As far as I understand with the smartphone market, Samsung preserves some residual capacity to create its own smartphone OS ecosystem, to keep Google from extracting too much Android rent. That might be a starting point.
Stretching my memory, I do recall that Linux has been a credible alternative for some big systems contracts, but that Microsoft has usually won because it's the path of least resistance. There are plenty of geeks who would do a lot of work to undermine Microsoft if they were given the contract. And a government with spine could use intellectual property legislation to protect Australia's interests rather than the interests of USA companies, as it has repeatedly done, e.g. via AUSFTA. In these challenging times, what once might have seemed impossible, can become conceivable. (Microsoft enjoys its dominance only because of IP laws that effectively grant it a monopoly).
The proposal for a public social media platform would seem to be an excellent one. The software should be easy. The biggest problem would be sieving out hotheads like Advance Australia who are loose with the truth. Any attempt to ban a politically active group however would be a political decision and therefore highly contested. The platform could be restricted to public authorities and registered charities, leaving the ACNC to sieve out bodies that do not have a public interest ethic, but even then some politically disserviceable groups will slip through. How do you differentiate for example between the inoffensive Fabians and Advance Australia? The chief siever could expect a torrent of abuse from the Murdoch press if he or she ever excludes one of the favoured bodies.
I wouldn't overlook the use of taxation legislation. Economists who have worked for decades to remove tariff barriers are now watching their world turn upside down. It might not even be far in the future that any foreign company that doesn't pay 30% company tax here on its profits or simply pay a proportion of its turnover might be automatically banned from trading.
In the past, the US has accepted orders to leave bases in foreign countries with relatively good grace (for example, Subic Bay). I can't imagine that of Trump. OTOH, he will soon be fighting on so many fronts that he might be willing to buy us off. But that presupposes a government in the same subphylum (Vertebrata) as, for example, Ukraine. Our major parties are definitely Annelida
This is, I think, an area where Europe (not just the EU) has the advantage, not least the linguistic advantage, in resisting monoglot stateside tech-bros. I have no detailed idea of how, for instance, Paris, Berlin, Madrid, and Rome intend to stick it to the Orange Messiah on technological issues.
But that they have notions to this end, is highly probable. The likeliest new German chancellor, if the few reports I've seen from Europe can be trusted, seems to be basically an old-fashioned conservative type in the general Franz-Josef Strauss spirit (as I suspect Meloni also will be, if push comes to shove).
Tory anti-Americanism, though largely written out of recent triumphalist books by neocon historians - not to mention by those putative Catholics at Sydney's Campion College who now seem to prefer Gina Rinehart over the 'Woke Palestinian' Virgin Mary - really has been a thing. How much of a thing it was, and could be again, anyone who recalls the Suez and Falklands Wars will appreciate.
I make no Nostradamus-type predictions as to whether or how much it will flare up. Rather, I merely say, 'do not count it out.'
I think the key point here is the government or government supported organisations don't have much chance of outdoing private enterprise during the boom phase of a technology. An official government version of X, or even an open one, would have been a preposterous idea a decade ago. However, after that phase, technological progress slows and you're left with natural monopolies which are now more like utilities than exciting innovations.
But there are a number of utility-type technologies that should be put in public hands, or replicated by governments. In many ways, the government still hasn't really come to terms with the new digital reality, but I think the next decade or two will see this change. First up, it's time for email and search engines to be provided by government. Once upon a time, Google was the only serious player in search. Before that there were a series of leaders in the field, each outdoing the last.
It's worth remembering the point of search - to connect people with information. That is no longer a function served by search, or even really by the world wide web itself. How many recipes for chocolate cake do we need? I mean that question seriously. Maybe 200? I used to make a gluten free beetroot chocolate cake which was moist and delicious. You can make it with zucchini, too. Maybe 500? How many recipes for chocolate cake are there on the internet? Tens of thousands? Hundreds of thousands?
Once upon a time we justified this chaos by arguing it was a sort of free speech marketplace of ideas, where all the chocolate cake recipes compete and through the magic of Google's clever page ranking algorithm, the most popular ones rise to the top. But that's not remotely true. Now, Google returns 203 results for "chocolate cake recipe" before giving up and 383 results for "chocolate cake recipe beetroot". None of it makes sense and none of it really works.
Another area ripe for government intervention is streaming. What is the point of having multiple streaming platforms and their associated apps? The apps are often poor, and those which aren't are merely adequate. Why not have a government commission like the ABC which is responsible for hosting streaming services and vendors can put their videos on there, either on a packaged subscription basis or by individual sale?
It's time for governments to operate in cyberspace just as they do in the physical world, not just through regulation, but through the judicious provision of public services. Of course there will be fiascos, but platforms like Wikipedia and the Fediverse point the way to an internet that is functional.
