Any US or European company absolutely should not trust a Russian or Chinese company at the moment. Especially not for antivirus.
Just like any company based in Russia or China shouldn’t trust western companies.
But also you are comparing autocracies to democracies. Don’t pretend that the control the US is able to exert over their companies is in anyway comparable to what is common place in Russia/China. Remember the rash of murder/suicides of Russian oligarchs where they decided to kill their families and then off themselves. Or how about when Jack Ma was disappeared for a year.
Russia/China is in no way equivalent to western democracies on this issue. So please stop the whataboutism.
Russia is at war with Ukraine. The EU is at war with nobody. Who's at war with the US?
You seem to be using the world "war" very lightly in a context where actual war is also happening.
And that's the aspect that's hitting me the most: people get into a "we're at war" mindset without needing their government to actually make official steps nor actually engage their responsibility. Banning TikTok is ok because of that "war but not really" atmosphere, where China is not an actual diplomatic enemy with open proof and potential discussions of them, but companies can still be punished purely on the grounds of involvement with China.
There is pretty good precedent for that usage.
That's not something I'd be longing to repeat from a citizen perspective.
The US/EU is definitely in a proxy fight with Russia in Ukraine. Russia is definitely running disinformation campaigns and funneling money across the US and EU to try and tilt elections to their far right allies. There have been several high profile breaches of US institutions recently traced back to Russia and Chinese hacker groups.
So that covers actual fighting, political attacks, and cyber attacks. This is literally the definition of hybrid warfare. Here is the Wikipedia page on this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_warfare
The US also spies and runs disinformation campaigns in EU countries. Are we at hybrid war with the US ? Is the US at hybrid war with Japan since the actual war ended ? Or is the point to always be at hybrid war with somewhere ?
We are not in a direct conflict with Russia. But Russia has invaded a neighbor in order to steal the land, people and property. And is currently bombing children hospitals in the process of achieving its goals.
We are at war with the idea that in this day and age, this is normal and OK.
Since WW-II, the world has lived in "relative" safety. No national boundaries have been changed by force. Russia is not on-board with this plan and wants to go back to the old way of expanding borders.
We are at war with this ideology.
You have that relationship inverted. The US gov't is a mere shell at this point, having outsourced all its core functions to private companies. There is no "medicare" budget or "defense" budget, there is only the capital allocated to and embezzled by the medical & military industrial complex.
And rest assured they do their own set of overt disappearances, notably the Boeing whistleblower and Epstein. There is an obvious playbook they follow in such cases, first they bribe, blackmail, or discredit - before being indiscreet.
The amount of "control over companies" one state has over another is not going to be a strong debate point when your good guys here are, as we speak, sustaining an extreme act of at this point inarguable mass murder. All while, it should probably go without saying, sustaining a complete harmony in the respective state and private institutions at play. What a lovely coincidence I guess!
This is not even get into maybe the not so fine details of USA democracy these days.
I know you really felt like you had a point and some ground to stand at one time, but you gotta remain vigilant. History can move fast, and it does not reward loyalists.
Jeffrey Dahmer killed people but Matthew Broderick did too, so you should never watch "Ferris Bueller's Day Off"
Countries scared of Russian aggression have been clamoring to join. Russia invaded Georgia and Ukraine twice. They managed to get Sweden and Finland to join up thereby expanding their border with NATO by 1340km.
Truth is Russia could have decided to be Norway if they would have just peacefully stayed in their borders and sold gas/oil to the EU. But instead they decided they would rather be North Korea.
In a decade they will likely be just another client state of China. It is truly sad.
Between 55-80 percent of the people in these regions identify as Ukrainian, according to the most recent census.
They may also speak Russian (to some degree), but that doesn't mean they consider themselves to be ethnically "Russian", or are desperate to be reunited with the Motherland.
It just means that Ukraine is a bilingual country.
You may want to take a serious look at what sources you are pulling such obviously misleading figures from.
