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Comment by IAmGraydon | Hacker News Reader

The nuclear train article that has been going around has been debunked by none other than the Director of the CIA.

Prominent news organizations, such as CBS and Newsweek, have reported on the nuclear train (albeit, referring to it as "not independently verified").

If you're going to claim that it was debunked by the Director of the CIA, you're going to need to provide a link, please - ideally to a credible news organization or the CIA itself. I did a quick google and it came up with nothing, so it's very possible I'm not searching in the right way.

> Prominent news organizations, such as CBS and Newsweek, have reported on the nuclear train (albeit, referring to it as "independently verified").

I'm not sure what articles you're referring to, but the first CBS article I found[1] says it could not be "independently verified".

>A video shared online of a train in Russia carrying equipment belonging to a Russian military unit that handles nuclear weapons should be taken as a message to the West, a military analyst says. The video, which a U.S. official told CBS News could not be independently confirmed, shows an armored personnel carrier with a cannon attached, as well as another vehicle belonging to the unit, being transported on the train, the analyst said.

The newsweek article[2] doesn't mention any sort of verification, and is repeating whatever the polish military analyst says.

[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/russia-nuclear-weapons-train-vi...

[2] https://www.newsweek.com/nukes-nuclear-weapon-train-russia-u...

Thank you. People like the above poster are justifiably scared, but it's important to maintain rationality in times like these instead of going into hyper-vigilance mode and seeing every crazy Twitter post as confirmation of the apocalypse.

The entire world is looking for a reason to freak out, so they're seeing big, scary shapes in the clouds. Most mass media would love to see the masses freak out, so the problem is exacerbated. The entire train claim came from some nobody in Poland who had no idea about the context of what they were looking at. This train track is commonly active, and even more so during Russia's nuclear training exercises that occur every autumn.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/russia-ukraine-war-1.6605262

>"We don't see any practical evidence today in the U.S. intelligence community that he's moving closer to actual use, that there's an imminent threat of using tactical nuclear weapons," CIA director William Burns told CBS News Monday.

>"What we have to do is take it very seriously, watch for signs of actual preparations."

The nuclear train story came out Sunday and this quote is from Bill Burns on Monday.

is different than

"that is not a train used by the nuclear organization, they are not moving weapons, etc "

He specifically does not address the claim. Which to me, is a red flag of lying by omission.

Personally, I never took the initial story super seriously, and view articles like this suspiciously.

Only slightly off topic but Newsweek was purchased by a weird Korean cult similar in structure to Scientology, so you should move them off your "prominent news org" mental map. Several of the higher ups at the org are under federal indictment and the current owner/operator who came in with the cult seems to be a bit of a psychopath.

https://www.motherjones.com/media/2014/03/newsweek-ibt-olive...

lol, who believes the CIA? AKA the Lying agency....

Ahh a conspiracy theorist. You must know all of their dark plans that the sheeple could never see. How original of you. The world definitely needs more people like you.

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