After Orbán, Hungary Is Falling Out of Love with Russia

By Charles Hilu

Saturday, October 24, 2026

 

In the leadup to this year’s elections in Hungary, then–Prime Minister Viktor Orbán castigated Ukrainian leaders for calling on the country to give up its importation of cheap Russian energy.

 

“Anyone who says this is an enemy of Hungary, so Ukraine is our enemy,” Orbán said at a February rally. Since taking office in 2010, Orbán has pursued closer relations with Russia, refusing to reverse course even after Russia invaded Ukraine despite the demands of erstwhile allies in the European Union and NATO.

 

In April, months after Orbán declared Ukraine an enemy, his Fidesz party lost in a landslide to its rival Tisza, led by eventual Prime Minister Péter Magyar. Under Tisza control, Hungary is looking to reverse the legacy of Orbán’s love affair with Russia while stopping short of embracing Ukraine fully.

 

“We basically promised to the Hungarian people that we will keep Hungary out of harm’s way,” Márton Hajdu, a Tisza official who chairs the Hungarian Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee, said in an interview with National Review in the Hungarian Embassy in Washington, D.C. “But we, by virtue of rebuilding our international relations and our partnership and our cooperation with our allies, will not be holding up anyone from helping Ukraine, whatever they wish to [do], and that’s where we stand right now.”

 

While he was clear that Russia was the aggressor in the war, Hajdu ruled out the possibility of supplying troops or weapons to Ukraine. But Hungary is open to cooperating with Ukraine, he said, on non-military matters, so long as officials in Kyiv protect the rights of ethnic Hungarians in Ukraine, which has long been a sticking point between the two countries.

 

“Our promise to the Hungarian people was that you don’t have to be worried about Ukraine, and that explains why we have to be so categorical about our relationship with Ukraine,” Hajdu said.

 

Hajdu’s comments indicate that — though Putin will no longer have an ally in Hungary, which shares an eastern border with Ukraine — Kyiv has not necessarily found a new cheerleader. They also reflect the legacy of 16 straight years of Orbán’s rule on public opinion, something that cannot be undone overnight.

 

During his time in power, Orbán repeatedly clashed with his allies in the EU as he deepened Hungary’s relationship with Russia, often opposing EU measures to support Ukraine or sanction Putin. He also made Hungary dependent on Russia for energy, even increasing the share of Hungarian imports that Russian oil made up as the Ukraine war raged.

 

One of Tisza’s first priorities has been to reverse course on Russia. In a speech to NATO allies this year, Magyar broke with Orbán’s line, stating clearly that “Ukraine is the victim, and Russia is the brutal aggressor.” According to Hajdu, the party is also attempting to repair the relationship with those EU and NATO allies alienated by Orbán.

 

“During the 16 years of Orbán’s rule — but in particular in the last few years — basically, Hungary became an obstructive force, a veto-wielding government in almost all of our foreign policy relations,” Hajdu told NR.

 

But while it is becoming friendlier to the West, there are limits to how much Tisza can help Ukraine.

 

“Hungary has stopped being Putin’s Trojan Horse in the EU,” Dalibor Rohac, director of research at GLOBSEC, a European foreign policy think tank, told NR. “It’s not holding Ukraine hostage for Putin’s benefit anymore, which was a common pattern by the previous government. But that doesn’t mean that it has become Ukraine’s advocate.

 

That’s mostly due to the fact that the Hungarian population that elected Tisza still has some reservations about Ukraine. A poll from the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) released soon after the Hungarian election found that Hungarians generally oppose allowing the shipment of military aid to Ukraine through Hungary, providing financial support to Ukraine, and especially, giving military aid to the country. Hajdu indicated much of that is due to a hangover from Orbán and his control of the discourse in Hungary.

 

“Orbán and his friends had an 80-percent cloud over the Hungarian media,” he said. “Public media was under their fist, and also his oligarchs owned a lot of private media. And this allowed them to tell a narrative to the Hungarian people in which Ukraine was a national security threat.”

 

It’s that public sentiment in part that has led Hungary to continue to oppose fast-tracking Ukraine’s joining the EU. Hajdu argued that the promise of an accelerated accession was “always a mirage” and “unrealistic.”

 

“The EU enlargement is one of the most regulated processes inside the European Union. It has its own rhythm, it has its own rules, and departing from the merit-based approach would be suicide, both for the European Union and for Ukraine.”

 

Asked about the possibility of Ukraine joining NATO once the war is over, Hajdu said that the prospect of both NATO and EU accession for Ukraine is a discussion for the distant future and emphasized that the region’s main priority should be bringing a just end to the war.

 

“Let’s assume that we reach at a certain point a just and sustainable peace,” Hajdu said. “Then it will take years, if not decades, in which we have to talk about Ukraine reconstruction, reforms, military cooperation, all sorts of things before any of these can be realistically discussed.”

 

But Tisza officials are showing some willingness to buck public opinion on certain issues. While Hungary still opposes accelerated EU accession for Ukraine, Magyar in June lifted the country’s Orbán-era opposition to beginning formal talks with Kyiv to bring Ukraine into the EU through the ordinary process — despite a majority of Hungarians opposing Ukrainian accession in the ECFR poll.

 

Tisza may soon be forced to confront public opinion on the issue of Russian oil. Per the ECFR, 53 percent of Hungarians want the country to keep buying oil from Putin, but recent legislative moves in the United States could make relying on Russian oil, which makes up over 90 percent of Hungarian oil imports, untenable.

 

The recently passed Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026 gives President Donald Trump new powers to sanction those who import their energy from Moscow. On a trip to Washington, D.C., last month, Hajdu asked lawmakers not to impose tariffs on Hungary while it attempts to wean itself off of that energy source. Trump last week broadly waived the sanctions the bill would have imposed.

 

Speaking to NR, Hajdu was reluctant to commit to completely cutting off imports of Russian energy, but he was clear that he hoped to decrease them.

 

“What is absolutely certain at this stage is that, for the protection of our own national interest and security, we need to stop — or decrease and then stop — our unilateral dependence on Russia for energy,” he said.

 

Broadly, Hajdu expressed an interest in cooperation with the United States. He insisted there was no awkwardness on Hungary’s part, even given the fact that Vice President JD Vance went to Hungary to campaign for Orbán in the leadup to this year’s election.

 

“We look for something durable, something value- and interest-based, not something that is down to personalities or any kind of personal emotions,” Hajdu said.

