The siren song of financing an endless war seems just as irresistible as it was in Greek mythology.
Even if the U.S. is pressing hard to put an end to the madness in Ukraine (and maybe use the money poured on the country on a more pressing challenge), the leaders of Europe (especially the ‘big trio’, London, Berlin, and France) still want more, trying to sabotage Washington’s plans for a quick stop.
In spite of the roughly $197 billion the EU and its governments have already pledged to Kyiv since 2022.
The ‘unprecedented support’, as the Team VDL cheerfully calls it, has still not been enough, thus the debate about the next package is already ongoing. Estimates vary, but the EU has acknowledged that Ukraine may need as much as EUR136 billion by 2027. Just to keep the war machine running.
Washington has some experience, but it’s been a while since any government in Europe has faced the challenge: how to tell the population that a war cannot be won – peace might be painful, but so is to keep going. And the costs won’t get lower.
If anything, Europe’s leadership doubles down.
New rescue packages, loans and military aid keep rolling out, seemingly unconcerned that the bill comes out of our future.
Because who cares about high-tech competitiveness and the future tech when there are classical wars to prolong?
And, of course, there’s President Zelensky – hailed as a (somewhat corrupt) hero eagerly accepting every euro, who don’t mind dragging down all Europe with Ukraine, as long as he can run his war-business, filling the pockets of his closest friends and associates.
Meanwhile, Asia appears to have discovered something novel: investing in innovation.
Not just investing, Asia is winning the game. The contrast is stark. Asia’s major economies are plowing money into tomorrow’s techwhile the West burns through cash in today’s conflict.
It’s enough to consider just a few headlines from the last month.
Peking University researchers brag about an analog computing chip that could outperform Nvidia’s top GPUs by up to thousand times while using far less energy. This ‘century-old problem’ in analog computing has been cracked in China, potentially rendering many Western data centers obsolete.
While European politicians are explaining themselves over defense budgets, Chinese firms have to prove that their humanoid robots are hyper-realistic and are not hiding stunt actors. Xpeng Motors, a Chinese EV maker, built a humanoid robot(IRON), the movements of which were so convincing that its engineers even sliced it open on stage to prove there was no human inside.
Meanwhile Beijing has given green light to hundreds of robotic startups – in fact, regulators just warned that 150+ companies are churning out near-identical humanoids, risking a bubble.
It will probably take a while until Europe will face the problem of how to handle too much humanoid robot factories.
Let’s not forget Baidu.
China’s search giant is now pumping out its own Kunlun AI chips to replace those banned Western GPUs: analysts expect $1.1 billion in chip sales by 2026, with Baidu’s chip division valued near $28 billion.
The VW group’s happy announcement from earlier this week could be great news for Europe: its test center is ready. Alas, what Volkswagen has, in fact, announced was that for the first time in VW’s history, it can now fully develop and validate new electric vehicle platforms entirely outside Germany.Its giant R&D hub in Hefei, China opened over 100 labs, cutting development time by about 30 percent.
In plain English: VW is shipping its smarts to Asia because that’s where the EV action is.
Instead of debating how to stop the brain drain and question why VW needs to move its R&D capacities to China, the EU is still shoveling money on a war that can’t be won.
To make matters worse, it’s not just China.
Japan is betting big on next-gen tech, as well.
Tokyo approved a supplementary budget of roughly ¥400 billion (that’s approximately $2.6 billion) for quantum research, AI and nuclear fusion. The AI slice alone is ¥190 billion (about $1.25 billion), earmarked for things like scientific discovery acceleration and autonomous systems. This is years of funding – not one-off handouts – to keep Japan competitive in fields that really matter for 2030 and beyond. And this is on top of Japan’s already announced $65 billion AI/R&D program (¥10 trillion) launched earlier.
In other words, Japanese policymakers are throwing cash at future industries while Europe timidly whispers about austerity.
South Korea’s tech titans aren’t bluffing, either.
Samsung pledged 450 trillion won (roughly $310 billion) for domestic chip and technology projects over the next five years – a bet that AI demand will stay sky-high. Hyundai Motor Group has lined up another 125.2 trillion won in home investments from 2026 to 2030 for EVs and robotics. (Even shipbuilders got in on it.)
These aren’t idle numbers; this is state-of-the-art fabs, factories and R&D centers going up – not endless war bonds.
The list goes on, no matter whether we talk about Singapore’s or India’s new space developments.
The message is clear.
There are those, who spend money to win the future, and there are those who burn money on an unwinnable war and try not to answer questions like the future of our economy in the age of AI, robotics or future of biotechnology.
Asia’s narrative is clear: invest now to win later.
Europe’s, by contrast, sounds like a broken record about ‘defending democracy’ and ‘supporting our ally’ – even as commentators quietly warn that pouring more cash into Ukraine might bankrupt the continent.
By comparison, the EU’s grand scheme looks almost farcical. Brussels boasts of its $197 billion “support” for Ukraine – but that mostly pays for bullets, refugees, and banking Zelensky’s government and business partners. In effect, Europe is subsidizing war instead of technology. No wonder major carmakers and financiers are shifting their gaze East.
Well, at least Europe can console itself with high-minded rhetoric while Asia advances.
