White House administration set to be paid $10B for brokering TikTok deal
theguardian.comThis racketeering can serve as a model for tech independence across the globe. Everyone can force Meta/Google/twitter to sell their local businesses to local owners and the government get a payout.
I can’t believe the US took this route. EU is still trying to force open markets and rules based system but the future is gang rule.
Not really. This only works because the US market is valuable. A tech company can simply leave the market rather than sell. Just like tiktok would have been free to shut down in the USA.
The USA market belongs to the US, though, and other people are free to play by the rules or simply leave.
Have you looked at the financial reports of those companies recently? US is the largest revenue stream but nowhere dominant.
USA is headed to have companies that used to serve 3-5 billion people markets to shrink to 0.35 billion market. US also doesn’t produce that much, unlike EU and China so when this system breaks those 0.35 billion people aren’t going to be as valuable as today.
Open regime change calls, attempts to manipulate elections, trying to start civil wars - it’s brewing.
The software industry is about to be decimated by AI anyway and US isn’t ahead in AI in any meaningful sense. When the status quo shatters there’s a good chance that tech would not be American industry anymore. The hardware too is made in China with European tooling. USA used to have an amazing brand but that’s being destroyed at outstanding pace.
Just like the way tech workers should have revolted against WFH instead of embracing it, the tech capitalist should also revolt against the breaking of the order. Both are extremely short sighted.
> it’s brewing.
Brewing, always brewing. Never measurable results.
> The software industry is about to be decimated by AI anyway and US isn’t ahead in AI in any meaningful sense.
The US has been far ahead, in terms of actual companies being made actually. China has some models, sure, but the EU is nothing. I have never heard less about the EU and their companies than in the last few years.
All talk, no results. Always years away, but never now.
I'm afraid things no longer are going to be the same
Indeed, this time for sure! All that current evidence that we have that shows otherwise? Doesn't matter! The fact that the trends are actually going the opposite, meaning that the USA is actually pulling out even further ahead? That doesn't count!
> US also doesn’t produce that much, unlike EU and China
China OK. But a criticism we hear all the time inside the EU is that manufacturing is gone and that the number one export of the number one economy in the EU --that'd be cars from Germany-- are taking a serious beat up atm.
> The software industry is about to be decimated by AI anyway and US isn’t ahead in AI in any meaningful sense.
How is it not? China has some models but it's basically US, US, and more US: Google, Anthropic, OpenAI, xAI... With chips made by NVidia and Google. So US and still more US. Is that not basically it?
The EU loves to posture a lot but until I see that turd that Windows is kicked out of all the EU institutions and Microsoft Office replaced for good by something else, I'm not believing it.
> USA used to have an amazing brand but that’s being destroyed at outstanding pace.
USA has 35 of the 50 biggest companies in the world ranked by market cap. China has 6 and the EU has... One! (Switzerland ain't the EU). One company for the EU in the top 50: that's ASML and even that is very mainly US owned.
I think you give the EU way too much credit and the US way too little.
Comparing country by market cap will always favours the US while oil is traded in dollars, especially since passive investment is so big and dollar debt is so big. You ought to compare them on efficiency and/or profitability.
If you really want to compare the biggest companies while including investors preferences (which mechanically favours the US, but it's fine in your case, your point is about US advantages, and the dollar is a big one), to account for AI and 'tech' (Tesla), EV/EBITDA is probably what you're looking for
A bribe by any other name would smell as foul.
edit to tone down the accusatory tone of my previous comment. In retrospect, the post was likely derailed due to a subthread discussion that appears to have been flagged.
Interesting in the sense that similar things happen all the time- stories get posted and either get no traction or else somebody starts a boisterous subthread with flags and downvotes that results in the HN algo downgrading "arguing".
FWiW it's currently #2 on https://hckrnews.com/ .. but that's chronology of submissions with votes, unweighted by comment numbers / arguments.
“JD Vance has said the US version of TikTok is valued at about $14bn, meaning the fee taken by the government is closer to 70% of the deal.”