Microsoft suspended the email account of an ICC prosecutor at The Hague

Was Epstein particularly connected to Israel? I mean, Israel already has very strong lobbying in the US. What would they have needed the weirdo for?

There's no conspiracy, it's public information he received lots of funding from pro-Israel sources: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/25/us/politics/miriam-adelso... .

You don't call conspiracy something with receipts openly laying around.

What "Epstein/Israel/Trump blackmail conspiracy?" It's already known that Trump is in the Epstein files. He's already admitted to sexual assault, has been found liable of sexual abuse and is a convicted felon. He's one of the most openly venal and corrupt Presidents in history. There's literally nothing Israel could have on him that would surprise anyone.

Every American President will defend Israel at any cost. The American military industrial complex depends upon the existence of an aggressive, Zionist Israeli government constantly starting shit and creating the pretext for American imperialist doctrine. Conservative and evangelical Christians believe it is their literal sacred duty to defend Israel (see recent comments by Ted Cruz citing the Bible to that effect) It doesn't matter who is in the White House, or what party, and no coercion or blackmail is required.

Let's not overlook that Israel has bought all previous US presidents back to its founding, and more than enough Congresscritters. We have been treating Israel as if it were the 51st state, including unconditionally funding and defending it.

Because any US president is expendable if they don't comply.

> because Israel bought Trump

I don't think the US ever had a president who cared less about Israel than Trump. The few times Trump has been on the Israel side seem to be only because Israel was "winning" some conflict, and Trump just prefers being on the winning side. He doesn't seem to care (or understand) the slightest whether Jews have a state, whether they can defend themselves, etc.

> because Israel bought Trump

This is a self-defeating and untrue meme.

Most Americans don’t say Israel is very important to them, favourably or not [1]. Historically, Israel was popular in both parties; that has now changed. As a result, being anti-Israel was dumb not because of some APAC [EDIT: AIPAC] conspiracy but because voters generally don’t respond to foreign policy issues (versus kitchen-sink ones) and the voters who would tended to were predominantly pro-Israel. So the safe electoral strategy has been, until maybe the last year, to say something nice about Israel and then move on.

So no, there isn’t some undefeatable (and frankly, steeped in historically-racist characterisations of Jews) shadow government. This is basic electoral incentives. Incentives which are shifting. Because if there is an undefeatable shadow government, there are better things to talk about and focus on.

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/04/08/how-ameri...

That sounds...appropriate? I would have no issues with every living former US President being accountable for their crimes, and I expect they would all be convicted.

How is it a threat to American sovereignty? It has no jurisdiction in America, only within nations that are party to the treaty - which is their sovereign right?

Is a foreign nation convicting an American tourist for crimes in said nation also a threat to American sovereignty?

If the US is in the wrong, why should I as a citizen not want our government officials held accountable?

When did the US make that threat?

It doesn't need to throw out the baby with the (US-controlled) bathwater. The EU should present Microsoft with an ultimatum similar to what China might: setup a non-controlled european licensee to own and manage all MS & Azure infrastructure in the region, or have some legislators force a similar structure on them. Complete control, full sourcecode, EU-only support/access - as a condition for corp HQ being allowed to have a monopolistic market share. Either way, nothing the US might decide to do should have any effect in "EU Microsoft", short of severing US Microsoft off completely, in which case EU MS just becomes fully autonomous and bye-bye US. Clearly, a US-controlled Microsoft without this structure is a deep security risk to europe now.

A $200B grant would be globally unprecedented. The LHC only cost $5B. European countries are market economies, moving more in that direction, and would like a local competitor.

You make some very good arguments, but

EU funded Microsoft to the tune of 234.26 billion USD per year

???

This, 100X this. The EU wants to have the shiny SW toys the US has spent decades and trillions building, but without forking up the money needed to develop them. They want everything done on cheap labor. Paying rank and file engineers shit tonne of money is not part of European business owner culture (barring few exceptions). You're expected to be grateful you've been given a job.

