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.
I see it used very much for the wrong purposes though. It's a really mediocre database for example. It allows numbnuts to make really poorly designed stuff that then worms its way into critical business processes.
Microsoft could have worked to make access more accessible to non technical users. But they didn't bother.
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).
I bet they will still be using Android and iOS devices, accessing those systems from Windows and macOS desktops and laptops, developing the bulk of the applications in Java (Oracle), C# (Microsoft), Go (Google),....
The solution isn't going for a few cloud products, or Libre Office, the solution has to be the whole stack like during cold war days when almost every nation had their own computing stack.
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.
I remember the Mueller report explicitly stating they would say he was innocent if the evidence showed but that they could not indict a sitting president.
The theory might be incorrect be incorrect, but to claim it’s baseless is factually wrong
TACO keeps flipflopping, but each time Russia ends up with an advantage. Random noise should average to zero. When it averages in one party's favour, it's not noise.
They are fighting against a country with something like 1/5th of their population so this reasoning is completely fallacious. You will use any advantage gained by Russia as evidence of collusion without demonstrating that the advantage was based on collusion. The intelligence agencies have tried and failed to prove this theory of Russian infiltrationism for more than 10 years now; you haven’t seen something that they’ve missed.
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..
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
> 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?
That this is the strategy being deployed is so far without meaningful evidence as far as the rest of the world is concerned.
It appears far more scattergun, corrupted, ignorant, incompetent and focused on the aggrandisement of US leadership than really at any time in US history.
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.
Incited a riot to interrupt the certification of the election with ~500 individuals resulting in the deaths of a few individuals and hundreds of convictions. Most notable Trump did not face prosecution.
I edited my previous comment because I knew of January 6th, I was just thinking OP meant something else. However I did not follow the events or aftermath with great detail.
Considering he was prosecuted for other things, I'm guessing there was not any actual evidence to support even a prosection?
> I'm guessing there was not any actual evidence to support even a prosection?
You don't have to guess, there was.
So much so that the special counsel that was shut down when Trump won re-election took the extraordinary step of declaring publicly that he had more than enough evidence to secure conviction of Donald Trump for Jan 6th.
Sorry, there is a lot of misinformation from "both sides" - That is why I don't care much to watch the dog and pony show while I "dress myself" (to the person who wrote that, really?)
I am going to try to take this thread in good faith.
Here is an event that happened on Saturday, 7 million plus people took to the streets.
One side says this was a Hate America rally made up of marxists, hamas supporters and protestors paid by George Soros. The president shared an AI video of himself in a crown flying over the protesters he is supposed to represent dumping shit on them.
Every news outlet on the other side says it was a peaceful protest against authoritarian overreach.
Call me a biased leftist but the misinformation and divisive bullshit is severely tipped to the right side of the scale.
Lots of people, esp on HN, will say J6 was some kind of insurrection, but the BLM riots were peaceful protests. From the other perspective, what happened was a bunch of disgruntled republicans saw the riots that summer, among many other things, and rather than burn down Minneapolis, they took their grievances to the one place that actually could make a difference - the politicians in DC. Instead they were led thru the halls of the Capitol (by the police!) and the resulting footage used to frame the whole debacle as an insurrection. Certainly they were some angry protesters, but the premise that they intended to overthrow the govt by stopping the certification ceremony doesn’t even make sense, since nobody would have recognized it.
The riot wasn’t the attempt: it was the threat of violence that underscored the attempt, which was to happen in the chamber when Mike Pence chickened out (ask Chuck Grassley).
Only for once he didn’t chicken out.
Trump’s obvious, incandescent anger at Pence not doing his bidding makes it clear what that whole “protest” (along with Trump’s own plan to join it) was all about.
Any other interpretation is really a ludicrous, bad faith reframing of quite commonplace behaviour in attempted overthrows.
> Instead they were led thru the halls of the Capitol (by the police!) ... but the premise that they intended to overthrow the govt
You could have just said you didn't read the John Eastman memo and left it there. Or any of the Jack Smith findings. There was a coordinated top-down plan to violate the Electoral Count Act, its not even hidden. Just say you have no clue what you're talking about next time
> You could have just said you didn't read the John Eastman memo
Show me where exactly in the Eastman memo, the so called "coup plot", it calls for a group of protesters to go into the Capitol?
