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Comment by hsuduebc2 | Hacker News Reader

It always surprises me that people only act when a problem becomes undeniable, rather than preventing it in the first place. In a country with a voting system and power structure like US, where a single person can abruptly shift the entire nation's direction, this has always been a security flaw for others. It's the same as relying on Russian gas, people pretend the worst can't happen because it would be harmful to everyone, right up until it does.

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It's a few things but they act in almost every large organization. 1. Valuing everything purely by cost - giving up sovereignty is "cheaper" to do and will only lock you in more as cost goes up, until like you mention there's a tipping point. 2. Seeing support of domestic options as cost rather than investment. This supports issue 1 because it makes it harder to justify the (currently) higher priced domestic alternative. 3. Concrete cost of investing NOW vs possible future cost of fixing an issue later. This is why every app on a long enough time scale becomes 100% tech debt.

Reminder that Russian gas is not a closed topic.

Several European countries are still financing Russia's war economy by buying Russian gas. There is no 100% embargo ... yet.

I see a lot of people discussing this as if we are all running on windmills and nuclear, it is absolutely not the case... yet.

I know, but it's always former Russian colonies that fall for their propaganda—partly because some still see Russia as an "old friend." These countries are also much poorer than those in the West, which is pretty ironic since the Russian gas they get isn’t even that much cheaper. It’s more about having the infrastructure in place and simply being used to living next to the Russians.

Nord Stream 2 is beyond repair—just like Russia’s reputation for the coming decades. There may be trade again in the future, but they will never be the sole supplier again.

> but it's always former Russian colonies that fall for their propaganda—partly because some still see Russia as an "old friend."

The largest importers of Russian gas in the European Union are Germany and Italy, accounting together for almost half of the EU's gas imports from Russia. Other larger Russian gas importers in the European Union are France, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Poland, Austria and Slovakia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia_in_the_European_energy_...

I always think of how people treated Musk after he did the Nazi salute, versus before.

Before, there were all these people saying "Elon Musk is a Nazi" and the response was always "you're overreacting" or "show me where he killed 6 million Jews"

Then he did a Nazi salute. And now, in the minds of the average public (excluding his devoted fans), he's undeniably a Nazi. Just with that one simple gesture.

It seems like you can get away with a lot of bad things as long as you don't telegraph them.

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