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Comment by rg111 | Hacker News Reader

While many think that they should not work on such projects, my take is the opposite.

If we don't work on these projects, then we will not have autonomous killing machines, and our rivals will.

Turkey already have autonomous predator drones [0], and they have been used in the battlefield.

If countries like the US, UK, France, Germany, India, Japan, Israel etc. do not have these, and China, Iran, and Russia do (they surely do or soon will), we are at massive disadvantage.

We will have to deploy humans on the field when they won't have to. That is a gap too wide to exist. It is more fundamental than gunpowder.

Like Archimedes created massive war machines, and mathematicians and physicists worked on artillery, weapons, and Manhattan project, AI scientists of today should help develop autonomous killing machines. Freedom isn't free.

[0]: https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/07/05/killer-flying-robots-dr....

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You do realise that right now on a Chinese version of hacker news, a Chinese version of you is making the same argument?

The messed up aspects of this world aren't inevitable, we all take part.

As they should, with 8 billions inhabitants, assuming that peace can be kept on good intentions is the pacifist fallacy. We just got a wonderful example with the invasion of Ukraine. You can be nice, you can play nice, you can apply sanctions, send strongly worded statement, and yet Ukrainians are dying and tanks are still rolling in.

You know what's stopping the Russians? Javelins and Bayraktars.

The right lesson to learn from Ukraine is that big countries are ever willing to sacrifice small countries in their bids for power. Ukrainians would have been much better off had they worked with Russia to avoid or quickly settle the war, especially after heroically successfully resisting the blitzkrieg-style initial invasion.

Instead, goaded on the by the USA and Europe, they are fighting a losing war that will hurt tens or hundreds of thousands over the coming years. There is 0 chance Russia will back off. Of course, it will also weaken Russia, which is what Europe and the USA actually want. Putin fell right into their trap, and Ukraine thinks it's being helped.

> Ukrainians would have been much better off had they worked with Russia to avoid or quickly settle the war, especially after heroically successfully resisting the blitzkrieg-style initial invasion.

By that logic wouldn’t the Russians be much better off if they had worked with the international community to avoid this war as their industrial base is crumbling around them and they are losing massive amounts of manpower?

Russia could take Ukraine today with no more materiel losses and they will be worse off than when they started. The only way they could consider this a win is if they consider ideological reasons, but if you include those you can’t say the Ukrainians would be better off if they value freedom more than they value staying alive

Russia is better off without a NATO presence at its borders, threatening regime change at the press of a button. Sure, NATO would avoid openly invading Russia, but just like we are currently fighting in Ukraine with everything except (overt) manpower, our expansion would not stop at Russia's current borders. Every separatist movement inside the Russian Federation would (will) find a good friend in NATO.

Stopping this expansion at Ukraine, and reminding their people the immoral lengths they are willing to go to when their interests are threatened, is a major strategic goal for Russian leaders.

> By that logic wouldn’t the Russians be much better off if they had worked with the international community to avoid this war as their industrial base is crumbling around them and they are losing massive amounts of manpower?

Absolutely, and what I'm saying is not justification for this disturbing invasion. The invasion obviously puts Putin and other Russian elites' interest above those of their citizens, as can be expected from an authoritarian oligarchy.

Gee. I wonder why the US and most other world powers don't have an international treaty organization exclusively dedicated to defending other countries against the possibility of aggression by them?

If you don't invade your neighbors, you have nothing to fear from NATO.

Edit due to rate-limiting: OK, I'll amend my comment. Don't invade your neighbors or commit genocide, and you don't have anything to fear from NATO. Better?

As for Iraq and Afghanistan, NATO activated Article 5 because the US was attacked by terrorists based in Afghanistan on 9/11, but my understanding is that the coalition forces that went into Iraq were not NATO-affiliated. Is that understanding incorrect?

>If you don't invade your neighbors, you have nothing to fear from NATO.

You have to be kidding about this. Have you ever heard of Serbia, Iraq, Afghanistan?

In fact, NATO has never defended an invaded country before Ukraine - the record is all aggression.

Edit: I should mention that the aggression against Serbia was probably morally justified - what they were doing in Kosovo was truly despicable.

Alright bud this is just propaganda if you’re mixing Afghanistan in there. Iraq was straight aggression and Serbia I admit to not being too knowledgeable about, but Afghanistan was in direct response to 9/11 and not handing over bin laden. If that’s considered being an aggressor then there’s not much point in using the word anymore

At least if you read Wikipedia's summary, there is disagreement about whether the US was legally justified to go to war against Afghanistan and topple its government because of the al-Qaeda attack. It's not clear cut.

What happened post invasion and whether that fit the notion of NATO members definition for legality is definitely up for debate but we’re there any serious considerations that invoking article 5 in light of the attacks was not legitimate?

I’d need to see some documentation on that as, as far as I am aware, every NATO member responded to the call and did not leave NATO

Afghanistan was asking for proof that Bin Laden was to blame, and had offered to set up some common courts to decide on the matter - as was their right as a sovereign nation.

The invasion of Serbia was much more morally justified, as it helped stop a genocide that Slobodan Milosevic was committing against the Islamic Albanian minority, mainly in Kosovo.

The only rights you have a sovereign nation are what you can support by strength of arms or diplomacy. Rights are protected by common governments and there is no world government both the US and Afghanistan were party to.

As far as NATO is concerned another party punched a member in the face and and the defensive pact responded as they had laid out in their public treaties. If other nations want to construe that as not a real attack and the defensive pact needed to take it slow and capitulate the the internal legal demands of an aggressor state, that’s a position they can take. They are however, going to be repeatedly surprised when NATO doesn’t take that stance under advisement

There is no way to construe the Afghani government as an aggressor in an attack involving 15-20 people who were led by a Saudi noble who happened to live in Afghanistan, and who wasn't even established at the time as the definite mastermind. Furthermore, there was significant internal pressure in Afghanistan to give up Bin Laden, including from the main religious authorities. Instead of waiting for this to Halen, the US simply invaded, barely a few weeks after the attack.