Expecting to make several times the national average gets you ousted as an evil greedy capitalist pig that wants to gentrify society, even though EU is full of stealthy elite royals and billionaires who own most of the continent's wealth, cosplaying as average people. So as long as you have a financial/tax system and a social contract that vilifies those seeking enrichment and upwards mobility through work and innovation, you're not gonna get FAANG competitors sprouting up thin air.

China could do it and become independent of US tech and they started off financially way worse than the EU. So the EU's tech failure is 100% self inflicted from policy short sightedness and mismanagement, by catering policies to the well off boomers and retirees, instead of the youth.

Stop taxing income, and start taxing inherited wealth more and you might see a change, just get off your asses politicians and actually do something, less talking and more doing. Otherwise keep buying American software running on Chinese hardware, while you hold grandiose speeches of tech independence.

There are reason why Linus Torvalds, Bjarne Stroustrup, Guido van Rossum, Anders Hejlsberg packed their toys and moved to the US to work for big-tech, instead of enjoying the amazing quality of life back home in Europe. Maybe the EU should talk to them and put them in charge of EU tech leadership, instead of the clueless unelected career bureaucrats like Von der Leyen and their lobbyists who's biggest success is selling the most diesel engines.

No AI features in Rafale?

[dead]

The power that comes with military contract-type money, connections, and influence.

That's the kind of situation that gives CEOs lifelong reputations (that they think it's in a good way).

Like the days of the British Army selling commissions, it's for corruption opportunities and cosplay.

Fascism is the last step in the merger between the state and corporate power, the state is currently trying its best to take the country there, and the sycophants who are ready to assist it are getting in line.

And if you want to close your eyes and believe things aren't that dire (they are), at minimum you have to admit that this is a regime that is incredibly blatant and open in its corruption and embrace of the spoils system. You'd have to be an utter idiot[1] to not try to weasel in to get your hand into the public purse.

---

[1] Or hold on to something resembling moral principles when mountains of money and power is at stake, which in that part of the business world is a synonym.

It gives them a chance for grift. They're going into an "innovation" unit whose job is to get the Army (or DOD more broadly, but they're in the Army now) to select particular technologies moving forward. Naturally, they'll recommend whatever their employer produces, and recommend to their employer that they expand into other areas so they can get the Army to buy that as well later on.

Good news, that sort of behavior is technically illegal even if the current administration is wildly corrupt already. So give it 4 years and they open themselves to the possibility of being courtmartialed for their grifting.

FOMO

As far as I know, we haven't seen widescale pull out of Europeans from American Tech companies, alot of talk but not a ton of action. Also, email is so centralized at this point between 365 and GMail, they probably figure there is nowhere to go.

Also, Europe does seem cautious about poking this tiger since Tech is critical industry and it's possible that Europe going "WE ARE DONE!" could prompt massive backlash in tariffs and such.

Trump won the majority vote in an election that brought out a huge amount of voters compared to previous elections, and Republicans won every other government body.

He's not unpopular and many people do support him, unfortunately. Best case scenario, the silent majority didn't bother to prevent Trump and his lackeys from taking over the American government.

I don't think denying Trump's popularity is going to solve anything. America spoke out in support of this guy, twice, and it'll keep doing that unless the underlying issues are tackled.

As for election fairness: I haven't seen any credible proof of large-scale election fraud, not when Biden won, not when Trump won.

That's a good point.

70% of voting eligible Americans didn’t do the bare minimum to prevent Trump. 30% voted for him directly, and 40% couldn’t be bothered to vote at all. I’m even willing to excuse third party voters. But the Trump voters and non-voters don’t get a pass, not at all. It’s absolutely the majority of Americans.

Israel is not a proxy state, they self-determine oftentimes against what their allies have wanted them to do.

That commentary was far less prevalent and met a lot of resistance from the same people here.

Few people imagine something like a Department of Mis/Disinformation not being such a good thing if its their person in charge and don't imagine a situation where someone else takes over later on something like the Israeli/Palestinian conflict where there's a schism within parties about what is "misinformation". Instead they'll cheer lead it and downvote or debate detractors and accuse them of being an otherside shill because its immediately good for them. They don't take an adversarial view of how can this be abused, and if not by whose in power now, who maybe 5-10-20 years from now.