And in particular: at who is presenting these misleading narratives to you, and why.
Ukraine begged to join NATO because they saw this coming a mile off.
They’re still begging.
Asking to join the neighbourhood security watch is offensive only to burglars.
PS: If your argument over NATO membership is a valid one, then why is Russia not equally upset about Sweden and Finland joining NATO? Why not invade those sovereign nations on their border as well to prevent their membership? Is it because they don't particularly care about NATO unless it gets in the way of a planned invasion? Could that be it?
I'll close with a quote from former CIA director Bill Burns, who tried to talk the Bush administration out of pushing for NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia (this is from 2008):
"Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin). In more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players, from knuckle-draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin's sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests. At this stage, a MAP [Membership Action Plan] offer would be seen not as a technical step along a long road toward membership, but as throwing down the strategic gauntlet. Russia will respond. Russian-Ukrainian relations will go into a deep freeze…. It will create fertile soil for Russian meddling in Crimea and eastern Ukraine."
Burns has changed his mind since 2008 and now advocates for greater military support for Ukraine.
The fact that Burns is hawkish on Ukraine after Putin invaded does not imply that he's changed his mind about what could/should have been done to prevent it.
Ukraine didn't have even that. Prior to the Russia invasion of Ukraine, there were no permanently stationed foreign troops at all east of where they had stood in Europe during the Cold War. Most Cold War era military installations in Western Europe were shut down in the 1990s and no new ones were built anywhere. It's a completely made up grievance.
> The fact that Burns is hawkish on Ukraine after Putin invaded does not imply that he's changed his mind about what could/should have been done to prevent it.
He has completely abandoned the line of thought from 2008 that centers on tiptoeing around Russia. NATO acted as he advised and didn't offer membership to Ukraine, yet this didn't prevent the war. He now accuses Russians of lying about their intentions, warns of ambitions beyond Ukraine, and says that he underestimated Putin's fixation on Ukraine. Nowhere have I seen any mention of NATO or Ukraine being at fault as suggested by those who bring up that old quote.
Russia is only afraid of NATO because they know it will stop them from taking the territory that they want. And it's pretty clear that they're trying to restore the Soviet Union, so they want quite a bit of territory.
"Panama wants to make ties with China"
Let's see... the US is preparing for the invasion next -- checks notes -- oh never. They're not planning to invade at all. Huh. Interesting. Interesting...
Similarly, China has been "courting" Pacific islands that were previously in the "sphere of influence" of Australia. It's been in the news a lot recently over here.
Instead of immediately ramping up military recruitment for an imminent invasion, our government instead sheepishly admitted that it's a bit shameful how we haven't been paying much attention and should be nicer to our neighbours so that they'll ally with us instead.
https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/resetting-aust...
Love instead of tanks.
Who would have thought such a crazy notion could work!?
You understand that in fact the MAPs to Ukraine and Georgia were never issued -- and hence, that this "strategic gauntlet" (which according you is what really started the war) was never "thrown" -- right?
So again, why did Russia not invade Finland to stop Finnish membership in NATO?
Russia claims this is their casus belli for their invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and tankies accept this at face value.
They also claim that Ukraine deserved to be invaded because they were mis-treating ethnic Russians. Okay, but Ukraine's treatment of ethnic Hungarians near the Hungarian border was virtually identical. So... does Hungary have casus belli to invade Ukraine?
Or if Putin takes all of Ukraine as per his stated goal of "returning" Ukrainian land to Russia "where it belongs", does he also plan on returning the currently Ukranian land back to Hungary that it lost? If not, why not?
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/putin-adm...
(1) Public discussion in the web about what is, has and will happen in global / security / foreign politics is completely broken.
(2) The reason is not and cannot be one-sided. However it may be better to think of groups with "mind control" powers and entities with not than any nation states or international organizations.
(3) I have never seen an attempt by anyone to do something about this; it seems that hope of rational (web) discussions and analysis is, has always been, and will for foreseeable future buried by whatever this is.