Software and cloud services have entered the infrastructure stage.
I don't think it matters who writes the software. Governments should mandate the infrastructure be hosted and operated locally by people accountable to the host nation (the operators would pay for the software, perhaps a subsiduary or whatever). It should require a Netherlands court to deprive an institute located in the Hague of its infrastructure.
This means bringing "big regulation" like we have for the electrical network (and the physical internet!) to the cloud. It would be tricky to draft since we'd still want to support the millions of small providers who, unlike Microsoft, you wouldn't describe as infrastructure.
While i strongly disagree with the usa's sanctions on the ICC, i'm very surprised that the ICC has to rely on american cloud providers.
It seems like a court, especially one dealing with international crimes where international esponage seems quite likely, should have in-house tech. It seems like being fully independent would be really important. Sort of in the same way i would expect e.g. the eu gov not to be dependent on a foreign cloud provider either (have no idea if they are or not)
That's not the point though. The point is that Microsoft to provide its services should be required to set up a fully local subsidiary and be prepared to lose its control on event of sanctions against that country.
Just off the top of my head, accessing the IRS website (taxes) gets tracked by google. Windows keeps trying to pull everything online. Americans don't get separate apple app stores.
The US and Europe is tightly integrated, this integration can be used as leveraged. Especially, since we've allowed the US to play the bigger brother in most of these relationships.
But you can only use this in a big way once. And all parties have pretty much assumed the US would never use its leverage as Trump has been doing.
The same way we dare invest in the US stock marked, because we're confident the US won't do a Cuba-style nationalization of private assets.
Obviously, the orange man is gambling EU won't decouple from the US. He might be right, this probably isn't big enough.
Decoupling all systems is expensive, it cheaper to wait 4 years.
That said, the orange man did get EU defense investment -- the investments are just not being made in the US.
Sadly, I don't think anyone will decouple, people still laugh at the idea of using LibreOffice.
> Decoupling all systems is expensive, it cheaper to wait 4 years.
People who say this haven't internalized how much shit the US is in. In the absolute best case scenario where there is a fair election and the Democrats retake the federal government, the decisions made over the next 4 years will have harrowing effects throughout the world that will take decades to recover from.
In the most likely case scenario, Republicans will continue trying to expand their fascist power and suppress the judiciary and their stranglehold on Congress so they can effectively remain in power indefinitely.
I can only imagine what's going to happen in 4 years. The current administration has opened a can of worms that is not easily closed. Once you start sending people to torture prisons, once you start defying lawful orders, people are going to be scared that this same power can be used against them.
Imagine what you would do if you thought weakness could leave you no recourse if you were sent to the gulags? How ruthless and self serving would you get?
Imagine thinking the US just started sending people to torture prisons now. We had a worldwide network of black sites just to torture people, destroyed all the videotapes, pardoned all the torturers, and made the person who destroyed the tapes the head of the CIA a few years later.
> once you start defying lawful orders, people are going to be scared that this same power can be used against them.
I feel like people only born yesterday could say this. There has been a bipartisan push for an Executive unfettered by the legislature since 9/11, and extreme partisans just point at each other. You're both right.
I want to see: (1) an open source privacy first web browser engine funded by the EU and (2) EU to mandate interoperability in "chat" and video conferencing applications.
No, I don't want EU tech VC oligarchy. I just want to avoid big tech SaaS regardless of where it's from.
I've been quite happy with smaller local services for a loong time. Started using them in 2004 when I got my first website and aside from short try of gmail when it was still free, always used them.
To me, the real question is in the last sentence of the post: "the question is, however, whether they are enterprise-ready, secure, and fully sovereign"
The ICC is incredibly important, incredibly young and global. Shifting this to europe would not solve the problem.
If the ICC was able to have a contract with a fully sovereign supplier, that would be a whole new can of worms. It would be a matter of time (hours? days?) until a fully sovereign corporation put its profits above its negative impact on people.
More than that, how does an organization funded by a group of nations avoid the budget becoming politicized?
The issue is complex and the silver bullet is hard to find.
> The ICC is incredibly important, incredibly young and global. Shifting this to europe would not solve the problem.
Well it’s incredibly young, but it is neither incredibly important seeing as how the premise of the court is suspect nor global seeing as how substantial portions of the globe have either not signed, not ratified, or withdrew their signature before ratification. I’ll give you “international”.
You’re right though: any possible software vendor is theoretically subject to someone’s sanctions regime. If they want to uphold the independence of their institution, that’s probably more work for an internal IT department.
Well, I’m not a fan of analogies, but kind of, but in addition to asking them to sign up, all the biggest companies with the highest valuations got to sit it out, but retained powers to impose it on smaller companies that aren’t friends of theirs, and to step in and protect their friends from being subject to your hypothetical fair tax treaty.
Not really. The ICC mostly doesn't prosecute heads of states. Recent events are kind of unusual relative to the historical role. Historically ICC mostly went after rebel groups.
Think of the treaty as more of an extradition scheme. Its also a bit of an insurance policy - its an incentive not to commit international crimes against/on territory of member states, because it becomes much harder to evade justice.
There is also an element of symbolism to it, of what type of country you want to be.
The head of the ICC, Karim Khan issued an arrest warrant for Putin in 2023[1], so of course, Russia has issued an arrest warrant for him.
A year goes by, and the government of the world's other large rogue state responded thusly, to the ICC's consideration of arrest warrants for both Netanyahu and Hamas leaders:
> On 24 April 2024, Khan was sent a letter signed by 12 Republican U.S. senators[c] threatening him and other UN jurists and their families with personal consequences if the ICC were to seek an international arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu or other members of the Israeli government. The letter cited the American Service-Members' Protection Act – known informally as "The Hague Invasion Act"[42] – which specifically includes "all means".[43][44] The signatories said they would view any arrest warrant as "a threat not only to Israel's sovereignty, but also to the sovereignty of the United States". They threatened: "Target Israel and we will target you", and that any further action would "end all American support for the ICC" and "exclude [Khan and his associates and employees] and their families from the United States". The letter ended: "You have been warned."[45]
There are EU member states where politicians lobby Congress and the Administration to put their rivals on the Magnitsky list. Europe is in no condition to resist the will of the United States.
I would say the citizens of Europe have greatly benefited from the partnership with the US. I'm not an American by the way.
So after the US (and others) fought for Europe in WW-II. Defended Europe during the cold war (and till today). Took most of the load ($, weapons etc.) in supporting Ukraine against Russia. Now you're going to tell it to f off? And that is somehow in the interest of the citizens?
How many American companies have offices in Europe? How many American products are in your life? Hacker News is based where?
I would agree the partnership needs to evolve as does everything. But in a world that's looking more and more like China-"The West"-India(?) Europe's place is still in the west. That's likely the best thing for the world and for Europeans. And for Americans. Hopefully also including better partnership with the rest of the world as well.
Presidents come and go. Don't get too stuck on Trump.
