Apparently France may use its nukes to protect Europe, according to The Telegraph (whether they’re right, I don’t know). Maybe Europe together should develop a joint nuclear weapons program. Then British nukes wouldn’t have to depend on US missiles anymore.
I think the 3% target is intended for the next parliament though. The target he wants to hit in this parliament is 2.5% from 2027 onwards.
I guess raising defence spending makes sense so that the UK can better protect itself from threats like Russia.
HMD could be mentioned in electronics, they’re Finnish and they make smartphones. The CPUs in some of their phones are from Unisoc who are Chinese; maybe some people would want to know that. In their other phones they use Qualcomm CPUs, and Qualcomm are American.
Also there are more alternatives to American goods/services outside of Europe, e.g. goods/services from places like Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia, Canada, New Zealand.
E.g. South Korean cars (Hyundai and Kia) or Taiwanese electronics (Asus, Acer, MSI).
What’s dim is refusing to recognise that this war was started by Russia. Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014, then increased their invasion in 2022. Ukraine asked the West for military help so the West provided military help.
Maybe Ukraine should have been allowed to join NATO years ago when they asked, and then they might not have been invaded.
NATO has already been on Russia’s borders - the Baltics and Poland were already NATO members that bordered Russia.
I think the invasion of Ukraine was indeed a conquest for land. John McCain over 10 years ago predicted that Putin wanted to grab a “land bridge” between mainland Russia and Crimea:
proxy war
So you think Russia waged this war just to stick it to the West? To me it looks like a war of conquest - Russia invaded so they could take land.
I guess I think of it like bugging a phone. The technology for bugging phones has been around for a long time, but that doesn’t mean the authorities are bugging everybody’s phones all the time. Even if they can theoretically listen to everyone’s conversations, that doesn’t mean they are always listening. There would be too many conversations to listen to.
Maybe only the biggest companies should be required to be able to decrypt certain messages if a court warrant is produced. Privacy fans could use services exempt from this requirement, like Signal. But there are laypeople who just use iMessage because it’s the default, and you could catch criminals sending bad stuff over iMessage.
I think there are valid concerns on both sides of the argument… but I am just imagining if you have a group of violent people planning an attack over iMessage, I want law enforcement to be able to read those messages.
I’m not comparing privacy fans to paedophiles and terrorists, that’s not what I mean. What I mean is that I want serious criminals to be caught.
I think properly private technology is good to protect yourself from an authoritarian government for example. You could use something like Signal for messaging (I’ve not used it, but apparently it’s good).
But the big popular platforms like WhatsApp and iMessage, which many laypeople use just because they’re popular - on those platforms I think it makes sense for law enforcement to be able to access messages, but only in certain circumstances. So maybe Apple could keep the encryption key and they could decrypt someone’s messages if a court warrant is issued.
I’m not saying end-to-end encryption should be entirely outlawed. Hopefully services like Signal would still exist. Sure, some criminals might jump to those platforms, but you could still catch some at least, who use big services like iMessage.
Controversial opinion: maybe it’s a good thing to allow law enforcement to access communications when necessary (e.g. with a court warrant)
Do we want serious criminals like terrorists and paedophiles to be able to plan their crimes with impunity?
The same government that has lied about so many things that I have lost count
Evidence? Do you think the US plotted and funded the Crocus City Hall attack for instance?