The USA probably doesn't worry much, our Dutch government and related services all run on AWS and Microsoft Office/Azure. All internet access flows through the same cable the NSA has access to. Radio traffic is intercepted in multiple locations in The Netherlands.
So sure, there are probably some signals the USA won't receive, but they still get the bulk of it.
> our Dutch government and related services all run on AWS and Microsoft Office/Azure
And this is already being criticized over and over again. With various German government organizations now actively moving away from Microsoft and demonstrating that you don't need Outlook & Office 365 to run a government, I would be quite surprised if the possibility of doing the same here won't at least be discussed any time something needs an overhaul.
The Dutch IRS just doubled down on M365 though saying they couldn't find any alternative. Strange detail though is that they were not on a cloud service until now. It's a bit of a weird time to decide to migrate to a US cloud service when most places are trying to get away from them.
I'm not surprised, I used to work for a cloud SaaS provider, everything we had ran on Linux, everyone in the office ran on Macs and Google Docs.
Then as we grew the finance team, they found that Google Docs couldn't handle the spreadsheets they needed, and even Excel on Mac wasn't compatible.
So, the Finance team started running VM's where they could run Windows and native Excel. Then as they grew (in size and power) they found themselves using the VM so much that they started moving from Mac to Windows laptops. Then as our windows footprint grew, more and more departments started requesting Windows.
When I left around 25% of the ~1000 person company was on Windows (almost all on the corporate admin side, engineering remained overwhelmingly on Mac), and the Windows support team was twice as large as the team that managed the Mac infrastructure.
Similar experience. The best excuse was that Google Sheets wasn't secure enough for the head of finance to store his passwords, so need needed a password protected Excel sheet. He also got phished for about $50k.
"De Belastingdienst, met daarnaast ook de Douane en de Dienst Toeslagen, gebruikt momenteel eigen software voor kantoorautomatisering."
This is M365 so it's not to do with Azure. It says they used their own office software before that was not cloud. That's what I referred to.
I was not aware what they do with the more traditional cloud stuff but I'm not surprised they handed everything on a silver platter to the US though. The neolib party that has been in power for the last 20 years is super US centric and their previous prime minister is now acting as Trump's lapdog as general secretary of NATO.
As with every large Microsoft migration, the problem isn't figuring out what's necessary to run a government.
People in high places only know Microsoft and they don't want to risk having to learn something new. National security isn't as big of a deal as having to spend a few afternoons of training, after all.
People in high places have assistants to operate Word for them. If anything, the money Microsoft pours into lobbying is a bigger threat to gaining independence - the killing of the LiMux project[0] made that quite obvious.
I don't disagree but the world then and the world now are different places and people pushing for less of a dependency on american tech companies have a real chance to make some headway with The Orange One(TM) sitting on his throne over the pond and Microsoft seemingly determined to make themselves (more) unpopular with techies generally not entirely sure what they are doing with Windows 11 but after 3 decades of running a microsoft OS I don't have one in the house (in fairness windows hung in for gaming for the last 20 odd years, I've been linux for everything else since the millenium).
That won't ever happen at a large enough scale in Germany itself because of the Ramstein military base (and other such US military bases located on German soil). Playing "we're independent!" it's just a futile game as long as the military US presence in Germany is an ongoing thing.
Well if you were ever planning on evicting those bases you’d probably want to start by getting off of other infrastructure controlled by the owner of said bases, right?
Even before getting off of MS Word, Germany would have to start by having a military capable of self-defense since leaving the country undefended would be very foolish. Ironically the imperial overlord USA which would hypothetically be getting evicted is the main party urging them to do this.
> Ironically the imperial overlord USA which would hypothetically be getting evicted is the main party urging them to do this.
I always found the framing on this funny. Europeans will talk about data sovereignty and decreasing reliance on the Americans and simultaneously cry foul when the Americans threaten to take their ball and go home.
> Europeans will talk about data sovereignty and decreasing reliance on the Americans and simultaneously cry foul when the Americans threaten to take their ball and go home.
I am sure that you are aware that there are more than one person in Europe, and most of the countries there being democracies, those people are allowed to have different opinions. They even have the right to express them, go figure!
You won’t because your administration is not stupid and knows what kind of soft power it gives them. But I really, sincerely, wish they would fuck off.
I made no indication as to my nationality in my original post and you responded with rudeness and hostility. This is illustrative of the type of person I was talking about. Your country would not exist if the Americans did not have bases in Europe. There are 26,000 people in the Swedish armed forces. You and everyone you know are either dead or speaking Russian in less than a year if the Americans leave.
the offer was that the US would play ball and Europe would remain militarily weak and not start another world war. now that the Amerikka Oblast answers to mother Russia, the Europeans are having second thoughts about the match.
Don't underestimate the AIVD/MIVD. They have quite the history infiltrating Russian networks and operations and operate a rather useful satellite listening post.
That said, the current American administration probably doesn't see Russia as a threat.
America has always been spying on Europe, making it a bit harder by not willingly providing intel is a step in the right direction at least.
It'd be risky if Russia-friendly folks start telling Moscow the intelligence that the Dutch gathered, and some of the current American administration seem very Russia-friendly..
