> If the EU repeals Article 6 of the Copyright Directive, some smart geeks in Finland could reverse-engineer Apple's bootloaders and make a hardware dongle that jailbreaks phones so that they can use alternative app stores
Apple could easily block this, and in the situation described here of a complete rupture with the US, they would no longer operate and sell phones in the EU. If Google decided to do the same, that essentially leaves Europeans without smartphones. Microsoft could "brick" the rest of the EU's digital infrastructure overnight if they so wished, or were compelled to do so.
This makes the transition described in the article much more difficult. Although likely more urgent, from an European perspective.
What I think most US people don't realise, is this would overnight start the slow but complete collapse of the US and it's economy.
Europe can make alternatives to US tech, and with it's track record it will probably be more open with more legitimate options and less predatory monopolies.
Once that is established with a home grown market of 450m people it will start competing with US in all the other markets.
Let's not forgot how many EU people work for US tech.
I suspect the wheels are in motion for many such transitions away from US dependency, in software and other fields.
Whenever trust is massively breached, and I believe much of the EU feels strongly that the US has breached trust, the natural action is to regroup and then gradually begin figuring out how to not be vulnerable to the same risk again.
If the US continues escalating the Greenland situation I expect that process will speed up massively.
We did have alternatives to US tech, they just lost competition (fair or not) to US companies, and because tech is a winner takes it all industry, they ceased to exist. Should US companies leave EU though, we absolutely are in a position to have our own tech again.
They are either crushed my American monopolies and enforcing US laws abroad, or European companies are bought-out wholesale by American companies. Europe was too scared to enforce their own protectionist schemes because it always upset the US. Europe could be a superpower, if it wanted to.
iPhone chips are largely produced in Arizona, and TSMC's 2nm fabs are scheduled to come online by 2028. 30% of TSMC's global production is schedule to be produced in America.
USA has been strategically re-homing TSMC to the USA mainland for a long time now.
Contrast with the EU which has done nothing to become self-reliant, and really just has no ideas. It is unfortunate.
> First Fab: High-volume production on N4 process technology started in Q4 2024.
> Second Fab: Construction was completed on the fab structure in 2025. Volume production on N3 process technology targeted for 2028.
> Third Fab: In April 2025, TSMC broke ground on the site of the third fab, slated for N2 and A16 process technologies. Targeting volume production by the end of the decade.
> TSMC Arizona will play a crucial role in increasing U.S. production of advanced semiconductor technology and elevate the state of Arizona as an American center of innovation.
> In July 2025, Wei indicated that the company would speed up its production timelines on multiple manufacturing facilities following an additional $100 billion investment in Arizona. He stated that the completion of a "gigafab" cluster totaling six facilities would account for 30 percent of TSMC's 2-nanometer and more advanced capacity semiconductor production within the state.
Creating good smartphone software is not easy. Only Apple has achieved it. Google is close. The rest are so far behind in the race they think they are leading.
Because there was arguably no need for a third option. The current duopoly only exists because it was seen as risk-free, and propping up an alternative was seen as uneconomical.
> Creating good smartphone software is not easy.
Yes, but it's not rocket science either (and even if it were, the EU has both rocket scientists and a space port).
Maybe it's been too long for people to even imagine it, but European companies were fully capable of developing a smartphone OS and running an app certification platform (there were no app stores yet, as the industry was very fragmented) less than two decades ago.
I would argue MS did with windows phone, and Palm and Nokia did too. BlackBerry as well, but less flexibly.
They weren’t commercially successful because of network effects, which I think matter less when your back is against the wall to migrate away from the duopoly.
Android is open source (decreasingly, but still). A reasonable starting point would be forking it and adding replacements for the proprietary Google Play services, app store etc.
Gobally Android also has a much larger market share than Apple. (Yes the US is the opposite, it is an outlier.)
It can be done, but a few things are needed: money. A lot of money. And competent project managers / architects / visionaries.
The money problem is the sticking point; even if you can find investors, if you don't have guarantees of sales you're boned. Actually, this is the other problem: Android is not profitable per se, you don't get an "android license fee" on your bill if you buy a new phone. It's the tie-in with Google's services (default search engine with ads, app store, etc) that make it work. And even without those, Google is a company that originally made money off of ads on webpages, they could do whatever they want outside of that because their primary source of income was so reliable.
