Talk is cheap (for Americans). Europeans were still reeling from a pair of unthinkable acts of American aggression when I arrived in London last week, and wow did they want to tell me all about it. First, President Trump signaled he would be negotiating Ukraine with Putin, a conversation Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy might not even be a part of. Then, a couple days after that, Vice President JD Vance gave a speech in Munich in which he argued yes, Putin was a danger to the continent, but the greatest danger facing European liberalism was the European “liberal.” Specifically, the EU had abandoned free speech. Vance rattled off a long list of examples including “commissars” in Brussels threatening to shut down social media during civil unrest, police raids in Germany on citizens suspected of posting “anti-feminist content,” the conviction of a Christian activist in Sweden charged with burning a Koran, and the United Kingdom’s arrest of Adam Smith-Connor for silently praying near an abortion clinic. Much as you would expect from a teenager told to clean his bedroom before dinner, European response to the speech was apoplectic, and has quickly given way to an identity crisis. Today, Europeans are openly rethinking their relationship with America. Now, to their credit, Americans don’t typically think about Europeans. But among the few of us who sometimes do, the feeling that we no longer have that much in common is mutual.

Vance’s reminder to Europe that allowing people with whom we disagree to speak is a core Western value was considered so totally chilling that Friedrich Merz, Germany’s leading candidate for chancellor, speculated America might soon collapse into autocracy. German’s Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, EU Foreign Policy Chief Kaja Kallas, former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt, and then German Chancellor Olaf Scholz all condemned the speech. But everyone on the continent, from every walk of life, had something to say. Over the weekend, the popular young actor Joe Locke was asked what Londoners feel about America. They’re worried for us, he said. This was surprising to hear, as I had just taken a drive through East London and found myself worried for Europe — not because a European politician was defending the concept of free speech, but because large swaths of Europe now resemble the Islamic third world.

This is no small rift between cultures. This is a schism between American and European-style liberalism, and it is already reshaping the West’s relationship in business, as is painfully evident in Europe’s unprovoked act of trade war against America’s technology industry. Culture is following. Eventually, probably in our lifetime, possibly imminently, we will find ourselves in a state of military conflict, not against each other, but without each other. World War II, it seems, is finally close to over. It’s worth addressing why.

Again and again in London, even among like-minded European friends, I encountered confusion. Actions of Trump’s which are widely supported at home — from Ukraine to global tariffs — are viewed abroad as America unceremoniously, and without any real justification, abandoning its relationship with Europe. But I found this reaction confusing myself. After the past four years pouring money into a European war, and protecting European borders while European regulators robbed our companies blind, what exactly is the relationship we’re meant to be preserving? What, dare I ask in 2025, are we getting out of this “relationship”?

How is this in America’s interest?

Why, Americans often wonder, are we spending more money to defend Europe than Europeans? I had this conversation with a pair of European friends the weekend I landed, two young men almost totally aligned with me on values. But on this issue they were just as confused as the average European. The old world order is in our interest, they argued. Trade! Monopoly power! Money! Then, if we don’t defend Europe, and national borders begin to thaw, we slip back into a multi-polar world. None of us have any idea what that will look like, but it will probably be more violent. This, unlike the incoming German chancellor’s mentally ill conclusion that America is in some sense less free than Germany, is a decent argument in favor of the prior order. But Europe has violated the terms of our relationship for years. And egregiously these last five.

The lens through which I look at most of this is the technology industry. Here, while Europeans are nowhere near as bad as China, they are very obviously not our friends.

As with most grand criminal enterprises, the EU’s grift started small. Back in 2021, it was a €746 million “fine” for Amazon, or €225 million for WhatsApp, over a bullshit “data protection” ruling. But a year later, with nothing but a thumbs up from the Biden Administration, European regulators got a little more creative. In 2022, the EU slapped Google with a €4.125 billion fine. Allegedly, the company violated foreign monopoly laws. Google “restricted competition,” regulators said, by preinstalling Chrome on Android devices. The following year, Ireland fined Meta €1.2 billion over more data protection bullshit, and Google was rocked with another €2.4 billion “fine” for favoring its products over competitors in search. Concurrently, Meta scored a slimmer €797 “fine” for anti-competition yet again, and Apple was hit with a €1.84 billion “fine.” Then, the Digital Markets Act (DMA) went live.

This is where things get crazy. The DMA is an EU regulation that imposes strict obligations on major digital “gatekeepers” (America’s largest tech companies) to ensure “fair competition and protect consumer choice.” To comply, companies are forced to open their platforms — allowing third-party app stores and alternative payment systems, ensuring interoperability and data portability, and avoiding unfair self-preferencing practices. If they fail to comply, they’re “fined,” which is the euphemism we are using here for a full 10% of a company’s global turnover. In the case of Google, that looks something like $28 billion for a single offense. Or, a little more than the entire GDP of Malta.