> That said, the current American administration probably doesn't see Russia as a threat.
That's just pabulum for the masses which you're better off not repeating so as not to appear so easily fooled. Keep your friends close and your enemy closer [1] rings a bell I assume?
Somebody might even say that the administration sees russia as a useful tool to force europeans into paying a protection tol, not sure it's limited to this administration either
If Dutch intelligence is failing to encrypt their data to the point that AWS / the US government could see it then they deserve to lose every byte of it.
Don't worry, these agencies seem to be appropriately paranoid. As an example: each intelligence worker gets three desktops PCs with various levels of security / airgapping.
The current dutch (demissionary) PM is the former head of the Dutch intelligence services. To say that Trump isn't trusted by EU intelligence services would be a vast understatement.
Indeed, that wasn't a great decision. But... there is a serious lack of alternatives that makes it very hard to get around the United States and Israel when it comes to this kind of software. Of course the Dutch should have rolled their own but give that we can't even get our tax software sorted out (I think they've been at it for 30 years), had our digital notary services hacked and a number of other noteworthy items I think that maybe 'buy' instead of 'build' was the right decision.
It's very tricky, I would definitely not be able to claim that in his shoes I would have done better. As a prime minister he's done a fair job given the absolutely impossible situation in our government right now, and this decision is one of those where at least he's willing to make a stand (unlike many other EU countries).
This level of governing is always going to be an exercise in endless compromises.
Palantir might be an American company, but if you hire them it's not like a bunch of Americans come and take over your IT systems. There entire business model is "forward deployed engineers" who by necessity are locals and come help setup things on your own infrastructure.
It does not. In fact most of the big enterprise software doesn't because enterprise won't allow it, or it's running airgapped.
Enterprise software is licensed based on support contracts and audits. "trust" is actually more present because a large company or the government can't just vanish if they're in license compliance breach and can later be sued to recover costs.
This is basically Oracle and IBMs business model: let people install whatever they want, then request a spot check if usage and discover the license breaches which can be rectified by buying more of whatever now that it's business critical.
I have never been a big enterprise integrator, and I thought exactly like this.
Then in 2024 the CrowdStrike BSOD screw up happened, and I was surprised to learn that no, not everything is airgapped. Apparently, businesses are okay with untrusted, unvetted, self-updating pieces of code that run in kernel mode.
Palantir installing their kit on your on prem network doesn't give them anymore magical ability to exfiltrate data than installing Microsoft office would.
Well... taking into account that Trump was screaming and swearing at Zelenskyy to surrender to Russia or Putin will destroy Ukraine just yesterday... I don't see why the Dutch would stop sharing intel with the US
Russia and China still exist and are pre-eminent dangers. The US has gone crazy but we still need to work together to discourage wars related to invading taiwan or Europe. I am terrified the US won't come back to being an actual democracy that follows the rule of law. At the same time, we can just stop surveilling our citizens in the democratic free world. We can just decide to do that.
The main danger is not Russia and China - it is us. Why? Because we actively stop big tech from developing and deploying cybersecurity solutions to protect billions of people. Why? Because we want us and Israel to be able to hack their systems, just not Russia and China. We want it both ways, to develop the most defensible and the most vulnerable system, and this is why we can never win. This self-incompatible ask will be our collective undoing.
Also, if you think the US was a proper democracy, I have news for you - it wasn't. It has been an alternating two-party dictatorship that prevents the system from evolving beyond this system. In a real democracy, information from the voter would be maximized, the first result of which would be to transform it beyond a rigid two-party system. The voting system would not be first-past-the-post. Superior forms of voting such as Ranked Choice and Range Voting would not be banned as they are in numerous red states; they would be welcomed. People would not be denied the right to vote. Gerrymandering wouldn't be a thing.
Everything's for sale. The Dutch were still buying natural gas from Russia as late as 2020 [0] despite 6 years of irregular warfare in the Donbas at that point and 12 years of South Ossetia in Georgia. Hell, they still might be through some sort of third-party reseller.
Compared to the early years of the Donbas invasion, having a leader full of hot air is small potatoes.
There's always room for spies to get what they want. It's just a matter of what that will be.
The main reason for the Dutch dependence on Russian gas is the rapid shutdown of the Slochteren field for political reasons[0], while there weren't yet any LNG terminals available to import it from outside Europe. Considering Europe didn't yet view Russia as a genuine threat it's not exactly surprising that importing Russian gas was seen as a viable short-term strategy.
[0]: The Slochteren field still has plenty of gas remaining. It was shut down due to pushback from the inhabitants of Groningen, whose houses were being destroyed by earthquakes - caused by soil subsidence as a result of gas extraction. If there were to have been a serious war with Russia at that point, The Netherlands could've trivially shut off all gas imports by scaling the extraction back up.
The point isn't about the potential for future production of natural gas or other petrochemical products from Slochteren. The point is that Europeans regularly participate in dealings with countries that act against their best interests on a regular basis, and that there's no real reason to believe that the Dutch will behave any differently with Trump.
> Considering Europe didn't yet view Russia as a genuine threat it's not exactly surprising that importing Russian gas was seen as a viable short-term strategy.