The EU’s Inexplicable Aggression Toward America’s Tech Industry

By Josh Hodges

Wednesday, October 21, 2026

 

Last month, the American AI company Anthropic reported that Chinese operators had circumvented its security safeguards to develop military software, including air-defense suppression tools simulating strikes on Taiwanese targets. Chinese AI labs have also siphoned off Claude’s capabilities to train rival models. Months before that, the EU sanctioned two China-based companies for their roles in cyberattacks across six member states. And in January, a San Francisco jury convicted a former Google engineer of stealing AI trade secrets for China’s benefit.

 

China is coming for Western technology, and neither the United States nor Europe can claim they haven’t been warned. The EU’s own sanctions show that its leaders understand the danger of an authoritarian adversary willing to hack and steal its way to technological dominance over the West and, ultimately, the world.

 

Given that threat, Europe has every reason to stand alongside the American companies that China is targeting. Instead, the EU increasingly treats those companies as enemies.

 

On September 21, Ireland’s Data Protection Commission fined Google, whose AI trade secrets had been stolen for China’s benefit, nearly $500 million over its handling of users’ location data under EU privacy rules. That came barely two months after the separate European Commission fined Google nearly $1 billion over its search rankings and restrictions on purchases outside Google Play.

 

European penalties against America’s leading technology companies now total roughly $18 billion, with Google’s alone accounting for nearly $12 billion. According to U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, the EU’s fines against Google account for “over 2 percent of the EU’s budget,” effectively making the company a larger financial contributor to the bloc than many EU member states. In late September, France’s Minister for Europe proposed using €4.6 billion in Google fines to cut what member states pay into the EU budget.

 

The rest of America’s technology sector is getting much the same treatment as Google. EU officials have already used the Digital Services Act to investigate how X moderates speech, while House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan has accused them of pressuring the platform to censor political speech the European Union disfavored. The European Commission ultimately fined X $140 million over its blue-check system, advertising database, and refusal to give them sufficient access to its data.

 

Similarly, Apple was fined $570 million by the European Commission over the App Store’s management of outside purchases, on top of a $2 billion penalty involving music-streaming apps the year before. Meta was fined another $228 million over its advertising model.

 

In June, the European Commission went further, preliminarily designating Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure under the Digital Markets Act — even though it conceded that neither meets the law’s quantitative thresholds. That move would subject both cloud services to European regulations backed by fines of up to 10 percent of the companies’ annual revenue.

 

Meanwhile, potential changes to the Digital Networks Act described in a leaked January draft raised the prospect of requiring American platforms to subsidize European telecom companies through “network usage fees.” Doing so would directly contradict the EU’s explicit promise in its 2025 trade commitment to the United States that it would not adopt such fees.

 

In its quest for “digital sovereignty,” Europe has become shamelessly determined to bleed America’s technology industry dry. Never mind that it’s targeting a democratic ally’s companies already under attack from China, or that these are the very companies whose technology European businesses and broader economy have depended on for years.

 

Even the commission has struggled to replace American technology with European alternatives. This summer the European Commission rolled out a “sovereign” backup to Microsoft Teams. Its staff kept using Teams. One official called the replacement “absolute shit,” Politico reported; another conceded that if American technology went dark, the U.S. would “instantly win the war.”

 

When Europe’s homegrown alternatives inevitably fall short, the fallback won’t be European; it will be a choice between America and China. Europe has a direct stake in keeping American companies strong, both for its own economy and for the West’s broader economic and national security.

 

Beijing, of course, isn’t complaining about Europe’s aggression toward U.S. tech companies.

 

Chinese state-owned outlets have praised the EU’s fine against X as evidence of the bloc’s willingness to confront major technology companies. They’ve also characterized European investigations into Google and Meta as flashpoints in the transatlantic relationship and described the bloc’s technology disputes with Washington as “a new focal point of transatlantic conflict.”

 

But Beijing’s support for that scrutiny disappears as soon as Chinese companies are involved. Any EU proposals to remove or even investigate high-risk Chinese suppliers are framed under the same media apparatus as “naked protectionism” and “unreasonable suppression.”

 

Beijing clearly wants European markets open to Chinese companies and European regulators occupied with American ones. And its state media is perfectly willing to encourage the fights that help make that possible. All the while, Chinese operators will keep trying to hack into and steal from companies on both sides of the Atlantic. European leaders should recognize whose interests they are serving. Burdening American companies gives their Chinese competitors more room to advance, while the resulting disputes give Beijing more opportunities to divide the allies.

 

Europe has another reason to reconsider its approach: The United States still holds substantial advantages in the global AI race. American firms drew $286 billion in private AI investment last year, 23 times China’s total, according to Stanford’s 2026 AI Index. The United States hosts roughly three-quarters of the world’s AI computing power; China, about 15 percent. And where Chinese labs have closed the gap, they’ve often done it by copying: According to Anthropic, a single Alibaba campaign used fraudulent accounts to generate more than 151 million exchanges with Claude between May and July this year to train its own models. China’s frontier is, in no small part, built on the back of America’s technology and innovation.

 

The EU claims to understand the danger of Chinese technological dominance. It cannot expect to prevent that outcome while relentlessly penalizing the American companies best positioned to compete. Each new fight with those companies is another opening for Beijing, and Europe has already given it far too many.

Eurozone Crisis 2.0?

By John Gustavsson

Tuesday, October 20, 2026

 

Although the unrest in France is unlikely to grow into another French Revolution, it could in retrospect prove to be a pivotal moment in triggering the next eurozone debt crisis. French bond yields have risen sharply in the middle of a global bond selloff, and the difference between French and German yields are now greater than at any point since the early 2010s. Other eurozone countries, largely untouched by the crisis 15 years ago, are now also in the danger zone. One thing is clear: Another eurozone debt crisis would not look like the first one.

 

The eurozone crisis of the early 2010s followed the global financial crisis of 2008. The trigger varied by country: Ireland and Spain saw collapsing housing and credit bubbles, while long-standing fiscal problems and fudged numbers resurfaced in Greece. During the boom years, the common currency delivered an artificially strong euro and unusually cheap borrowing to countries that had previously faced higher interest rates and frequent devaluations of their pre-euro national currencies. When the crisis hit, these now over-indebted countries were unable to set their own interest rates and depreciate their currencies, as they no longer had their own currencies. Rising sovereign yields threatened bank balance sheets (many of which held large amounts of domestic government debt), prompting bank bailouts that further increased public debt and deepened the spiral. Portugal, Spain, Ireland, and especially Greece lost normal market access.

 

Facing the risk of contagion that could destroy the currency altogether, the European Commission, reinforced by market interventions by the European Central Bank, orchestrated a series of bailouts funded by the vehicles underwritten by eurozone members and the International Monetary Fund. The eurozone was saved, but underneath the surface, structural problems remained.