Spoiler: It doesn't. So it's actually you who hasn't read the memos. If anything, it shows Trump sought to remain president by legal means, a gray area at worst, but nothing to do with the "violent insurrection" claimed.
> Jack Smith findings
You mean the cases that were thrown out by the courts? And another that he closed himself? In other words, they had 4 years and found nothing. You are innocent until proven guilty, and ultimately he proved nothing.
Just say you have no clue what you're talking about next time.
> Show me where exactly in the Eastman memo, the so called "coup plot", it calls for a group of protesters to go into the Capitol?
Really cynical stuff. The Eastman memo was the blueprint on how to actually stop Biden's certification. That was the paperwork, the legal attack. January 6th was the kinetic attack.
Just because both actions were not detailed in the same piece of paper does not mean they weren't both part of a clearly coordinated action (of which the special counsel agreed).
> You mean the cases that were thrown out by the courts?
Wrong again. His findings were not thrown out. He ended the case himself because he knew Trump would shut him down anyway once back in office.
Look, I get it. This is a narrative that is very important to you. You can't believe that your side are the violent ones or your president is the lawless one. So much of this is a waste of time.
Just know that this is your narrative and it has no connection to reality.
The special counsel publicly said he had enough evidence to convince a jury that a premeditated, coordinated attempt to coup the U.S. government had occurred.
> partisan-appointed lawyer
There isn't an inch of proof that Biden interfered with either the DOJ or the special counsel. You assume that because Trump is doing this, Biden must have as well. This is the mentality of Trump himself, he thinks about how to commit crimes and get away with it so he assumes that's how everyone else behaves too. You can't actually imagine a world where people have principles and don't always act with self-interest.
It goes back to the first word and the first response I made to you, cynical. Not a word you're saying is accurate, but you don't care. Because you're just assuming the other side would lie the same way you do, if pressed.
> There is no evidence trump intended a violent insurrection
that's the thing about being responsible for violent events at a certain point your intention does not remove your culpability. Whether or not Trump meant to use his supporters to attack the Capitol is irrelevant. It happened. Also, when the riot turned violent, Trump had several hours to stop it. He chose to watch it all on television at the White House instead.
Guilty as sin.
> "Your side" literally shot at Trump
The shooter in question was a registered Republican.
> And at the end of the day..
So I prove you wrong, you move on like it never happened, rinse, repeat. This is a boring game. I don't feel like playing.
> Great. And as we have already established, that case went nowhere. Anybody can accuse someone of anything.
You've already admitted twice you did not read any of the evidence. You literally have no idea what the case is. You outsource your thinking and argumentation to a sitting Republican senator, as if their opinion on the matter counts for anything.
You created an account four days ago in order to post a series of justifications as to why the politically motivated violence of January 6th wasn't that bad, or was really just in response to other violence and therefore cannot be condemned, etc. etc.
If this is your hobby, I suggest you find a new one.
> If anything, it shows Trump sought to remain president by legal means, a gray area at worst, but nothing to do with the "violent insurrection" claimed.
You do realize John Eastman himself literally says he would lose 9-0 [1] when heard in the supreme court, admitting he is illegally violating the ECA with no sound legal argument. And he was literally disbarred for this behavior. [2]
How do you reconcile with this cognitive dissonance?
> In other words, they had 4 years and found nothing.
So you just admit you have never heard the Jack Smith report. Just say that next time, why lie?
> J6 was some kind of insurrection, but the BLM riots were peaceful protests
I'm not a fan of shameless whataboutisms, but this one is particularly bad. The attempted insurrection on January 6th had nothing to do with Black Lives Matter riots (Funny, you can never say those words. It's always an abbreviation).
It was a premeditated attack on the Capitol at the exact time and place the new president was being certified.
It is the most cut and dry example of an attempted coup this country has seen in decades, and it was organized and executed by the sitting, and current President.
There's no reason for you to try to remake history. Your guy got back into power and made all of his legal problems disappear.
He has not avoided prison because he was somehow not guilty. He avoided prison by overcoming the legal system.
