upvote
For France it certainly is, probably because of our stubborn focus on strategic autonomy. For example, offshoring passport printing to me sounds like a great opportunity for identity theft and document forgery by people outside of your jurisdiction.

I do kinda get the China customs system example though, only because if corruption is bad enough that it's a greater concern than opsec, then you're kinda hosed anyways.

reply
> For France it certainly is, probably because of our stubborn focus on strategic autonomy.

You're seeing people wake up to the threat now, with the opposition against Kyndryl and the Nexperia thing.

Somewhat more controversially, I'm also worried about the French government owning large parts of the Dutch defense industry through Thales and Airbus. (And, to a lesser extent, German and Spanish governments.)

Very little of the Dutch defense industry is still Dutch-owned. Only Damen comes to mind.

reply
The Netherlands is a small but very tasty fish in a pond infested with sharks.

None of the sharks ultimately ever managed to agree who gets to eat it- because whoever did would upset the balance between the sharks.

But China and America are mega sharks who don't care about balance and want to eat everything or die trying.

reply