 

Though countries such as Ireland staged a strong recovery, in much of continental Europe, growth remained sluggish and deficits remained stubbornly high. The EU’s rule against deficits above 3 percent of GDP continue to be ignored, with France’s deficit running over 5 percent for the past three years. Neighboring Belgium is doing about as poorly, with Italy only slightly better. Less indebted but still vulnerable countries include the likes of Finland and Slovakia. History suggests that investors, if forced to reevaluate one formerly safe haven (e.g., France), will soon take a much closer look at others.

 

Some American observers have noted that French debt-to-GDP and French ten-year yields are still below American levels. This, however, is cold comfort: America can sustain a higher level of government debt on account of the dollar’s status as the global reserve currency. Also, and while this is far from a get-out-of-jail-free card, technically, the United States cannot be forced to default, since its debt is issued in a currency that it prints. This is not true for France, or any of the other countries that use the euro.

 

A debt crisis is not by any means a sure thing. What is sure, however, is that such a crisis, were it to happen, would look very different than the one during the early 2010s.

 

To begin with, a debt crisis would realistically require Thatcherite welfare and tax reforms. Whereas the first eurozone crisis was first and foremost a financial crisis caused by an unsustainable surge in cheap credit overheating peripheral eurozone economies, a new crisis would be a truly economic crisis caused by a decade or more of accumulating structural issues: a loss of competitiveness causing a long slog with little economic growth resulting in little growth in tax revenues, combined with an aging population and an underemployed migrant population. The recent French riots, though not explicitly in response to cuts, have reminded French — and European — politicians of just how dangerous public anger can be, especially coming from the aforementioned immigrant population. France has only implemented modest tightening, and there has already been serious trouble. No doubt this will make many policymakers hesitate to support broader reforms.

 

The upcoming French presidential election in April next year does not make it easier. The two candidates most likely to make it into the run-off are Jean-Luc Mélenchon, from the far left LFI, and the populist right National Rally’s Marine Le Pen. The former has indicated he would partially default on France’s debt, even openly mocking the idea of “reassuring the markets.” Of the two, Le Pen would be the better alternative, but even she has so far resisted calls to raise the retirement age, even suggesting she may lower it back from 64 to 62, or even down to 60 for certain groups. She does promise other spending cuts, but these may not be enough — even if she’s able to pass them at all.

 

Second, this crisis would be different because France, in particular, may just be too big to fail. In the aftermath of the eurozone crisis, several measures were implemented to prevent a repeat: The European Stability Mechanism (ESM) is supposed to provide funds for countries in financial turmoil but does not have anywhere close to unlimited resources, and conditions would be attached. Outright Monetary Transactions — the purchase on the secondary market by the ECB of the short-term bonds of a country in trouble — is another backstop, but again this is supposed to have fiscal conditions attached to it. Aiding a country flagrantly violating EU deficit rules would make a mockery of those rules and would encourage others to ignore them, setting the stage for future crises.

 

An important distinction between the 2010s crisis and what might be coming is that the Greeks and Irish were genuinely concerned that, if they did not yield to the EU’s harsh demands for austerity, they might be kicked out of the club. The French, on the other hand, know that the club does not exist without them in it. Does that mean that France will get off scot-free? Not so fast.

 

Nobody in Germany requested an encore. During the last crisis, the Alternative für Deutschland party (AfD) — then known as a “professor’s party” with a strong, classically liberal strain — was formed to oppose the bailout of Greece and other troubled member states, arguing that Germany should cut its losses and let them fail. The AfD remains a broadly euroskeptic party, and if another debt crisis occurred, and Germany once again agreed to bail out other members of the eurozone, it just might strike a definitive deathblow to the country’s political mainstream — and even more so if a hypothetical French, Belgian, or Italian bailout didn’t come with the tough conditions imposed on Ireland and Greece last time around. These countries were effectively placed under administration, with years of national budgets having to be approved by an unelected troika of the European Commission, the ECB, and the IMF. France is not a country that likes being pushed around (and it’s not too keen on living within its means, either, having run a budget deficit every year since 1974). French voters might very well prefer default to subjecting themselves to troika rule.

 

The ECB, having assured investors that the eurozone crisis was a one-time thing, would find its credibility seriously questioned. It could drastically lower interest rates to try to ease the burden on France and other troubled nations, but as always this would come with the risk of higher inflation. With inflation already on a steady upward trend since this summer, and with several countries more worried about inflation than deficits, this balancing act will only get harder.

 

Making matters worse politically is the fact that the European Union has explicitly endorsed deficit spending for the purpose of rearmament. During the first half of the 2010s, military spending was on the chopping block as European policymakers looked for easy cuts to balance budgets. For geopolitical reasons, that won’t be an option if another debt crisis kicks off, but convincing voters to accept continued rearmament while slashing social welfare will still be a hard sell.

 

Brussels has also encouraged heavy government spending on decarbonization. Without expensive subsidies, tax credits, and government investment into green sectors, the EU’s already unrealistic climate goals would be completely out of reach. Unfortunately, the sunk cost is too great: Too many industries and too many jobs have been lost, and too much political capital invested in the transition, for Brussels to turn around and say, “Forget net zero, save your economies.” After all, a debt crisis is nothing compared with an uninhabitable planet — which is what Brussels has told Europeans is at stake if they don’t go green.

 

In 2012 the message from Brussels was a simple “Don’t spend beyond your means,” something voters, however much they hated austerity, fundamentally agreed with. This time, the message would be far more muddled: “Deficit spending is bad, except for in these areas which we in Brussels deem worthy.”

 

On top of this, the EU is planning to raise membership fees. While the hike, if passed, is not going to be anywhere close to a main deficit driver, it will present an easy political target (“Why is the EU getting more, while our retirees and unemployed receive less?”), further hurting the EU’s credibility with ordinary Europeans.

 

How it ends is hard to predict. Wealth taxes, which most of Europe already abolished for good reason, would almost certainly stage a comeback as left-wing populism surged. Eurobonds — joint bonds issued by the eurozone — were first discussed during the first eurozone crisis. The proposal was revived during the Covid-19 pandemic, and such bonds would certainly be hotly debated once again.

 

Supporters of EU centralization will argue that the problem is the EU’s lack of authority to directly intervene in the day-to-day fiscal affairs of its member states, that if Brussels had the power to force countries to raise taxes or reduce spending, national budgets could be balanced. Euroskeptics will, in turn, point to the growth-hampering bureaucracy imposed by the union to make the case that Brussels already has its fingers in too many pies. The skeptics are right, but “less EU” is only part of the Thatcherite package that Europe will need to get out of its low-growth, high-debt slog.