Ironically, European regulators have been thinking about foreign companies operating in Europe exactly the same way Trump thinks about foreign companies operating in America. Sure, the Europeans hide behind vague platitudes like “corporate greed” in the case of their anti-competitive “fines,” or “safety” in the case of their censorship rules (whereas China is much more honest in its anti-liberalism) but their purpose is simply to reduce the influence of foreign companies, while artificially boosting the influence of their own. There appears to be quite a bit of urgency here, as Europeans are concerned with the state of their entrepreneurs. And they are right to be concerned.

Back in December, Andrew McAfee shared a great visualization of Europe’s economy. Here, he produced a shocking side-by-side of publicly traded companies worth over $10 billion founded on each continent over the past fifty years (termed “arrivistes”):

I don’t think it would even be fair to say America is dominating here. Our publicly traded startups worth over $10 billion are something like 70x the value of Europe’s. As one poster on X blithely put it, Home Depot is worth more than all of Europe’s arrivistes created over the last 50 years combined. This is not what winning some kind of competition looks like. This is what it looked like when men sailed to the New World and encountered nomadic pagans living in tents.

Europe needs its own successful startup scene. But rather than deregulation or favorable tax policy European bureaucrats believe hamstringing American companies is their essential first step to getting there. Now, I don’t deny that legally forcing American companies to suck a little more will benefit European upstarts. I just don’t think kneecapping competitors is enough to jumpstart a business ecosystem on a continent ideologically opposed to the concept of business. Still, if I’m right (I am), the fines will at least serve as a little new revenue? It won’t be enough, but this is how, in an age of total decline, the European thinks. And not just in terms of competition, but also in terms of “safety.” It’s never “what can we build?” It’s “how can we control?”

Europe’s response to Russian aggression was not remilitarization, but a slew of proclamations. They are still proclaiming things, I think. In tech, this instinct is mirrored. Europe’s response first to social media and then to artificial intelligence was not to ask their technologists what policies would benefit their business ecosystems (the American model), or to steal our shit and scale up their own competitors (the China model). It was to regulate foreign platforms and technologies. But here’s the problem facing Europe: America isn’t some random land of rich people who annoy you with our moralizing speeches. Or, it isn’t only that. The threat of America’s military is the reason your countries exist. And that free ride? Would probably be ending even if you weren’t separately instigating a trade war.

The only person in my family who remembered World War II was my grandma. Amazing woman. She passed away almost twenty years ago. Today, the grandchildren of the men who fought that war are left with stories, but no real emotional attachment to this relationship. How will I feel if Russia invades Germany? Thoughts and prayers for sure, but beyond that I don’t know. Because I don’t really know what Germany is anymore, or what we have in common. And I really don’t know what they have to offer.

Amidst the hysteria following Vance’s speech, the Germans vowed “to fill a continental and global leadership vacuum.” This, for me, was actually the craziest thing they said. Europeans, much like America’s standard issue model of college-educated millennial urban Democrat, seem to conceive of power in the tradition of a Marvel movie. They don’t think of it in terms of resources, money, leverage — in terms of actual power, this is to say — but in terms of virtue, and in saying just the right words, as if power were a kind of magic spell. But while a nation of wordcels for sure, America hasn’t been in charge for eight decades because of our dank insults. We have been in charge for eight decades because we hold a military larger than every other military on the planet combined, including thousands of nuclear warheads, the largest economy on the planet, and, as Europeans well know, the most vibrant startup sector in human history. What does Germany have?

The growing rift between America and Europe comes down to the question of liberalism, as both sides not only believe in the virtue, but consider it a major point of identity. We just have different definitions for the word. Where Americans equate liberalism with freedom, Europeans equate it with — from best I can tell — that which is done in service of some slowly shifting social good, which tends to present as material equality and “being nice.” This is how the incoming German chancellor was able to interpret a speech imploring him and his friends to let people disagree with him as fascism. But certainly he really does believe his side maintains the moral high ground, and who am I to judge? It’s better to simply take a quick accounting of where we all stand.

Let’s start with America. Have you noticed everyone over here is screaming about fascism basically every day? That is because we have a First Amendment right to speech. The dictator everyone is screaming about? He was elected. And the current controversy that has brought our country to the brink of a “constitutional crisis”? Our government workers were just asked what they did last week, and are expected to provide an answer.

Meanwhile, in Europe: something like 20% of the British electorate supported Starmer, who nonetheless secured power and immediately set to the mass censorship of his country. Last week, his government succeeded in forcing Apple to remove its highest level of data security from devices in the United Kingdom, permitting the British government to spy on its citizens — presumably for saying mean things about Pakistani gang rapists in their text messages. In Germany, the second most popular political party in the country has been blocked from joining any governing coalition. In that same country, it is literally illegal to make fun of politicians. This is confusing for Americans.

Of course, it’s fine that we value different things. Olaf, baby, the world’s a diverse place, full of all sorts of crazy ideas. You want a governing bureaucracy immune from criticism, for example, and Americans want to shitpost in peace. Different strokes for different folks. But the problem is you’re asking us to pay a lot of money to defend your way of life, while concurrently tapping our largest companies for cash like they’re your baby daddy. And that? Unfortunately not a kind of charity we’re doing anymore.

Good luck though, and enjoy your tariffs.

—SOLANA