NATO acquiesced to the invasion because the USA was out for blood, and their closest toadies weren't about to get in the cross hairs.

That is a viewpoint none of the NATO members shared or they wouldn’t have responded to the Article 5. There’s no ifs ands or buts about it. Their end decision was that it was a valid reason to attack as a bloc.

Again, most NATO counties and leaders are US sycophants. That they acquiesced to an obvious absurdity to do the bidding of the USA is not surprising, and definitely not evidence that the arguments weren't absurd. Most of the same countries beleieved the CIA fabrications about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq as well.

Look outside the NATO sphere and very few countries actually agree with the US justification for the war.

You know what, this is all just your opinion at this point man. We’re looking at the same picture and seeing different colors. If it’s coming down to that then it’s gonna be shit for you and the other Russians because they lack the ability to gain anything but a Pyrrhic victory.

Even if they are planning on showing the “immoral lengths” they are willing to go, all they’ve done is drive more nations into their enemies arms.

Edit: also lol did you really bring up that countries outside NATO didn’t agree with their decision making in a thread where you’re arguing that Russia had to do this invasion and everyone should have just let them?

You must be in incredible shape with how frequently you move these goalposts

This is wrong and cynical.

1) The issue of 'NATO Aggression' vis-a-vis Russia is propaganda.

The Russians are not 'afraid of NATO' - we know this, they know we know this, we know they know we know - and yes it goes on. Notice that they now have 1000Km of 'NATO Border' with Finland, does that change the equation?

'Oh, that's fine' Putin said a few days ago.

2) That NATO Article 5 has not been used is more or less evidence that it is working.

3) Iraq War 1, which might arguably be a NATO-driven war, was utterly justified, Saddam invaded Kuwait, it was bad.

4) Intervention in Afghanistan of 'some kind' was also justified, and initially there were hardly any serious military action, it was a mess, and therefore probably a mistake, but that's very different than Soviet involvement there.

5) Iraq War 2 was an American, not NATO enterprise.

Russia's conquest of Ukraine is blatantly Imperialist, this is Putin's quest to reclaim the USSR, it's not even something he really hides.

He says 'NATO expansion' as a convenient excuse for the 'useful idiots' (that is a term coined by Stalin for this exact situation), and of course this repulsive fantasies about 'Ukrainian Nazis' all over Ukraine.

FYI - should not that Putin was behind 'both side' of the conflict of 'football hooligans with AK47's' in 2014 Donbas, using his GRU to funnel money to the supposed 'Nazi Azovs' (many of whom were even Russian) fighting against 'victim loyal Russians'.

The 'future' of Ukrainian acquiescence to Putin is evident in Belarus as an example: a laughable stooge of a corrupt bag of lard, verbally farting his way through nonsensical press conferences, while doing the bidding of Putin, repressing those around him etc..

The Ukrainians as a whole have the right to fight if the want, so long as they want we should support them, and frankly, we should likely have a material presence on the ground, just not quite up to the point of direct face offs between NATO and Russian forces.

And the same for Georgia, and whoever else.

Literally today, the Kremlin was threatening the 'End of Human Existence' if NATO continued to interfere with Russia's genocidal murder [1]. These are psychopaths with nukes, and we probably cannot afford to exist with them, something likely has to be done, or, they can be little hermits like North Korea.

The Russians don't bother to hide their real ambitions, they can do this because when asked in a public forum, they give the 'NATO' and 'Denazification' excuses willy nilly out of the other side of their mouths - because our system of information isn't competent enough to call it out for what it is contextually.

We far too often just take their words at face value. We know what their foreign policy textbooks require, and in their purview 'public communications' don't have to have any bearing whatsoever on reality, ergo, we should assume that whatever they are saying is just a constructed lie with the truth occasionally thrown in.

Read Putin's own words on how 'Ukraine is not a country or a people' and how that area of people 'naturally belongs under his power'. [2]

Russia has nothing to say about Ukraine - either from a 'security' or 'cultural' perspective - they are the antagonizing force in all of this, and have been for 20 years.

[1] https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1636688/putin-russia-uk...

[2] http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66181

You are lucidly seeing Russian propaganda for what it is, but essentially taking NATO and US propaganda at face value.

NATO is a hostile military alliance to Russia - one that is far more powerful than it in every way. To claim that Russia doesn't fear NATO, or that it has no reason to, is simply absurd.

NATO has a habit of involving itself anywhere the USA has an interest. They were "justified" in intervening against Saddam in his war with Kuwait, but of course when Saudi Arabia invades Yemen, that's not our problem, and we can still sell them "defensive weapons". When a group of 20 terrorists led and financed by a Saudi noble attacks the USA, it's the country where he was staying at the time that NATO must invade, and remain in for 20 years.

Even for Iraq 2, while NATO itself wasn't involved, several NATO states were, not just the USA - even ignoring the fact that, given their overwhelming military superiority, the lines between the USA and NATO are quite blurry.

So yes, the claims that Russia is denazifying Ukraine are utter bullshit. The claims that Ukraine has no legitimacy as a nation are utter bullshit. The claims that Russia has Ukrainians', or even Russian ethnics' best interests at heart are utter bullshit.

But so are NATO's claims that it is a purely defensive alliance and that Russia has nothing to fear from them.

It's also important to note that, had territorial expansion been the biggest aim for Putin, he has much easier, and richer, neighbour's to attack. Ukraine is impossible to hold after a hostile invasion, and Putin can't be idiotic enough not to understand that he can't control a country of 50M people. Why not attack Mongolia if he really wanted more land?