There is always an argument for that from each country’s, treaty organization’s, and corporation’s perspective: what are we relying on and what laws is it subject to? That cuts across both sides of the Atlantic.
All I’m doing though is pointing out that no European institutions were harmed by this result, and I’ll even add to that that generally the American sanctions regime is often a benefit to our allies; and this type of sanctioning is something we have usually done in concert with our European allies. What’s different this time is that it’s targeting an ICC prosecutor rather than people who are also on the EU’s hit list, namely Putin’s cronies.
It doesn't matter if it is or isn't. The whole point was accountability to each other. That went out the window with the "American Service-Members' Protection Act" (The Hague Invasion Act) [0].
Nothing screams "complicit in genocide" like attacking and cripling the institution investigating such crimes.
I'm surprised there hasn't been more public outrage at what I think is the geopolitical equivalent of having a journalist killed.
It does matter, even excluding America, Russia and the PRC, none of which are signatories, as well as the other non-members: the world is a big place. The ICC has many signatories across the Americas, Asia, Africa and the Pacific. An international institution doesn’t automatically become a European one when America leaves the room.
> Nothing screams "complicit in genocide" like attacking and cripling the institution investigating such crimes.
The law you cited is clear. Don’t touch American service members and American service members won’t touch the court. Reasonable enough given we aren’t party to the court and will not be held subject to its jurisdiction.
I would actually pay money to see that happen, should the opportunity arise.
Jokes aside though, remember that the prior commentator brought in the American Service-Members Protection Act as a weird form of whataboutism. Bringing that up does not transform the ICC into a European court, even if an actual American military intervention of The Hague would not bode well for the integrity of Dutch sovereignty and my advise to the European nations and citizenry that can’t grok the implications of hosting an international political institution is to convince the ICC to relocate itself so the Eurocentric among you stop mistaking it for a European court.
Just goes to show how short-sighted these political decisions have been. Politics shouldn't be wrapping itself around tech, the US is shrugging off a huge market and ally.
Keep the chocolate separate from the artificial sweeteners.
Whatever our deal is with the EU and individual European countries, the ICC is emphatically not an EU nor even a European court. They’re hosted in The Hague, it is not of The Hague in the same way the UN is not of New York.
This distinction is a technicality, given the The Hague Invasion Act signed into law by G.W. Bush. Or to use your example, would a hypothetical attack on the UN building in New York not also be a violation of American sovereignty?
Call me when we’ve invaded The Hague or when someone else invades New York. An international institution that claims members from Asia, Africa and across the Americas doesn’t become a European institution just because America left the room. Japan is actually the largest national contributor to the ICC’s budget.
> Just goes to show how short-sighted these political decisions have been. Politics shouldn't be wrapping itself around tech, the US is shrugging off a huge market and ally.
Which political decision? The one to prosecute a US ally, or the one to sanction the ICC?
When someone decries something as "politics," there's often a problem where the analysis conveniently stops when the blame can be placed on the speaker's disfavored group.
Seems like we shouldn't be using tech to punish a foreign group who's job, at least at face value, is to help the world. If the ICC is doing so much harm to the US, fight legally. That's where the battle should be fought. Not ripping away some guy's email access.
ICJ would be the comparison for international politics. It is all about interpreting treaties and what the duties of various states are in various circumstances.
ICC is about criminal liability of individuals, which sometimes has bearing on international politics but is not intrinsically so.
It isn’t like there are some treaty police that will come along and arrest you for breaking a treaty. It is more like a business contract I think; if you break lots of contracts, people will be less likely to make deals with you.
> If the ICC is doing so much harm to the US, fight legally.
US isn't really a party to all this, so there isn't much they can do legally (to be clear i think americas sanctions are unacceptable). They could file a juridsictional challenge, which some countries did, but legally there isn't a huge amount of ground to stand on for that.
Other than that, the actual legal part doesn't start until (if) the suspects are apprehended. And if it does get to a trial, its going to be the accused lawyers who are going to be fighting it out.
Under international law, the United States is free to regulate it's commerce in any way they wish. If they declare it a crime to do business with the ICC, it's their right. The sanctions are completely legal.
What's legally questionable, is for ICC to claim jurisdiction over Israel - a nation that never signed to or ratified the ICC statue.
> What's legally questionable, is for ICC to claim jurisdiction over Israel - a nation that never signed to or ratified the ICC statue.
They do not claim that.
What they claim:
- palestine is a state (probably the most controversial claim)
- states have the right to punish crimes that happen in their borders regardless of who commits them
- states can delegate that right to other parties
- Palestine delegated that right to the ICC.
Additionally from an international law perspective, there is the idea that some things are preemptorary norms which apply to all states. This includes things like parts of the geneva convention or the genocide convention that define certain crimes. Based on the precedent at nuremburg, an international body can setup a tribunal to punish those crimes even against the will of the state in question. The ICC doesnt use this but its fairly well established doctribe in intl law.
> Based on the precedent at nuremburg, an international body can setup a tribunal to punish those crimes even against the will of the state in question.
You do realize the precedent at Nuremberg (note the spelling), requires that the the capitulation of the party being tried? Famously, at the trial of admiral Dönitz, the defense presented an affidavit from admiral Chester Nimitz, where he confessed to the same crimes Dönitz was being tried for. Dönitz was convicted, but the court declined to try Nimitz because the United States was on the winning side and thus outside of the jurisdiction of the court.
You can't impose a tribunal on a country, without capitulation.
Hold on, that line of reasoning would imply that the Nazis were primarily guilty of being defeated. Are you sure? The idea of ordering people you can't catch to appear before court makes enough sense to me.
Claiming Palestine is a state in its current form is a huge stretch and would probably undermine the rest of the court case.
Is Israel actually supposed to supply food for the independent state of Palestine whose controlling government in Gaza (Hamas) has initiated said war, while the war is ongoing, and where the food is transferred to areas that are not even controlled by Israeli forces?
I don't think that's very common in warfare between states
> Is Israel actually supposed to supply food for the independent state of Palestine whose controlling government in Gaza (Hamas) has initiated said war, while the war is ongoing, and where the food is transferred to areas that are not even controlled by Israeli forces? I don't think that's very common in warfare between states
Under the geneva convention Israel (or any state engaged in war) is expected to do 2 things:
- not unduly hinder aid shipments provided by relief organizations (there are a bunch of details here im glossing over)
- anywhere where they are occupying they are expected to ensure that the civilian population has the neccesities of survival. Providing it themselves if neccesary.
It doesn't matter who started the war, who is right, who is wrong. The rules are for the protection of non combatants, not for the people involved in the war.
That's a rather questionable interpretation of international law, I'm afraid. If a country A wages war on country B, A isn't normally bound by treaties signed by B.
And in any case, even if the ICC's actions weren't questionable, the beauty of international law is that America is free to ban companies from serving the ICC for any reason or for no reason at all.
