this post was submitted on 19 Jan 2026
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Yes, China has very purposefully put itself at the forefront of the first technological revolution of the 21st century and done this at multiple levels (solar panel production, battery tech, EVs)
Meanwhile the American elites have decided that 19th century technology is were they want to be. Well, that and dead ending killing the country's lead in the Tech revolution by going down a branch with no future in the form of LLMs and making everybody lose trust in keeping their data in anything owned by American companies.
And, of course, the crooked politicians here in Europe are actually following America more than China in this.
That is much less the case then it might appear. Out of the Top10 largest EV makers three are European(Volkswagen, BMW and Stellantis). When you look at wind, Europe has a few of the largest companies in the world. Europe is also basically the only place even attempting to compete with China in batteries, since Trump cut US support for that industry. There are plenty of more niche industries as well, in which Europe has some very strong companies.
It is a lot more complex than "Europe is actually following America more than China in this".
Europe have very limited lithium deposits compared to China. Europe is trying to be as self sustaining as possible, especially now that the US have shown themselves to be a highly unreliable partner.
So exchanging one dependency for another is a poor lateral move at best.
You can't just start digging up the entire ground and make car batteries out of all lithium you find.
European universities all over are researching alternative battery technology that doesn't rely as much on lithium.
Russia has alot of gas
Yeah, well, there's no Oil in Europe either, so ICE cars are even worse for a self-sustaining Europe (at least Lithum is only consumed once for an EV car, whilst Oil is consumed all the time for ICE cars)
If Europe can constantly source Oil from abroad to keep ICE cars going, I'm sure it can also source (a far lower quantity of) Lithium from abroad to make cars that can then run on electric power produced right here in Europe.
Your entire "argument" is one big cherry picked excuse.
C'mon. I'm a dumb American, but even I know without looking it up about Norway's vast petroleum production as well as the North Sea petroleum platforms off the coast of Scotland.
Confused European noises
https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/crude-oil-production?continent=europe
None of that is true. There is lithium everywhere, Germany just found 45 million tonnes of it. People have been digging up the entire ground for oil for 200 years.
You can research all you want, but the periodic table is not changing, and Chinese R&D is decades ahead of the West.
Erm you really shouldn't trust American companies with your data https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act
Well informed people knew that it wasn't safe already for quite a while.
Most people did not, most companies did not, most public institutions either did not or could make believed they did not.
That's changing (as are lots of other things) because Trump is being far more loud about how Europe is an adversary of America than previous administrations (it was too for Democrats, though only on business and trade terms)
There was quite a lot of fighting against treating America as a safe haven for the data of Europeans from people in the know in Tech and IT Security in Europe but we lost, but now crooked politicians can't make believe America or American companies are safe for the data of Europeans anymore.