The Taliban Government Runs on WhatsApp. There’s Just One Problem

nytimes.com

5 points·detaro··4 comments

So WhatsApp end-to-end encryption works therefor Taliban uses it in military and non-military operations. However, because it leaks metadata Facebook is able to identify Taliban users and ban them.

https://archive.is/YvNRH

> smartphone use has proliferated and 4G networks have improved across Afghanistan with the end of the U.S.-led war.

I found this sentence to be oddly unintuitive. I would have assumed that during the war, infrastructure would have been built, and the Taliban would have destroyed some or all of it on taking control.

> infrastructure would have been built, and the Taliban would have destroyed some or all of it on taking control

Why? Surely U.S military is better off in a zone where their own radios are working but others do not. So any infra that U.S military brings with them into a war zone would be available for themselves only. And likewise U.S military might even desire to sabotage infra for others in the area I would think.

So then it would make sense that 4G in general would be better after U.S troops left than prior.

But aside from that costs of 4G infra has surely been ever declining over time independently of war. So to roll out 4G will have become more and more feasible globally over time.

When the Iraq war was at its peak, iPhone did not even exist yet. And most people probably had phones that didn't even support 3G. They were still on GPRS and EDGE, if their phones even had anything beyond call and SMS capabilities at all. Man those were the bad days lol.

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