it's a live, dire, urgent danger to your state, your companies, and your people.
9/
The best time to get shut of the American internet was 15 years ago. The second best time is *right fucking now*.
*NOW!*
The result is the burgeoning movement to build a "post-American internet." In Canada, PM Mark Carney's announcement of a "rupture" has the country rethinking its deep connections to the American internet and asking what it could do to escape it:
https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/27/i-want-to-do-it/#now-make-me-do-it
10/
Europe, meanwhile, has multiple, advanced, well-funded initiatives to leave the American internet behind and migrate to a post-American internet, like "Eurostack" and the European Digital Infrastructure Consortium:
https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/edic
But status quo bias exerts a powerful gravity. A reactionary counterrevolution is being waged in the European Commission - the permanent bureaucracy that executes Europe's laws and regulations.
11/
Within the EC, an ascendant faction has announced plans for a "dialogue" with representatives from the Trump regime to let them direct the enforcement of the Digital Markets Act (DMA) and Digital Services Act (DSA), Europe's landmark 2024 anti-Big Tech regulations:
12/
DMA and DSA require US tech to open in ways that would halt the plunder of Europeans' private data and cash. US tech giants have flatly refused to comply with these rules, relying on Trump to get them out of any obligations under EU law:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/26/empty-threats/#500-million-affluent-consumers
That's a sound bet. After all, the last thing Trump did before his inauguration was publicly announce his intention to destroy any country that attempted to enforce these laws:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/23/us/politics/trump-davos-europe-tariffs.html
13/
He's making good on his threats. He's already sanctioned a group of officials who helped draft the DSA:
And he's ordered his tech companies to turn over the private emails and messages of other European officials, so he can identify the ones most dangerous to US tech plunder and sanction *them*, too:
14/
The quislings and appeasers in the Commission who've been spooked by Trump's belligerence (or tempted by offers of cushy jobs in Big Tech after they leave public service) are selling out the EU's future. Caving to Trump won't make him more favorably disposed to Europe or Europeans. Trump treats every capitulation as a sign of weakness that signals that he can safely ignore his end of the bargain and demand twice as much.
15/
For Trump, the "art of the deal" can be summed up in one word: *reneging*.
Within the EU, there's fury at the Commission's announcement of "dialogue." As *Politico*'s Milena Wälde reports, lawmakers like Alexandra Geese (Greens) say that this is a move that eliminates the "sovereign path for Europe" by letting tech giants "grade their own homework." She calls it a "fatal decision for our companies and our democracy."
16/
Moving to the post-American internet *is* hard - but it will only get harder. Sure, Europe could wait for the next crisis to let go of the Big Tech vine and grab the Eurostack one, but that next crisis will be far, far worse. The EU can't afford to wait for Trump to brick one or more of its member states to (finally, at long last) take this threat seriously:
https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/39c3/#the-new-coalition
eof/
If the EU politicians who fear the us tyrant or rather as you say are eyeing a cushy after-politics job should be treated as troublemakers (traitors) and people better start mobilizing because if Europe falls to this then rest of the world, we are cooked: "goose, meet oven" kind of situation...
yes china may, so remains a doubt, the us "has" so there is no more doublt of the us intentions ...
is time of denazify which now is deamerkkkanize ...
@ebuising @pluralistic @EUCommission @bert_hubert
"The art of the deal" should be called by its proper name "The art of screwing people over to get what I want".
@raymierussell @ebuising @pluralistic @EUCommission @bert_hubert
The art of the steal.
@raymierussell @ebuising @pluralistic @EUCommission @bert_hubert
Yeah in spite of the book title, he only does betrayals.
@raymierussell @ebuising @pluralistic @EUCommission @bert_hubert
Only if by people it means "the entire fracking world"...
@anathexyz @ebuising @pluralistic @EUCommission @bert_hubert
The world are people too ;-)
Wait. Denmark has crazy delicious licorice?
A spicy little essay about the urgent need to get off American tech platforms.
One of the small satisfactions I take from the ongoing disaster that is Trump's 2nd term is knowing that the tech oligarchs who helped put him in office have lit the fire that will burn down their financial futures.
> Wait. Denmark has crazy delicious licorice?
You bet! Super Piratos for the win. (They can be a bit of an acquired taste.... But we have others.)
The ones you want are called "Piratos", but there are many others which are also good.
There used to be a place called "Nordic House" in Oakland, CA where you could get them, (and marinated hering :-)but they closed some years ago.
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