That's exactly what I'm talking about. Everything should have told Europeans that Russia was reverting back to its old autocratic imperial ways. Everything. Ukrainian politicians and internal dissidents were being poisoned with dioxins and radioisotopes almost 20 years ago by Russian agents. Putin was stacking on more and more repression as the years went by. Hacking campaigns have been a constant problem in the West for decades with strong evidence to suggest the Russian government as a threat actor. The Russian military was building weapons specifically designed to counter NATO, which is the backbone of strategic defense in Europe. And that's before you take into account things like the South Ossetia war which saw the Russians literally invade another country for wanting to move towards a Western sphere of influence.
What was funding all of this? Purchases of Russian petroleum products by Europeans who were told over and over to stop by American allies, only to be caught with their flies unzipped when the tanks started rolling into the Donbas three years ago.
I have no reason to think that the continent will behave any differently when faced with a Trump administration that would give them benefits to look the other way. The damage he could do to the continent is insignificant compared to what Putin did.
The Dutch governments haven't exactly shown a lot of interest into their Caribbean links over the last few decades. The actions of the US regarding Venezuela are barely getting mentioned in the Dutch news, and the physical proximity to Aruba/Bonaire/Curacao is not even mentioned in passing.
Am I the only one that doesn't really think of most of Europe as an ally anymore? If it wasn't for shared opposition to Russia and China I would support us cutting most of these ties anyways.
Well, if it helps, plenty of us Europeans don't think of the US as allies anymore. The current administration has made it quite clear.
The only hope is that the next administration will be a bit less eager to cut ties with all its allies and might fix some of the self-inflicted damage.
What the United States has just demonstrated is that it's idiotic to rely on them for anything fundamentally vital when its government can drastically and dramatically go manic/bi-polar ever 4 years
The only actual hope is a common European defence policy (and industry) independent of NATO. The day Germany agrees to it, the dominos might fall, and the USA might realise what it has lost.
I mean, the US was paying for the ability to project both force and influence all over the world. Clearly, the US isn't willing to pay for either thing at the moment.
Germany where 20% of the population currently votes for AfD? I don't think they should get to have an army until they can figure out how not to use it for evil. They should have a lot of defence treaties and pay for them, though.
I mean kind of? I feel like other than allies of necessity (to counter other great powers) there isn't really a point in pretending to be friendly to countries that are different to us in practically every way.
Is the cultural difference really that big? Bigger, then say, the difference between NYC and rural Kansas?
Me and my generation (born in the 80s) of Western European have grown up admiring the US. Listening to your music, watching your movies, wearing your brands. And we still do, mostly.
The unease seems to have started some time after 9/11 though. European countries joined various wars, that turned out to be mostly a grab for control of oil states. (WMD anyone?)
And the US basically just stopped leading the way on international cooperation. Instead of cofounding the Internation Court of Justice, the US threatened to invade The Hague because of it. Instead of leading the way on averting climate change, having the tech, the global power and the money to do so, the US chose to block much of the initiative coming from elsewhere. And there've been many similar things.
So yeah, to me at least the US feels kind of like an old friend that's been derailed. By 9/11, perhaps.
I'd love to be proven wrong. I'd love to come back to visit the US more often in the future. But with this administration, I just won't risk it. And also.. I just don't want to, at the moment. :-/
Honestly fair enough. And for the record, I do not want the US and Europe to stop cooperating, I just think that we have lost much of the intrinsic cultural reasoning for allying in the first place. But at the same time, your statement about the urban/rural culture gap kind of refutes my point anyways. Either way, we still have much bigger fish to fry with Russia and China on the horizon, so we definitely have more in common with each other government wise compared to the rest of the world.
I'd say many people in the EU have similar views and ideas to about 2/3rds of the US (maybe I'm being generous on the US size), the half of the US that doesn't think the world is flat, that global warming might be happening, that following the rule of law is a good thing and we don't need to destroy the US to fix it.
Europe is more alike most Americans then you are to other Americans. Why pretend to be friendly with other states why not breakup. Cities in states should break apart from rural areas. We can all go back to tribal hunting groups.
Pretty sure lots of smart-minded europeans would love a chance for europe to detach and be actually allowed to develop its own services sector. Seems to me the US wants europe to be a contributing ally when it suits, and an open market to dump services into when it doesn't
Those don't seem like the best reasons. European and American economics are pretty close. Europe isn't socialist, it has broader welfare system than the US, but the US has significant welfare systems as well.
I've lived in the US and in Europe and the UK. Shared culture is still very significant. If anything, maybe even closer now than in the 90s.
There's probably other reasons to think about the why and how of alliances than these.
I'm okay with a country jailing people for the crime of tweeting "we should murder all trans people". That probably should be a crime. Punishment should fit the crime though, so no more than a few weeks.
Literally never happened. You just are way too online if you believe that. Try visiting the UK sometime, you clearly never been and it’s a great country.
I guess this might be a matter of conditioning. You might live in an environment where concepts around the stem "social" has become a pejorative. In that way it is understandable that a term like "social democrat" is interpreted as "communist". There does not exist anything you imagine like that.
What is different is that there is more opposition and cultural resistance to hyper capitalism. Think monopolies, corporatism, live-to-work, hustle-culture.