> Palestine is an ICC signatory; the genocide is happening on Palestine land. ICC has jurisdiction.
While the ICC has juridsiction over criminal acts of genocide comitted on the territory of member states, so far they have not accused anyone of comitting genocide in Palestine.
Its always possible they might add more charges later, but so far they have only accused Israeli leaders of lesser crimes.
> Seems like we shouldn't be using tech to punish a foreign group who's job, at least at face value, is to help the world.
Claims about "helping the world" are highly subjective and often bullshit (see the often-mocked tech company talk about "making the world a better place [by doing awful stuff like shoving targeted ads in people's faces]".
> If the ICC is doing so much harm to the US, fight legally. That's where the battle should be fought. Not ripping away some guy's email access.
What do you mean? Sanctions are "fight[ing] legally," literally.
Sanctions are still the rule of the bigger stick, except the stick is measured in money and manufacturing capacity, not soldiers and weapons. A great improvement to be sure, but it’s still an instrument for unilaterally forcing people to stop doing things you don’t like. And as far as a group of people in the Netherlands doing things the US does not like, it’s not clear the US has (or ought to have) a more civilized way to accomplish its goals.
> Sanctions are still the rule of the bigger stick, except the stick is measured in money and manufacturing capacity, not soldiers and weapons. A great improvement to be sure, but it’s still an instrument for unilaterally forcing people to stop doing things you don’t like.
What's the problem with that? Ultimately, that's what all law is. Law doesn't work unless the lawgiver has the power to force its will on whomever it deems to be a lawbreaker.
The ICC's problem here is that it tried to exert control where it has no power, inviting retaliation.
> Claims about "helping the world" are highly subjective and often bullshit
It seems you are making the point that using technology to punish subjective politics is the right way?!
Sidenote: ICC has been backed by many nations, occasionally including US too. Using sanctions in retributions to unfavourable opinions might seem against the spirit of US Constitution in other contexts...
Why not let arguments do their work in open debate? The ICC isn't a bunch of loonies or Saddam's Baath party. These are reasonable people, with dissident opinions, for sure. But reasonable.
> Sanctions are "fight[ing] legally," literally.
Technically, the more appropriate term might be "legalism", in the mechanistic sense.
> Why not let arguments do their work in open debate?
Well, that happened. Israel presented an argument that the investigation legally must end, as they haven't consented to ICC jurisdiction; the ICC openly considered and openly rejected this argument (https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/situation-state-palestine-icc-p...), saying that Palestine's consent was sufficient because the alleged crimes took place in Palestinian territory.
The US has always taken an extremely aggressive stance that this theory of ICC jurisdiction is unacceptable. "It is a fundamental principle of international law that a treaty is binding upon its parties only and that it does not create obligations for nonparties without their consent to be bound", as 22 USC §7421 puts it. (If you're old enough, you may recognize this as part of the bipartisan "Hague Invasion Act" of 2002, widely understood as a threat of military force against anyone who tries to enforce ICC jurisdiction on a citizen of the US or its non-ICC allies.)
Its a little more complicated than that. The dispute is also about if palestine is a "state" and thus able to consent (and i'm not sure, but possibly what the territorial extent of Palestine is. it probably doesnt matter, but the fact that the official government of Palestine lost control of the gaza strip in a civil war a long time ago is another winkle in this whole thing)
While the court initially rejected Israel's challenge, the appeal court reverses the decision, and threw it back to the lower court, which is now deliberating on it https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/situation-state-palestine-appea... . As far as i understand most observers think this is an extreme long shot on the part of Israel and they are unlikely to win this challenge.
[IANAL, and far from an expert at this, this stuff is complicated, it is very possible i got the details wrong]
I think the more interesting point here is that some members of ICC don't recognize Palestine as a state so they don't have a reason to accept ICC jurisdiction because essentially they will be ceding recognition of states to the ICC which seems unlikely.
Imagine the leader of some random country taking away your country's judge's funds, their email address, their job, for trying to do their job in accordance with the law, regarding a non citizen.
You don't have to imagine it, it's happening. Is it happening to judges in your country, though?
That would be bad because it tramples that country’s sovereignty, and by that, the sovereignty of its citizens. But the ICC has no citizens, and it does not represent anyone other than a cause.
I honestly don't get what HN, or even some commenters, thinks should happen here in the real world.
I understand in the pretend world they want to be able to do $x without ever worrying about being beholden to any other countries laws or politics or whatever else.
They want this for lots of values of $x, and often have fun asserting it will soon be possible.
In the real world however, this has never been possible, since the dawn of recorded history, for lots and lots and lots of values of $x.
Pretty much any time $x becomes valuable or interesting enough, it becomes impossible to have this happen in all and usually most cases.
It often doesn't matter how simple a thing $x is - sailing a ship for example, or buying produce, it usually only matters how valuable or interesting it was.
As long as enough countries exist, and they have laws that have extra-territorial effect, the likelihood this problem will be really solved trends towards zero.
What exactly does someone expect to happen here when it's just people and companies trying to follow the laws they think they are required to follow.
This is actually what should happen, and is happening
The usual response is then that some country or group of countries need to build some untouchable-by-other-countries infrastructure and that will solve having to deal with others politics. This seems to me naive at best. The only cases this will work is for things that can be 100% contained and controlled within a given country/group. That is roughly impossible for most interesting things.
For example - it makes no sense to have a economic-block-specific email provider to work around sanctions, because whoever wanted to sanction them will just ban transiting email to them, and then transiting packets, and then equipment, and then chips to make equipment, and then machines to make chips to make equipment, and then wafers used to make chips, and then raw resources used to make wafers, and then equipment to mine raw resources, and then ....
Let's assume you don't care about this group, but they are still powerful.
Great - they'll do this not just directly, but indirectly, by forcing others who do have to care to do the same to you.
Now, it would be different if you are building this thing as a political move or strategy, rather than expecting it to solve your problem directly. But otherwise, it is remarkably rare to be able to work around the politics with technology, and if you do, you won't be able to for very long.
It's much more useful to focus on dealing with the politics,
if you want to change it.
Wasting lots of time and energy and money trying to avoid politics seems like a bad plan
Yes. It would then be upon the government to do something about it, which would create some controversy, penalties for MS, and a political debate.
Same for refusing orders. It may change nothing, like in this story:
> One commander ordered a sapper to put two old women in
> a certain house ... and to blow up the house with them.
> The sapper refused ... The commander then ordered his
> men to put the old women in the house and the evil deed
> was done.
Why not proton, or fastmail, or tuta. Some provider that resides in a country that does not have an "Hague Invasion Act" just in case the ICC investigates a US citizen.
Maybe not the 'main threat', but most certainly a threat. Have been since 2002.
The US have the means to act against the ICC. They have a motive for doing so. The US has the Hague Invasion act. The US is currently performing a blockade against ICC. The US really is the main threat.
Basically you need to sovereign-balance your services over different regions. Also have a high available pool of people to replace arrestees.
