If Europe collectively decides they must only buy French and German weapons, there's less US cake.

Sure, but are these guys the kind who wants control over the whole cake or a smaller slice of a larger cake?

Look at Russia.

Suspicious that it’s not on the front page.

There is absolutely no interesting discussion going on in the comments here.

Lots of political flaming and not much else.

Upvote to comment ratio is low and people are likely flagging it too because it’s just world news.

I don't think Hacker News is trying to be Reddit.

Edit: no disagreement or flagging, just poof, gone. Likely someone knows how to make unwanted conversations go away on platforms like HN.

It's because number of comments > number of upvotes, which triggers flamewar detector.

> How are stories ranked? Other factors affecting rank include [...] software which demotes overheated discussions, [...]. [1]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

Laat I think I knew anything it took surprisingly few flags and I think people abuse it all the time to get rid of things they personally don't like. And don't like is a broad category.