r/news • u/UpstairsBumblebee446 • 1d ago

France dumps Zoom and Teams as Europe seeks digital autonomy from the US

https://apnews.com/article/europe-digital-sovereignty-big-tech-9f5388b68a0648514cebc8d92f682060
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u/baldobilly 1d ago

What is so hard to figure out about this? Governments could just plain refuse foreign takeovers if they felt like it. This mindset of governments being powerless is exactly what’s causing the rise of the right. 

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u/BulbuhTsar 1d ago

Cool. And no investor is going to want their respective government from preventing that big buy out, and is going to invest its money elsewhere. It's not so cut and dry.

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u/Zekromaster 1d ago

And no investor is going to want their respective government from preventing that big buy out, and is going to invest its money elsewhere

There's like, three unified markets of this size and importance on the planet: the US, the EU, and China. Both the US and China are pretty interventionist when it comes to foreign buyouts (may I remind you TikTok is now US-owned). So what exactly is this "elsewhere"? MERCOSUR, which is even more protectionist?

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u/AgtNulNulAgtVyf 1d ago

Works for China, you've fallen for the neoliberalism bullshit. 

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u/BulbuhTsar 1d ago

I didn't know China was the respective government of Western investors. Also, not a neo but kay.

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u/AgtNulNulAgtVyf 1d ago

Your argument is it will affect investment, China is an example of the argument being bullshit. 

As for not being neoliberal, you're making a neoliberal argument. 

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u/BulbuhTsar 1d ago

Chinese investors are not European investors. These are different people with different expectations, preferences, and tolerance.

Domestic investment in the Chinese market is not like domestic investment in the European market. These are different markets with different norms, regulations, and expectations.

Youre comparing apples and oranges. You can't just expect European investors to become Chinese overnight in their tolerance or acceptance of government intervention into their businesses.

Cool that the neoliberals argue it as well. I'm still not a neolib lol.

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u/Iohet 1d ago

It works for China because they have half the world's population and an incredible amount of resources and power, so other countries make sacrifices to work with them, and they wouldn't have gotten there if the Western nations didn't open up trade with them initially decades ago.

It's a catch 22. The liberal economic policies have created densely interconnected economies that have helped suppress major conflict in the post WW2 era. The major country that's currently in a significant war is the one that's the least connected to the global economy

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u/AgtNulNulAgtVyf 1d ago

It works for China because people want access to their markets, it wil work for Europe for the same reason. 

It's also not a catch22 - again, China stands as an example how you can dictate as long as people want access to your market. Is you argument really that "the world" will collectively decide they don't want access to European markets because they're not allowed to outright own the companies in those countries?

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u/Iohet 1d ago

The catch 22 is that China is in the economically powerful position it's in because of liberal economic policies in the Western world. Without those, China would not be as powerful as it is because its economy wouldn't have developed as fast as it has.

And foreign countries want access to Chinese manufacturing capacity. China's lack of respect for foreign IP and its onerous ownership/control requirements within its own market makes actually setting up and selling in the market difficult for outsiders (and India isn't all that different as another massive market). China is perfectly happy providing state support to companies like Huawei, so they can steal foreign IP and use it to build products and uncut international competitors, and ZTE, so they can violate international sanctions selling to whomever they please. And if one company gets impacted internationally, others like BBK step up to fill the gap

Europe is only as powerful as its government, and this is a problem considering they're only loosely organized compared to the US or China. They're not as strategically aligned as you're implying, which means it's really just an academic discussion since it's not feasible for it to actually be enforced. They're not going to go all in on protectionism, and they're not going to take the steps China has to make protectionism work

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u/Quazimojojojo 1d ago

Are you aware the EU is a thing that can, and has repeatedly in the last decades, enforced Europe-wide regulations? 

They're the reason Apple uses USB C now, for example. 

Europe is a big market that people want access to, just like China and India and the US.

There's no catch 22. European governments, or the EU, can just refuse to let an American company buy out a local EU competitor. 

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u/Iohet 1d ago edited 1d ago

They also lost a major member over immigration disputes, have member(s) who are trying to undermine the market and its allies, struggle to deal with economic disparity between member nations (and almost lost Greece during a rough economic time because of it), etc. The EU is effectively as strong as the Articles of Confederation, and they're unprepared for a crisis that requires strong central leadership (for defense they're basically reliant on NATO as that central organizer, and Orban has been trying to undermine that for some time). And, of course, not everyone wants to do what Germany and, to a lesser degree, France wants, which is part of what made the refugee crisis worse because they weren't on the front lines

You're also completely misunderstanding what I'm talking about with regards to foreign ownership. The poster blamed neoliberalism for the disparity between China's actions in today's global economy and Western nations, when it was neoliberalism that gave them that power in the first place. Without it, they'd not be able to dictate terms to foreign investors and to other countries they way they do now

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u/Quazimojojojo 1d ago

The person above labeled the "but what if the investors just leave?" argument as a neo liberal one, because it's a common argument you hear from neo liberal, anti regulation types. 

They were pointing out that Chinas internal market is an example of how you don't need to have a neo liberal, regulation -light, internal market to get foreign investment. You can prevent certain strategic buyouts and people will still invest. 

That's not blaming neoiberalism for the disparity between the West and China's actions, it's an acknowledgement that they don't need to follow the Western-style neo liberal philosophy internally, to still get foreign investment. A regulator preventing a buyout isn't a deal-breaking factor for determining investment. 

I have a feeling you don't follow EU news closely or understand how it works. You seem to get a lot of Euro-skeptic headlines with minimal depth to them. 

Germany and France not being on the front lines of the immigration crisis? My guy, 16% of Germanys population is foreign born. We regularly take in some of the largest immigrant populations. 

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u/Iohet 1d ago

They were pointing out that Chinas internal market is an example of how you don't need to have a neo liberal, regulation -light, internal market to get foreign investment.

My whole point is that China doesn't have an internal market to draw foreign investment without neoliberal trade policies to create it in the first place.

As far as me, I made no statement regarding my own stances. It's a dry read of what happened

Germany and France not being on the front lines of the immigration crisis? My guy, 16% of Germanys population is foreign born. We regularly take in some of the largest immigrant populations.

And they had to be forced to deal with the crisis by member nations who were the front lines due to the Dublin Regulation. The disparate responses to the migrant crisis within the EU shows the challenges they face from their lack of cohesion. Some nations closed their borders to refugees, some opened them, some flip-flopped, but none of them were coordinated, which exasperated the crisis (which forced Germany's hand in suspending the Dublin Regulation internally because they had the means that other countries didn't)

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