In many senses there's hubris in the western* view of China accomplishments: most of what western companies have created has had significant contribution by Chinese scientists or manufacturing, without which those companies would have nothing. If you look at the names of AI researchers there's a strong pattern even if some are currently plying their trade in the west.
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* I hate the term "western" because some "westeners" use it to separated what they think are "civilized" from "uncivilized", hence for them LATAM is not "western" even though everything about LATAM countries is western.
It's worked for a very long time for aircraft.
China has been pushing to build its own aircraft for >23 years. It took 14 years for COMAC to get its first regional jet flying commercial flights on a Chinese airline, and 21 years to get a narrow-body plane flying a commercial flight on a Chinese airline.
If for no technical reasons and purely political, COMAC may still be decades away from being able to fly to most of the world.
Likewise, in ~5 years, China may be able to build Chips that are as good as Nvidia after Nvidia's 90% profit margin - i.e. they are 1/10th as good for the price - but since they can buy them for cost - they're they same price for performance and good enough.
If for purely political reasons, China may never be able to export these chips to most of the world - which limits their scale - which makes it harder to make them cost effective compared to Western chips.
Note that this happens at the same time the US is breaking up its own alliances, so as of this writing, there's no such thing as certainty about politics.
This isn't happening. The US is driving a harder bargain with our allies. No one serious thinks anyone is walking away from alliances with the US.
The question of “can we trust the American government” is now being asked more often. Existing alliances and new potential alliances face that question, whether or not you personally believe that they should trust America.
Even if no concrete actions are being performed with asking that question, the fact that question is even being asked is a major drop from where we were.
Obviously Wall Street would have preferred purchasing from US-listed/owned arms companies, but from the perspective of a military alliance, having well-armed allies is the main point.
It's really hard to argue with Trump's methods if they led to Europe finally spending on their own defense.
From the US perspective, we have been asking ourselves "can we trust Europe's military capacity" for a very long time and the answer (prior to 2025) was: NO.
With Trump on one side and Russia on the other, it seems like the answer has shifted to: MAYBE.
The EU is pumping money into what they call "digital sovereignty" left and right. Germany just cancelled their Microsoft subscriptions and replaced them with self-funded Open Source for Schleswig-Holstein, which is roughly 5% of all government employees. That's one hell of a trial run. Germany's "OpenDesk" and France’s "La Suite numérique" even made into the new "Franco-German Economic Agenda 2025", which self-describes as "bilateral coordination to full swing for a more sovereign Europe".
I mean, the current administration has repeatedly threatened to invade militarily two of its allies. Also, it has repeatedly threatened to not honor military agreements with most others, and both the current president and vice-president have insulted the leaders of several allied countries to their face.
Oh, and if that weren't sufficient, the current admin has unilaterally broken all trade treaties (alongside most intellectual property treaties) it held with its commercial partners.
The EU is slow at it, but it's no accident that everybody is doing their best to move away from US tech and military dependencies.
When the US called its allies to its wars, NATO responded. Now that the rest of NATO is being threatened, the US is playing neutral, trying to see which side will bid highest for their help.
It's "block everything that depends on US clouds", which is a considerable downgrade (because you can't upload all mission parameters to an airplane without going through the cloud, and you can't use self-diagnosis features), but not entirely a kill switch. Close enough, though.
NATO's mutual defense clause has only been activated once: after 9/11, when the United States declared war on the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Out of the 3621 deaths of coalition soldiers, 1160 of them were from nations other than the United States, including 457 from the UK, 159 from Canada, and 90 from France.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalition_casualties_in_Afghan...
Proof of this happening or even having the capability of happening? There is none.
2001 was 24 years ago. A lot has changed since then. Europe's militaries are much degraded and the threats are much enhanced.
On the contrary, his methods are ridiculous. He could have achieved similar ends without kowtowing to Russia, without squandering the opportunity to further weaken Russia’s military capacity, and so on. Something similar applies to pretty much everything else he’s done. He incurs collateral damage on everything even when it’s completely unnecessary to do so. It’s a definitional example of egregious incompetence.
1. https://apnews.com/article/russia-nato-members-borders-airsp...
2. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russian-drone-that-cras...
3. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/lithuania-says-russian-...
Among other events, like drones being spotted near commercial airports.
Are you suggesting repeated airspace intrusions and acts against civilians are merely acts of innocence?
The fact that they are doing this because they don’t trust the US to honor its commitments is a very different proposition from “maybe it’s for the best”.
And if you’re familiar with world war 1 and 2, you might doubt that significant increase in domestic military production is a wholly good thing.
But point stands: it’s an example of formerly-strong alliance that is no longer trusted.