Comment by blotter_paper | Hacker News Reader

Comment by blotter_paper | Hacker News Reader

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> There's this huge pandora's box about opening up state-level weaponry to the general public. Ultimately, it undermines the nation state as an organizing principle. And that's the world we live in now.

I feel like this point is hardly ever appreciated. I don't think we quite live in that world (where's my open source nuke?), but we're always oscillating on the continuum if we take a long enough view of the situation. The extent to which power is distributed relies on the extent to which technology is distributed, but also the extent to which the distributed technology can be utilised by a relatively small group. A small group with equally good spear designs still loses to the larger group. A small group with equally good drones, nukes, viruses, and firewalls might be able to put up something closer to an even fight. A radical open sourcing of technology might lead to a breakup of the modern nation state into smaller entities. Until it does, or some sort of parallel structures form alongside the nation states which they are unable to actually police, I wouldn't call them undermined. The parallel structure scenario might be somewhat arguable today, but always has been; the line between organized crime and government is blurry. I don't think we've moved significantly far in that direction as a result of open source tools yet. If there ever comes a day when private defense contractors can accept Bitcoin without KYC and taxes, just rolling through the streets in a small division of tanks selling AK-47s to passing school children, I'll completely agree that the nation state has been undermined.

Imho, what keeps the nation-state from being undermined by the techno-anarchist crowd is the requirement to hold territory.

Any halfway competent person in a number of fields (cyber security, virology, chemistry) could probably "take over" a small town with a few buddies.

And then the US government surrounds it. Blockades it. Allows nothing in or out. And waits.

As the Palestinians, South Sudanese, Tibetans, Taiwanese, Hongkongers have found (with varying degrees of success), independence is only viable as a going concern if you have international allies and trade.

Agree completely. I think this is one of the reasons for so much interest in seasteading despite the high barrier of entry and maintenance compared to living on land (not that a group of ships can't be surrounded and sanctioned). Ultimately, I fear that joining the WMD club is a prerequisite to true self determination.

And the price of leaving the WMD club (eg Ukraine and Libya) is so high that there is no way a diplomatic solution to denuclearization

History shows any group that is disarmed by another group is about to get run over. The logic scales from the individuals of a nation to the nation itself.

As a small note, I think the word we're looking for in this thread is not "nation-state", but simply "state" i.e. sovereign country or polity.

Not all states are "nation-states". A "nation" (⋆) is specifically a group of people who are culturally homogeneous, and a "nation-state" (⋆⋆) is a sovereign state that is also culturally homogeneous. In most of these discussions we are talking simply about sovereign states, not nation-states specifically.

Someone else pointed this out onetime in another HN comment, and now "can't unsee".

(⋆) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation (⋆⋆) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation_state

That's certainly what "nation" meant a hundred years ago, and what it means in context of nationalist ideology.

I think that in modern English, "nation" and "nation state" mostly mean "sovereign country or polity". I think this usage is partly because obviously most uses of "state" are references to obviously-non-sovereign internal divisions of territory, whether in the US or Austria or Australia or Brazil or India, and including extremal cases like the states of Palau (most of which comprise less than a thousand people).

Probably another cause is that so few people take 19th-C / 20th-C nationalism seriously that there's no real need for the word "nation" in this context.

But if you're keen on the political-science definitions, note that states don't have to be sovereign. The word "country" won't do because they don't have to be sovereign either (e.g. England or Greenland). I think if you want to formally say "sovereign state", you have to say "sovereign state".

I think that in modern English, "nation" and "nation state" mostly mean "sovereign country or polity".

It's just very recent modern infosec and internet English and it's seeping out into all sorts of other places. Probably too late to stop it.

As a check, I just searched NYT's site for 'nation state' and other than its original non-redundant sense or in quotes, they don't use it, best I can tell.

Having mentioned the Palestinians, it's only fair to include the Israelis. Especially because it was US support that almost guaranteed their independence. The British had been far more even-handed, back in the 20s to early 40s. But they were (in a way) defeated by the US in WWII, along with just about every other nation involved, except for the Soviets.

> where's my open source nuke?

There are "open-source" (leaked) designs out there, I'm sure. Or at least, old designs. Maybe for something like the Hiroshima bomb.

But you'd need enriched uranium. And for that, you'd need a bunch of gas centrifuges. And a chemical plant to make the hexafluoride, and convert the enriched stuff back to uranium.

And that's why you don't have open-source nukes.

Another way to look at it is that if you have all the prerequisites for that (talent, staff, money, resources, physical space, etc) to do those things, there are plenty of other more profitable enterprises they could be leveraged for unless you specifically need a saber to rattle, which is usually only the dominion of a well-funded despot and/or Bond villain.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CutLexLuthorAChe...

How Pepsi briefly became the 6th largest military in the world: https://www.businessinsider.com/how-pepsi-briefly-became-the...

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