One reason the the court has been hamstrung is that it relies heavily on contractors and non-governmental organizations. Those businesses and groups have curtailed work on behalf of the court because they were concerned about being targeted by U.S. authorities, according to current and former ICC staffers.
Microsoft, for example, cancelled Khan’s email address, forcing the prosecutor to move to Proton Mail, a Swiss email provider, ICC staffers said. His bank accounts in his home country of the U.K. have been blocked.
I had a conversation about 15 years ago where he told me about a book he was reading about the risk of anti-intellectualism in the US. I laughed it off. I think about this at least once a week now.
What we've seen over the last 10 years in tech and politics is the rise of people who have absolutely no idea what they're doing and they wear their ignorance like a badge of honor.
I've had so many conversations with crypto bros about how crypto doesn't really solve anything and NFTs are BS and DeFi is pushed by people who have no idea of why finance is the way it is or they're simply trying yet another rug pull. This is a fundamentally anti-intellectual position.
What we've seen since January 20 is the absolute dumbest, most ignorant sycophants destroy things they simply don't understand and don't want to understand. Destroy USAID (as one example)? Foreign aid is a tool of US soft power, a key part of US foreign policy. That's not money for nothing. We're buying influence. Don't even get me started on tariffs. Again, it's fundamentally anti-intellectual.
Part of me is glad to see how many people are waking up to the myth of meritocracy.
By taking punitive yet performative action against the ICC for hurting Israel's feelings by saying true things does nothing but weaken US tech influence over Europe. it tells Europe that the US cannot be relied upon and an alternative needs to be found.
Fun fact: the US has passed a law colloquially known as the Hage Invasion Act [1]. This not authorizes but requires the US to invade the Hague if the ICC ever detains and prosecutes any US service member or official or those of any ally.
By itself it doesn't really matter but it's death by a thousand paper cuts and there are a thousand other small things that are pushing Europe to distance itself from the US.
I am sure anti-intellectualism plays no small part, but I believe it's more that we have adopted a culture of greed at all levels, not just at the top of the income distribution. We are not willing to make even small sacrifices to make things better for other (present and future) Americans. I don't think that's always been true.
I actually figured it out after attending crypto meetups in Switzerland just to drill into their heads to see what is really going down with my own eyes and ears. And man, you're spot on. Crypto is basically a giant loophole for slapping the word "decentralized" on what's just a fancy, unregulated securities market. The whole scene is a masterclass in rebranding speculative gambling as "innovation." NFTs? Mostly hype and JPEGs with extra steps. DeFi? A Wild West where the rules of traditional finance get ignored until someone gets rugged, then suddenly everyone's shocked. The crypto bros love to talk about "disrupting the system," but half the time it's just a grift wrapped in tech jargon to lure in bagholders.
Carl Sagan and Isaac Asimov has written about it many years ago, but it has clearly accelerated. My hope is that's it's the last surges of Christianity/religion in a death spiral.
I'm a strict atheist but am generally neutral on religion. It depends on the output.
What people should know is that even within a religion like Christianity there are vast differences between sects. Jesuits are not Southern Baptists, for example.
A lot of texts from antiquity were preserved by the Catholic monastic tradition through the Middle Ages. Theology in the Roman Catholic sense has always been treated as an academic discipline.
Evangelicism arose primarily in the US as a byproduct of "manifest destiny" combined with no access to academic theologians. Sects popped up based on "plain" readings of religious texts. Put another way: it's almost entirely vibes-based.
But none of this really matters because religion is never the reason for a conflict such as this. Religion is simply the veneer applied to motivate the masses. The actual motivations are always materialist. In this case that means a settler colonial project to disrupt a region of strategic improtance.
our technocrats are destroying the world and bleeding the peasants dry. the peasants are right to revolt against them. they only err in their choice of alternatives.
ICC should also issue an arrest warrant for Trump/Biden. Who do you think supplies Israel with all the money and weapons they use against the Palestinians?
Software and cloud services have entered the infrastructure stage.
I don't think it matters who writes the software. Governments should mandate the infrastructure be hosted and operated locally by people accountable to the host nation (the operators would pay for the software, perhaps a subsiduary or whatever). It should require a Netherlands court to deprive an institute located in the Hague of its infrastructure.
This means bringing "big regulation" like we have for the electrical network (and the physical internet!) to the cloud. It would be tricky to draft since we'd still want to support the millions of small providers who, unlike Microsoft, you wouldn't describe as infrastructure.
Youre talking about utilities. And yes, letting foreign adversaries provide utilities is a security risk.
Unfortunately, current citizens have been awash in the notion that capitalism needs supersede government secirity.
While i strongly disagree with the usa's sanctions on the ICC, i'm very surprised that the ICC has to rely on american cloud providers.
It seems like a court, especially one dealing with international crimes where international esponage seems quite likely, should have in-house tech. It seems like being fully independent would be really important. Sort of in the same way i would expect e.g. the eu gov not to be dependent on a foreign cloud provider either (have no idea if they are or not)
ICC doesn't have a country though. Wherever it is based may have to be investigated.
Pragmatically though - yeah after Snowden US is not a good choice.
The entire west participates in the kind of monitoring.
So obviously then China is the right place for the ICC to be hosted. I'm sure the UN can pass that.
https://bgp.he.net/dns/icc-cpi.int
They're also using Cloudflare for both DNS and a CDN.
Let's call it lessons learnt
It is a lesson all right. Whether or not it's learnt remains to be seen
Given we are still here despite how bush treated the ICC, i'm not sure the lesson will be learned
Most government organs or government adjacent organizations around the world are fully dependent on Microsoft platforms, especially for email.
That's not the point though. The point is that Microsoft to provide its services should be required to set up a fully local subsidiary and be prepared to lose its control on event of sanctions against that country.
We need Europeans need to rid ourselves from American big tech used in government functions. This is simply unacceptable.
Americans would like the same thing.
Just off the top of my head, accessing the IRS website (taxes) gets tracked by google. Windows keeps trying to pull everything online. Americans don't get separate apple app stores.
It goes on and on.
The US and Europe is tightly integrated, this integration can be used as leveraged. Especially, since we've allowed the US to play the bigger brother in most of these relationships.
But you can only use this in a big way once. And all parties have pretty much assumed the US would never use its leverage as Trump has been doing.
The same way we dare invest in the US stock marked, because we're confident the US won't do a Cuba-style nationalization of private assets.
Obviously, the orange man is gambling EU won't decouple from the US. He might be right, this probably isn't big enough.
Decoupling all systems is expensive, it cheaper to wait 4 years.
That said, the orange man did get EU defense investment -- the investments are just not being made in the US.
Sadly, I don't think anyone will decouple, people still laugh at the idea of using LibreOffice.
If it is only four years, too many people are confident this administration is willing to bet losing elections.
> Decoupling all systems is expensive, it cheaper to wait 4 years.