Android is a solid basis for a homegrown solution. We just never had the need to build one just yet. What Google and Apple built was convenient. But it's not as irreplaceable as some might think.
That is not a problem of Android but of the hardware and funnily enough much of that is not produced in the US. I think we could cobble together a working phone in a short time and iterate upon that if it is necessary. Hardware has advanced sufficiently that we don't need the latest greatest to have an okay experience.
Technically, sure, but as long as the US dollar is the 'world reserve currency' any attempt to do so that would threaten to be a success can be easily 'bought out' by the US just by creating a few more bits on a ledger.
USD is about 2/3 of foreign exchange reserves. Which definitely is the lion's share. However, the more the US prattles about, the lower that ratio will become, the less soft power the US has.
It’s rapidly declining as the world reserve. Thats part of the over 10% decline in the value of the dollar last year (it still amazes me that those prattling on about the rise in the S&P last year dont realize that of the 16% increase, over 10% was eaten up by the USD falling, so the real increase was closer to 6% which is remarkably average if not below average, when considering higher than normal inflation).
The other part that Americans aren’t seeing coming is a reduction in the reduced willingness of the rest of rhe world to finance American debt. The last few rounds have seen a much higher percentage of corporate debt purchases as opposed to sovereign purchases. Which is fine for now, but if a slowdown hits, corporate purchases of U.S. debt will reduce in a way sovereign purchases never did (in fact those tend to increase).
That would severely impact the ability of the Fed to goose a slowing economy by lowering interest rates.
It's only one of many; I think (armchair gut feeling etc, not an economist) that the euro was one of the best economic decisions in recent history. Unless Europe falls apart - which currently many outside forces are trying to achieve - the euro will remain one of the safest currencies to use.
1) The moment US decides to completely exit EU and brick their devices, China will step in and provide the alternatives. Or it will trigger some tech arms race inside Europe, and we will see European providers rise up.
2) US Tech companies can't afford to pull out. They might do some short-lived performative black-outs to show European customers how dependent they are, and they will for sure run to the government, who in turn will start trade wars. But in the end they simply can't afford to just pull out completely.
As others have mentioned, not only is it a danger to their own revenue, but the US stock market is being carried by these tech companies.
The US has always profited the most from providing products / services which are better and cheaper to Europe, to such a degree that organic growth has been naturally suppressed.
> 2) US Tech companies can't afford to pull out. They might do some short-lived performative black-outs to show European customers how dependent they are, and they will for sure run to the government, who in turn will start trade wars. But in the end they simply can't afford to just pull out completely.
Yep, case and point is current situation in Russia, where US companies "pulled" out due to sanctions, but not really.
Sure this could happen but that seems like a very last resort. The only reason the US economy is still competitive is tech stocks so cutting off ~35% of your income seem like it would cause a lot of downstream effects
For security quality reasons, I hope Apple have made that suggestion impossible, but for law enforcement reasons I doubt it and anticipate a backdoor exists.
Google wouldn't block enough of Android to matter: Core is open source, EU forks/alternatives are likely already under development, and even if not a complete rupture with the US also likely means rapidly getting comfortable with China despite everything, and China already have Android forks.
However, Google docs/sheets/etc are a common business alternative to Microsoft, and therefore such a transatlantic rupture also cuts that. FWIW, I've never encountered a business using LibreOffice etc.
Security is a fallacy here because, being a US company, it is technically not secured by default as it has backdoors (or one has to assume it has backdoors and those cannot even be audited).
Then it is just about the sense of security which is based on the threat model you consider threatening to you.
You do not chose who you are the enemy of though and in fascist countries with no regards to the rule of law like the USA, this becomes a fairly important threat model to take into account.
Libreoffice is used quite a bit in administrations across EU.
I would expect more stickiness to microsoft caused by legacy applications that requires windows to run rather than office.
ASML is considered 'strategic' and its freedom to operate is significantly constrained by international politics, specifically US-led efforts to limit China's access to advanced semiconductor technology. The Dutch government, under pressure from the United States, has implemented and tightened export license requirements for various ASML products destined for China, including both advanced EUV and some older-generation DUV machines. These controls are tied to US export administration regulations, as some components and underlying technology in ASML machines are of US origin, giving the US jurisdiction. The company must comply with US law, which has led to actions such as rejecting job applications from nationals of sanctioned countries.
