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Comment by ilyt | Hacker News Reader

> In fact, the exact information he passed along was factually correct by one interpretation. The S-300 rockets were "Russian" in the sense that they were Russian manufacturing. They were not "Russian" in the sense that they were fired by Russian armed forces (to the best of our knowledge).

That's a fucking terrible interpretation. By that interpretation both sides of war in ukraine are russian coz UA happened to use some of russian equipment...

Actually no, it's not terrible, it's outright malicious

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> By that interpretation both sides of war in ukraine are russian

Well, no, I made a pretty clear distinction about what context we were using "Russian" to refer to.

By that interpretation both sides of the war in Ukraine use Russian manufactured weapons. Which isn't a crazy thing to suggest, since it's manifestly true.

It seems very likely to me that the journalist meant "Russian-fired rocket". But is that what their source meant? I could easily see a conversation where a source said "Russian missile" referring to the type or manufacture of the missile, and the journalist misunderstood that as "Russian missile" referring to the army who fired it. Clearly, from the context of the slack conversation, this happened quickly without a lot of time to clear up the context.

So if a Boeing plane is shot down in Iran, it would make sense to say "Iranians shoot down American plane"? During the Iran/Iraq war would have made sense to say "American missiles hit American planes in Iraq"?

> it would make sense to say "Iranians shoot down American plane"?

If you had no idea who the plane belonged to, it wouldn't be very strange to say that it was an American-manufactured plane.

Would it make sense for the AP to report that? No, of course not.

Could it make sense for someone to communicate that idea? Sure, absolutely.

Does it make sense to say the sentence you wrote? It really depends on who is saying what, and in which context!

My main point was: this looks like it was a misunderstanding (which, unless the source was fabricated, or just lying to the journalist, it was). I was presenting a hypothetical context in which that misunderstanding could arise.

Not to mention all of the American munitions raining down all over the world.

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