With regards to any messaging about "freedom" in the USA, be vigilant, I do think people will be unpleasantly surprised about what has been transacted away. Personal freedoms are indeed extremely important, so zero Schadenfreude here. And yes, those lobby groups in the EU fail to get their stupid anti-encryption laws passed, but they keep trying, so it is frightening. Citizens and visitors of the Five Eyes have lost any privacy already, but we need all of us to fight back.
TLDR: it is better to cooperate around common causes than to fight imaginary opponents. We are in the same boat.
This is just American nonsense. Literally every single country in Europe is capitalist. Socialism is the democratic ownership of the means of production. Nowhere do we have that in Europe. Frankly this is the real problem with America, about half the population are extremely poorly educated and yet extremely arrogant. A deadly combination, clearly, as it’s led to the very sudden decline and fall of the American Empire.
I genuinely can't tell whether you are serious or trolling. Please tell me more about how Europe is socialist.
Or what does that even mean to you. Is socialism when state exists? You are not first American to say that, and every time it happens, I'm genuinely surprised. (I mean, rhetorical question. I suppose that's what socialism is to you. And you are a part of a problem too, because you are growing up internally people who genuinely believe that socialism is good because it means healthcare and higher education. Words no longer have meaning to you in America.)
I meant more that most European countries seem to be on a path towards socialism with popular opinion being much more in favor of it than it is in the US (more in line with my cultural gap statement). If you consider democratic socialism socialism like I do, you have plenty of examples to pick from in government.
> most European countries seem to be on a path towards socialism
No, unfortunately the path in most European countries seems to be heading towards fascism, not socialism. We Europeans do tend to follow America in many things.
> ...inter-agency relations between Dutch and American intelligence organizations remain “excellent”.
While I highly doubt that Dutch Intelligence is significantly more accountable tothat the American ones are, and therefore don't assume that any meaningful intelligence will actually be withheld (or at least, if is being withheld, it isn't because of the decision being discussed in this piece), BUT it is at least interesting that they made this announcement, which suggests some element somewhere in the European deep state is at least trying to pressure Washington in some way.
The USA probably doesn't worry much, our Dutch government and related services all run on AWS and Microsoft Office/Azure. All internet access flows through the same cable the NSA has access to. Radio traffic is intercepted in multiple locations in The Netherlands.
So sure, there are probably some signals the USA won't receive, but they still get the bulk of it.
> our Dutch government and related services all run on AWS and Microsoft Office/Azure
And this is already being criticized over and over again. With various German government organizations now actively moving away from Microsoft and demonstrating that you don't need Outlook & Office 365 to run a government, I would be quite surprised if the possibility of doing the same here won't at least be discussed any time something needs an overhaul.
The Dutch IRS just doubled down on M365 though saying they couldn't find any alternative. Strange detail though is that they were not on a cloud service until now. It's a bit of a weird time to decide to migrate to a US cloud service when most places are trying to get away from them.
I'm not surprised, I used to work for a cloud SaaS provider, everything we had ran on Linux, everyone in the office ran on Macs and Google Docs.
Then as we grew the finance team, they found that Google Docs couldn't handle the spreadsheets they needed, and even Excel on Mac wasn't compatible.
So, the Finance team started running VM's where they could run Windows and native Excel. Then as they grew (in size and power) they found themselves using the VM so much that they started moving from Mac to Windows laptops. Then as our windows footprint grew, more and more departments started requesting Windows.
When I left around 25% of the ~1000 person company was on Windows (almost all on the corporate admin side, engineering remained overwhelmingly on Mac), and the Windows support team was twice as large as the team that managed the Mac infrastructure.
Similar experience. The best excuse was that Google Sheets wasn't secure enough for the head of finance to store his passwords, so need needed a password protected Excel sheet. He also got phished for about $50k.
Bullshit, Belastingdienst has been on Azure for a very long time.
Source: I was inside one of their offices for a few Azure trainings.
Source: https://tweakers.net/nieuws/239890/ook-fiscus-kan-geen-eu-al...
"De Belastingdienst, met daarnaast ook de Douane en de Dienst Toeslagen, gebruikt momenteel eigen software voor kantoorautomatisering."
This is M365 so it's not to do with Azure. It says they used their own office software before that was not cloud. That's what I referred to.
I was not aware what they do with the more traditional cloud stuff but I'm not surprised they handed everything on a silver platter to the US though. The neolib party that has been in power for the last 20 years is super US centric and their previous prime minister is now acting as Trump's lapdog as general secretary of NATO.
As with every large Microsoft migration, the problem isn't figuring out what's necessary to run a government.
People in high places only know Microsoft and they don't want to risk having to learn something new. National security isn't as big of a deal as having to spend a few afternoons of training, after all.
People in high places have assistants to operate Word for them. If anything, the money Microsoft pours into lobbying is a bigger threat to gaining independence - the killing of the LiMux project[0] made that quite obvious.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux
I don't disagree but the world then and the world now are different places and people pushing for less of a dependency on american tech companies have a real chance to make some headway with The Orange One(TM) sitting on his throne over the pond and Microsoft seemingly determined to make themselves (more) unpopular with techies generally not entirely sure what they are doing with Windows 11 but after 3 decades of running a microsoft OS I don't have one in the house (in fairness windows hung in for gaming for the last 20 odd years, I've been linux for everything else since the millenium).
