Europe will absolutely build alternatives. They'll bicker for some time, but in the end, they build. To Americans it looks like they don't but they do. Quality of life, life expectancy, and many factors have outpaced US in the last few years. The tech industry in the US is still important, but the importance will start waning soon.

  Starshield systems are owned and controlled by the US government. Any limits on speed or usage are decided by the US military and ultimately POTUS. Starlink is a commercial service owned and controlled by SpaceX. Usage of Starlink is limited to civilian or defensive activities and cannot be used for offensive military action, as doing so would be inappropriate for a commercial company.

Isar is working hard on commercial launch capabilities: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/sep/06/german-star...

The decision of the U.S. to shut off intelligence and throttle the military version of Starlink called Starshield to Ukraine.

Ukraine does not use Starshield, only Starlink. Take this article with a grain of salt.

The rumor [0][1] is that both Ukraine and Russia install GPS spoofers as a workaround for geofencing. Another rumor is that Starlink recently updated their software to detect and block such attempts that is based on rapid satellite switch detection by the Starlink terminal that happened if the terminal was moving faster than 160km/h.

[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/10/12/starlink-rus...

[1] https://flasharmy.com.ua/en/vneshnij-gps-dlya-starlink

Pension funds: - U.S. has over 5,000 independent municipal, state, and corporate pension systems that invest aggressively. - EU pension capital is in national funds.

University Endowments: - U.S. has over 800 active endowments (with 130+ exceeding $1 billion) - EU universities are state funded, with little or no endowment funds

Corporate Financing: - U.S. businesses get > 70% of funding from VC, PE, mutual funds - EU companies favor banks

Family Offices: - U.S. system has created over 10,000 single-family offices that invest aggressively - EU has ~2,000

State investment: - U.S. moves .16% of GDP into small business with no equity ownership -- free market VC takes equity - EU moves < .08% of GDP into small business with full equity ownership.

2. They don't have to replace a lot of US tech before the economic impact compounds to effect the US.

Yes, they have increased defense spending but your thread topic says they "just gave them a reason to".

Crying about Musk and declaring what you are going to do on an internet forum may feel good, but it doesn't make it reality.

A Starlink terminal has a detail that reports its location. There is a restriction on location, so if a terminal reports a restricted location, it gets blocked. A terminal may get blocked either because it actually got off the territory or if it the GPS signal was somehow distorted. So all terminals that go into Ukraine are hacked: they get a chip that reports a fixed location. This allows both to fight the distortions and to ignore the restrictions. (For some time this hack allowed use of Starlink on either side; then a white list of terminals came into effect.)

Ukraine never used (maybe didn't have access to) neither the military subsystem, nor the high-speed tariffs (which are way more expensive). The tariffs they use limit the moving speed of a terminal to 100 mph (160 kmph). For some time the limit was not enforced so drones just flew at any speed.

Around the end of 2025 the limit started to get enforced. But initially the technology relied on the data of a GPS chip. Since the terminal was hacked, the GPS chip reported the same data and thus appeared static. The enforcement thus did not work for these terminals. So although the limit was always there and has been technically enforced for a good part of a year everything was quiet as things simply continued to work as they always did.

But it is possible to detect the hack if one checks how frequently a terminal changes the satellite it connects to. This improvement was made recently and rendered the hack unusable on high-speed targets. This is the point we are at.

After sanctions for the ICC members, Europe should be getting off services that allow the US to perform the sanctions. It's very difficult though, with any organizations that continue to offer services to sanctioned individuals risking cutting themselves off from the lucrative US market.

Ironically, Europe might need to learn a few things from Russia.

Either way, everyone loses from this kind of behavior. International cooperation is generally the most efficient way of operating. Looks like that's done for until the new world order is settled, and the US is going to flail wildly for a good decade or two to prevent that from happening (despite the current administration accelerating it, under the impression they can win everything, which is now demonstrably categorically false).

The US wasn’t happy with it and tried to put pressure not to proceed. In hindsight , It’s good that it did got into orbit.

ESA tends to favour French, Italian and German big state owned corporations rather than small start ups. So it will always be a political thing and slow.

There just isn’t a company in the EU that can operate like Elon Musk. Even if there was imagine a European company ceo holding that power. How would they use it, can they be coerced by EU countries? Should such a capability be in private hands at all?

Ukraine does not have access to starshield. They have starlink and they cannot be used for offensive striked. Ukraine hacked the terminals, SpaceX issued a patch.