Develop tech neutral (mental) health policies based on dopamine addiction and subsequent habitual behaviour. Whether gambling, flamewars or twitter-thumb (anticipating likes) you can require minimum delays/latencies or mandatory UI/UX (should be as easy to unsubscribe as to join). Irrelevant whether US, China or little green men from Mars, if they purposefully attempt to create addictive dark patterns, they should be regulated
I see on X that tech bro Jeff Bezos will now dictate what appears on the editorial pages of the Washington Post
"We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets. We’ll cover other topics too of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others. "
It is extraordinary and anti-democratic that a small gaggle of tech billionaires can have so such media power, and in the case of Musk, unelected government power.
As to X itself, I persist with it because many of its best centrist voices haven't migrated to other platforms and I get to see stuff like the Bezos post. But X is undeniably a sewer full of outright Nazis, Nazi adjacent Christian nationalists, MAGA lunatics, Chinese and Russian troll farm bots and useful idiots for same.
After Trumpism is vanquished, there needs to be a congressional hearing and investigation of Congressman Eric Swalwell's claim that Republican politicians fear violence if they vote against Trump, as that is also a step towards totalitarian rule https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/27/republicans-trump-threats
And Musk's claim noted in the linked article that he will use his money to oust non-compliant Republicans is yet more evidence that hugely concentrated wealth is a threat to democracy.
US dominance in IT is in software and services. Upstream, processor design is dominated by the ARM ecosystem, managed and mostly owned by a British IP company with no physical products. The benevolent global monopoly is weaker than it was, as the biggest customers – Apple, Amazon, Nvidia, Qualcomm, Samsung – have bought architectural licenses allowing them to design their own optimised chips using the ARM instruction set. There are thousands of smaller customers who pay for a standard use licenses, with a low fee per core of a few cents. With rising economic nationalism, an American takeover of ARM is now very unlikely.
The other constraint on American bullying is that the world’s leading chip foundry is TSMC in Taiwan. In both cases the barriers to entry are enormous, even for the likes of Apple and Google.
An encouraging start, here in the Netherlands.
https://www.voxweb.nl/nieuws/five-dutch-universities-are-experimenting-with-alternative-european-cloud
Merz's win in the German elections also gives me hope that Europe will take a stronger stance against the US techbros. Fingers crossed.
As far as I understand with the smartphone market, Samsung preserves some residual capacity to create its own smartphone OS ecosystem, to keep Google from extracting too much Android rent. That might be a starting point.
Stretching my memory, I do recall that Linux has been a credible alternative for some big systems contracts, but that Microsoft has usually won because it's the path of least resistance. There are plenty of geeks who would do a lot of work to undermine Microsoft if they were given the contract. And a government with spine could use intellectual property legislation to protect Australia's interests rather than the interests of USA companies, as it has repeatedly done, e.g. via AUSFTA. In these challenging times, what once might have seemed impossible, can become conceivable. (Microsoft enjoys its dominance only because of IP laws that effectively grant it a monopoly).
The proposal for a public social media platform would seem to be an excellent one. The software should be easy. The biggest problem would be sieving out hotheads like Advance Australia who are loose with the truth. Any attempt to ban a politically active group however would be a political decision and therefore highly contested. The platform could be restricted to public authorities and registered charities, leaving the ACNC to sieve out bodies that do not have a public interest ethic, but even then some politically disserviceable groups will slip through. How do you differentiate for example between the inoffensive Fabians and Advance Australia? The chief siever could expect a torrent of abuse from the Murdoch press if he or she ever excludes one of the favoured bodies.
I wouldn't overlook the use of taxation legislation. Economists who have worked for decades to remove tariff barriers are now watching their world turn upside down. It might not even be far in the future that any foreign company that doesn't pay 30% company tax here on its profits or simply pay a proportion of its turnover might be automatically banned from trading.
It also seems like a good time to get out of AUKUS.
The best time to get out of AUKUS is yesterday. The second best time is today.
Fantastic idea. If significant government support is required so be it. "Security requirements" can be used to justify millions if not billions.
John, just out of curiosity, what response would you think likely if we told the US to shut down Pine Gap or charged a “rent”?
In the past, the US has accepted orders to leave bases in foreign countries with relatively good grace (for example, Subic Bay). I can't imagine that of Trump. OTOH, he will soon be fighting on so many fronts that he might be willing to buy us off. But that presupposes a government in the same subphylum (Vertebrata) as, for example, Ukraine. Our major parties are definitely Annelida
Thanks John.
So you’re telling me if I planted the L & LNP parties in our garden that they would improve the soil? I’m not convinced
This is, I think, an area where Europe (not just the EU) has the advantage, not least the linguistic advantage, in resisting monoglot stateside tech-bros. I have no detailed idea of how, for instance, Paris, Berlin, Madrid, and Rome intend to stick it to the Orange Messiah on technological issues.