People who say this haven't internalized how much shit the US is in. In the absolute best case scenario where there is a fair election and the Democrats retake the federal government, the decisions made over the next 4 years will have harrowing effects throughout the world that will take decades to recover from.
In the most likely case scenario, Republicans will continue trying to expand their fascist power and suppress the judiciary and their stranglehold on Congress so they can effectively remain in power indefinitely.
Laughing at Libre (Open) Office is so early 2000s. Now people laugh at anything which isn't as collaborative as Google Docs.
I can only imagine what's going to happen in 4 years. The current administration has opened a can of worms that is not easily closed. Once you start sending people to torture prisons, once you start defying lawful orders, people are going to be scared that this same power can be used against them.
Imagine what you would do if you thought weakness could leave you no recourse if you were sent to the gulags? How ruthless and self serving would you get?
Imagine thinking the US just started sending people to torture prisons now. We had a worldwide network of black sites just to torture people, destroyed all the videotapes, pardoned all the torturers, and made the person who destroyed the tapes the head of the CIA a few years later.
> once you start defying lawful orders, people are going to be scared that this same power can be used against them.
I feel like people only born yesterday could say this. There has been a bipartisan push for an Executive unfettered by the legislature since 9/11, and extreme partisans just point at each other. You're both right.
Exactly. Anybody can go to Google Images and type "abu ghraib uncensored" to see how it's done.
Honestly, Microsoft needs to stay the hell away from the US Gov, too.
https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/01/microsoft-network-b...
It's also the only way for the EU to jumpstart it's own silicon valley.
Look at how silicon valley was bootstrapped through government expenditure.
I want to see: (1) an open source privacy first web browser engine funded by the EU and (2) EU to mandate interoperability in "chat" and video conferencing applications.
Chromium is already a suitable open source browser engine that a privacy focused browser product could be built on top of.
Forking it and setting up the CI for all tests, monitoring performance regression, etc -- no thanks.
Having worked on Firefox CI infrastructure years ago, it's a huge and complex setup. As I recall back then it was >100 compute hours per push.
Fork it and keep synching in from upstream, sure that's easy. But are you an independent browser?
web is bursting with abuses. euros like to regulate. if they regulate & enforce-away the abuses, the browser could be made far far simpler.
Or Firefox.
No, I don't want EU tech VC oligarchy. I just want to avoid big tech SaaS regardless of where it's from.
I've been quite happy with smaller local services for a loong time. Started using them in 2004 when I got my first website and aside from short try of gmail when it was still free, always used them.
EU can't even solve some tracking cookies, how will they/we create an europeran (-alternative to-) google?
To me, the real question is in the last sentence of the post: "the question is, however, whether they are enterprise-ready, secure, and fully sovereign"
The ICC is incredibly important, incredibly young and global. Shifting this to europe would not solve the problem.
If the ICC was able to have a contract with a fully sovereign supplier, that would be a whole new can of worms. It would be a matter of time (hours? days?) until a fully sovereign corporation put its profits above its negative impact on people.
More than that, how does an organization funded by a group of nations avoid the budget becoming politicized?
The issue is complex and the silver bullet is hard to find.
> The ICC is incredibly important, incredibly young and global. Shifting this to europe would not solve the problem.
Well it’s incredibly young, but it is neither incredibly important seeing as how the premise of the court is suspect nor global seeing as how substantial portions of the globe have either not signed, not ratified, or withdrew their signature before ratification. I’ll give you “international”.
You’re right though: any possible software vendor is theoretically subject to someone’s sanctions regime. If they want to uphold the independence of their institution, that’s probably more work for an internal IT department.
Is signing up to the ICC a bit like getting a bunch of CEOs and asking them to sign up to a fair tax on CEOs treaty.
Pretty much.
It requires a given state to allow it to operate and have jurisdiction. That's a political act through and through.
The US doesn't recognize it anymore so it's baffling why they didn't move to non US equipment.
actually they completed migration to Azure in order to streamline "things" only year ago or so
edit. i believe the migration was initiated and implemented by the current icc prosecutor. amazing absence of a foresight.
Lack of wisdom and judgment. Ironic.
speaking of "lack of wisdom and judgment". this is the prosecutor: https://www.timesofisrael.com/icc-prosecutor-khan-on-leave-a...
Well, I’m not a fan of analogies, but kind of, but in addition to asking them to sign up, all the biggest companies with the highest valuations got to sit it out, but retained powers to impose it on smaller companies that aren’t friends of theirs, and to step in and protect their friends from being subject to your hypothetical fair tax treaty.
Not really. The ICC mostly doesn't prosecute heads of states. Recent events are kind of unusual relative to the historical role. Historically ICC mostly went after rebel groups.
Think of the treaty as more of an extradition scheme. Its also a bit of an insurance policy - its an incentive not to commit international crimes against/on territory of member states, because it becomes much harder to evade justice.
There is also an element of symbolism to it, of what type of country you want to be.
The head of the ICC, Karim Khan issued an arrest warrant for Putin in 2023[1], so of course, Russia has issued an arrest warrant for him.
A year goes by, and the government of the world's other large rogue state responded thusly, to the ICC's consideration of arrest warrants for both Netanyahu and Hamas leaders:
> On 24 April 2024, Khan was sent a letter signed by 12 Republican U.S. senators[c] threatening him and other UN jurists and their families with personal consequences if the ICC were to seek an international arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu or other members of the Israeli government. The letter cited the American Service-Members' Protection Act – known informally as "The Hague Invasion Act"[42] – which specifically includes "all means".[43][44] The signatories said they would view any arrest warrant as "a threat not only to Israel's sovereignty, but also to the sovereignty of the United States". They threatened: "Target Israel and we will target you", and that any further action would "end all American support for the ICC" and "exclude [Khan and his associates and employees] and their families from the United States". The letter ended: "You have been warned."[45]
It's certainly not incredibly important. It is, however, incredibly undemocratic
If this isn't enough to cause a shock in European companies and governments, I don't know what would.
And I know: remote destruction of various tech, including pagers, laptops, routers, power plants, and experimental nuclear reactors.
Still not enough? A law that mandates backdoors necessary to trigger the above in all exported tech.
Oh, sweet summer child.
There are EU member states where politicians lobby Congress and the Administration to put their rivals on the Magnitsky list. Europe is in no condition to resist the will of the United States.
Yeah, the EU needs the US for leadership mostly :)
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In Europe's defense, they didn't expect a mad-man would be running the U.S., but still should have had a protocol for Apocalypse.
Cute to pin it all on one man and pretend K-Street doesn't exist.
Not only we Europeans need to get rid of American weapons, but also of most American technologies?!
And people talked about Huawei…
To be fair, the ICC isn’t a European court, at least on paper.
No one said Europe owned the ICC, just that Europe has to start to be more and more independent of the US, in the interest of its citizens.
I would say the citizens of Europe have greatly benefited from the partnership with the US. I'm not an American by the way.