 

A debt crisis is not inevitable. Though bond yields have risen, no eurozone country has lost market access. If the next French president, likely Marine Le Pen, were to rise to the challenge of taking on France’s entrenched interests and win, this may even provide political cover and embolden other European leaders to follow suit. Otherwise, markets will eventually, like in the 2010s, force Europe to do what its leaders will not. To quote the words of the economist Herb Stein, “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.”

Canada’s EU Romance Is a Mistake

By John Gustavsson

Wednesday, September 23, 2026

 

Last week, the European Commission’s president, Ursula von der Leyen, surprised the world by announcing an offer to make Canada the first “associate member” of the European Union. What makes an “associate member” is not legally defined in any of the EU’s treaties, but there is no doubt that Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney appears determined to embrace the EU as he seeks to reduce his country’s dependence on the North American market. After Donald Trump’s threats to turn Canada into the 51st state, Carney’s approach may seem reasonable — and, judging from the PM’s approval ratings, Canadians are, so far, on board.

 

Yet running to Brussels would be as big a mistake for Canada as it was for Britain.

 

Whatever Canada’s new relationship with the EU ends up looking like, it will be a much cozier relationship than before. Whereas Carney’s predecessor, Justin Trudeau, never missed an opportunity to emphasize Canada as an indigenous land and apologize for the sins of the settlers, Carney seems to have rediscovered his country’s European heritage, going as far as to label it “the most European of non-European countries.”

 

On Canada Day, CBC/Radio-Canada announced that the country would compete in the 2027 Eurovision Song Contest, by far the biggest music competition in the world, with around 160 million viewers. Joining the ESC is not cheap; indeed, several countries decline to participate every year citing the cost. Fortunately, Carney had increased the public broadcaster’s budget for this very purpose.

 

In May, Carney became the first non-European leader ever to attend the semiannual European Political Community summit, an intergovernmental summit attended by leaders of 48 European countries. Last year, he signed a Strategic Partnership of the Future with the EU, covering areas including trade and climate transition, as well as a security and defense partnership. An “associate membership” in the EU — whatever that term ends up meaning — could be seen as a logical next step, fitting with Carney’s ambition to double Canada’s non-U.S. exports over the next ten years.

 

Carney increasingly looks like an insecure high schooler trying to hang with the cool kids. But, much like in high school, the cool kids are not really all that cool.

 

First, Europe struggles with economic growth. Since the global financial crisis, the wealth gap between America and the EU — and especially the western EU — has widened, as Europe has struggled with weak and inconsistent growth. Economic shocks like those brought on by the war in Ukraine and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz have contributed, but taxation, an ill-conceived common currency, and regulatory policy in areas such as energy, climate, and tech, bear the brunt of the blame. It would make more sense for Canada to diversify by adding more members and deepening ties with the faster-growing Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), a trade pact that has nearly eliminated tariffs among signatory countries following the United States’ withdrawal from the preceding Trans-Pacific Partnership in 2017.

 

Supporters of Carney’s European adventures may counter that there is no need to choose — that Canada can diversify elsewhere while still deepening ties with Europe. But it is not that simple. Brussels rarely gives deep market access without pulling partners toward its rule book. If “associate membership” turns into dynamic alignment, Canada, while still formally able to sign other foreign trade agreements, would find those deals harder to use: Goods and data would still have to clear European process rules, including rules written after the ink is dry.

 

Nowhere is this more dangerous than on climate policy. Whereas Carney has begun the process of rolling back his predecessor’s unrealistic goals, the EU is still charging full steam ahead, even implementing climate tariffs (the “carbon-border adjustment mechanism”) on its trade partners. That the EU climate regime is not exactly suitable for an oil-, gas-, and minerals-producing country should go without saying.

 

It may seem counterintuitive that Europe would ever try to force its environmentalism on Canada, seeing as how Canada’s minerals and natural gas — two sectors that EU rules could devastate, if applied to Canada — are part of what makes the country attractive to the EU. But in Brussels, the link between overregulation and underinvestment is not properly understood. Sure, policymakers want rare earths and natural gas — but since that’s never stopped them from overregulating those industries almost to extinction in Europe, Canada should not assume it will get a free pass. The mere threat of future regulatory alignment with the EU could deter investment into Canada’s extractive industries.

 

For Canada’s tech sector, the EU poses an even bigger threat. The EU prides itself on a “regulate first, ask questions later” approach that has strangled innovation in the union. If Canada is pushed to adapt EU tech regulations, the effect would be even worse than in Europe, since geographical proximity means Canada’s tech sector competes with the U.S. and Silicon Valley more directly than Europe’s does.

 

The same is true for the auto and chemicals industries as well as many other sectors, and geographical proximity makes it easier not just for businesses but also for skilled Canadians in affected sectors to move to the United States, something more and more of them are already doing.

 

Carney may feel emboldened by polls showing that large majorities of Canadians favor closer ties with the EU, with one poll even showing 57 percent would support full membership. But the idea of greater integration with the EU and the reality of such a path are starkly different. Brits once overwhelmingly voted in favor of EU membership, but decades of clashes between Britain’s Anglo-Saxon worldview and Brussels’s continental ways eventually led to a bitter divorce. And more than a European nation, Canada — with apologies to Quebec — is first and foremost a British nation, and that is something Carney ought to consider before he traps his country in a union that neither he nor his voters fully understand.

 

Of course, Trump was wrong to ever suggest that Canada should become America’s 51st state. It would be nothing short of tragic if Canada, in its rush to safeguard its sovereignty, merely ended up giving it away to another foreign bidder.

Europe’s Misguided Plans for Pursuing Digital Independence

By John Gustavsson

Sunday, August 30, 2026

 

After years of living in denial, the European Union has seemingly finally noticed that it lacks something the U.S. has: a vibrant tech sector. Europe’s lack of a tech industry has increasingly left it dependent on America and Silicon Valley. Two new initiatives aim to mitigate this issue and take Europe toward “digital independence.” Sadly, they are both misguided.

 

The first is EuroStack, an initiative that originated from a multiparty conference at the European Parliament in September 2024. Out of this came a policy report envisioning a way to break European dependency across raw materials and chips, networks, cloud, software, data, and AI through €300 billion of investment across ten years.

