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Comment by authoritarian | Hacker News Reader

I would hope that a country with the largest military industrial complex in the world can hack a group of camel herders in a desert. Doesn't seem particularly impressive

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It's not a group of camel herders in the desert in regards to their cybersec team. They managed to recruit TriCk/Junaid Hussein(associated with TeaMp0isoN), to be their teamleader. TeaMp0ison were fairly well-known(at the time at least) and actually quite talented hackers.

He was later killed in a dronestrike.

Bit crudely put, but it hasn't been the case that the US military has easily trounced small guerilla forces in ground combat (e.g. Vietnam, Afghanistan, Somali, etc.), so I assume the idea was to suggest that cyberwarfare works better?

Basically shared my same sentiments. One group isn't even trying the other is fully reactive and trying to uncover how much the other groups know.

USA always will win.

Is the racism critical to expressing your view. I understand those terrorist are horrible evil people and inflicted pain and death on innocent people. Your racist comment is grounded in racism towards Arabs and Muslims. Most victims of ISIS are physically near them

Also since they supplied equipment to them it would not have been as difficult to trojan it.

The US support of Syrian "moderate" rebels was stupid, shortsighted, and pretended that the world was a different place.

And I will infinitely fault the Obama administration for providing technology which immediately fell into jihadist hands, which any reasonable analyst would have told them would happen.

But it's not accurate to say the US 'supplied' equipment to ISIS. ISIS stole it.

If it was what "any reasonable analyst would have told them would happen," why isn't it reasonable to assume that was the intention? Governments aren't single level actors - they are occasionally capable of subtlety - saying one thing even when intending another.

Did they even get any significant amount of advanced gear that way?

Most heavy things they got from looting Iraqi military.

I am not going to debate why "Obama secretly supported ISIS" is stupid.

It's stupid, and if you think it's plausible, you need to honestly evaluate whether your news sources are informing you or peddling a narrative with an objective.

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