On second thought, isn't a core tenet of the US justice system "innocent until proven guilty"? Under that tenet, along with the fact that he was never found guilty, wouldn't US values require considering him innocent? Or have US values changed since that tenet was adopted?
He had already been convicted of multiple unrelated felonies.
He was in the process of being tried in multiple cases in multiple jurisdictions regarding his attempts to compromise an American election, each time with overwhelming, nearly comical evidence against him.
Saying he's innocent until proven guilty not only ignores the reality that the cases against him, even based on what is publicly available evidence, were airtight, but also the fact that these cases only went away because he won re-election and made them go away.
It's his narrative. It's how he's making sense of it. But most importantly, it's his justification.
"The violence on my side is only in response to the violence on your side." This is how such an unambiguous act of political violence makes sense in his head, in the context of it being a defensive action.
Of course it's absurd. But in order to stay aligned with your pre-existing worldview, you sometimes have to say and believe absurdities.
We are just watching him work through it in public.
> Black Lives Matter riots (Funny, you can never say those words. It's always an abbreviation).
> the BLM comparison
Hey look, you did it again.
> provide context for what the country was going thru at the time
No, it's a shameless whataboutism trying to justify your side's riot with a clear political goal with the other side's riots that were more a spontaneous reaction to a horrific crime.
Both were riots but the circumstances and purpose of each could not be further apart.
> and J6 was partly a counter protest.
I know. You need that to be true. But it's not.
> he won many of those cases on appeal
No, he didn't. He lost every single major court case (E. Jean Carroll Defamation Case, civil fraud case, Georgia Election Interference Case, Falsified Business Records), except for one appeal that kept him on the ballot in Maine despite his coup attempt.
Bear in mind these people are very much pro-gun and believe the 2A is there to protect against the govt. If they had intended to violently overthrow the govt, it would have been very apparent. Yet not a single bullet was fired from the protestors. As you pointed out, the only ones doing the shooting was from the police towards the pro-trump people. That lady was unarmed, and was shot while climbing thru a window. (Considering this [1] was the standard for 'peaceful protests' at the time.) Hardly qualifies as self defense, and had this been any other situation the policeman would be stripped of his badge and jailed. But of course, Biden's DOJ declined to prosecute.
Let me tell you about Belgium in 1830. It got attached to the Netherlands, and their king would not listen to the locals. Things got completely out of hand until we got huge protests. All the while, the idea at the Belgian side was things would calm down once their king would stop being so bloody minded and make some concessions. Well, the Dutch king didn't, the revolution succeeded, and we more or less accidentally liberated ourselves. France couldn't invade yet, and there was a general air of: whoops,we created a country, now what? Belgium is a country to this day, for no real reason.
You can start an armed revolt, but you have no idea what's going to happen afterwards.
Arguing that it was a poor insurrection attempt does not negate what it was. Arguing that it could have been worse doesn't change the fact that five people died. The unarmed lady was shot climbing through a window you didn't say what window it was the window dividing a violent mob from congress people sheltering in place.
And making excuses for political violence guarantees that there will be more in the future. It should never be tolerated.
There aren’t some kind of magic levers inside of the building. To perform an insurrection you need military support. Do you think all of the people involved were just so dumb that they thought they could take over by simply being inside the building? The reality candidate where they intended to delay the proceedings by protesting on site makes massively more sense. Certainly one can disagree with the method there and say it wasn’t appropriate, but there is a lot of hysteria over it and I don’t really get why people are sucked in by it.
The plan was, according to the special counsel who had researched it, to buy time for the Eastman memo's plan of sending fake electors to create a constitutional crisis, whereas then the House needs to vote on who is president.
The attack on the Capitol wasn't meant to overthrow the government itself. It was meant to stop the certification, which it did, so that the rest of the plan could take place.
Under no circumstances take my word for it all of this is freely available.
Okay, that isn’t an insurrection or an attack though. It’s some attempt at a legal loophole via targeted protest, right? Insurrectionists typically don’t rely on legal mechanisms to achieve their goals.
This sounds like moving the goalposts. Sorry, I don’t intend to move the goalposts.
