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Comment by remarkEon | Hacker News Reader

>I can’t imagine a US intelligence official would be wrong on this

Has this AP reporter been asleep for … their entire career? Charitably, I can interpret this as the reporter thinking they wouldn’t make up something about a potential Article 5 event, but - and maybe it’s my cynicism about this war - wouldn’t that mean you’d want to guarantee that what you’re saying is super precise? “Russian missiles hit Poland” vs “Russian missiles fired by Ukraine hit Poland” obviously mean very different things.

Doesn’t look like LaPorta did anything wrong here, necessarily, and this looks like an editorial problem to me.

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Who say things like “American missiles fired by Ukraine?” It would only make sense to say that if US troops on the ground hosted by Ukraine fired the missiles.

It’s stupid. No one says Chinese AK-47s fired by Ukrainian soldiers.

Someone was playing stupid.

Are you saying that LaPorta, a Marine so he’s probably more likely to be familiar with these weapons systems than other non-military veteran journos, is playing stupid in the thread about the manufacturing origins of those missiles?

The origin, both manufacturing and who fired them, seems pretty relevant in this war because both sides are using a lot of the same weapons systems.

It’s way more relevant WHO fired them from where than who manufactured them.

The missiles aren't even Russian made. They're Soviet made, and there's a fair chance they were even made in Ukraine at least partly. Yes, someone is playing dumb here.

> The origin, both manufacturing and who fired them, seems pretty relevant in this war because both sides are using a lot of the same weapons systems.

That, logically, make the manufacturer less relevant, bordering on irrelevant.

> Are you saying that LaPorta, a Marine so he’s probably more likely to be familiar with these weapons systems than other non-military veteran journos…

Isn’t this assumption of knowledge/authority pretty much the same sort of appeal to validity that this quote from the Slack thread fell into?

“I can’t imagine a US intelligence official would be wrong on this”

I am saying often in an effort to push a narrative or POV or get the scoop, journos may overlook inconvenient facts or appeal to an authority that perhaps they shouldn’t…since that authority may have an ulterior motive.

The gravity of the allegations required hyper-responsible journalism that did not happen here…this was a rush to get a scoop. This wasn’t a message board post that effectively had a small audience where assumptions of a rumor’s validity had essentially zero real world impact. This has the chance to create mass death.

Headlines like "US bombs dropped on bus full of children" are somewhat common in stories about the war in Yemen.

But those were sold with the expectation to be used by Saudi Arabia for that purpose.

Exactly. And the planes that dropped those bombs could only perform their sorties because they were refueled midair by US pilots.

And if we're going down this road, the targets were often provided by US intelligence. Still, Saudi's did the bombing so our hands are squeaky clean.

Yes, thank you for bringing that up! Although rather than “often,” I would say “almost exclusively provided by US intelligence.”

> Who say things like “American missiles fired by Ukraine?”

Russia-aligned internet commenters seem to say things like that a lot. I think it's part of their cope; Russia couldn't be struggling against Ukrainians... no... they're struggling against Ukrainians with American weapons! I guess this is gentler on their egos.

I mean… that is the truth though.

Without the full force of US Intelligence and more money sent to Ukraine this year than any year of the Iraq/Afghanistan war… yes, Ukraine would have folded months ago.

This is very clearly a proxy war.

I'm not sure it is a proxy war, as the Ukrainian government is not being instigated by the US. Granted I'm not v. familiar w/ Ukrainian politics but if the Ukrainian leadership is democratically elected, and the population is generally against Russian leaders taking over the country (this part seems likely), it is much closer to an alliance no? In the same way the US supplied Russia with materials in WWII -- while clearly of a much different scale and impact -- it would seem awkward and inaccurate to claim the Nazi's were fighting the US when they were invading Russia.

> I'm not sure it is a proxy war, as the Ukrainian government is not being instigated by the US.

