Well, frankly, given the choice between UK as an ally, and the EU countries, I'd probably go for the UK. UK punches well above its weight in defense technology, and has a well trained, but diminished army. RAF and RN are also quite valuable, even for European continental defense.

But if Continental Europe really does think they can go it alone, all I can say is "Good luck, you'll need it!" To repeat an old story: "The French admiral was complaining at a NATO meeting. 'Why do we have to speak English all the time?' The Dutch admiral responded, "Because the UK, Canada, and US made sure we're not all speaking German."

You're attributing to me, that which I'm attributing to political leaders after the fall of the Soviet Union. I thought Russia might be able to change its spots, but their actions starting in the late 200x showed otherwise.

Let me repeat Pug Ismay's characterization of NATO: "US in, Germany down, Russia out" NATO succeeded for a long time, but it's not clear to me now NATO is working. Hungary & Turkey have at various times been the primary impediment to NATO consensus on various missions.

Of course, roughly half the population of the US shares the view that Trump has been an appalling reset, both domestically and internationally. I do note, though, that other nations have undergone significant political changes, as is their right. DeGaulle tossing the Americans out of France is the best example (a neighbor talks about being in the US Army at that time and moving rapidly from Orleans to Kaiserslautern.) I'm sure there are others in post WWII Europe. Europeans should not be surprised if the US democracy enables a significant/radical political shift, and more importantly should accept it's the right of any democracy to significantly change its mind. It's always bothered me how so many people outside the US feel entitled to tell the US how its voters should behave.

The problem with being a kept woman is that the "keeper" has already established the moral imperative to do whatever is expedient solely for the keeper, so the kept woman can't be too surprised if the keeper decides to spend on someone else, or no one at all.

Continental Europe without UK is strategically much poorer. If Putin moves to the Rhine (the old 'WWIII" scenarios I remember from my time in the US Army, as well as from books written by Brits like Sir John Hackett), UK still has the English Channel as a defensive barrier to Russian occupation. Eurocrats who think the UK should come begging for forgiveness (whether in Britain or on the Continent) put their moral position ahead of their strategic imperative.

(And for the record, I'm in the US and would have voted against Brexit. But I AM very much a Euroskeptic with respect to the EU's ability to actually get its shit together, economically, politically, and strategically.)

After the 'fall of the wall', Europe, particularly Germany, believed that war on European soil was unimaginable, and that Russia would turn into an at least semi-democratic state, with economic ties motivating political reforms. So they stopped spending on defense, started buying Russian energy, and generally positioned themselves to their current position. (I visualize an ostrich, head in the sand, ass exposed to the air!) Here, I'm using "Europe" both to mean the collective political institutions, i.e. the European Union, and as a shorthand for the actions for the individual sovereign nations that occupy the European continent. One could say 'painting all European countries with the same brush" is unfair, but from where I sit on my side of the pond, there is significant commonality of strategic thought across the continent. Trump came along in his first term and in his transactional way, said "Europe has to pay for its own defense,' denigrating both political and strategic/military aspects of collective defense. Europe treated Trump as 'a bad dream that will go away,' and when that proved to be wrong, they're left holding the empty bag. (This is NOT to agree with Trump's approach for international/strategic/defense affairs, but particularly on NATO defense spending, he did have a point.)

Now Europe has to play catch-up. It has to spend significant resources in defense, not the least of those resources are adding large numbers of people to its military. It has to wean itself completely from Russian energy. It has to rebuild defensive alliances that are not dependent on the primacy of the US. It has to figure out how to reconcile NATO and EU as actors in the strategic space.

"A new Europe must emerge" I would agree, but (a) I don't see a clear consensus within the European countries for what that 'new Europe' should look like (look at the gains of right wing politicians, not just in Hungary and Slovakia, but in Netherlands, France, and even UK.) (b) it's not clear that Putin will allow Europe the time to figure this out. A first step HAS to be figuring out how to re-integrate the UK into European strategic discussions, without entangling UK in European social and economic nets.

I'm fine with Palantir having to "open the kimono" to be used on government contracts. Palantir really scares me, they're the archetype for dystopian "society controlled by evil tech companies" Science Fiction.

A related issue is software supply chain. Most software now is composed of both new code and components obtained elsewhere/reused. How reliable are those "not developed here" components? (I remember an audit of a large DoD program back in the early '00s that found something like 20 copies of the SSL library, several of those old versions with known and exploited security vulnerabilities.)

The Army's new truck is built on a Chevy Colorado. (https://www.gmdefensellc.com/site/us/en/gm-defense/home/integrated-vehicles/infantry-squad-vehicle.html ) Will GM have to give the Army all the part specifications for Colorado parts? Will Palantir have to give up detailed data on how its software works?

The Government has always been able to require data hand-over as part of meeting a solicitation/Request for Proposal. See https://www.dau.edu/acquipedia... Now in many cases I saw, the PM decided to not spend the $ for this, either because s/he didn't think it was necessary or because the bill would have been too high. It used to really piss me off when the government would pay for a lot of new software but not own that software. The argument was "let the contractor commercialize that and that should reduce the government's maintenance costs." But requirements, operating environment, and lifetimes for software used in military applications are significantly different than those in commercial practice. The related problem came when the contractor would do some R&D, and then carve out the core of the system as "company proprietary." (Imagine Linux if the kernel wasn't open source....)

But to pretend this is a Sudden New Revelation is to ignore what have been acquisition practices for much longer than the now 40 years I was working in that business.

That makes sense, it's what the article should have said.

I tried to figure that out from what I could see of the Bloomburg article, but wasn't sure if this was registrations in US Patent Office, worldwide, China, etc.

both directions. You'll be better for it.

I would have thought there are advantages to keeping the Linux kernel as a 'strictly conforming application' using only the standard C language features.

On this Veterans Day/Armistice Day, it's worth repeating the apocryphal story about the French admiral complaining at a NATO meeting, "Why do we all have to speak English here?" The Dutch admiral responded, "It's because the British, Americans, and Canadians made sure we are not all speaking German."

Are usually full of shit. Whether it's Gurman or Kuo, or less well known Apple 'prognosticators', their track record is poor. Apple is very (notoriously) secretive, and to think that product release plans would be leaked is very unlikely.

But if you believe what you read on the Internet, I'm sure you live an "adventurous" life...

I've been reading "Enshittification" and Doctorow clearly calls for much more aggressive anti-monopoly regulation and enforcement. What he's calling for, as I understand it (I haven't finished the book) would be a significant change to US understanding of 'illegal monopoly'. But Europe operates under different rules, as EU actions against Apple and Google have shown. One could well argue that Spotify should be qualified as a 'gatekeeper' kind of company, but I am certainly not a EU lawyer. A ruling that says "engagement engineering" is illegal would be difficult to enforce, but presumably not impossible.

It's a worldwide phenomenon. Will the EU produce a response applied to not just US companies, but Big Tech from the EU? I don't think anyone is expecting significant legal action within the US.