What I mean is - yes, the document you linked seems quite plausible, I hadn’t read about that before. But, based on the reaction I see to January 6th from the public, I have trouble believing that the public reaction is driven by an understanding of the alleged plot and not from media driven hysteria. Are we saying that the media is drumming up hysteria based on the actual plot, but since the common man doesn’t actually understand such things typically that the media doing so is justified?
Like to me an authentic negative reaction to reading about the plot would be something like disappointment that the type of legal strategizing that happens in courtrooms has made its way into politics. And I think even you personally are using the language “insurrection” and “attack”, which doesn’t really line up with the alleged plot at all, does it? This is what I’m confused about.
That is a strawman argument, or perhaps you misunderstand the comparison. Nowhere did I say it was a poor insurrection attempt. I said it was not an insurrection at all. They were set up and led into the capitol for the cameras, in a ploy to frame it as an insurrection. And ultimately, that's what happened.
To this claim that "5 people died" - how many were shot by the "violent insurrectionists"?
The answer: none.
1 policeman had a stroke and 4 committed suicide. You cannot blame the J6ers for the policemen's pre-existing conditions or suicidal tendencies. None of the suicides were coerced. The only person who was killed was the aforementioned pro trump woman.
In crowd control, if your line is broken, you fall back. That's why rioters were allowed to walk through the Capitol. The police had no ability to stop them once their forward line was broken.
"The police were giving them a tour." I'm sorry, what did you expect them to do? Go home? Not try to keep an eye on what was happening?
> You do know they were subsequently pardoned?
Accepting a pardon is a formal admission of guilt. You literally cannot pardon an innocent person. That's the whole point.
And again, justifying or excusing political violence guarantees that more will come, which is why I'm particularly angered by what you're doing.
>Accepting a pardon is a formal admission of guilt. You literally cannot pardon an innocent person. That's the whole point.
Wrong. Pleading guilty is an admission of guilt. Being convicted is not the same as admitting guilt. That is why there are things called appeals. Pardons can be a tool to overcome miscarriage of justice. And that's exactly what happened there. A partisan conviction by the regime they were protesting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pardon
>And again, justifying or excusing political violence guarantees that more will come, which is why I'm particularly angered by what you're doing.
Strawman after strawman with you. Nowhere at all am I justifying political violence, because what happened was a mostly peaceful protest. I'm particularly angered by YOUR rhetoric, and it is amusing there isn't a shred of self awareness with that statement. If you haven't noticed, YOUR narrative has led to multiple high profile assassination attempts by leftists convinced Trump is a fascist or something. It hasn't merely guaranteed political violence, it has already happened. Multiple times.
> Wrong. Pleading guilty is an admission of guilt. Being convicted is not the same as admitting guilt.
You either pardon a person declared guilty by a judge and jury or a person who pled guilty themselves.
> Pardons can be a tool to overcome miscarriage of justice. And that's exactly what happened there.
I don't like this game and I'm not going to play it. Political violence spirals, and anyone who seeks to excuse it because it's their side, and their side can't be the violent ones, is childish at best and malevolent at worst.
> Nowhere at all am I justifying political violence
no you're just saying there was a bunch of grandmas and they were let in by the police and yes people die but it wasn't their fault and the guy organized the whole thing couldn't have possibly foreseen it becoming violent and then when it did he was in the white house so it's not like he could have pulled out his phone at any time and tweeted for them to go home to stop the whole thing.
I get that you need this to make sense in your head, but just understand not a single person is convinced by your babbling.
Who gives a shit? You're trying to say that because they were pardoned, they didn't do anything wrong. They were convicted of crimes in a court of law.
> You sought to pin political violence from 'your side' onto the opposition.
I don't even know what you're attempting to reference here. Your repeated attempts to excuse real political violence on January 6th is disgusting and dangerous.
So you can carry on trying to change the subject and confuse the matter. It won't accomplish anything.
> 77 million people would like to have a word with you.
Yes as i said in the beginning of this conversation Americans made a grave mistake returning a man to power who has no intention of ever leaving peacefully. as you pointed out January 6th could have been a lot worse, I pray the Republic survives whatever attempt is coming in 2028.
Although I'm sure you're preparing all of your excuses for why whatever happens won't be that bad.