Ukraine military spending is ~$6b/yr [0] and so far this year the US has sent ~$57b of "aid" to Ukraine [1], of which ~$27b is military.

The total US commitment dwarfs the contribution from all other countries [2] and it appears there is a request for another ~$38b [3] of which ~$21b is military spending.

So while one could claim that the US is not instigating Ukraine govt to war, it's clear that the US is funding a greater part of the military activities by providing equipment for the war to the tune of at least (to date) 4-5x Ukraine's normal military spending each year.

[0]. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1293277/ukraine-military... [1]. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1303432/total-bilateral-... [2]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_foreign_aid_to_Ukraine... [3]. https://www.defensenews.com/congress/budget/2022/11/15/white...

If you pay attention, you’ll realize media often use ambiguous titles that are technically correct, in a sense, but which most of their audience will interpret in a different and wrong way that fits their agenda. It’s really common when it comes to reporting on geopolitical rivals. Usually not this blatant, though.

Btw, there are a lot of reporting on how Russia uses Chinese drones, often without mentioning Ukraine uses the very same (consumer) drones.

I've seen it referred to as "exonerative tense" mostly in reference to how e.g. the New York Times will refer to incidents of police shooting and killing citizens.

Exactly! "new reports reveal rifts in organization XYZ" or "findings reveal increasingly erratic actions by CEO" or "(something) sends (company) into tailspin"

While I very much agree w/ your points -- the Chinese drones in Russia is a little different. Because of sanctions against Russia (and not Ukraine), the source of their drones is very meaningful. I.e. If the majority of their usable munitions are from China, and the US can pressure China into stopping that, they can stop the flow of munitions to Russia in a meaningful sense. Given that's a key part of the strategy I think reporting on where Russia's sourcing its drones is extremely relevant, while generally irrelevant when the context is Ukrainian usage.

>> Someone was playing stupid.

Welcome to the real world. Even if the intelligence offical was being scrupulously careful to lay out the facts the reporter may mishear or misunderstand the context. The only thing that would have been known immediately was that the missile was manufactured in the soviet union. The offical thinks he is telling the reporter one thing but the reporter just hears 'russian missile' and runs with it because he believes it comes from a verified source.

The Slack chat is pretty clear that the AP reporters here are just jumping to conclusions that fit their preconceptions. The reporters are breathlessly invoking article 5 as if a stray missile hitting a polish farm would rise to the level of a deliberate act of war.

Likely what happened is that all the source knew what that missiles had hit Poland, and they were (made in) Russia. From that point, things will have been lost in translation, ignored (not necessarily maliciously) in the rush or augmented due to unconscious biases.

It's certainly an editorial problem if this kind of information is not being double and triple-checked for confirmation and precision.

Even the intelligence community's own PR materials wouldn't put forward such a claim.

Saying something like "can’t imagine a US intelligence official would be wrong on this" in the first place shows a misunderstanding of what the point of such "intelligence" is: collecting (often-dubious) information as quickly as possible to enable probabilistic (but sometimes wrong) assessments for decision-making.

Nobody with the sort of fundamental lack of judgement shown by Gera belongs anywhere near an editorial chain of command.

You can always retract your statements and pieces, most of the time the evidence isn't as glaring and it just goes unnoticed. I firmly believe prioritizing shock value in journalism is dangerous and without brakes it'll keep getting worse, and some will absolutely, inevitably pay for it because misinformed people acted in some unpredictable way. Especially in such a propagandized conflict.

Speaking of US officials, or from any country at all, they don't really care about evidence. It's political games that news media feeds with like vultures, sometimes.

>It was an attention-grabbing assertion that made headlines around the world: U.S. officials said they had indications suggesting Russia might be preparing to use chemical agents in Ukraine.

>President Joe Biden later said it publicly. But three U.S. officials told NBC News this week there is no evidence Russia has brought any chemical weapons near Ukraine. They said the U.S. released the information to deter Russia from using the banned munitions.

from https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/us-using-...

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