The bribes also make a difference.
It's easy enough to wrap some open source software in GUIs that closely resemble proprietary software (cf. LibreOffice as an example).
I've been hearing about the German government moving to Linux from the days when I installed Red Hat Linux 7, I think https://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/09/news/it-managers-cite-sec...
We will probably have fusion power first.
I think it's not a binary yes/no thing. No one will ever be full-on Microsoft, and no one will ever be full-off Microsoft.
But even knowledge that your department must support non-Microsoft way is good, as it helps getting at least some parts vendor-neutral.
Same as security -- there's no perfect security, but the grade matters a lot.
I think it's not a binary yes/no thing. No one will ever be full-on Microsoft, and no one will ever be full-off Microsoft.
But even knowledge that your department must support non-Microsoft way is good, as it helps getting at least some parts vendor-neutral.
Same as security -- there's no perfect security, but the grade matters.
'Some linux' is also useful for negotiating lower prices.
That won't ever happen at a large enough scale in Germany itself because of the Ramstein military base (and other such US military bases located on German soil). Playing "we're independent!" it's just a futile game as long as the military US presence in Germany is an ongoing thing.
Well if you were ever planning on evicting those bases you’d probably want to start by getting off of other infrastructure controlled by the owner of said bases, right?
Even before getting off of MS Word, Germany would have to start by having a military capable of self-defense since leaving the country undefended would be very foolish. Ironically the imperial overlord USA which would hypothetically be getting evicted is the main party urging them to do this.
> Ironically the imperial overlord USA which would hypothetically be getting evicted is the main party urging them to do this.
I always found the framing on this funny. Europeans will talk about data sovereignty and decreasing reliance on the Americans and simultaneously cry foul when the Americans threaten to take their ball and go home.
> Europeans will talk about data sovereignty and decreasing reliance on the Americans and simultaneously cry foul when the Americans threaten to take their ball and go home.
I am sure that you are aware that there are more than one person in Europe, and most of the countries there being democracies, those people are allowed to have different opinions. They even have the right to express them, go figure!
Nah, you are more than welcome to take your ball.
You won’t because your administration is not stupid and knows what kind of soft power it gives them. But I really, sincerely, wish they would fuck off.
> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.
> Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Are you crying foul because I’m telling you that you are welcome to take your ball?
Talk about irony.
I made no indication as to my nationality in my original post and you responded with rudeness and hostility. This is illustrative of the type of person I was talking about. Your country would not exist if the Americans did not have bases in Europe. There are 26,000 people in the Swedish armed forces. You and everyone you know are either dead or speaking Russian in less than a year if the Americans leave.
the offer was that the US would play ball and Europe would remain militarily weak and not start another world war. now that the Amerikka Oblast answers to mother Russia, the Europeans are having second thoughts about the match.
Don't underestimate the AIVD/MIVD. They have quite the history infiltrating Russian networks and operations and operate a rather useful satellite listening post.
That said, the current American administration probably doesn't see Russia as a threat.
America has always been spying on Europe, making it a bit harder by not willingly providing intel is a step in the right direction at least.
It'd be risky if Russia-friendly folks start telling Moscow the intelligence that the Dutch gathered, and some of the current American administration seem very Russia-friendly..
That is very literally the accusation that is being made for the record.
That said, the current American administration probably doesn't see Russia as a threat.
Gee, you think? https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/pete-hegseth-tie-causes-...
The entire Trump administration is indistinguishable from a deliberate -- and very successful -- attack.
> That said, the current American administration probably doesn't see Russia as a threat.
That's just pabulum for the masses which you're better off not repeating so as not to appear so easily fooled. Keep your friends close and your enemy closer [1] rings a bell I assume?
[1] https://www.thehistoryofenglish.com/keep-your-friends-close-...
No it's a summary of repeated pro-Russia statements and actions. Ignoring it doesn't make it go away.
Somebody might even say that the administration sees russia as a useful tool to force europeans into paying a protection tol, not sure it's limited to this administration either
> The USA probably doesn't worry much
No, if they did, they'd know about certain attacks or planned attacks earlier [1]. So they should but they don't.
[1] https://www.amazon.nl/Het-oorlog-maar-niemand-ziet/dp/946381... - not an affiliated link, just the first one I could find.
Stuxnet comes to mind.
If Dutch intelligence is failing to encrypt their data to the point that AWS / the US government could see it then they deserve to lose every byte of it.
Don't worry, these agencies seem to be appropriately paranoid. As an example: each intelligence worker gets three desktops PCs with various levels of security / airgapping.
The most paranoid use typewriters.
and burn, bury, and store the remains in the basement.
If they were truly paranoid, there would be a lot more they would do. I would call it naive, but then again, they are.
Is it fair to say the US has been a bit erratic lately? Seems to me its hard to maintain trust in these circumstances.
Yes, Americans made the mistake of electing somebody that doesn't believe in stepping down peacefully if he loses an election, among other things.