 

In parallel, the industry-led EuroStack Industry Initiative began its work lobbying policymakers to create artificial demand for European tech through public procurement (its pillars are “Buy European,” “Sell European,” and “Fund European”). EuroStack has been publicly endorsed by several European leaders, as well as by the European Parliament’s industry, research, and energy (ITRE) committee.

 

While one cannot fault the European tech sector for looking for a bailout, it is unlikely it will be able to grow as long as the regulatory attitude toward tech remains hostile. The EU itself is the main culprit through regulations such as the GDPR, Digital Services Act, Digital Markets Act, and AI Act. It is, perhaps, quite telling that the EU tech sector seems to have given up hope that these regulations may be lifted and instead seems to simply aim to have some of the costs of compliance reimbursed through public procurement contracts.

 

Yet, the idea that €300 billion over ten years would bring Europe anywhere close to digital independence is ludicrous. In Silicon Valley, this kind of money is spare change. Spread across an entire continent’s technological supply chain, it looks more like miserly alms to the impoverished EU tech sector.

 

The industry wing has conceded as much and made it clear that the €300 billion figure is not the real prize, going as far as to say it’s become a “distraction.” What they most want is a slice of the demand that Europe already sends abroad: most importantly, the roughly €260 billion that European organizations spend on U.S. cloud and software annually.

 

Most of the €300 billion would not be a single new line on the EU’s budget. Yet, for contrast, over the 2021–2027 period, the EU has earmarked approximately €661 billion to be spent on the climate transition. Clearly, nobody in Brussels anticipated the AI race when going all in on climate. Now, with so much of the budget already dedicated to a transition that is leaving Europe less technologically independent by the day, options to genuinely support the continent’s tech sector in a meaningful way are far more limited.

 

Beyond deregulation, Europe’s best chance is — for once — to follow Sweden’s lead: As one of the only European countries that is punching above its weight in producing “unicorns,” Sweden could teach the rest of the European Union a lesson on facilitating venture capital growth. For a high-tax economy, Sweden’s treatment of start-ups and serial entrepreneurs is shockingly libertarian, with highly preferential tax treatment of employee stock options and angel investors. And of course, we don’t have silly things like wealth taxes.

 

Limiting public procurement options through “Buy European” rules is likely to have the opposite effect: Unable to simply purchase digital services from whoever offers the best quality, public sectors throughout the union would become less efficient, giving taxpayers even less bang for the large buck they pay in taxes in most of the EU. It is also debatable if such rules will even prove to be compatible with the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) Government Procurement Agreement — not that anyone seems to care about the WTO anymore.

 

More troublingly, a tech sector kept alive through the life support of taxpayer money would not be a tech sector that could meaningfully innovate in a way that contributes to productivity. Instead of optimizing for everyday users, businesses will optimize for tenders. Once businesses are on the receiving end of bureaucratic chest compressions, their goal turns from pleasing consumers to pleasing the bureaucrats pounding on their ribcages. Of course, considering the EU’s hostile attitude toward tech, it may not view an enthralled tech industry as a bad thing; at least it will be easier to regulate.

 

Which brings us to EuroSky, a project launched publicly in April this year by the Netherlands-based Modal Foundation, providing a European-hosted infrastructure for the AT Protocol, which is the same open standard that Bluesky runs on.

 

While a separate initiative from EuroStack, it too seeks to bring digital independence to Europe by creating a European social media ecosystem with data servers based in Europe and a shared layer of social media infrastructure. Among its founders is Sebastian Vogelsang, who also founded the Bluesky-based app Flashes.

 

With all EuroSky social media platforms based in Europe, the shared content moderation envisioned by its founders would by necessity have to align with EU law. Apparently not seeing the irony, Robin Berjon, another one of its architects, described EuroSky as a way to get around “authoritarian infrastructure providers.”

 

While he did not explicitly name Elon Musk as the “authoritarian” in question, Musk has a long-running conflict with the EU, with European policymakers repeatedly threatening to ban X. It is perhaps not a coincidence that the very first homegrown EuroSky social media app is a microblogging platform, Mu.

 

Of course, on its own, any EuroSky social media platform will fail for the same reason that Bluesky, Threads, and all others did: The number of people willing to abandon a thriving platform because they dislike the owner’s political views is small. Competitors therefore almost automatically become intolerable leper colonies full of bitter people who use their competing platforms for little else than just complaining about the other platform and posting stuff that would not be allowed or would not be prioritized by the other platform’s algorithm.

 

Prior to Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, several right-wing alternatives like Parler failed like Bluesky to gain widespread adoption because their initial user bases of angry political radicals scared off any users other than those on the fringes of politics.

 

That is not to say that EuroSky platforms may not play any role. One reason European policymakers have failed to ban X and other repeat offenders of the Digital Services Act is that they know there is no alternative they could direct users to if these platforms were geoblocked. Without an alternative, the political price of taking away platforms that users have come to rely on for years would just be too great. This is where EuroSky would come in.

 

While digital independence is a serious issue for Europe, neither EuroStack nor EuroSky offers serious answers: Europe does not lack for engineers, capital, and market size. What it lacks is a political class willing to let go of its “regulate first, ask questions later” attitude toward tech innovation. Neither public procurement nor a “safe space” social media ecosystem will ever replace the successful formula that once built Silicon Valley: allowing people to build things that the state has not already approved.

Identifying the Enemy

By Andrew Stuttaford

Saturday, August 15, 2026

 

I wrote last year about the way in which Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, a Social Democrat, led her center-left party to take a tougher stance on immigration after she became its leader in 2015. Not unconnectedly, she became Denmark’s prime minister in 2019. Unsurprisingly, Frederiksen has reiterated her position on immigration in the wake of the events in Ceuta, and in language unimaginable from almost anywhere else on the left.

 

On August 12, the Danish parliament debated Ceuta and its aftermath. Among Frederiksen’s remarks were these (translation by Google Translate, but from my very, very limited knowledge of Danish it looks to be accurate):

 

A few years ago, Denmark stood very much alone in Europe. Now a majority of EU countries support it, and this has made it possible to create concrete political results. We have succeeded in changing EU legislation so that it is now possible to establish reception and departure canters [for illegal migrants] in countries outside the EU, and . . . Danish authorities are working concretely to make it a reality. In other words: Denmark is now pushing Europe forward, and we intend to continue to do so — also when it comes to the issue of legalizing illegal migrants who are already in Europe, because we are against that. We are against that. It is no secret that I and the Spanish prime minister deeply disagree on immigration policy. We do so at a national level, and we do so at a European level. The Spanish government can make its own national decisions, just as Denmark can. But I and we will not accept that Danish society has to pay the price for decisions in Spain that we fundamentally disagree with. [Emphasis added.]