And if you think it's absurd for Russia to fear NATO, hearing NATO countries like Poland and my own Romania fearing a Russian invasion is truly comical.

>And if you think it's absurd for Russia to fear NATO, hearing NATO countries like Poland and my own Romania fearing a Russian invasion is truly comical.

It is clearly absurd for Russia to fear NATO because both parties have peacemakers aka nuclear weapons. The threat of nuclear retaliation keeps both in check. Any agreement on the NATO side to not use nuclear weapons is a defacto dissolution of NATO for countries that do not have nukes.

Russia has nothing to fear because NATO is a loyal customer of fossil fuels. There is no political, cultural, economical basis for attacking Russia. Really the only argument in favour of getting rid of Russia is to get rid of an enemy with nuclear weapons and that can't be done through conventional warfare, you're going to need to slowly let the economy crumble over decades until it loses nuclear capabilities. If those things are happening right now, you should be complaining about the man in charge e.g. Putin he ran the country to the ground. At best this could mean that Putin is a NATO puppet. The more we assume that NATO is a threat to Russia the more absurd the reasoning must become. If Putin is a NATO puppet then why does he start a war against a NATO aligned country (by that I mean Ukraine wants to join NATO)? We are now running into a irreconcilable contradiction. NATO could either bait Russia into war with Ukraine to justify expanding NATO or it could bait Russia into fighting a conventional war with the expectation that Russia loses the war and then hopefully loses its nuclear capabilities from the damage caused to the economy.

The problem with imagining that NATO is a threat is that it would be winning so hard, it is unbelievable how well things have been going for NATO as if they were orchestrating the entire thing from start to finish. I don't believe in such a coincidence that is effectively a conspiracy theory.

No, it is much easier. Russia doesn't consider NATO a threat which is why they believe they can get away with openly fighting a war in Ukraine. Western countries denied the war until the last minute. If anything they were too soft and lenient, maybe even submissive towards russian interests. The German Energiewende for example was a strategy that is utterly dependent on russian natural gas to get to 80% renewable production as gas is easier to throttle than coal and more flexible and emits less CO2. Putin is inflicting a lot of pain to Europe.

>hearing NATO countries like Poland and my own Romania fearing a Russian invasion is truly comical.

What? That just means NATO isn't a threat and Putin isn't a NATO puppet. I personally think that Putin being a NATO puppet is comical.

> Stopping this expansion at Ukraine, and reminding their people the immoral lengths they are willing to go to when their interests are threatened, is a major strategic goal for Russian leaders.

And Ukraine reminding Russia that they will fight to the death and leave scorched earth behind, so invading will cost more than they earn isn’t a major strategic goal? I don’t have a problem with the justifications you have on Russias side of the argument, it’s just that you seem to view that as inevitable so the Ukrainians are the ones being unreasonable by providing any resistance. They both are trying to accomplish strategic goals here and Ukraine didn’t decide on war just because they were “goaded”

The difference is that Russian civilians and all of their belongings are not being murdered, raped, destroyed - only Ukrainians are. So one side has a much more powerful incentive not to take this war too far. My fear is that all of the NATO support and information is giving Ukrainian leadership a wrong assessment of their chances of ending this without reducing the entire country to rubble.

Essentially Ukraine has agreed to become a proxy for NATO in a bid to cripple Russian power. NATO has little lose if this fails, but Ukraine's leaders are gambling the lives and livelihoods of an awful lot of people. I do wish I am wrong and they are right, but as I said elsewhere, I don't beleive Russia will stop at anything not to let that happen.

Do the Ukrainian people have no agency? We’ve already seen mass defections in the contested regions by locals who felt the Russian government was the better master. The people still fighting in Ukraine appear to _want_ to fight Russia regardless of the damage it’s incurring to them. Theyre far less likely to be candidates being tricked into fighting unlike the Russian conscript POWs reporting that they were just loaded into trucks and didn’t realize they were being brought to a war

Of course they have agency. Many, perhaps most, of those who have been allowed to have fled the country. It is of course their right to stay and fight for anything they believe in.

When I say I don't think it's in their best interest to do so, and that I think they are misjudging Russia's determination if they believe they can win, I'm not taking away their agency. As such, I don't believe my leaders are doing them a service when they are supplying them with weapons and military intel, and if it were in my power, I would stop this supply (all the leadership, and the vast majority of the public, in my country is almost rabidly anti-Russian and pro-NATO, so this is an extremely theoretical exercise).

In the end, I believe NATO is playing chicken with Russia, but putting Ukraine in the speeding car instead of driving it themselves. I don't think this is wise, and definitely not good for Ukraine.

I just cant grok that viewpoint. As an American the French did the same thing to us in the Revolutionary war that we are doing to Ukraine, i.e. supplying arms to another nation to fight a proxy war against their enemy. Even while knowing that and with the benefit of getting to peruse historical documents rather than figure this out pre communications technology, I still appreciate that they stepped up and helped us when we wanted to fight. I can't imagine the Ukranians as being any different.

Well, yes. I don't know anyone who would seriously argue otherwise. I don't think the person you are arguing with disagrees with you on this.

They’re arguing in this thread that the war is acoomplishing strategic goals for Russia so it’s a win even with the material loss, but implying that Ukraine has no legitimate strategic goals in resisting or otherwise they wouldn’t claim that Ukraine should have just worked with Russia

No, Russia would not be 'better off'.

Their concern is not 'industrial base' - it's 'Imperial Conquest'.

As of today, they've expanded their territory and now have Crimean, most of Donbas and S. Ukraine as acquisitions.

