What are we witnessesing is the beginning of the end of the post-WW2 rules-based international order. What's truly bizarre is that the US designed this order to benefit themselves and they're the ones destroying it now. NATO is a protection racket to outsource European security but really to sell arms to Europe and give the US effetive control over the European militaries.

Over the years the control has grown ever-more pervasive, such as with the control over banking and international payments. One anecdote of the extent of this influence is that if one European Venmos another European and puts "Cuba" or "Syria" in the memo field, they can have their account flagged or permanently banned [1]. The US gets to decide who can use credit cards and what for, which is something the EU has finally picked up on as an issue [2].

What's clear in all this is that China was completely correct to maintain sovereignty over their tech companies, platforms and data. What the US risks is that the EU is going to follow the China model. That means EU versions of cloud platforms, computing platforms, networking infrastructure and so on. And they'll do it similar to how China did by creating demand. Specifically, the EU will mandate the use of European platforms with all their contracts, the European parliament will pass laws as such for national governments and generally the pressure will increase to wean off of US tech companies.

IMHO this shift is as big a change as the post-1945 world order.

[1]: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/venmo-cuba-sanctions_n_571f80...

[2]:https://europeanbusinessmagazine.com/business/europes-24-tri...