 

In other words, given the rules governing internal movement within the EU, the amnesty for illegal migrants forced through by Spain’s far-left prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, had implications elsewhere in the bloc. That’s something that Sánchez, who has complained loudly about a lack of “solidarity” within the EU after the Ceuta crisis would do well to remember, a point that Frederiksen addressed later in the debate.

 

Frederiksen also turned her attention to the danger posed to Europe by “undemocratic forces.” After identifying Russia as the principal threat, she then turned her attention to what she referred to a “big enemy that has started to grow from within (en stor fjende er begyndter begyndt at vokse op indefra).”

 

Who might this be?

 

It is foreigners who have come to Europe [“udlændinge, der er kommet til Europe”], it is Hamas supporters, it is people who commit terror against European societies, it is people who do not recognize our fundamental European values, it is people who sympathize with some of the darkest forces in this world. So Europe is threatened. The problem is that we are threatened both from outside and now from within, but it is not because of a disagreement between the Danish and Spanish governments, but because of people with an Islamic background [“folk med islamisk baggrund”] who do not want the open, free European society, unfortunately.

 

As a reminder, Frederiksen was on the left and is on the left. To Bernie Sanders, she must be the Dane from hell.

 

Moreover, she has just co-signed a letter with Italy’s redoubtable (oh, sorry, “far right”) Giorgia Meloni, who is, in many respects, Frederiksen’s polar opposite, as the duo acknowledge in the letter:

 

We are aware that many might be wondering about our cooperation. We come from very different political backgrounds, and we certainly do not agree on everything.

 

But:

 

We do not accept uncontrolled immigration to Europe, and we have promoted a strict immigration policy, both in our Nations and in Europe.

 

And they defend their stance not only on conventional grounds (problems with crime and so on), but something deeper:

 

We are both proud of Europe’s Christian cultural heritage and we want to protect it. We expect those who come to our countries and choose to make Europe their home to respect our values and not seek to impose ways of life on us that we do not share.

 

The reference to “cultural heritage” is carefully chosen. This is not, it should be stressed, some sort of theological declaration. Meloni is a Catholic, if somewhat idiosyncratically so, and a churchgoer. Frederiksen is a member of the Church of Denmark but is not a believer. However, for reasons tied to culture and social cohesion, she is a “virkelig hardcore tilhænger” (a really hardcore supporter) of the Danish church, a stance, incidentally, that has its equivalents in the home of the Church of England.

 

Contrast the attitude of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of France’s hard left LFI. He will be running (again) for the French presidency next year and, based on current polling, he may emerge as the leading candidate of the left.

 

Mélenchon talks of a “New France” formed and defined by a process he refers to as “créolisation” (a concept borrowed from Édouard Glissant, a poet born in the French Caribbean), something new formed by the mix of traditional French and immigrant culture, rather than the traditional French model which is, at least in theory, assimilationist.

 

Mélenchon’s approach is, above all, a matter of political calculation. He has realized that the white Catholic working class (“les ouvriers blancs catholiques”) are not going to help build the path to socialism he is looking for. He seems to have concluded that citizens of the nascent New France just might. Given France’s demographics, that has meant a sharp turn toward Muslim voters, which seems to be working. In the 2024 European elections, an estimated 62 percent of those French Muslims who voted (there was a high abstention rate) opted for the LFI and an estimated 69 percent chose Mélenchon in the first round of the 2022 presidential elections.

 

Mélenchon dismisses talk of an informal Islamo-leftist “partnership.” He also denies allegations of antisemitism.

 

Of course he does.

 

Fortunately, his sort of politics would be impossible in New York City, say, or Michigan.

 

Oh.

The Roots of the Ceuta Crisis

National Review Online

Tuesday, August 04, 2026

 

The massive (if largely temporary) incursion of about 70,000 illegal migrants out of Morocco into Ceuta, a Spanish city of 80,000 people on the North African coast, has set off a debate that, to say the least, has been wide-ranging.

 

We will start at the beginning. Ceuta has been under Spanish or Portuguese rule since it was taken by the Portuguese in 1415, almost 40 years before the fall of Constantinople. Asserting that it is unacceptable to have a Spanish city on the African mainland is a variant of blood-and-soil nationalism that, if taken to its logical conclusion, would mean that Turkey should quit East Thrace and Istanbul.

 

Self-determination is the better principle. Ceutans are Spaniards who want their city to remain Spanish. That wish should be respected. Ceuta juts into Morocco, which argues that Ceuta (and Melilla, its “twin”) are part of its patrimony, a claim without any legitimacy. If there is any substance behind recent hints of discreet U.S. support for Morocco over this, it is evidence of appallingly misguided thinking. Spain’s hard-left prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, is profoundly and dangerously anti-American, but his time will pass. The U.S. should not confuse Spain with Sánchez or, for that matter, Morocco with reliability.

 

Much of the controversy over the influx into Ceuta revolves around Sánchez’s responsibility for it. Earlier this year, his government forced through an amnesty for illegal immigrants. About 1 million people applied, roughly double the official, but widely disbelieved, estimate. Eventually, family reunification provisions may increase the total admitted or regularized to, on some estimates, between 2 and 3 million. After, typically, five years of legal residence, they will be able to settle elsewhere in the EU. Unsurprisingly, the news of this amnesty horrified many in a bloc already wrestling with the consequences of mass immigration and badly scarred by the Merkel debacle a decade ago. Thanks to the EU’s rules on free movement within its borders, an immigration problem in one member-state can easily spill over into another.

 

The amnesty sent a signal to would-be immigrants. It was not the first in Spain, and there was no reason to think that it would be the last, Moreover, just weeks ago, the Spanish Supreme Court had opened a loophole in the special immigration regime in place for Ceuta and Melilla. Under this, asylum-seekers can be turned back at the border but, the court ruled (for reasons that are now being addressed), not if they swam there.

 

People respond to incentives, whether real or imagined. Some sort of surge was foreseeable. Indeed, there are claims that Madrid was warned that one was on the way. The government’s response has ranged from denial to the somewhat more credible position that it was given no warning of the size of any incursion. Whatever the truth, no new steps were taken to deal with a surge, a negligent coda to a reckless amnesty.

 

The sheer size of the crowd that overwhelmed Ceuta’s inadequate defenses and poured into the city has understandably given rise to suggestions that the incursion was organized. But by whom?