> doesn't believe in stepping down peacefully if he loses an election, among other things.
Source?
We do have evidence that he stepped down after his first term.
Certainly not peacefully.
Forgive me, I don't pay attention to the national news that much, what did I miss when Trump left the Whitehouse for Biden?
> Is it fair to say the US has been a bit erratic lately?
More than usual? Not really
The current dutch (demissionary) PM is the former head of the Dutch intelligence services. To say that Trump isn't trusted by EU intelligence services would be a vast understatement.
Well, that's the same guy that planted Palantir in the Dutch government, since 2011.
Yes, so?
Indeed, that wasn't a great decision. But... there is a serious lack of alternatives that makes it very hard to get around the United States and Israel when it comes to this kind of software. Of course the Dutch should have rolled their own but give that we can't even get our tax software sorted out (I think they've been at it for 30 years), had our digital notary services hacked and a number of other noteworthy items I think that maybe 'buy' instead of 'build' was the right decision.
It's very tricky, I would definitely not be able to claim that in his shoes I would have done better. As a prime minister he's done a fair job given the absolutely impossible situation in our government right now, and this decision is one of those where at least he's willing to make a stand (unlike many other EU countries).
This level of governing is always going to be an exercise in endless compromises.
Palantir might be an American company, but if you hire them it's not like a bunch of Americans come and take over your IT systems. There entire business model is "forward deployed engineers" who by necessity are locals and come help setup things on your own infrastructure.
unless those engineers know about, and can shut off, backdoors in code, then their locality is meaningless.
10 guys in Northern VA are making those calls, not the forward deployed engineers and not your infra.
palantir dials home at some point to verify a license, right?
It does not. In fact most of the big enterprise software doesn't because enterprise won't allow it, or it's running airgapped.
Enterprise software is licensed based on support contracts and audits. "trust" is actually more present because a large company or the government can't just vanish if they're in license compliance breach and can later be sued to recover costs.
This is basically Oracle and IBMs business model: let people install whatever they want, then request a spot check if usage and discover the license breaches which can be rectified by buying more of whatever now that it's business critical.
I have never been a big enterprise integrator, and I thought exactly like this.
Then in 2024 the CrowdStrike BSOD screw up happened, and I was surprised to learn that no, not everything is airgapped. Apparently, businesses are okay with untrusted, unvetted, self-updating pieces of code that run in kernel mode.
Palantir installing their kit on your on prem network doesn't give them anymore magical ability to exfiltrate data than installing Microsoft office would.
> To say that Trump isn't trusted by EU intelligence services would be a vast understatement.
Trump isn't trusted by any intelligence service, but seems to only publicly distrust his own ones.
so they say.. perhaps they detected leaks and just doing some a/b testing now
Good
Smart move.
Trump is widely adopted around intel services; at least in Spain.
Well... taking into account that Trump was screaming and swearing at Zelenskyy to surrender to Russia or Putin will destroy Ukraine just yesterday... I don't see why the Dutch would stop sharing intel with the US
</sarcasm>
Where did you see this? I haven't read that anywhere.
https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2025/10/19/8003438/
thanks
I think we all know whose fault that is.
It would be glorious to see Five Eyes fall apart, but that is much bigger ask. Canada would be wise to kick it off before the US annexes it.
Because what we all need is to see the Ministry of State Security be the most capable intelligence agency in the world . . . wait, no we don't.
Russia and China still exist and are pre-eminent dangers. The US has gone crazy but we still need to work together to discourage wars related to invading taiwan or Europe. I am terrified the US won't come back to being an actual democracy that follows the rule of law. At the same time, we can just stop surveilling our citizens in the democratic free world. We can just decide to do that.
The main danger is not Russia and China - it is us. Why? Because we actively stop big tech from developing and deploying cybersecurity solutions to protect billions of people. Why? Because we want us and Israel to be able to hack their systems, just not Russia and China. We want it both ways, to develop the most defensible and the most vulnerable system, and this is why we can never win. This self-incompatible ask will be our collective undoing.
Also, if you think the US was a proper democracy, I have news for you - it wasn't. It has been an alternating two-party dictatorship that prevents the system from evolving beyond this system. In a real democracy, information from the voter would be maximized, the first result of which would be to transform it beyond a rigid two-party system. The voting system would not be first-past-the-post. Superior forms of voting such as Ranked Choice and Range Voting would not be banned as they are in numerous red states; they would be welcomed. People would not be denied the right to vote. Gerrymandering wouldn't be a thing.
Wake up and see the truth for the darkness it is.
What is your point?
five eyes falling apart now seems like a "be careful what you wish for" situation where we'd start losing long-held alliances?
I think you might be putting the cart before the (stampeding) horse here.
Those alliances are language and culture-based. Bit stronger than one orange dipshit can disrupt.
Sharing of information can be restricted though for various reasons, as has been suggested happened regarding Pearl Harbor.
Everything's for sale. The Dutch were still buying natural gas from Russia as late as 2020 [0] despite 6 years of irregular warfare in the Donbas at that point and 12 years of South Ossetia in Georgia. Hell, they still might be through some sort of third-party reseller.
Compared to the early years of the Donbas invasion, having a leader full of hot air is small potatoes.