Theoretically we could get to a peace agreement and in 40 years, Russia will be 'just fine' and Putin will be a 'grand hero' of Russia along the lines one of their big baller Tsars.

All of this 'But their GPD is crashing' stuff is incredibly short sighted, of course it matters, but much less in the long run.

I suggest Ukrainians probably will prevail, and Putin will mostly 'lose' - but only because he lost ground, not really for any other reason, in the eyes of 'Net future Russian Historical Perspective'.

I don't know.

If this debacle turns into Putin being toppled and Russia as an empire collapsing, and increasing casualties and quality of life declining further for Russians, how is this going to help anybody's dream of imperial conquest?

Even if this alleged empire doesn't fall, if it gets isolated and dependent on, say, China (as some claim will happen), how is this going to help these dreams of imperial conquest? A subservient empire.

Ah yes. Appeasement. Always a winning strategy.

Ukraine has had its own independent culture for thousands of years. Russian propaganda doesn't erase history. Russia's ultimate goal is to erase Ukraine.

What's the compromise between "you need to stop existing" and "we exist", again?

>>Ah yes. Appeasement. Always a winning strategy.

It worked fabulously for Neville Chamberlain didn't it? </sarc>

The main reason Putin attacked Ukraine is the ever growing NATO presence in Ukraine, which is an existential threat to the current Russian regime. If NATO got Ukraine, Putin would likely be the next target.

And negotiation is always the winning strategy, since in war everyone loses.

There was no NATO in Ukraine, but now Sweden and Finland are NATO.

The reason is why Ukraine is existential threat to current Russian regime is because they have democracy and personal freedom, which spreads around (Belarus, Kazahstan, etc) and challenges foundation of Putin regime.

Ukraine's constitution says they will try to join NATO. NATO has explicitly said its door is open to Ukraine. Putin's puppet leader of Ukraine was ousted with US involvement. For the past 8+ years, NATO had been pouring money, weapons, training and intel into Ukraine. Last year, they had held joint military exercises, with NATO troops temporarily stationed inside Ukraine.

Now that the war has started, but only is NATO pouring weapons and Intel into Ukraine, they are actually providing detailed targeting data for much of Ukraine's long-range weaponry. NATO guns are being wielded by NATO-trained soldiers deployed in positions suggested by NATO tacticians based on NATO intelligence gathering. The guns are targeted by NATO computers. Ukrainians are basically only pulling the trigger, and of course taking the bullets.

So saying "there was no NATO in Ukraine" is quite absurd.

On the other hand, Putin has clearly misjudged this invasion, and it has already become a costly mistake from all points of view. Finland and Sweden joining NATO is a major blow, in addition to the economic sanctions, while the initial failure of his all fronts invasion has surely been a major blow to the image of the Russian military.

However, while this is great news for NATO, it doesn't mean that it's also great news for Ukraine, which has already sacrificed much. And personally, I believe this invasion is Russia's last stand: that will either crush Ukraine into dust (assuming Ukraine doesn't acquiesce), or they will crumble themselves. I don't think nuclear weapons are off the table for Russia if it thinks the alternative is pulling out of Ukraine with no guarantees it will abandon cooperation with NATO.

> NATO has explicitly said its door is open to Ukraine

Could you provide any references on this? NATO needs to agree on this unanimously, and afaik several countries explicitly opposed this.

> had been pouring money, weapons

This is not true. NATO refused to even sell heavy weapons to Ukraine because afraid to anger Russia. Ukrainians built their army by recovering 50y old tanks from soviet junk yards.

> Last year, they had held joint military exercises, with NATO troops temporarily stationed inside Ukraine.

Could you provide reference?

> Could you provide any references on this? NATO needs to agree on this unanimously, and afaik several countries explicitly opposed this.

Sure: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-nato-idUSL017971462008040... .

> This is not true. NATO refused to even sell heavy weapons to Ukraine because afraid to anger Russia. Ukrainians built their army by recovering 50y old tanks from soviet junk yards.

This is disputed.

Here is for example the Ukrainian minister of defense claiming that shipments of weapons from NATO countries started in 2014:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-29198497

Here is a story about the USA supplying arms to Ukraine under Trump:

https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/lethal-we...

> Last year, they had held joint military exercises, with NATO troops temporarily stationed inside Ukraine.

Sure: https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/ukraine-h...

> Sure: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-nato-idUSL017971462008040... .

yes, Ukraine wanted to join NATO in 2008, it was rejected, and under pressure from USA they promised "maybe some time in the future", which never happened and political bs.

> This is disputed. > Here is for example the Ukrainian minister of defense claiming that shipments of weapons from NATO countries started in 2014:

They shipped like hundred javelins in 7 years. It is not heavy weapon you can fight Russia with.

> Sure: https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/ukraine-h...

At the end it was 300 american soldiers. https://www.army.mil/article/250444/us_nato_ukraine_enhance_...

> in war everyone loses

That kinda overlooks several thousand years of history.

Appeasement has been tried before, to great loss.

> Ukrainians would have been much better off had they worked with Russia to avoid or quickly settle the war, especially after heroically successfully resisting the blitzkrieg-style initial invasion

The war started immediately after Ukraine threw out the Russian puppet government.

They didn't successfully resist the initial anything; Russia seized Crimea and infiltrated and set up proxies in Eastern Ukraine, and Ukraine was unable to do much about it.

> Instead, goaded on the by the USA and Europe, they are fighting a losing war that will hurt tens or hundreds of thousands over the coming years.

The war Russia initiated and bears full responsibility for has hurt millions already (and in fact had hurt millions before the 2022 escalation), not mere tens or hundreds of thousands.