No, we have evidence that he ran out of road in his attempted autogolpe. There’s no evidence that he did what he “believed” was right. He literally tried to persuade people to change vote counts.
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.
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.
From my experience in Europe, this comes to being the least bad choice amongst a large series of bad choices. They install CrowdStrike in legacy devices running in critical industries like manufacturing because a lot of devices are legacy (think Windows 2000 and XP in 2025) which cannot be changed because either the company is bankrupt, the machine change would cost millions or the company is strapped for cash and/or labor to actually update all of the necessary (and not supported) industrial computers.
This + corporate shit policies from departents disconnected from the needs on the terrain.
Palantir installing their kit on your on prem network doesn't give them anymore magical ability to exfiltrate data than installing Microsoft office would.
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.
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
The original interview clearly states that the US can no longer be trusted to do the right thing with data concerning Russia, and the spy services explicitly say that they are keeping a close eye on the potential of intelligence being politicized or used to violate human rights. There is no need to guess why that is the case, it is painfully obvious to anyone paying even the slightest attention to US politics.
Regarding "their loss": the self-destruction of the US on the international stage is directly leading to a "massive scale-up" of the way various European agencies work together. If anything, I'd call that a win.
> Regarding "their loss": the self-destruction of the US on the international stage is directly leading to a "massive scale-up" of the way various European agencies work together. If anything, I'd call that a win.
It's going to take time and resources to match what any sort of "lost" cooperation with the US had, assuming they even can match the capabilities. That's a naturally bad thing for intelligence agencies in the interim.
The 2000s / early 2010s US is definitely leaving behind some big shoes to fill, no doubt about that. I'm not going to pretend it won't be a painful transition - Europe has been relying on the US far too much since the Second World War.
On the other hand, 2025 US has a president who seems to flips sides in the Ukraine conflict every other week. Considering that the main threat in Europe right now is Russia, that significantly reduces the value of US intelligence. Who needs enemies when your "friends" are just as likely to help you as they are to feed you misinformation?
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 system that prevents the system from evolving beyond its current state. 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.
That's not true. We just don't want the Five Eyes to be used as excuse for domestic surveillance without a non-FISA court order, which strongly happens to be the case.
And ironically, one of the reasons why Five Eyes was so valuable is that it allows spy agencies that are banned from domestic surveillance from surveilling their own allies and then sharing the results, or at the very least sharing intel they've received elsewhere.
No, they want to avoid being accessory to violation to human rights and the weaponization of such information for political purposes. That's fairly clear.
I don't think they care nearly as much about that as many suspect.
Trump's a loudmouth idiot and the Dutch government has to look like they're doing something about it. Telling a nation that they're "not" going to share intelligence is one way to "do" that.
The only problem is, spies are born liars and the world of espionage is inherently opaque to the public, so what this really means for US-Dutch intelligence sharing is probably going to depend on what the intelligence is, what the Dutch have to gain from sharing it, and what could be prevented should it be shared.
If the Dutch government thought that they could benefit from what Trump's doing, they'd go through with it, humanitarian consequences be damned. Nations don't have values, they have interests. People in Amsterdam aren't going to stop drinking coffee en masse because of the coffee trade's reputation for economic exploitation of the global south, and they're not going to stop talking with the US if they can get to draw benefit from it, either.
Seriously though, the article doesn't say why they're more "critical" but say that intel sharing remains "excellent". That's a lot of words without saying anything, these kinds of articles are fantastic for one thing and one thing only: reinforcing pre-existing beliefs.
The article they cite from De Volkskrant does mention the reasoning why some information is being restricted; the politicizing of information, and the violation of human rights.
I'm a subscriber of De Volkskrant and follow Huib Modderkolk. He is an investigative journalist in the area of (Dutch) intelligence services. He has uncovered that the Dutch agencies were involved in hacking Natanz, specifically in the last mile part of the operation. He also uncovered a strange motor accident of the alleged agent in the Middle East (out of my head Qatar or Dubai I don't remember and mix some of these countries up, mea culpa). He's done several interviews with former agents and has build up a network of sources.
