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Comment by babesh | Hacker News Reader

Not going to take sides but Europe does have innovation. It’s just not necessarily commercial or they have been bought out. JetBrains, Minecraft, Python, Linux, HTTP/HTML, ARM, DeepMind.

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Linux isn't a good example. Torvalds abandoned Europe a mere five years into Linux, and has lived in the US ever since. For 80% of the development of Linux, he has been in the US, almost a quarter of a century. His home is in the US, he's an American citizen. He has lived in the US as long as he lived in Europe at this point (except he chose to live in the US, he was born in the Europe and left by choice).

Wouldn't really count the UK as part of continental Europe, i see them more as a part of the anglo sphere(US,UK,AUS and NZ). But wouldn't also say programming language can be claimed by a continent because most are global effort or contributions.

The scenario in my head is what if the US decides to put the same kind of sanction/embargos they have put on Russia, Iran and China how well will the EU handle such a economic/technological warfare, can we in the EU continue to function by flipping a switch and have cyber sovereignty. Because as far as i can see the EU tech sector got colonized by US companies, and i wouldn't be surprised if the same happen with India in 10~20 years.

The US won't probably go as far as to enact sanctions against the EU but rather pressure its leaders to support US against Russia and China, like banning Huawei spyware or commonly applying sanctions. Which we should probably do anyway because its in our common interest.

Not going to take sides but none of those are internet companies.

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