Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwaway894345 | Hacker News Reader

As an aside, I wonder why more people (especially on this forum) aren't discussing the likelihood of increased cyber attacks, not just on government and military institutions but on private businesses. If we sanction Russia, they might hit our hospitals, banks, etc. Seems like we should start ratcheting up our security.

View on HN

I work at the big fintech with a large footprint in Eastern Europe. We have been ramping up our cyberdefence capabilities intensively for over a week now based on various public and non-public advisories. As far as I see from my extended network, we are definetly not alone doing that.

For a week? You should have been preparing for years. Seriously.

I guess I was thinking every NATO country and the whole of the EU should be boosting its security posture.

I posted a link about that earlier but it got flagged.

Agreed, this is a terrifying prospect. Governments, hospitals, transport links.. anything.

Dams, hydro, iron smelters, steel mills…

What worries me is the idea that some ex-soviet apparatchik (someone like Vladimir himself) might want to take eye-for-eye, and reduce western infrastructure to the same level of ruin of the Soviet’s, after ‘89.

Their industry and economy was struggling and fell apart overnight but the West wasn’t happy to just win, it wanted to Win Big. We rubbed the unproductivity of it in their face, kicked the market wide open to fire sales and mass demobilization… these humiliations create resentment, and you never know who’s the more spitefully determined.

> Their industry and economy was struggling and fell apart overnight but the West wasn’t happy to just win, it wanted to Win Big. We rubbed the unproductivity of it in their face, kicked the market wide open to fire sales and mass demobilization

I'm not familiar with this; can you elaborate or link me to something?

Post-communist states sold off their remaining assets after 1989. Many people think (correctly in many cases) that there was a lot of corruption during the process. That allowed people (usually foreign) to buy a lot of key infrastructure and other stuff for nothing.

The OP seemed to imply that the West actively orchestrated this? Is that what is meant by "there was a lot of corruption during the process"?

In reality: not "the west", but people from the west who saw an easy opportunity. Which makes people here think it was "The West".

They are actively doing it anyway.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com