If the US wants to invade Europe it can, there is no point in trying to outspend them.

However they struggled to occupy Afghanistan that spends a fraction of the money the US does, I think they’d have trouble holding Europe.

Even with those numbers, Europe can match Russia (400 < 183 UKR, 97 DE, 91 FR, 85 UK) or even China (570 < UKR,DE,FR,UK,PO 62, IT 61) without factoring in other European countries that spend at least 200B more in that list alone.

So even by those numbers in the only scenario In which Europe is outspent is if China & Russia attack at the same time, and it seems China has little interest in invading anywhere but Taiwan.

I also don’t really buy those numbers given Russian performance in Ukraine and the fact that China uses their military to provide employment I think they overestimated the military strength of both countries.

Additionally I don’t think anywhere else has the extent of pork barrel spending on the military the US does, so I don’t really believe those in numbers are accurate for PPP for European countries.

Defend from who?

Russia (military budget of 145.9B) can barely invade Ukraine (miltary budget of 28.4B), meanwhile any 2 out of Germany (86B), UK (81B) & France (64B) can match Russia without even counting the rest of Europe.

The combined spend of just DE, UK & FR (231B) is inline with China’s (235B), again without the rest of Europe that has Italy (35B), Poland (28.4B), Netherlands (23.4B), Spain (19.4B), Sweeden (12B) & Norway (10B) which can more or less match Russian spending (128B) especially if you include Ukraine.

Europe alone basically spends the same amount as Russia & China combined, so unless the proposed attacker is the United States, the idea that European military budgets need to increase is ridiculous!

There is also a lot to be said for smaller better trained forces vs large meat grinders, especially in modern warfare, the scale of grift and job creation in US, Russian & Chinese armies is significantly larger than the equivalent in European armies.

And that’s all ignoring the nukes.

if people can’t say “fuck” or “lick the outlet” anymore.

People can say fuck though, I’m not sure why people claim Internet is politically correct now just because we outgrew SomethingAwful & 4chan (both sites that still exist).

show the code or go fuck yourself

Except that’s not really true, you can look at the Linux kernel for example multiple out of tree forks existed for years because of personal beefs not coding skills (it doesn’t matter how good your tail-packing filesystem or scheduler is, if you’re an asshole it won’t get merged).

Interference by China a serious issue, and one is increasingly threatening democratic values in the West.

We are arming a genocide, our former PM is joining a “peace” board that’s committed to ethnic cleansing, there are 100s if not thousands of influence groups operating across the UK in favor of said genocide, and you want me to be scared of China?

It’s illegal to say you support Palestine Action! and you’re worried about threatening democratic values?

Not that I know of even one.

We spend £4-5B on MI6 and you don’t think we have any influence operations in China? What are we spending the money on?

Tens of thousands of Chinese students studying overseas are required to sign a document pledging loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party

Oh boy do I have news for you about Americans.

There are tons of reports of Chinese students and scholars stealing high-tech military technologies

1. Sure there are
2. Who cares
3. “high-tech military technologies” like what the military-grade encryption used by Lemmy?

I don’t know of similar influence operations from any Western country in China.

That’s because you’re very incurious about what the UK, US & Israel do.

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

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

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

I’m no fan of the CCP but these hysterical times articles about China doing the same shit every nation state does are ridiculous. Sure all nation states should be abolished but fixating on China is ridiculous.

beautiful place where engineers and geeks lived in harmony.

The peaceful bliss of usenet forums & the nice decorum of mailing lists, lol. The mythical peaceful Internet has never existed.

Brian Herbert/Dune fans in general: 😬

Audio routing is not usually handled by apps, but by the distro itself, this sounds like an Fedora/Arch problem, what Fedora spin are you using?

Pretty sure they have the resources, they’re valued at $10B

I got no love for the CCP but these articles are getting crazy, how many does Israel have, or how many do we have in China?

Outbound firewall and SMAC protections.

If you compromise my server you’ll struggle to phone home without manual intervention, which is good enough to stop botnets.

You can’t leave me hanging, what subculture?

Maybe with a Manc accent with makes him look slightly less professional.

85% of the UK isn’t London, much of which prefer a Manc accent to a London one.

THIS, organize for things you can change.

And so some pointless but fun things too, I bike marshal at PSL/lib rallies, not really going to change anything but it is fun to do.

Yeah trading one fascist for another sure is a choice.

Effect change in your country, start local!

Nah bro, if we chant “one solution, revolution” one more time we’ll totally stop the genocide.

Anyone who drinks more than me, everyone who drinks less than me is a lightweight though!

Tankies: US empire is bad

Also Tankies: it’s ok for the US to negotiate the future of Ukraine away

Mosad like ISIS take credit for everything, because it induces a paranoia in their enemies.

Pretending nobody in Iran has agency except Mosad agencies is just helping Mosad, great job.