That the leaders of AIVD and MIVD give this broad interview to him is unique, and a sign that they want to inform the voter before the election on 29th of October. These guys and services are normally very reluctant to share any information because they know the enemy reads it as well. After all, as you asserted elsewhere any idiot can use Google Translate which works quite well with Dutch for a very long time (since forever?).
That's a paywall, and I don't speak Dutch, what precisely are the human rights violations they're accusing the US of?
And these kinds of accusations go both ways, free-speech is under constant attack in the EU, the ruling class doesn't want citizens informed or even able to inform one another of critical political processes and actions without their thumbs in everyone's mouth, that much is clear.
They're very careful in not making any real political statements, which makes sense considering it's the heads of both the military intelligence service and general intelligence service. Here's the relevant quotes thrown through Google Translate:
*Are you more cautious about sharing certain information?*
Reesink: “I can’t comment on what that relationship is like now compared to before. But it’s true that we make that assessment and sometimes don’t share things anymore.”
*That’s a striking shift. What has been the most important change?*
Akerboom: “We don’t judge what we see politically, but we look at our experiences with the services. And we are very alert to the politicization of our intelligence and to human rights violations.”
*What does it mean in practice if there are risks in those areas?*
Akerboom: “Sometimes you have to consider each case individually: can I still share this information or not?”
That doesn't really clarify anything, but if I read between the lines, they're saying "we don't share information if we determine it will help (Trump) politically"
On one hand, this is the modus operandi of every political institutional from the CIA, to the CCP to city states to small towns in California, everyone acts in their own self-interest all the time. They're claiming nebulous "human rights" violations but don't state what they are. Could they mean blowing up boats suspected to be carrying drugs or precursors? I'd like to see Trump stop that myself, it's a pretty dangerous game he's playing.
On the other hand, I would expect the CIA/NSA have much greater potential value for the Dutch intel agencies than the reverse, so them prodding an administration after he was nearly assassinated twuce and many of his closest political officers and supporters were arrested and subjected to lawfare over the last 4 years doesn't seem like a particularly wise course of action. It's true this iteration of Trump is a lot more in tune with the way DC works so I wonder how wise the statement even is, they can accomplish what they're doing without announcing it, except now they announced what they're really up to and should probably expect some kind of retaliation.
I would expect anyone on this particular website right here to be able to let their browser do the translation. For Google Chrome that would even be the default, if it is setup knowing your language(s). The quality of the translation is excellent these days. There is no excuse.
Dramatic headline. They're probably not sharing Ukraine-specific planning info but will continue sharing everything else. My theory is that they can't trust Trump to keep Ukraine stuff secret and I agree with them.
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.
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.
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
Calling European countries "freeloaders" is such a one dimensional way of looking at this. Europe "outsourced" most of its defense to the US because the US wanted it that way, for soft power, influence, access to military bases and probably many other reasons.
This will become undeniably obvious when Europe stops being "freeloaders" and the US will complain about that too.
When you outsource you make a payment for services. I would have no problem with such an arrangement, but in this case, no payment is made, which is why I say "freeloaders."
The payment is that the USA got to make the rules for the whole world, most importantly regarding trade, and we follow them. Now you have decided to elect someone who is destroying the very world order you built that you specifically designed to benefit you! It certainly wasn't out the kindness of your own hearts that you had such a disproportionately strong military, that must be clear to you.
I guess I feel sorry for you because the British Empire had to fight two extremely destructive world wars against militarism and fascism in order to lose its role as superpower. The USA on the other hand has decided to lose its role as global hegemon because, why exactly, trans people and abortion??? Quite pathetic! In the long list of empires the American one will be remembered as having the most pathetic and stupid collapse of all, and that's very sad!
There's actually some truth to that. For a long time, the US was quite happy (with ups and downs) with paying more to be the sole military leader of the West, and Europe with paying less while focusing first on rebuilding, then on losing colonial empires, then on other stuff.
Recent US administrations obviously have different priorities. The latest has decided to phrase their priorities by negotiating with enemies of NATO, insulting NATO leaders, threatening to withhold help should NATO countries be under attack, and of course threatening to invade two NATO countries.
Clearly, it is a time for both parties to clarify what they want from an alliance and what they're willing to contribute. I suspect that, for one thing, the EU wants more clarity and predictability than what the current US administration is willing to provide.