> There is 0 chance Russia will back off

They will back off before or after they collapse from the cost of the war, but either way they will back off. They’ve lost vastly more in lives and treasure in a few months than the much larger USSR did in a decade in Afghanistan. Putin may dream of recreating the Empire of Peter the Great, but he's heading more toward Nicholas II.

> Putin fell right into their trap

I mean, if you mean by the 2022 escalation, it was a pretty well-marked trap. The US and other friends of Ukraine spend most of a decade openly arming and training Ukraine after the 2014 invasion, repeatedly saying Russia should stop interfering and warning, with increasing urgency, of their knowledge of and commitment to opposing Russia’s plan for a new, large scale invasion in 2022, going so far as to release detailed intelligence of the orders for that invasion that Putin has given.

Pretty easy trap to avoid if you don't want to fall into it, what with everyone pointing out where it is, how bad it would be to step in it, and how to avoid it.

> The war started immediately after Ukraine threw out the Russian puppet government.

Neglecting US involvement in that revolution/coup hides a big part of the story. The US ambassador to Ukraine and Victoria Nuland were discussing who should replace Russia's puppets a full two weeks before the people actually got rid of him - which Russian spies discovered and published.

> The war Russia initiated and bears full responsibility for has hurt millions already (and in fact had hurt millions before the 2022 escalation), not mere tens or hundreds of thousands.

Right - I was thinking more of deaths, but you're right harm has indeed come to millions of people, from Russia's unjust war.

> They will back off before or after they collapse from the cost of the war, but either way they will back off. They’ve lost vastly more in lives and treasure in a few months than the much larger USSR did in a decade in Afghanistan. Putin may dream of recreating the Empire of Peter the Great, but he's heading more toward Nicholas II.

I honestly believe there is a high chance Russia would rather throw the dice and nuke Ukraine before allowing the war to end, unless they get down guarantees that NATO involvement in Ukraine will stop completely. What would happen next is impossible to predict, as we would be stepping into an entirely new world.

> I mean, if you mean by the 2022 escalation, it was a pretty well-marked trap.

The trap was constant escalation of NATO presence in Ukraine, culminating in the joint military exercises in 2021, forcing Putin to react.

> Pretty easy trap to avoid

I'm not sure I agree. That there was a trap was obvious, I think, but this doesn't mean there was necessarily an alternative way for Putin to react without losing face. I imagine the forces that move this kind of things along have a form of inertia measured in years or decades. Especially if there are other forces (backers, allies, whatever) goading him and pushing his government to take action. Maybe he thought the alternatives were worse.

I think it's evident now Putin made a mistake, even by his own calculations, and that it might be too late for him to back off now.

> Ukrainians would have been much better off had they worked with Russia to avoid or quickly settle the war

You don’t “work with Russia”. You either surrender completely and have leadership controlled from Moscow or get labeled a nazi regime itching to invade Russia.

And yet Finland, Germany, even France, China - all managed to work with Russia decently well, at least before the current desperate show of force from Putin.

Finland is probably the only exception to the rule and only because they managed to kick a lot of russian ass back in the day.

China is significantly more powerful player than Russia. Germany and France don’t share a border with russia.

> Germany and France don’t share a border with russia.

Its more they are part of NATO, which Russia not ready to confront directly.

I also forgot Mongolia and Kazakhstan on the list of nations that are neither Russian puppets nor in danger of invasion. And further out, Russia has good relations with India as well (not sure about Pakistan).

To be fair, there were some significant disagreements between Kazakhstan and Russia after Putin made comments about their traditional statehood, prompting several threats from their own authoritarian leader, but when Kazakh leadership felt threatened by protesters, they appealed to Russia for troops to quell the popular revolt.

> And yet Finland

Finland could perfectly be next Russia's target after Ukraine. They just don't have enough resources at the moment.

Finland, Germany, France and China are sovereign nations.

Putin required the direct vassalage and control of Ukraine, much like he does with Belarus.

Ukraine obviously posed no material threat to Russia.

The attempted conflation of those different scenarios is intellectually repulsive.

> Putin required the direct vassalage and control of Ukraine, much like he does with Belarus.

While this would have obviously been Putin's strong preference, it's hard to say whether he would have accepted a compromise solution, with Ukraine being committed to neutrality.

As it is though, Ukraine got rid of Putin's puppet with significant US involvement (but also popular will), and then became committed to doing everything it could to join NATO - working very closely with them in the meantime.

> Ukraine obviously posed no material threat to Russia.

A neutral Ukraine would have not, but NATO bases in Ukraine would pose an extraordinary threat to Russia, given NATO's hostility, overwhelming military might, and Ukraine's geographical position, with a direct line of access to Moscow that has been exploited in all previous major western invasions of Russia (newly by Hitler and Napoleon).

Finland proved that a country at Russia's border can maintain decent relations with Russia without becoming a puppet state, as long as they don't join hostile military alliances. Mongolia and to a lesser extent Kazakhstan on the other side of the world are similar examples.

A neutral Ukraine would have not, but NATO bases in Ukraine would pose an extraordinary threat to Russia

Russia has several thousand thermonuclear weapons, a couple dozen of which might actually work. Consequently, the only conceivable threat to Russia is the man currently occupying the Kremlin. No one else can lay a finger on Russia.

No, again, NATO, even bases in Ukraine are is a material threat to Russia, or not much more so than before.

Again, everyone knows this. The Russians know this, we know they know, they know we know they know.

Due to interference in Ukraine, Russia now has another 1000km NATO border with Ukraine, that could (may very well) host nuclear weapons.

And yet what was Putin's reaction? 'Ok, that's fine'.

Russia's posture that '1000km of NATO border with Finland is no big deal, but 1000Km of NATO border with Ukraine is enough to invade a country' is bullshit at face value.

