Hacker News Reader

The phrase 'an act of war' means an act which intends to and/or actually does give the target casus belli. I took it for granted that you knew that.

See, for example, the OED reference:

'An act by one nation intended to initiate or provoke a war with another nation; an act considered sufficient cause for war.'

https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20...

View on HN

Well, war has changed. Russia annexed part of Ukraine without ever declaring war. It's not as black and white today. War is a spectrum, especially at the borders of superpowers. Whether you want to call it an act of war or an escalation or whatever, I don't care. If you want to play definition semantics, I'm not interested as it completely misses the point I was making.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com