But that they have notions to this end, is highly probable. The likeliest new German chancellor, if the few reports I've seen from Europe can be trusted, seems to be basically an old-fashioned conservative type in the general Franz-Josef Strauss spirit (as I suspect Meloni also will be, if push comes to shove).
Tory anti-Americanism, though largely written out of recent triumphalist books by neocon historians - not to mention by those putative Catholics at Sydney's Campion College who now seem to prefer Gina Rinehart over the 'Woke Palestinian' Virgin Mary - really has been a thing. How much of a thing it was, and could be again, anyone who recalls the Suez and Falklands Wars will appreciate.
I make no Nostradamus-type predictions as to whether or how much it will flare up. Rather, I merely say, 'do not count it out.'
I think the key point here is the government or government supported organisations don't have much chance of outdoing private enterprise during the boom phase of a technology. An official government version of X, or even an open one, would have been a preposterous idea a decade ago. However, after that phase, technological progress slows and you're left with natural monopolies which are now more like utilities than exciting innovations.
But there are a number of utility-type technologies that should be put in public hands, or replicated by governments. In many ways, the government still hasn't really come to terms with the new digital reality, but I think the next decade or two will see this change. First up, it's time for email and search engines to be provided by government. Once upon a time, Google was the only serious player in search. Before that there were a series of leaders in the field, each outdoing the last.
It's worth remembering the point of search - to connect people with information. That is no longer a function served by search, or even really by the world wide web itself. How many recipes for chocolate cake do we need? I mean that question seriously. Maybe 200? I used to make a gluten free beetroot chocolate cake which was moist and delicious. You can make it with zucchini, too. Maybe 500? How many recipes for chocolate cake are there on the internet? Tens of thousands? Hundreds of thousands?
Once upon a time we justified this chaos by arguing it was a sort of free speech marketplace of ideas, where all the chocolate cake recipes compete and through the magic of Google's clever page ranking algorithm, the most popular ones rise to the top. But that's not remotely true. Now, Google returns 203 results for "chocolate cake recipe" before giving up and 383 results for "chocolate cake recipe beetroot". None of it makes sense and none of it really works.
Another area ripe for government intervention is streaming. What is the point of having multiple streaming platforms and their associated apps? The apps are often poor, and those which aren't are merely adequate. Why not have a government commission like the ABC which is responsible for hosting streaming services and vendors can put their videos on there, either on a packaged subscription basis or by individual sale?
It's time for governments to operate in cyberspace just as they do in the physical world, not just through regulation, but through the judicious provision of public services. Of course there will be fiascos, but platforms like Wikipedia and the Fediverse point the way to an internet that is functional.
Develop tech neutral (mental) health policies based on dopamine addiction and subsequent habitual behaviour. Whether gambling, flamewars or twitter-thumb (anticipating likes) you can require minimum delays/latencies or mandatory UI/UX (should be as easy to unsubscribe as to join). Irrelevant whether US, China or little green men from Mars, if they purposefully attempt to create addictive dark patterns, they should be regulated
I see on X that tech bro Jeff Bezos will now dictate what appears on the editorial pages of the Washington Post
"We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets. We’ll cover other topics too of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others. "
It is extraordinary and anti-democratic that a small gaggle of tech billionaires can have so such media power, and in the case of Musk, unelected government power.
As to X itself, I persist with it because many of its best centrist voices haven't migrated to other platforms and I get to see stuff like the Bezos post. But X is undeniably a sewer full of outright Nazis, Nazi adjacent Christian nationalists, MAGA lunatics, Chinese and Russian troll farm bots and useful idiots for same.
Another big step towards totalitarian rule, and we are barely a month into the nightmare
After Trumpism is vanquished, there needs to be a congressional hearing and investigation of Congressman Eric Swalwell's claim that Republican politicians fear violence if they vote against Trump, as that is also a step towards totalitarian rule https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/27/republicans-trump-threats
And Musk's claim noted in the linked article that he will use his money to oust non-compliant Republicans is yet more evidence that hugely concentrated wealth is a threat to democracy.
US dominance in IT is in software and services. Upstream, processor design is dominated by the ARM ecosystem, managed and mostly owned by a British IP company with no physical products. The benevolent global monopoly is weaker than it was, as the biggest customers – Apple, Amazon, Nvidia, Qualcomm, Samsung – have bought architectural licenses allowing them to design their own optimised chips using the ARM instruction set. There are thousands of smaller customers who pay for a standard use licenses, with a low fee per core of a few cents. With rising economic nationalism, an American takeover of ARM is now very unlikely.
The other constraint on American bullying is that the world’s leading chip foundry is TSMC in Taiwan. In both cases the barriers to entry are enormous, even for the likes of Apple and Google.