 

The most obvious suspect is the Moroccan government. Not only does it claim that Ceuta is Moroccan, but also, some argue, it was angered by a recent visit by Sánchez to Algiers during which he described Algeria as a “strategic partner.” Morocco and Algeria do not get along. Under the circumstances, for Morocco to take advantage of the opportunity created by Madrid to demonstrate Ceuta’s vulnerability would make a lot of sense. There are reports that the Moroccan government encouraged the exodus, and there are others that suggest something more complex. If only, perhaps, for diplomatic reasons, Sánchez has distanced himself from the accusations against Rabat and cast some of the blame on people-traffickers and, one way or another, social media.

 

Sánchez was, however, enraged by criticism from some EU countries (above all, Italy, which also introduced temporary checks on non-EU citizens traveling directly from Spain) and their supposed lack of “solidarity.” However, in a letter sent on Saturday, 22 EU prime ministers (the EU has 27 member-states) made clear what they thought of Sánchez’s solidarity. They stressed the importance of working jointly against illegal immigration, an approach that included “addressing all policies that can serve as pull factors, such as the regularization of [a] very large number of irregular migrants.” Ouch.

 

In an attempt to defuse matters, Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the EU Commission, has praised the speedy resolution of the Ceuta crisis (even if more migrants remain there than was first claimed). She is calling for tighter external border controls, something that obviously makes sense. These would, however, have done nothing to stop Sánchez’s amnesty. So, what to do? We would recommend offering member-states a choice. If they want to preserve their prerogative to unilaterally pass such measures, they should agree to withdraw from the EU’s border-free Schengen Area. This is unlikely to happen, though, and Schengen will limp on until it collapses.

The Ceuta Migrant Wave Was a Power Play by Morocco Against Spain

By Jim Geraghty

Monday, August 03, 2026

 

Most of the commentary on Ceuta that you’ll find on platforms like X reiterates the same four points.

 

·         If we hadn’t reelected Trump, this is what America would look like.

 

·         This is what you get when you elect socialists like Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez.

 

·         The Moroccans attempting to cross the border are overwhelmingly military-age males, so this isn’t migration, it’s an invasion.

 

·         The 1973 French novel The Camp of the Saints is more than a xenophobic tirade, it’s a prediction of our future.

 

All those arguments are true to varying degrees. Most notably, in February the Sánchez government said it would offer amnesty, expecting to legalize an estimated half million immigrants who had arrived illegally in recent years. More than 1.3 million applied for the amnesty. Under the laws of Europe’s Schengen area, if you’re a Spanish citizen, you can travel or work in 28 other countries. (Our Andrew Stuttaford, back on July 3: “This amnesty, the seventh in 40 years, will only encourage more arrivals. Needless to say, it is a mistake.”)

 

But there are also a couple of wrinkles in the rush to Ceuta that are getting overlooked, although not by John Gustavsson or Josh Treviño, both writing for National Review Online.

 

On July 20, Prime Minister Sánchez visited Algeria:

 

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said in Algiers on Monday that he sought to deepen ties with Algeria, as the countries mend relations after a dispute over Western Sahara.

 

Sanchez told reporters that the visit, a first in four years, held “particular importance” for Spain, which views Algeria as “not only a neighboring country but also a strategic partner.” . . .

 

Ties between Algiers and Madrid deteriorated in 2022 when Spain backed Morocco’s sovereignty claim over Western Sahara, reversing its decades-long neutral stance on the conflict over its former colony.

 

The governments of Algeria and Morocco do not get along and have not gotten along for a long time. They both want to be the big dog in northwest Africa, and any gain by Algeria is seen as a loss for Morocco, and vice versa.  Algeria cut ties with Morocco in 2021, and the land border between those two countries has been closed since 1994.

 

There’s even an arms race:

 

Against this backdrop, the two countries began to prepare for the possibility that their dispute might evolve into armed conflict. Both sides ramped up military spending. Morocco bought Israel’s anti-drone Skylock Dome system in November and its Harop drones in December. In February 2022, it additionally acquired Barak MX, a modular Israeli-made system that can knock down both missiles and drones. Finally, in April 2023, the U.S. State Department approved the sale of eighteen U.S. HIMARS multiple rocket launchers, along with other military equipment, to Morocco.

 

Algeria rushed to keep pace with these purchases. In November 2022, the Algerian parliament approved a staggering increase in the 2023 military budget to around $23 billion, up from around $11 billion the previous year. In late 2022, local media indicated that the authorities were preparing to buy Su-57 stealth jets, SU-34 bombers and Su-30 fighters, in addition to new air defence systems, such as the S-400, from Russia. To diversify its weapons sources, Algeria turned to Türkiye to buy Anka S+ drones and to China to acquire Halcon drones, to give two examples.

 

Do tens of thousands of people spontaneously decide, all by themselves, to rush a fenced border? No, they do not.

 

From the New York Times (emphasis added):

 

Like so many others in Morocco, Mohammed Ahmidho saw on his social media feeds early Thursday that the heavily guarded border his country shared with the Spanish territory of Ceuta was open.

 

Soon enough, he joined a crowd in the tens of thousands, many of whom were astonished to see Moroccan police urge them, as he recalled, to “come to Spain.”

 

It is still unclear why so many people came to Ceuta. Many of the Moroccans who wandered around Ceuta on Friday wondered if the doors hadn’t opened because of some unknown plan by Morocco, which has been accused of using immigrant flows in the past for political pressure.

 

“I don’t know why they let us through,” said Ajoub el-Arrot, 24, who said he heard about the open border on social media. “Maybe they had some political reason. They opened the border and let everyone go by.”

 

He added, “When there are political problems, Morocco opens the doors and tells us to go.”

 

Douae Tabit, 19, who also said she heard about the unchecked crossing on social media, said it went “viral” and passed by word of mouth, attracting people from all around Morocco. Fluent in English, French and Spanish, she said she worked as a nurse and photographer and spontaneously decided to take advantage of the opportunity.

 

Moroccan police do not just randomly encourage people to cross into Spain without documentation.

 

Do you think it’s a coincidence that less than two weeks after Sánchez went to Algeria and declared that country a “strategic partner,” the Moroccan police started encouraging tens of thousands of Moroccans to attempt to cross the border into Ceuta? Me neither. Yes, Sánchez’s amnesty policies are a factor in this, but what happened here is that the Moroccan government, irked that Sánchez is trying to build a better relationship with Algeria, sent a signal to the Spanish prime minister that it can make life for him, his government, and the people of Ceuta miserable, any time it wants.

 

In the combined fiscal years 2024–2025, the U.S. government sent $112 million in foreign aid to Morocco. According to ForeignAssistance.gov, the U.S. has sent $1.4 million so far this fiscal year, although that data may be incomplete.