So after the US (and others) fought for Europe in WW-II. Defended Europe during the cold war (and till today). Took most of the load ($, weapons etc.) in supporting Ukraine against Russia. Now you're going to tell it to f off? And that is somehow in the interest of the citizens?
How many American companies have offices in Europe? How many American products are in your life? Hacker News is based where?
I would agree the partnership needs to evolve as does everything. But in a world that's looking more and more like China-"The West"-India(?) Europe's place is still in the west. That's likely the best thing for the world and for Europeans. And for Americans. Hopefully also including better partnership with the rest of the world as well.
Presidents come and go. Don't get too stuck on Trump.
If Europe follows the US out of the west, that's bad for Europe.
There is always an argument for that from each country’s, treaty organization’s, and corporation’s perspective: what are we relying on and what laws is it subject to? That cuts across both sides of the Atlantic.
All I’m doing though is pointing out that no European institutions were harmed by this result, and I’ll even add to that that generally the American sanctions regime is often a benefit to our allies; and this type of sanctioning is something we have usually done in concert with our European allies. What’s different this time is that it’s targeting an ICC prosecutor rather than people who are also on the EU’s hit list, namely Putin’s cronies.
It doesn't matter if it is or isn't. The whole point was accountability to each other. That went out the window with the "American Service-Members' Protection Act" (The Hague Invasion Act) [0].
Nothing screams "complicit in genocide" like attacking and cripling the institution investigating such crimes.
I'm surprised there hasn't been more public outrage at what I think is the geopolitical equivalent of having a journalist killed.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Pr...
It does matter, even excluding America, Russia and the PRC, none of which are signatories, as well as the other non-members: the world is a big place. The ICC has many signatories across the Americas, Asia, Africa and the Pacific. An international institution doesn’t automatically become a European one when America leaves the room.
> Nothing screams "complicit in genocide" like attacking and cripling the institution investigating such crimes.
The law you cited is clear. Don’t touch American service members and American service members won’t touch the court. Reasonable enough given we aren’t party to the court and will not be held subject to its jurisdiction.
Yeah, clear law:
"(b) Persons Authorized To Be Freed.--The authority of subsection (a) shall extend to the following persons: (2) Covered allied persons."
That includes Nehterlands, which is a member of NATO.
So US can snatch Dutch war criminal from Netherlands if US president likes the person or whatever? :) Very clear law with no weird implications.
Addenum: I solely react to your claim that this law is very clear.
I would actually pay money to see that happen, should the opportunity arise.
Jokes aside though, remember that the prior commentator brought in the American Service-Members Protection Act as a weird form of whataboutism. Bringing that up does not transform the ICC into a European court, even if an actual American military intervention of The Hague would not bode well for the integrity of Dutch sovereignty and my advise to the European nations and citizenry that can’t grok the implications of hosting an international political institution is to convince the ICC to relocate itself so the Eurocentric among you stop mistaking it for a European court.
>And people talked about Huawei…
Still bad.
Dont even try :)
Just goes to show how short-sighted these political decisions have been. Politics shouldn't be wrapping itself around tech, the US is shrugging off a huge market and ally.
> ally
Keep the chocolate separate from the artificial sweeteners.
Whatever our deal is with the EU and individual European countries, the ICC is emphatically not an EU nor even a European court. They’re hosted in The Hague, it is not of The Hague in the same way the UN is not of New York.
This distinction is a technicality, given the The Hague Invasion Act signed into law by G.W. Bush. Or to use your example, would a hypothetical attack on the UN building in New York not also be a violation of American sovereignty?
Call me when we’ve invaded The Hague or when someone else invades New York. An international institution that claims members from Asia, Africa and across the Americas doesn’t become a European institution just because America left the room. Japan is actually the largest national contributor to the ICC’s budget.
> Just goes to show how short-sighted these political decisions have been. Politics shouldn't be wrapping itself around tech, the US is shrugging off a huge market and ally.
Which political decision? The one to prosecute a US ally, or the one to sanction the ICC?
When someone decries something as "politics," there's often a problem where the analysis conveniently stops when the blame can be placed on the speaker's disfavored group.
Seems like we shouldn't be using tech to punish a foreign group who's job, at least at face value, is to help the world. If the ICC is doing so much harm to the US, fight legally. That's where the battle should be fought. Not ripping away some guy's email access.
In international politics there is no "legally". Maybe the closest thing to it is the ICC.
ICJ would be the comparison for international politics. It is all about interpreting treaties and what the duties of various states are in various circumstances.
ICC is about criminal liability of individuals, which sometimes has bearing on international politics but is not intrinsically so.
Don't international treaties count as "legally"?
It isn’t like there are some treaty police that will come along and arrest you for breaking a treaty. It is more like a business contract I think; if you break lots of contracts, people will be less likely to make deals with you.
I assume it is more like high school drama just at a much larger scale. If a bully wants your sandwich…
> If the ICC is doing so much harm to the US, fight legally.
US isn't really a party to all this, so there isn't much they can do legally (to be clear i think americas sanctions are unacceptable). They could file a juridsictional challenge, which some countries did, but legally there isn't a huge amount of ground to stand on for that.
Other than that, the actual legal part doesn't start until (if) the suspects are apprehended. And if it does get to a trial, its going to be the accused lawyers who are going to be fighting it out.
Under international law, the United States is free to regulate it's commerce in any way they wish. If they declare it a crime to do business with the ICC, it's their right. The sanctions are completely legal.
What's legally questionable, is for ICC to claim jurisdiction over Israel - a nation that never signed to or ratified the ICC statue.
> What's legally questionable, is for ICC to claim jurisdiction over Israel - a nation that never signed to or ratified the ICC statue.
They do not claim that.
What they claim: - palestine is a state (probably the most controversial claim)
- states have the right to punish crimes that happen in their borders regardless of who commits them
- states can delegate that right to other parties
- Palestine delegated that right to the ICC.
Additionally from an international law perspective, there is the idea that some things are preemptorary norms which apply to all states. This includes things like parts of the geneva convention or the genocide convention that define certain crimes. Based on the precedent at nuremburg, an international body can setup a tribunal to punish those crimes even against the will of the state in question. The ICC doesnt use this but its fairly well established doctribe in intl law.
> Based on the precedent at nuremburg, an international body can setup a tribunal to punish those crimes even against the will of the state in question.
You do realize the precedent at Nuremberg (note the spelling), requires that the the capitulation of the party being tried? Famously, at the trial of admiral Dönitz, the defense presented an affidavit from admiral Chester Nimitz, where he confessed to the same crimes Dönitz was being tried for. Dönitz was convicted, but the court declined to try Nimitz because the United States was on the winning side and thus outside of the jurisdiction of the court.
You can't impose a tribunal on a country, without capitulation.
Hold on, that line of reasoning would imply that the Nazis were primarily guilty of being defeated. Are you sure? The idea of ordering people you can't catch to appear before court makes enough sense to me.
