> Just disable Microsoft/Google/AWS/Apple crap for them and they will be on their knees.
The dumb thing is that there are people in the US that actually believe this. Apparently including you. It would destroy the US as a trading partner and cause overnight implosion of the USD. If you thought brexit was an own goal this would be on another level entirely. But please, shout it around some more and prove the point that I've been making to every company that I've been involved with in the last decade: have a plan in case your cloud stuff isn't available anymore.
First, the US has recently done a lot of dumb shit and own goals. One never knows where is the boundary, especially if things escalate gradually.
Second, the spinelessness of 'the west' also seems unbounded (the failure to condemn Venezuela action, Iran war, or Israel's behaviour). Even after the Greenland fiasco. Carney's words at Davos seem very hollow, when one sees his reaction to Iran war. So, it might not even come to full stop of IT infrastructure, just 'a gentle warning'.
Third, the US has no problems screwing its partners, with those obediently bowing down; that is not a new phenomenon. Read on 1971 Connaly's statement "The dollar is our currency, but your problem."
Ah hahahaha. Yeah... No. Contrary to popular belief, the 2-300 year old upstart that is the United States doesn't have a magical lynchpin it can pull to get the other longstanding nations of the world to acquiesce entirely. If the U.S. really pushes things, it will soon find itself on the shit list of everyone else on whom we rely for implementing key links in the supply chain. I honestly do not understand where the gung ho America ooh rah comes from anymore these days. People, we sold out our industrial base. We sold out how to make things. We sold out everything that wasn't nailed down chasing cheaper payroll to undercut the American worker. This country is not as on it's own two feet as we like to believe. One need only look at the supply chain disruptions of the last decade to understand that.
Perhaps I should have formulated my post more precisely.
1) So much goodwill gone up in smoke. Yes.
a) Will the US stop wasting its goodwill? Well, that would be a new thing, so no. b) Will it exploit the dependence on its IT infrastructure muscle? Who knows? It exploited the dependence on it financial infrastructure, despite obvious long term consequences on trust in this financial infrastructure.
c) Will it come to truly turning off IT infrastructure? Probably not, the threat of that is sufficient, plus see 2).
2) My main beef is not with the US (I am not from US), its with Europe, for its spinelessness and inability to break its US dependence.
> Sure you can show easy empathy for the employees but this is how economy runs. A static economy where layoffs are hard or punished will lose to a more dynamic one.
Is that why workers are generally happier in Europe even though on paper their economy loses?
I've always been skeptical of happiness statistics. In many cases, self-reporting happiness offers an objective floor for happiness, but the ceiling is entirely relative/subjective.
The floor is universal: starvation, suffering, death.
The ceiling...
For someone who's starving & facing death, would simply be good health, easy access to food, healthy family, house & car.
But the ceiling for someone who already has these things is different. The ceiling for a billionaire is different.
The only way I can imagine not doing this type of subjective self-reporting is... maybe you can draw blood from populations and record cortisol and oxytocin levels?
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