The 'NATO' issue has a 'tiny bit' of validity, in that, yes, it's advantageous for Russia to have a material 'buffer zone' - definitely - but it's not enough to substantiate the invasion.

Moreover - Ukraine was not really trending towards NATO. NATO denied them entry before, and likely would have denied them in the future, because the West/NATO doesn't really need/want bases in Ukraine. What the West wants, is just for Ukraine not to be a vassal of Russia.

In short - the 'default situation' that Russia said it so desperately wanted, i.e. a 'buffer zone' - was what the Russians had.

A 2022 'negotiation' would likely have yielded nothing.

The West would probably have accepted 'No NATO' for Ukraine, but required in return 1) get out of Crimea, and Donbas and 2) No interference in Ukraine politics etc. whatsoever.

Russia would not agree to #1, and would agree to #2, but then not heed the agreement.

The reality is, Putin/Russia have had plans to re-conquer Ukraine (and whatever else) since the breakup of the USSR.

Putin's 'special operation' in Ukraine is the same as it was for Hungary and Czech, i.e. put those stupid fledgling paupers under our thumb, part of the Empire.

In their cynical view of the world, everyone is a vassal of either them or the US, and that's it.

I don't see how any negotiation with Putin would have resulted in anything.

The best thing to do might have been to put NATO Air Patrols and Air Defence over Ukraine (At least West of Dnipro), train them on F16s, MLRS, M777 etc.. and then if Putin decides to invade, back it up with tit-for-tat i.e. if Russia launches Kaliber, then NATO launches cruise missiles, if Russia has S300, then NATO uses Patriot, if Russia blockades Odessa, the NATO blockades Crimea. Ukraine pre-trained on patriots, stingers, mid-range AA, American mannned Patriots, NATO Air Superiority over most of Ukraine, tons of arty, pre-trained MLRS units, and a lot of trained troops ... this war would be over.

Yes I know. Basic game theory comes to mind.

But if you have closely observed China, you know that it is not some private hacker arguing in favor of development of AI drones in some private forum.

It is some Harvard/Stanford/Peking/Tsinghua educated scientific policy advisor deep inside the army/government doing this job.

The useful thing with game theory, is we can go the other way to work out what's likely to encourage cooperation.

Well, I hope we can at lest, because the more tech we get, the harder it hurts when someone decides to defect.

I'd love to see more cooperative structures and policies but were obsessed with competition for some reason.

I don't think there is a moral debate about developing autonomous military drones in China.

These self-restrictions based on morality regarding the development of military drones is really something only some western nations do. Other countries, if they reach the capabilites to develop them, they just do.

The reason both sides are correct in their conclusion is precisely because there is a "Chinese version of hacker news"

I'd argue that negative aspects of the world are inevitable in competitive environments given survival instincs humans have. The fact is, a lot of things really are zero-sum, like land (e.g. Russia and Ukraine)--there's only so much of it the way we take ownership of it.

Ultimately this sort of environment leads to competition over resources vs collaboration between humans. So long as environments are competitive and people want to survive, the rest emerges inevitably I think.

I always found modern conflicts interesting because humans basically formed societies to reduce competition and dangers, to help their odds. We can now take turns taking watch at night and I sleep most days vs living as a nomand I'm always in danger for my life and resources. We then moved from hunter gathers to agrarian societies because it provided even more security and stability, we didn't have to compete for food we could contribute, grow it, and share it. We formed towns, built houses. We worked together.

Then somewhere along the line we decided to reintroduce survival dynamics abstractly in these safer societies. We reduced your food security and livelihood security based on valuations of your contribution to society, we add power dynamics and authorities of control, created the idea of private property rights, we setup market places where people compete abstractly through wealth transfers in the forms of money, then we tied things back securities like food and housing to these things.

Maybe we got bored and many want to be in a threatened survival state. I'd like to think we, as a species, could toss the people obsessed with accumulating wealth and power to the curb and try stripping away many layers of abstract competition we created and look at creating layers of collaboration. It doesn't need to be another failed attempt at socialism, but it seems like we can at least be far less competitive to one another and still grow.

This is the tragedy of the commons. Its solution is a central authority. How do we get there?

What if there is an easy and painfully trivial answer to achieve world peace and avoid wars?

Imagine you are one of a million people on this planet who know the secret. Everyone else won't believe you because it is too simple and hence very easy to abuse in the other direction. What if it was as simple as flicking a switch and just doing it?

Here is the problem. If it just about flicking a switch, how to make sure people don't switch it from utopia back to dystopia?

Your utopia needs to be a self preserving system even in the face of violence. A pacifist system that isn't self preserving will be destroyed and taken over by non pacifist systems that are self preserving at least in the short run.

A democracy needs the backing of a military force to keep it alive. If there is something better than democracy then it will also need a military to protect itself.

> Turkey already have autonomous predator drones [0], and they have been used in the battlefield.

Turkey is part of NATO.

> China, Iran, and Russia do (they surely do or soon will), we are at massive disadvantage.

Countries like Iran and Russia aren't able to sustain an electronics industry to produce something as complicated as AI Computer vision drones. I hope I don't need to explain why.

> We will have to deploy humans on the field when they won't have to. That is a gap too wide to exist. It is more fundamental than gunpowder.

This is unsubstantiated fear mongering. The economies are too intertwined for either US or China to deploy their forces full-scale. If we ever get to the point of a full-scale confrontation, some AI-drones will be the least of your worries.

> AI scientists of today should help develop autonomous killing machines. Freedom isn't free.

Yikes.

> The economies are too intertwined for either US or China to deploy their forces full-scale.

This was was a common belief about Europe before World War One. Unfortunately, that didn't prevent the carnage.

I tend to agree with you about the existential danger of full-scale confrontation. And to be fair, your concerns about these weapon systems are well founded. These things are really dangerous and we need to think very carefully about how they're developed and deployed.