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Claiming Palestine is a state in its current form is a huge stretch and would probably undermine the rest of the court case.
Is Israel actually supposed to supply food for the independent state of Palestine whose controlling government in Gaza (Hamas) has initiated said war, while the war is ongoing, and where the food is transferred to areas that are not even controlled by Israeli forces? I don't think that's very common in warfare between states
> Is Israel actually supposed to supply food for the independent state of Palestine whose controlling government in Gaza (Hamas) has initiated said war, while the war is ongoing, and where the food is transferred to areas that are not even controlled by Israeli forces? I don't think that's very common in warfare between states
Under the geneva convention Israel (or any state engaged in war) is expected to do 2 things:
- not unduly hinder aid shipments provided by relief organizations (there are a bunch of details here im glossing over) - anywhere where they are occupying they are expected to ensure that the civilian population has the neccesities of survival. Providing it themselves if neccesary.
It doesn't matter who started the war, who is right, who is wrong. The rules are for the protection of non combatants, not for the people involved in the war.
That's a rather questionable interpretation of international law, I'm afraid. If a country A wages war on country B, A isn't normally bound by treaties signed by B.
And in any case, even if the ICC's actions weren't questionable, the beauty of international law is that America is free to ban companies from serving the ICC for any reason or for no reason at all.
> Palestine is an ICC signatory; the genocide is happening on Palestine land. ICC has jurisdiction.
While the ICC has juridsiction over criminal acts of genocide comitted on the territory of member states, so far they have not accused anyone of comitting genocide in Palestine.
Its always possible they might add more charges later, but so far they have only accused Israeli leaders of lesser crimes.
That would mean having due process.
> Seems like we shouldn't be using tech to punish a foreign group who's job, at least at face value, is to help the world.
Claims about "helping the world" are highly subjective and often bullshit (see the often-mocked tech company talk about "making the world a better place [by doing awful stuff like shoving targeted ads in people's faces]".
> If the ICC is doing so much harm to the US, fight legally. That's where the battle should be fought. Not ripping away some guy's email access.
What do you mean? Sanctions are "fight[ing] legally," literally.
Sanctions are still the rule of the bigger stick, except the stick is measured in money and manufacturing capacity, not soldiers and weapons. A great improvement to be sure, but it’s still an instrument for unilaterally forcing people to stop doing things you don’t like. And as far as a group of people in the Netherlands doing things the US does not like, it’s not clear the US has (or ought to have) a more civilized way to accomplish its goals.
> Sanctions are still the rule of the bigger stick, except the stick is measured in money and manufacturing capacity, not soldiers and weapons. A great improvement to be sure, but it’s still an instrument for unilaterally forcing people to stop doing things you don’t like.
What's the problem with that? Ultimately, that's what all law is. Law doesn't work unless the lawgiver has the power to force its will on whomever it deems to be a lawbreaker.
The ICC's problem here is that it tried to exert control where it has no power, inviting retaliation.
> Claims about "helping the world" are highly subjective and often bullshit
It seems you are making the point that using technology to punish subjective politics is the right way?!
Sidenote: ICC has been backed by many nations, occasionally including US too. Using sanctions in retributions to unfavourable opinions might seem against the spirit of US Constitution in other contexts...
Why not let arguments do their work in open debate? The ICC isn't a bunch of loonies or Saddam's Baath party. These are reasonable people, with dissident opinions, for sure. But reasonable.
> Sanctions are "fight[ing] legally," literally.
Technically, the more appropriate term might be "legalism", in the mechanistic sense.
> Why not let arguments do their work in open debate?
Well, that happened. Israel presented an argument that the investigation legally must end, as they haven't consented to ICC jurisdiction; the ICC openly considered and openly rejected this argument (https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/situation-state-palestine-icc-p...), saying that Palestine's consent was sufficient because the alleged crimes took place in Palestinian territory.
The US has always taken an extremely aggressive stance that this theory of ICC jurisdiction is unacceptable. "It is a fundamental principle of international law that a treaty is binding upon its parties only and that it does not create obligations for nonparties without their consent to be bound", as 22 USC §7421 puts it. (If you're old enough, you may recognize this as part of the bipartisan "Hague Invasion Act" of 2002, widely understood as a threat of military force against anyone who tries to enforce ICC jurisdiction on a citizen of the US or its non-ICC allies.)
> the ICC openly considered and openly rejected this argument (https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/situation-state-palestine-icc-p...), saying that Palestine's consent was sufficient because the alleged crimes took place in Palestinian territory.
Its a little more complicated than that. The dispute is also about if palestine is a "state" and thus able to consent (and i'm not sure, but possibly what the territorial extent of Palestine is. it probably doesnt matter, but the fact that the official government of Palestine lost control of the gaza strip in a civil war a long time ago is another winkle in this whole thing)
While the court initially rejected Israel's challenge, the appeal court reverses the decision, and threw it back to the lower court, which is now deliberating on it https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/situation-state-palestine-appea... . As far as i understand most observers think this is an extreme long shot on the part of Israel and they are unlikely to win this challenge.
[IANAL, and far from an expert at this, this stuff is complicated, it is very possible i got the details wrong]
I think the more interesting point here is that some members of ICC don't recognize Palestine as a state so they don't have a reason to accept ICC jurisdiction because essentially they will be ceding recognition of states to the ICC which seems unlikely.
and majority of those who recognize palestine as state, do not recognize any specific borders.
What are your object-level beliefs?
Imagine the leader of some random country taking away your country's judge's funds, their email address, their job, for trying to do their job in accordance with the law, regarding a non citizen.
You don't have to imagine it, it's happening. Is it happening to judges in your country, though?
That would be bad because it tramples that country’s sovereignty, and by that, the sovereignty of its citizens. But the ICC has no citizens, and it does not represent anyone other than a cause.
The U.S. is harming itself by making technology subject to politics. Only makes them look untrustworthy. Just Trump breaking things that work.
I honestly don't get what HN, or even some commenters, thinks should happen here in the real world.
I understand in the pretend world they want to be able to do $x without ever worrying about being beholden to any other countries laws or politics or whatever else.
They want this for lots of values of $x, and often have fun asserting it will soon be possible.
In the real world however, this has never been possible, since the dawn of recorded history, for lots and lots and lots of values of $x.
Pretty much any time $x becomes valuable or interesting enough, it becomes impossible to have this happen in all and usually most cases.
It often doesn't matter how simple a thing $x is - sailing a ship for example, or buying produce, it usually only matters how valuable or interesting it was.
As long as enough countries exist, and they have laws that have extra-territorial effect, the likelihood this problem will be really solved trends towards zero.
What exactly does someone expect to happen here when it's just people and companies trying to follow the laws they think they are required to follow.
