No, adequate reactions and preparations before war are building up the industrial base, securing energy and primary production, stockpiling arms, planes, subs, drones, recruiting and training military, building fortifications to defend invasion routes, building up air defenses around critical infrastructure.
Spending 2% of GDP on the military and locking people up for hurting feelings on with facebook posts, while buying Russian gas and trying to sell China EUV chip technology, and groveling to sell their yachts and football clubs and mansions to Russian and other oligarchs is not preparation for war.
Russia and China are threats, and the European ruling class are not taking those threats seriously. Quite the opposite actually they had been enabling and appeasing them and selling out their countries to help their friends and themselves get rich. While also peddling their lies about how those threats require these draconian domestic policies.
If there was real serious concern for such threats and real action taken, it would have been foremost to try to prevent real or perceived need for strong alliances between Russia and China. Instead, all actions of the past 5-10 years have been to drive those two countries closer together, making the threat much bigger. The common people do not need to be spied on and monitored and censored, it's not that there is exactly zero threat that could be mitigated or intelligence that could be gathered from doing such things, it is that it is such a minuscule non-issue compared to the gargantuan one next to it of treasonous politicians, intelligence agencies, bureaucrats, corporate bosses - "the ruling class" when it comes to dealings with adversaries.
> adequate reactions and preparations before war are building up the industrial base, securing energy and primary production, stockpiling arms, planes, subs, drones, recruiting and training military, building fortifications to defend invasion routes, building up air defenses around critical infrastructure
Which most European states are doing and have been doing since 2014 (eg. Poland, Romania).
But counterespionage is equally critical.
> trying to sell China EUV chip technology
1. Said EUV technology is develoepd and manufactured by a US DoE JV which ASML only has nominal control over
2. It was recently alleged that ASML offered to sell EUV tech to China while trojaning offered tech to give western intel visibility [0]
> While also peddling their lies about how those threats require these draconian domestic policies.
A Kantian-esque rules based order only works when all players choose to operate under said rules. Weaponizing asylum seeking, exit visas, criminal networks, and wanton sabotage require a level of visibility that will be viewed as draconian.
And to be brutally honest, this "rules based" status quo is only came to fruition in the 2000s. Western European (and it's only soft Gen X and Millenial techie Western Europeans who are complaining) intelligence agencies were much more draconian until the late 2000s.
> would have been foremost to try to prevent real or perceived need for strong alliances between Russia and China. Instead, all actions of the past 5-10 years have been to drive those two countries closer together, making the threat much bigger
If forced to choose between the entirety of the EU (which is a loose confederation with individual nation states continuing to hold soverignity) or a nuclear armed neighbor with significant resources and technology exports, China would always choose the latter - even for the simple fact that it gives China a pressure point against Vietnam, North Korea, and India, all of whom try to leverage Russian ties against China to develop strategic autonomy.
> The common people do not need to be spied on and monitored and censored, it's not that there is exactly zero threat that could be mitigated or intelligence that could be gathered from doing such things, it is that it is such a minuscule non-issue compared to the gargantuan one next to it of treasonous politicians, intelligence agencies, bureaucrats, corporate bosses - "the ruling class" when it comes to dealings with adversaries.
Legally speaking in European countries, there is no difference between "common people" and "the ruling class". The only way to dragnet the "ruling class" is through such measures.
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Frankly, this is a return to the pre-2010s norms around national security within most European states. And techies on HN and Reddit do not matter. Most of you Western Europeans would desert your home countries the moment s### got real, just like a significant portion of Ukrainian and Russian techies.
Techies who earn significantly more than most other citizens of their countries acting as if they are not part of the "capital class" is just class fetishization.
> No they haven't. It's just not what the build up to to war looks like. At all
Depends European state to state. For example in 2018 [0][1], most Eastern states were spending close enough to what was needed.
The biggest laggard remained Germany due to constitutional issues, but even they along with other Western European nations have gotten back on track following the 2022 escalation by Russia [2]
> Broadly spying on your own citizens is not "counterespionage"
Dragnets absolutely are. Every piece of intelligence matters.
> Spying on your own citizens without any real military or economic preparation for war is proof that the former was not motivated by threat of war
Yet the dramatic rise in defense expenditures across Europe after 2022 and my own personal experience working with people in this space has shown a mixture of both.
I am a major critic of Western Europe's failure of preparation, but the changes that have happened in the past 3 years are massive. And every major and regional power is in the midst of a massive rearmament.
A major conventional war will happen in the next 5 years, and everyone is in the midst of preparation for that.
No it doesn't because the claim was that most of them have prepared for war. Most have not.
> Dragnets absolutely are. Every piece of intelligence matters.
This isn't, and it's not even marketed as such because that would be too patently ridiculous. It's sold on the lie of keeping children safe.
> Yet the dramatic rise in defense expenditures across Europe after 2022 and my own personal experience working with people in this space has shown a mixture of both.
There is no dramatic expenditure rise which indicates a build up for war across most of Europe. It's gone up a few points across the EU over many years and has just now barely breached the global average.
The claim was that this is justified because it is an adequate preparation for war, and preparations are being made for war, and therefore it is being done to prepare for war and is good.
None of those things are true. At best they're wild conjecture which are at odds with other facts. They are not an adequate preparation for war. Preparations for war are not being made. And they are not being done to prepare for a war.
> A major conventional war will happen in the next 5 years, and everyone is in the midst of preparation for that.
Almost no countries in Europe are preparing for invasion. If anything they are slightly upping deterrence factor, but they are not behaving though they fear being invaded, nor do they have any serious capability to participate in a major conventional war outside their borders, which is likely to involve China and be centered in the Pacific.
Spending 2% of GDP on the military and locking people up for hurting feelings on with facebook posts, while buying Russian gas and trying to sell China EUV chip technology, and groveling to sell their yachts and football clubs and mansions to Russian and other oligarchs is not preparation for war.
Russia and China are threats, and the European ruling class are not taking those threats seriously. Quite the opposite actually they had been enabling and appeasing them and selling out their countries to help their friends and themselves get rich. While also peddling their lies about how those threats require these draconian domestic policies.
If there was real serious concern for such threats and real action taken, it would have been foremost to try to prevent real or perceived need for strong alliances between Russia and China. Instead, all actions of the past 5-10 years have been to drive those two countries closer together, making the threat much bigger. The common people do not need to be spied on and monitored and censored, it's not that there is exactly zero threat that could be mitigated or intelligence that could be gathered from doing such things, it is that it is such a minuscule non-issue compared to the gargantuan one next to it of treasonous politicians, intelligence agencies, bureaucrats, corporate bosses - "the ruling class" when it comes to dealings with adversaries.