But as we see in Ukraine, there's a lot of scope for limited confrontation. In this case we'll want access to deadlier weapons than our enemies have access to.

To those of us that believe in liberal democracy, this isn't just about one team vs another. This really is about living in a world where freedom is the norm rather than living in fear of an autocrat.

The end game of intelligent autonomous weapons are dangerous to everyone. Google slaughterbots. We've been pretty successful in stopping major nation states from using bioweapons so far. Maybe we can do the same for AI. Maybe we can't. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try and the very least we can do is not start a bloody arms race as to who can develop the best autonomous killing machine.

> We've been pretty successful in stopping major nation states from using bioweapons so far.

I am sure everyone has it. Every major nations. Although they might not use it.

> AI

I am sure it is already there. Many have it. Turkey, and at least China. Maybe Israel and the US.

And it will not come in clear paradigms, I think. Like FSD in Tesla. Use will happen for components first, then major things, then maybe one day, fully autonomous.

How do you even regulize it? What happens if they use Logistic Regression? That's just Stat, right? What if add one more layer? Then that becomes MLP, and in the AI domain. What about CNNs? Transformers? Where do you draw the line?

What if the missile truck uses something like FSD?

> arms race

This isn't going to be like other arms races. This will fundamentally change all weapons. And should not be used where it is not needed, though.

Also, gone are the days when countries flaunted big missiles. How would even other countries know, if you don't want them to?

It's just autonomous technology in general. Making an autonomously-operable object destructive is the easy bit. Widespread use is a lot closer and easier than people realize, but I'd rather not spell out why that is.

Could it be... ... ... the self driving CARS?

>We've been pretty successful in stopping major nation states from using bioweapons so far.

Name a major state that has experienced existential war since their invention. Same for nukes.

"We've been successful in stopping" - there has been no "we" doing any "stopping". There have only been "others" "choosing not to". There would reasonably be some point of conflict where the decision falls the other way.

Major nation states do not use weapons of mass destruction against each other out of fear or retaliation. If you do not want your any to use autonomous drones against you, the best deterrent is to build some on your own.

Since when has google been making slaughterbots?

Or do you mean those dogs they were building for the military?

I think it should have been read as suggestion, as in search for "slaughterbots". IIRC then a short (a few minutes long) video emerges, in which a swarm of small drones is airlaunched from a container mounted onto one of the weapon pylons under the wing of a plane, glides down, swarms out over a city, engaging pattern/face recognition. One drone (smaller than a human hand) enters a building, where some people are assembled in a hall, locks onto his target and kills it by a small shaped charge to the head.

Mission accomplished.

This is then followed by (or was embedded in?) a recorded presentation on stage with showroom dummies, where every single necessary step to achieve this goal is shown to be possible with COTS (commercial of the shelf) components today.

That was new then, a few years ago...

Hard agree. The only counter to an enemy AI swarm or a runaway AI swarm is another AI swarm. Sure, we'll probably fuck it up, but at least there's a chance for us.

The alternative is simply accept Chinese rule.

That's it. Those are our choices. And for the pacifists, China is still going to develop their own AI swarm, and they could lose control of it, so dying is still on the cards with the second one, too.

I love people here focusing on the "end game". Yes, this is the horror: the rational choice is to develop the technology that will likely kill us all. They argue "The end-game is so bad that we must lose the mid-game", as if that will stop other nations from developing the end-game technology!

Really, anybody who isn't already a monk who lives entirely off the land through their own labor, doesn't got to make any moral argument, or argument about "well, Chinese rule wouldn't be so bad - we're just fighting for culture". Give up your culture, then we'll talk.

Everyone who believes there are other choices are simply living in their "just world" fantasy.

This same logic could be used to justify any atrocity. What exactly makes you so sure China is developing such dangerous technology?

And even if they are, why isn't it a better idea to negotiate an international ban on this type of research instead of driving full force into it?

Creating ever more powerful weapons is a fool's game, and every knowing participant is a human monster.

My premise assumes that at least one adversary will develop these weapons whether we do or not.

Your premise assumes that everyone would agree not to do it, and also keep that agreement.

This is basic game theory. Your position is indefensible.

It's not about monsters, or morals. It's just math.

I completely agree with your post but say with only partial sarcasm that the US/EU will develop these first, followed shortly by China but only after they steal the technology behind it. Then a trickle-down from there.

Yes, the invasion of Ukraine hopefully showed how naive this type of thinking is, i.e. "I hate war, therefore I won't support or work on defense technologies".

The invasion of Ukraine has shown precisely the opposite: playing military games gets youe neighbours antsy, and an antsy empire just invades to calm its nerves.

If Ukraine hadn't been slowly de facto integrating into NATO (NATO weapons, NATO training, and even joint military exercises with NATO, on Ukrainian soil), it would have been much harder for Putin to justify the extreme costs this invasion is having on his economy.

If the Ukraine invasion was in a vacuum maybe but Russia has set it sights on a number of nations regardless of their NATO involvement.

They’re absorbing Belarus soon, was Belarus getting too cozy with NATO?

"Well, I only robbed your house because you threatened to join the neighborhood watch."

While international politics is unsavory, it is what it is. Have you seen the US response to the Solomon Islands signing a military treaty with China?

They made it clear that if there is any attempt at establishing a Chinese military base there, the US wouldn't put a military response off the table.

The right lesson to learn from Russia is that big countries are ever willing to sacrifice small countries in their bids for power. Russians would have been much better off had they worked with NATO to avoid or quickly settle the proxy war, especially after heroically sacrificing more soldiers and weaponry in the initial invasion then they had in Afghanistan

Instead, goaded on the by the oligarchs and Putin, they are fighting a losing war that will hurt tens or hundreds of thousands over the coming years. There is 0 chance NATO will back off. Of course, it will also empower Putin, which is what Putin and the Oligarchs actually want. Russia fell right into their trap, and thinks they are being helped empowered.