This is actually what should happen, and is happening
The usual response is then that some country or group of countries need to build some untouchable-by-other-countries infrastructure and that will solve having to deal with others politics. This seems to me naive at best. The only cases this will work is for things that can be 100% contained and controlled within a given country/group. That is roughly impossible for most interesting things.
For example - it makes no sense to have a economic-block-specific email provider to work around sanctions, because whoever wanted to sanction them will just ban transiting email to them, and then transiting packets, and then equipment, and then chips to make equipment, and then machines to make chips to make equipment, and then wafers used to make chips, and then raw resources used to make wafers, and then equipment to mine raw resources, and then ....
Let's assume you don't care about this group, but they are still powerful. Great - they'll do this not just directly, but indirectly, by forcing others who do have to care to do the same to you.
Now, it would be different if you are building this thing as a political move or strategy, rather than expecting it to solve your problem directly. But otherwise, it is remarkably rare to be able to work around the politics with technology, and if you do, you won't be able to for very long.
It's much more useful to focus on dealing with the politics, if you want to change it.
Wasting lots of time and energy and money trying to avoid politics seems like a bad plan
Surely there must be an uncensored, decentralized means for sending messages? What about banking...
Could Microsoft deny the request from the US government? I guess not, but i am not familiar with US laws for US companies…
If it’s a lawful request, no. They can fight it but it’s a fight under US law, so if the law says they have to do it then that’s the outcome.
Yes. It would then be upon the government to do something about it, which would create some controversy, penalties for MS, and a political debate.
Same for refusing orders. It may change nothing, like in this story:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Dawayima_massacreBut people sometimes still do it.
Certainly the ICC would be using something more secure than Microsoft hosted email?
Why? US is not the main threat.
And even this case it's pretty obvious that they are under attack.
If you run your own server, you might not know that you've been compromised.
Why not proton, or fastmail, or tuta. Some provider that resides in a country that does not have an "Hague Invasion Act" just in case the ICC investigates a US citizen.
Maybe not the 'main threat', but most certainly a threat. Have been since 2002.
They have moved to using protonmail now, per a BBC article I read yesterday.
> If you run your own server, you might not know that you've been compromised.
You may or may not if run your own server. In a case of the hosted solution you are absolutely can't know.
The US have the means to act against the ICC. They have a motive for doing so. The US has the Hague Invasion act. The US is currently performing a blockade against ICC. The US really is the main threat.
Basically you need to sovereign-balance your services over different regions. Also have a high available pool of people to replace arrestees.
One reason the the court has been hamstrung is that it relies heavily on contractors and non-governmental organizations. Those businesses and groups have curtailed work on behalf of the court because they were concerned about being targeted by U.S. authorities, according to current and former ICC staffers.
Microsoft, for example, cancelled Khan’s email address, forcing the prosecutor to move to Proton Mail, a Swiss email provider, ICC staffers said. His bank accounts in his home country of the U.K. have been blocked.
https://apnews.com/article/icc-trump-sanctions-karim-khan-co...
Will be waiting to see if anything changes.
I had a conversation about 15 years ago where he told me about a book he was reading about the risk of anti-intellectualism in the US. I laughed it off. I think about this at least once a week now.
What we've seen over the last 10 years in tech and politics is the rise of people who have absolutely no idea what they're doing and they wear their ignorance like a badge of honor.
I've had so many conversations with crypto bros about how crypto doesn't really solve anything and NFTs are BS and DeFi is pushed by people who have no idea of why finance is the way it is or they're simply trying yet another rug pull. This is a fundamentally anti-intellectual position.
What we've seen since January 20 is the absolute dumbest, most ignorant sycophants destroy things they simply don't understand and don't want to understand. Destroy USAID (as one example)? Foreign aid is a tool of US soft power, a key part of US foreign policy. That's not money for nothing. We're buying influence. Don't even get me started on tariffs. Again, it's fundamentally anti-intellectual.
Part of me is glad to see how many people are waking up to the myth of meritocracy.
By taking punitive yet performative action against the ICC for hurting Israel's feelings by saying true things does nothing but weaken US tech influence over Europe. it tells Europe that the US cannot be relied upon and an alternative needs to be found.
Fun fact: the US has passed a law colloquially known as the Hage Invasion Act [1]. This not authorizes but requires the US to invade the Hague if the ICC ever detains and prosecutes any US service member or official or those of any ally.
By itself it doesn't really matter but it's death by a thousand paper cuts and there are a thousand other small things that are pushing Europe to distance itself from the US.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Pr...
I am sure anti-intellectualism plays no small part, but I believe it's more that we have adopted a culture of greed at all levels, not just at the top of the income distribution. We are not willing to make even small sacrifices to make things better for other (present and future) Americans. I don't think that's always been true.
I actually figured it out after attending crypto meetups in Switzerland just to drill into their heads to see what is really going down with my own eyes and ears. And man, you're spot on. Crypto is basically a giant loophole for slapping the word "decentralized" on what's just a fancy, unregulated securities market. The whole scene is a masterclass in rebranding speculative gambling as "innovation." NFTs? Mostly hype and JPEGs with extra steps. DeFi? A Wild West where the rules of traditional finance get ignored until someone gets rugged, then suddenly everyone's shocked. The crypto bros love to talk about "disrupting the system," but half the time it's just a grift wrapped in tech jargon to lure in bagholders.
> the absolute dumbest, most ignorant sycophants destroy things they simply don't understand and don't want to understand
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot
Usually, I suspect that, behind the behavior of dumb figureheads and dumb pawns, is some party that is smarter (and evil).
Carl Sagan and Isaac Asimov has written about it many years ago, but it has clearly accelerated. My hope is that's it's the last surges of Christianity/religion in a death spiral.
Why you think it is religion based? And why you think it is specifically Christianity?
This anti-intellectualism has a strong connection with Evangelical Christianity in America and the connection has a long history.
I'm a strict atheist but am generally neutral on religion. It depends on the output.
What people should know is that even within a religion like Christianity there are vast differences between sects. Jesuits are not Southern Baptists, for example.
A lot of texts from antiquity were preserved by the Catholic monastic tradition through the Middle Ages. Theology in the Roman Catholic sense has always been treated as an academic discipline.
Evangelicism arose primarily in the US as a byproduct of "manifest destiny" combined with no access to academic theologians. Sects popped up based on "plain" readings of religious texts. Put another way: it's almost entirely vibes-based.
But none of this really matters because religion is never the reason for a conflict such as this. Religion is simply the veneer applied to motivate the masses. The actual motivations are always materialist. In this case that means a settler colonial project to disrupt a region of strategic improtance.
Absolute statements using words like "always" and "never" are always mistaken. The world is never so simple.
our technocrats are destroying the world and bleeding the peasants dry. the peasants are right to revolt against them. they only err in their choice of alternatives.
ICC should also issue an arrest warrant for Trump/Biden. Who do you think supplies Israel with all the money and weapons they use against the Palestinians?
And at the same time for the sake of balance, issue a warrant against saddam hussain and bin laden.