There's always room for spies to get what they want. It's just a matter of what that will be.
[0] https://www.gasunie.nl/en/gas-infrastructure/blog-247-energy...
The main reason for the Dutch dependence on Russian gas is the rapid shutdown of the Slochteren field for political reasons[0], while there weren't yet any LNG terminals available to import it from outside Europe. Considering Europe didn't yet view Russia as a genuine threat it's not exactly surprising that importing Russian gas was seen as a viable short-term strategy.
[0]: The Slochteren field still has plenty of gas remaining. It was shut down due to pushback from the inhabitants of Groningen, whose houses were being destroyed by earthquakes - caused by soil subsidence as a result of gas extraction. If there were to have been a serious war with Russia at that point, The Netherlands could've trivially shut off all gas imports by scaling the extraction back up.
The point isn't about the potential for future production of natural gas or other petrochemical products from Slochteren. The point is that Europeans regularly participate in dealings with countries that act against their best interests on a regular basis, and that there's no real reason to believe that the Dutch will behave any differently with Trump.
> Considering Europe didn't yet view Russia as a genuine threat it's not exactly surprising that importing Russian gas was seen as a viable short-term strategy.
That's exactly what I'm talking about. Everything should have told Europeans that Russia was reverting back to its old autocratic imperial ways. Everything. Ukrainian politicians and internal dissidents were being poisoned with dioxins and radioisotopes almost 20 years ago by Russian agents. Putin was stacking on more and more repression as the years went by. Hacking campaigns have been a constant problem in the West for decades with strong evidence to suggest the Russian government as a threat actor. The Russian military was building weapons specifically designed to counter NATO, which is the backbone of strategic defense in Europe. And that's before you take into account things like the South Ossetia war which saw the Russians literally invade another country for wanting to move towards a Western sphere of influence.
What was funding all of this? Purchases of Russian petroleum products by Europeans who were told over and over to stop by American allies, only to be caught with their flies unzipped when the tanks started rolling into the Donbas three years ago.
I have no reason to think that the continent will behave any differently when faced with a Trump administration that would give them benefits to look the other way. The damage he could do to the continent is insignificant compared to what Putin did.
The Dutch did extend Groningen for a time after the Russians invaded Ukraine.
The problem with earthquakes is no one wants to be held accountable when a house is destroyed and people die.
Not to mention the downing of MH17, with 193 Dutch citizens aboard, by the Russians in 2016.
Tensions in Venezuela and Dutch interests in the Caribbean. That's the explanation and its public posturing that likely doesn't reflect reality.
The Dutch governments haven't exactly shown a lot of interest into their Caribbean links over the last few decades. The actions of the US regarding Venezuela are barely getting mentioned in the Dutch news, and the physical proximity to Aruba/Bonaire/Curacao is not even mentioned in passing.
Am I the only one that doesn't really think of most of Europe as an ally anymore? If it wasn't for shared opposition to Russia and China I would support us cutting most of these ties anyways.
Well, if it helps, plenty of us Europeans don't think of the US as allies anymore. The current administration has made it quite clear.
The only hope is that the next administration will be a bit less eager to cut ties with all its allies and might fix some of the self-inflicted damage.
What the United States has just demonstrated is that it's idiotic to rely on them for anything fundamentally vital when its government can drastically and dramatically go manic/bi-polar ever 4 years
The only actual hope is a common European defence policy (and industry) independent of NATO. The day Germany agrees to it, the dominos might fall, and the USA might realise what it has lost.
After that maybe we can cut our defense spending so we aren't covering for a bunch of other countries.
Maybe you can, indeed.
I mean, the US was paying for the ability to project both force and influence all over the world. Clearly, the US isn't willing to pay for either thing at the moment.
Germany where 20% of the population currently votes for AfD? I don't think they should get to have an army until they can figure out how not to use it for evil. They should have a lot of defence treaties and pay for them, though.
Yes, you are the only one that thinks that.
I mean, without mentioning Russia or China, why should we?
Without a positive suggestion of who our allies should instead be, the question is incomplete. Surely you don’t think we should have none?
I mean kind of? I feel like other than allies of necessity (to counter other great powers) there isn't really a point in pretending to be friendly to countries that are different to us in practically every way.
Is the cultural difference really that big? Bigger, then say, the difference between NYC and rural Kansas?
Me and my generation (born in the 80s) of Western European have grown up admiring the US. Listening to your music, watching your movies, wearing your brands. And we still do, mostly.
The unease seems to have started some time after 9/11 though. European countries joined various wars, that turned out to be mostly a grab for control of oil states. (WMD anyone?)
And the US basically just stopped leading the way on international cooperation. Instead of cofounding the Internation Court of Justice, the US threatened to invade The Hague because of it. Instead of leading the way on averting climate change, having the tech, the global power and the money to do so, the US chose to block much of the initiative coming from elsewhere. And there've been many similar things.
So yeah, to me at least the US feels kind of like an old friend that's been derailed. By 9/11, perhaps.