I know you're trying to mirror some of my comments, but this is just gibberish.

Of course Russia would have been better off if they (and NATO) had been willing to negotiate.

Russia is not "goaded on" by Putin, it is directly controlled. They also don't care too much about the Ukrainians they are killing or hurting.

If Ukraine backs off, there's not much NATO can do about it - except perhaps start working on regime change in Ukraine.

> Of course, it will also empower Putin, which is what Putin and the Oligarchs actually want. Russia fell right into their trap, and thinks they are being helped empowered.

I don't unbeatable what these words are supposed to mean.

It is as gibberish as your original comment read to me. There’s this undercurrent in your arguments that Russia was always going to do this, like an inevitable force of nature, and Ukraine just has to/ had to get out of the way.

If you don’t hold that assumption, like myself, then your viewpoint seems absurd

Russia was never going to allow Ukraine to become a de facto or de jure NATO ally. If you don't accept this as something as close to a fact as nature as anything can be in international politics, I don't know what you would accept.

So, Ukraine has a choice: seek to join NATO knowing that will eventually lead to conflict with Russia, but hoping you can beat them. Or, seek to attain a neutral status, where they can forge their own path between NATO and Russia, maybe on a model similar to Finland.

The option of peacefully joining NATO simply doesn't exist. Empires will never willingly allow anything like that, if they have any semblance of power to prevent it.

Note that the Baltic countries, who also share a land border with Russia, joined NATO at a time when Russia was so weak it could simply not do anything about it.

Russia was never going to allow Ukraine to become a de facto or de jure NATO ally.

Who asked them?

I don’t understand this logic.

I don’t see how an ‘if’ Ukraine joined nato and a ‘maybe’ it might give NATO an advantage over Russia is better then war now. I don’t see how something that is a known horror for all involved, is better than something that ‘could be’ worse maybe one day. The only unknown currently is how much more horrific it will become and how long it will go for. Generations of hatred have been sown already.

There was definitely ways to appease each side prior to war, eg integrating Russia’s economy and energy grid further into Europe and the west. This was a terrible failure of diplomacy that built up over decades.

Now that all involved are getting more experienced at warfare it will just promote deadlier warfare, ai controlled weapons etc etc. I’m completely losing faith in humanity, it unbelievable sad what’s happening.

I wholeheartedly agree with you - the current war is the result of decades of mistrust, hostility and grandstanding, from both sides of the conflict (NATO and Russia). It is the worse of all possible outcomes, and puts us closer than ever to direct war between these two major nuclear powers.

Assuming we didn't get there though, I think the only part of the calculation that you are missing is that the war is not a horror for Putin and his entourage, and neither for NATO leaders. It is a horror for the people of Ukraine, their army, and the Russian soldiers who actually have to fight it. The seeds of hatred will also prove to be a horror for the ordinary Russians who will suffer greatly in retaliation.

Unfortunately, their leaders and ours will have probably been long dead after content, peaceful lives, uncaring of the harm they have caused.

“Mr President, we must not allow a mineshaft gap!”

Typo: should be “minecraft gap!”

You might find this interesting:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/05/ukraine-ru...

Interesting but puzzling at the same time.

I don't disagree modern wars will result in whole classes of equipment being found obsolete or not cost effective, but this strikes me as odd:

[quote from the article]

> "The military we have—an army built around tanks, a navy built around ships, and an air force built around planes, all of which are technologically advanced and astronomically expensive—is platform-centric. So far, in Ukraine, the signature land weapon hasn’t been a tank but an anti-tank missile: the Javelin. The signature air weapon hasn’t been an aircraft, but an anti-air missile: the Stinger. And as the sinking of the Moskva showed, the signature maritime weapon hasn’t been a ship but an anti-ship missile: the Neptune."

Well, none of those types of missiles are fundamentally new, and have existed in one way or another for decades (e.g. the HMS Sheffield was sunk by an Exocet anti-ship missile during the Falklands War in 1982!). More importantly, they work because the Ukrainians are fighting a war of resistance against an invading force; were they to go on the offensive (hypothetical, imagine they -- like the Soviet Union in WWII -- were to advance into Moscow and decapitate its leadership) they would need tanks, and airplanes, and other allegedly "obsolete" equipment.

The Ukrainian defense works where they are given support and weapons by foreign powers and because of a Russian mismanaged offensive.

Say -- again for the sake of argument -- the invasion was a coordinated effort by NATO against an hypothetical Ukrainian rogue state. How long would they last with their Stingers and Neptune anti-ship missiles?

As a devil's advocate against my own argument, Afghanistan ended up "defeating" the US in the very long run, for reasons not directly related to the weapons they used. And what weapons did they use, anyway? (Good old) Stinger, RPGs and AKs? No Neptunes in sight.

> If we don't work on these projects, then we will not have autonomous killing machines, and our rivals will.

My biggest fear is that the next generation of warfare is going to be lost only due to lack of imagination.

I am starting to see a new opportunity emerge for the skills and tools held by AAA game studios and fintechs. Building a UX/UI that allows for you to interact with your next-gen weapons system is going to be the biggest challenge in my view. How does 1 person manage a fleet of 10k drones in a strategic conflict? How do you integrate hundreds/thousands of these fleets into a cohesive force? You are talking about potentially millions of battlefield actors. And billions of discrete events per second. How do you process all of this data and then make a rational decision by the time the next loop comes around? Every millisecond that goes by without a decision is a substantial step closer to defeat.

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