 

One last point: Andrew Stuttaford notices with irritation that the National Security, Department of State, and Related Programs Appropriations Act of 2027, which passed the House nearly unanimously a few weeks ago, states:

 

The Committee notes that the Spanish-administered cities of Ceuta and Melilla are located in Moroccan territory and remain the subject of Morocco’s longstanding claim.

 

And:

 

The Committee supports efforts by the Secretary of State to encourage diplomatic engagement between Morocco and Spain on the future status of Ceuta and Melilla.

 

“The wording of the committee’s report has no legal status, but it was, at the very least, careless,” Andrew concludes. “Making matters worse, it didn’t pass unnoticed in either Spain or Morocco.”

 

Was someone in our government, irritated with Spain over the amount of its NATO spending, attempting to stick a thumb in the eye of the Spanish government?

 

By the way, for all the legitimate gripes about Spain and its contribution to NATO, let us observe that the Spanish government has increased its defense spending by 70 percent in the last decade; its investment of 32 percent on equipment is above the 20 percent required by NATO and actually a bit higher than the U.S. level at 29.7 percent. Spain spent $40 billion on defense in 2025; we all love the Poles, but Poland spent about $46 billion. The reason Spain’s defense spending as a share of gross domestic product seems so much lower is that Spain has a GDP just above $2 trillion, while Poland — now in the top 20 economies in the world — has a GDP of around $1 trillion.

 

The Cyberattacks That President Trump Doesn’t Want to Acknowledge

 

Considering the importance of what it does, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is surprisingly low-profile. It could use a CBS prime-time drama or two. Then again, the agency may well like it that way; like offensive lineman, you usually hear about the more obscure federal law enforcement agencies only when something goes wrong.

 

Efforts to hack into critical infrastructure are widespread: in 2024, Check Point Research documented 1,162 cyberattacks on U.S. utilities, a 75 percent year-over-year increase. Given those numbers, perhaps it’s good that we hear about CISA so rarely. But the agency regularly puts out new alerts about foreign cyber threats. (Keep in mind that “approximately 50 to 85 percent of critical infrastructure is privately owned, depending on the sector, from large corporations to small and medium-sized businesses.” So it’s up to the private company to make sure its cyber defenses are up to the task.) China and Russia may take the gold and silver in the cyber-threat Olympics, but the Iranians consistently edge out the North Koreans for the bronze.

 

In February 2024, the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned six officials in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Cyber-Electronic Command for a November 2023 attack on the Municipal Water Authority of Aliquippa, Pa.

 

CISA put out alerts regarding “malicious cyber activities conducted by advanced persistent threat cyber actors affiliated with the Iranian Government’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps” or similar Iranian threats in August 2024, October 2024, and December 2024.

 

Also in 2024, President Trump’s campaign said it had been targeted by “an Iranian military intelligence unit in June sending ‘a spear-phishing email to a high-ranking official of a presidential campaign from a compromised email account of a former senior advisor.’”

 

In mid-March, the U.S. Justice Department “announced the seizure of four domains as part of an ongoing effort to disrupt hacking and transnational repression schemes conducted by the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security.” Later that month, “cyber criminals linked to Iran accessed FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal email account.”

 

Then, on July 30, the FBI put out a new public service announcement:

 

The Federal Bureau of Investigation and Environmental Protection Agency are issuing this Public Service Announcement to warn critical infrastructure asset owners and operators that malicious cyber actors are conducting cyber-attacks targeting Operational Technology devices, including Rockwell Automation/Allen-Bradley Programmable Logic Controllers , specifically MicroLogix 1100 and 1400 series. Since July 27 2026, Water and Wastewater Sector utility companies in at least seven states have reported incidents to the FBI, and some of that activity degraded water operations.

 

Minnesota and Michigan have been identified as two of those states.

 

Now, the most recent PSAs did not specifically state that the Iranians were doing this. But we know from past attacks like the one in Aliquippa, Pa., that this is the Iranian modus operandi.

 

Anyway, here’s our president on Friday:

 

Today, I just want to mention that we heard in Minnesota there was a cyberattack and they blame it on Iran. I don’t think so. I think — I blame it on Minnesota because they’re grossly incompetent. There was a cyberattack of 30 water plants, and I would blame it on Minnesota and the governor, the corrupt governor of Minnesota. They like to say, oh, it’s Iran. Iran should be so lucky. Iran’s got bigger problems than worrying about Minnesota. This month it was announced that inflation is dropping at the fastest rate in more than six years. Walmart, Sam’s Club, Giant Eagle and others are slashing prices by hundreds of grocery stores.

 

And then later in that same appearance:

 

I don’t think — no, I think that Minnesota is behind it. You know who’s behind it, Minnesota, because they’re grossly incompetent. I think the governor’s behind it. I don’t think there was an Iranian cyberattack. I think that Minnesota ought to get its act together. It’s one of the worst-run states. JD will tell you. He found tremendous corruption in Minnesota.

 

And how about the attacks on water systems in those six other states, Mr. President? Do you think “the governor’s behind it” for all of those, too? You think Tim Walz is the criminal mastermind behind all of these cyberattacks?

 

Our critical systems are under attack, and our rambling, erratic, living-in-his-own-world president does not want to acknowledge it. If he did publicly recognize that Iran is trying to harm Americans through their water systems, the public might be rather upset by the latest cancellation of a massive military response against the Iranian regime.

 

Oh, and under this administration, CISA has gotten significantly smaller:

 

At the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the government’s top cyber defense body protecting U.S. election systems, nearly 1,000 CISA personnel — or nearly one-third of the agency’s workforce — had left or been removed from active service by mid-2025.

 

Some were terminated, while others resigned or took administrative leave. Others had contracts that were not renewed or their programs were shut down. Altogether, staffing lingered at around 2,500, down from approximately 3,400 a year earlier.

 

Hey, didn’t our president just give a big prime-time speech about how “the election system we have dangerously exposes and really exposes [us], like levels never thought possible, to hacking, exploitation, and foreign interference”? If you’re so worried about foreign hacking and exploitation, why are you dramatically cutting the number of staff at the federal agency designed to fight foreign hacking and exploitation?

 

ADDENDUM: Out in Ohio, Republican Senator Bernie Moreno writes of his son-in law, Republican Congressman Max Miller:

 

If there are any basic standards of character required to hold elected office, Max Miller fails them. He should not serve in the House of Representatives. I believe Max Miller needs to seek professional help to end the clear pattern of abuse he has left in his wake. I believe he should not be free to continue endangering others until he does.