Is Ukraine an "American partner" ???

https://sota.io/blog/icc-microsoft-opendesk-migration-cloud-...

Many EU agencies, member governments, NGOs, etc. moving to open source alternatives since then.

Not sure what to think of it.

I hope Europe all the best but there is a reason why only US companies dominating those space.

US companies can operate in lost for many years, because they have deep pocket, and also because they have many way to earn profit.

This isn't new. The US has been doing this for decades.

- Amazon LEO (US)

- Qianfan (China)

The European (IRIS) and Canadian (Telesat) satellite systems are relatively small and more specialized.

> In the years ahead, this may cost American companies tens if not hundreds of billions of lost revenue.

The question is, if European governments and businesses conclude they cannot trust non-European software and hardware, what can they do about it?

On the software side, it seems to me the only realistic alternative they have is to build upon existing open-source projects.

On the hardware side, their options seem more limited to me, but I'm not an expert on the subject.

Arianespace has been for decades an extension of the French government, which needed at max several launches per year and didn't give a damn about its market share. As a result, it is seriously behind in reusable rocket development. The space port in Kourou may be the most underused space port in the world, even though its location is unbeatable.

I am not sure if this gap can be closed. Maybe some of the smaller startups like Isar Aerospace can do it, but the giants are ossified Molochs. Not that Boeing is any better, ever since absorbing MacDonnell Douglas and its pathological management structure.

Make sure you guys also make your own European-only version of the internet, too, so the rest of us (us as in the rest of the world) can stop seeing European-centric virtue signalling spam that none of us cares about. And make sure you pass bloc-wide legislation limiting all Europeans to using only that European version of the internet (this part is important).

Sincerely,

-a non-American

LEO satellites could've been deployed by other satellite providers but they wanted to gouge regular customers and live off of large gvt / telecom contracts till starlink disrupted their model via innovator's dilemma.

Europe etc could easily deploy their own constellation of LEO satellites.

1) Rubio saying that the Iran war was basically won.

2) Thiel saying that the US should not have started the Iran war!

3) Musk being tough on Ukraine yet again.

4) Trump saying that Ukraine won't get Patriots (of which there is actually a shortage anyway).

This is all election rhetoric so MAGA goes to the voting booths. It is literally the same theater as before the 2024 presidential elections. Watch what happens after the elections.

The same is true of Chinese technology, and if anyone thinks China isn't already embedding those kinds of capabilities in consumer goods & infrastructure hardware as well as mil hardware, I'd like to talk to you about some oceanfront property in Kansas I might have for sale.

And to all those who would immediately comment "that's a nonsense accusation, they would never do that" or "that's a biased/racist/nationalist accusation": NO, just look at the reality of what has already been found, I'm not accusing only China - everyone does it, and mostly, you are EXACTLY the same people who didn't understand the threat from US tech companies until Elon actually pulled the switch.

As in the cryptocoin "Not your keys, not your coins", this is:

"Not your tech stack, not your sovereignty"

The EU REALLY needs to step up and build their own tech stack.

Looks like it is starting to happen, and Elon just gave them the most solid reason. This will cost US tech and mil giants $$trillions. Or, they will have to go back to building systems that verifiably have no external control.

Fuck that obnoxious wanker.

Elon Musk Just Gave Europe a Reason to Replace American Technology

Should be "Elon Musk Just Gave Europe yet another Reason to Replace American Technology"

Elon Musk Just Gave Europe *Another* Reason to Replace American Technology

Fixed that for you

He threatens their power and politics.

He stopped being their green-tech hero the moment he bought Twitter, cut the censorship they liked, and backed Trump. Left-leaning newsrooms treat that as betrayal. X lets ordinary people bypass them. “You are the media now” is an existential threat to outlets whose business depends on controlling the narrative.

He hammers their credibility daily (calling them propaganda, highlighting their collapsed trust ratings). They retaliate with wall-to-wall negative framing.

Studies show it: ~96% negative coverage on major network evening news in 2025—worse than Trump. Same events get friendly treatment on the right.

Money they probably don't have.

The next president will get elected, and then we'll go back to being best buddies with the US, including using their tech.

Reminds me of this article. Everyone knows that Europeans could compete, and the world stage would welcome it, but they have put themselves into a bind where taking back any social service or loosening regulation and allowing markets to operate would take their air of superiority over stupid Americans and they would rather kill off any chance at becoming world technology players than that. Also it is just political and cultural suicide, ask Paris right now.

The only thing they can do these days is imposing new regulations of bottle caps. They turned themselves into the laughing stock of the all world: willingly.