I'd love to be proven wrong. I'd love to come back to visit the US more often in the future. But with this administration, I just won't risk it. And also.. I just don't want to, at the moment. :-/
Honestly fair enough. And for the record, I do not want the US and Europe to stop cooperating, I just think that we have lost much of the intrinsic cultural reasoning for allying in the first place. But at the same time, your statement about the urban/rural culture gap kind of refutes my point anyways. Either way, we still have much bigger fish to fry with Russia and China on the horizon, so we definitely have more in common with each other government wise compared to the rest of the world.
(Kind of) Changed my mind award <3
I'd say many people in the EU have similar views and ideas to about 2/3rds of the US (maybe I'm being generous on the US size), the half of the US that doesn't think the world is flat, that global warming might be happening, that following the rule of law is a good thing and we don't need to destroy the US to fix it.
Europe is more alike most Americans then you are to other Americans. Why pretend to be friendly with other states why not breakup. Cities in states should break apart from rural areas. We can all go back to tribal hunting groups.
People are not ready for that take yet.
Pretty sure lots of smart-minded europeans would love a chance for europe to detach and be actually allowed to develop its own services sector. Seems to me the US wants europe to be a contributing ally when it suits, and an open market to dump services into when it doesn't
Yes. And the current US government not opposing Russia, it's actively helping Russia destroy democracies
Why?
Different ideas on economics (socialism vs capitalism) and personal freedoms, lack of a shared cultural background anymore, etc.
I'm genuinely curious, could you elaborate?
Which European countries would you consider to be socialist? Or perhaps a better question is what makes a country socialist?
Which personal freedoms are different in the US vs Europe?
I've lived in both US and Europe, and have an opinion on this, but really would like your take.
Europe is also capitalist. The last time I checked we had stock exchanges, corporations, and private property laws.
What countries in Europe are not capitalist? Genuine question. And who has less personal freedoms in your opinion?
Those don't seem like the best reasons. European and American economics are pretty close. Europe isn't socialist, it has broader welfare system than the US, but the US has significant welfare systems as well.
I've lived in the US and in Europe and the UK. Shared culture is still very significant. If anything, maybe even closer now than in the 90s.
There's probably other reasons to think about the why and how of alliances than these.
You are correct in terms of economics and culture, but the UK has turned extremely authoritarian and jails people for social media posts frequently.
I'm okay with a country jailing people for the crime of tweeting "we should murder all trans people". That probably should be a crime. Punishment should fit the crime though, so no more than a few weeks.
What about when they jail people for tweeting about how they don't want more immigrants?
Literally never happened. You just are way too online if you believe that. Try visiting the UK sometime, you clearly never been and it’s a great country.
The UK is nowhere near as authoritarian as the USA currently is so I don't understand your criticism. If anything it could bring us together!
What is different is that there is more opposition and cultural resistance to hyper capitalism. Think monopolies, corporatism, live-to-work, hustle-culture.
With regards to any messaging about "freedom" in the USA, be vigilant, I do think people will be unpleasantly surprised about what has been transacted away. Personal freedoms are indeed extremely important, so zero Schadenfreude here. And yes, those lobby groups in the EU fail to get their stupid anti-encryption laws passed, but they keep trying, so it is frightening. Citizens and visitors of the Five Eyes have lost any privacy already, but we need all of us to fight back.
TLDR: it is better to cooperate around common causes than to fight imaginary opponents. We are in the same boat.
This is just American nonsense. Literally every single country in Europe is capitalist. Socialism is the democratic ownership of the means of production. Nowhere do we have that in Europe. Frankly this is the real problem with America, about half the population are extremely poorly educated and yet extremely arrogant. A deadly combination, clearly, as it’s led to the very sudden decline and fall of the American Empire.
> Different ideas on economics (socialism vs capitalism) and personal freedoms, lack of a shared cultural background anymore, etc.
In other words, you mean there isn't any country that you think could be an ally to the US?
Can you name any?
I genuinely can't tell whether you are serious or trolling. Please tell me more about how Europe is socialist.
Or what does that even mean to you. Is socialism when state exists? You are not first American to say that, and every time it happens, I'm genuinely surprised. (I mean, rhetorical question. I suppose that's what socialism is to you. And you are a part of a problem too, because you are growing up internally people who genuinely believe that socialism is good because it means healthcare and higher education. Words no longer have meaning to you in America.)
I meant more that most European countries seem to be on a path towards socialism with popular opinion being much more in favor of it than it is in the US (more in line with my cultural gap statement). If you consider democratic socialism socialism like I do, you have plenty of examples to pick from in government.
> most European countries seem to be on a path towards socialism
No, unfortunately the path in most European countries seems to be heading towards fascism, not socialism. We Europeans do tend to follow America in many things.
It's called social democracy, and much to the chagrin of real socialists this political tradition fully embraces capitalism.
> ...inter-agency relations between Dutch and American intelligence organizations remain “excellent”.
While I highly doubt that Dutch Intelligence is significantly more accountable tothat the American ones are, and therefore don't assume that any meaningful intelligence will actually be withheld (or at least, if is being withheld, it isn't because of the decision being discussed in this piece), BUT it is at least interesting that they made this announcement, which suggests some element somewhere in the European deep state is at least trying to pressure Washington in some way.
“The European Deep State”?
You think they don't have one too?