He wants you guys to pay up or get out. You may not be satisfied with how he has gone about making those demands, but he has been very predictable and clear about it. As for negotiating with enemies, I was under the impression that is one of the main things you do with enemies.
Not that many Americans are worried about whether Europeans are allies. Only people who have fallen into some kind of information black hole, like the kind of people who email around 30 times forwarded jpegs of newspaper articles about the conspiracy behind covid or something. Sadly this has happened to many of the 80+ year old scions of my own family.
Anyway, I don't see this among the Americans who are still actively connecting with the world, the kind of people who aren't focused on ivermectin not taking vaccines or similar priorities.
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
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.
You stated something objectively wrong (that European countries are socialist) and then get called out and your reply is just to get upset, literally no information content whatsoever. It's very on brand, I suppose, reminds me a lot of that fraudster, convicted rapist and known paedophile currently in the White House.
Regardless, I agree we are going in separate directions, indeed the USA is no longer even a Western country. We had some good times, the American Empire was pretty great whilst it lasted, I wish you all the best.
My entire point is that many Europeans love to call Americans stupid and uneducated about politics while acting the exact same way themselves, all without noticing the blatant hypocrisy. The difference between you and me and that I know and accept that I am an uneducated idiot about most things. I wish you all the best as well. Hopefully everything works out for the best for everyone involved.
There's nothing wrong with being stupid at all. I just don't understand why you have such strong opinions on something you clearly know nothing about. So: you don't like Europe, USA's oldest and most important allies because they're socialists. OK but Europe is not even socialist, literally all European countries are capitalist (objectively, it's an undeniable fact). Now what? Any reflection, reevaluation? No, you just get offended and tell me once again that you don't like me because I'm European and that's it.
The enlightenment is dead in the USA, knowledge and facts no longer matter. Feelings over facts really won.
First, you failed to read past the first entry in my list of reasons, second you still do not seem to understand what I am saying. You tell me about how half the population of the country that I live in is poorly educated, stupid, and arrogant while you probably do not even live there and then tell me I remind you of a rapist because of that. You do not seem to notice that, if what you are saying is true, you come off as all of those things as well (not the rapist part though lol) because you are doing the exact same thing that I am, talking about something you have little to no direct experience in.
But I'm not saying half the population of your country are morons because I'm bigoted or hate Americans, indeed I have spent almost my entire life respecting and admiring your country and its people. I'm saying half your population are morons because half your population voted for Trump. That's perfectly logical.
And yes I can talk about these things because your country remains the global hegemon, the USA is unavoidable. It's not as if I'm expressing some hot takes on South Sudanese politics, is it? So if we are to be ruled by you please don't be surprised if we have some opinions of you too. That's a fair deal, isn't it?
You are perfectly welcome to have whatever opinion you want, but when your intelligent and clearly more educated than mine opinion of everyone in the United States, a country that you do not live in, comes down to the most basic binary political nonsense that an 8 year old is capable of spouting I am also welcome to have my opinion of you based on an actual interaction. And either way, I am just as welcome to have my uneducated opinions on someone else's politics as you are.
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.
The US is allied with actual authoritarian regimes.
I'm not a big fan of the UK, I grew up there and left. But this whole UK is authoritarian thing is totally overblown in the US media and HN comments. Having free speech restrictions implemented by an elected government isn't authoritarian. You could even say that having totally free speech imposed by a non-elected government is authoritarian if people don't want it. These things are separate. I listen to UK media quite often (topical comedies mostly) and my feeling is that these laws are generally supported. There's a lot of negativity about social media from bullying up to incitement of violence.
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.
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.)
> 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.
Yes. Aside from Trump the United States and Europe share overwhelming interests and values. When Trump is gone they should work hard to repair what he has destroyed
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.
The government-funded news was surprisingly open about it two months ago:
Many residents would rather see the American ships leave than arrive. Curaçao traditionally maintains close ties with Venezuela, and residents fear the island will be drawn into a geopolitical conflict. [...]
The Dutch government determines the course in these areas under pressure from Washington, while Curaçao itself has little influence.
> ...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.
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.
So sure, there are probably some signals the USA won't receive, but they still get the bulk of it.
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