Besides this, do you really think ASML's major shareholders, Capital Research and Management Company, Blackrock, Vanguard, would support a board that would consider 'bricking' US machines?
there is a reason why US can force ASML to stop selling its machine to China
learn EUV technology history first, it originated from US department of energy research program, because of cost Gov decided to halt it but multiple private company take over the development but US Gov still hold a patent/license from that technology
"Which are enforced by international agreements. At some point those don't matter anymore either"
and whose in charge of international agreements between US and Netherlands ??? I think you mix up between who in power here
also stop acting like ASML netherland produce the EUV machine, its not lol
ASML US branch actually produce more parts, so if EU want to cut off the US then they also self sabotage themselves since 50%+ machine for Giant EUV is happening at US soil
If putin, then trump and their people agreed on that we are no longer living in a rule based world, patents, licences etc. would hold little value. Realpolitik of the globe will kick everyone's ass.
US let Russia take a chunk of ukraine and China and Russia to certain extend let US control its own hemisphere
just eat up that some major power always playing geo-politic war games that exert its influences
they maybe have a friction and want to mess with each other but the domain of influence is always there and they generally dont want to cross the line for it
Given this thread, imagine a complete rupture of relations between US and EU such that US orders US companies to stop supplying hardware or services to EU.
In this scenario, I don't think it is correct to consider normal business relations, rather "is it *materially* possible?"
? EUV lithography was an international undertaking, some US research projects sure, but also Japanese (Hiroo Kinoshita, 80's), Russian (Georgiy Vaschenko, who is on all the patents for the 13.5 nm laser used (https://patents.google.com/?inventor=Georgiy+Vaschenko)), Dutch (of course), etc.
It's kind of ironic to think of a company as state controlled by the US given how anti-state-controlled the US can be when it comes to companies. ASML has majority shareholders in US companies like Intel and co, but that doesn't mean the US government has a say in it.
I mean they do because of international politics - just like the Dutch government has a say in things - but still.
> Apple could easily block this, and in the situation described here of a complete rupture with the US, they would no longer operate and sell phones in the EU. If Google decided to do the same, that essentially leaves Europeans without smartphones. Microsoft could "brick" the rest of the EU's digital infrastructure overnight if they so wished, or were compelled to do so.
All the more reasons to go scorched earth on American companies. There's a point in every blackmail where the only way forward is through.
I think this is partly why the EU is trying to invest in native semiconductor technologies/companies Which is strange, because usually the EU doesn't make strategic moves like this (compare it to China, where nearly every thing it does is strategic).
The idea of Apple and/or Google just stop selling phones in the EU seems ... unlikely. A quick search tells me something between a fourth and a third of Apple revenue is in the EU, you really think they'd just stop selling in the EU?
Gotta also remember, that even if the EU would allow this, your average phone user would not use it. Just like your average phone user doesn't root their android smartphone or installs Lineage/Graphene/eOS/whatever. Even if it were made easier (or possible) for more phones, the vast majority would not use it and Apple and Google would still make a lot of money.
But in the proposed scenario, there wouldn’t be any technical hurdles or effort required by the phone’s owner - you could have this be a service offered by businesses. Maybe even the place that sells the phone would pre-jailbreak it for you.
Not only that, but also... only a small percentage of people actually wants this and / or would do this, the vast majority of consumers doesn't mess with their stuff even if they could.
Same with the alternative app store support, it reminds me of when the EU mandated Microsoft to offer a Windows without Media Player. It didn't sell, because consumers don't actually care much - Media Player wasn't obnoxiously in the way.
In case bricks will be thrown, the response from the receiving party will likely skew to the argument presented here--circumvention of technical locks.
You'd catch the brick, sand it and repurpose so it'll fit your home.
Apple could easily block this, and in the situation described here of a complete rupture with the US, they would no longer operate and sell phones in the EU. If Google decided to do the same, that essentially leaves Europeans without smartphones. Microsoft could "brick" the rest of the EU's digital infrastructure overnight if they so wished, or were compelled to do so.
This makes the transition described in the article much more difficult. Although likely more urgent, from an European perspective.