Comment by motohagiography | Hacker News Reader

Comment by motohagiography | Hacker News Reader

motohagiography

The key facts appear to be that there was an IKE vulnerability in Zyxel firewalls that allowed for a single packet compromise. The attacker used this simulataneously across all targeted companies. The report says the infra under attack didn't appear in Shodan, so the attackers would have used some other scanning to develop the attack surface, and they attribute it to a state actor.

While I was involved in a lot of critical infrastructure work over the years, there is so much mutually assured destruction on 'cyber' now that I don't see the economics of it anymore. Personally, I have doubts NATO can afford to act directly in a kinetic military capacity anymore and it has to operate through proxy parties because its members' infra is so exposed that no elected government survives a cyber retaliation against its energy and other infra services that derails its civil society. That said, I've held that belief for over a decade and haven't had it tested.

Angell famously published a book with a similar thesis in 1909, right before WWI. He was right about industrialized war being highly destructive and unprofitable, but he was wrong to think that this would stop the belligerents.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Illusion

Why is war unprofitable? The value of the land in a long run tends towards infinity, especially if it is populated with taxable people and factories.

The money that you spent fighting could have been spent on other activities that also tend towards infinity. At higher rates. Without a huge initial setback.

Of course, you only control your own choices not your competitors/opponents' choices, so game theory makes the outcome of "everyone chooses peace" nontrivial to achieve.

In such a game the trick is to build and maintain a consistent 'you', and therefore to control your own party, made of blurry and changing subgroups/alliances of individuals, most of them perceiving their own interests in their own ways.

War was profitable back when you'd use horses, swords, bows and arrows to conquer more fertile arable land and slave labor, as that was the most value back then.

In the industrial era, the value is the profitable industry, which you just blew up with bombs to win the war, or had blown up loosing the war.

Either way, you spent an insane amount of money going to war offensively or defensively, not winning anything of value other than some barren land which is now worthless, and now you're also broke from the debt you took to fight an industrial war.

Advanced industry means wars are less likely to be profitable, not that they'll never occur.

Being a huge history nerd war is almost always about profiteering, nothing has changed but propaganda.

The US is one big imperial war machine that protects its ownership class assets with their foreign policy, like any other superpower would.

"War profiteering", forceful opening of markets, huge contracts being made after all major wars, resource control?

The forever wars happening from the second world war up until now to keep the West on top. What "we" did to South America, to Iran, to African countries when they wanted their surplus?

Empire logic, game theory, nerdy statistical perspective even if you played a bit of civilisation or read Guns Germs and Steel.

Classical geopolitics 20 years ago was all about these game theories, propaganda, that it's all a big game of Risk, acquiring the most while dominating others like literally all of history.

What is war about today suddenly then? Beautiful philanthropic benevolence of the enlightened western peoples done very reluctantly but with great compassion for the future of the world despite immense expenses?

> War was profitable back when you'd use horses, swords, bows and arrows to conquer more fertile arable land and slave labor, as that was the most value back then.

But maintaining large armies to do such conquering was massively expensive, and consider the extent to which various kings over the years have had their military ambitions crushed because their country or people could no longer tolerate the sacrifices required. The so-called slave labour still has to grow food to primarily feed itself, and this is a fairly full-time occupation in a pre-industrial state. There isn't a lot left over to sustain an occupying force in any sort of comfort (which incidentally isn't farming its home fields when it is doing the occupying).

Don't think it in terms of states, standing armies, and occupying forces.

Wars were often not between states but kings, and most people had no particular reason to favor one king over another. Armies often signaled famine and death, regardless of if they were "friendly" or not. Kings and their vassals usually maintained only small core forces. When more manpower was needed, armies could raised.

War didn't have to be particularly profitable. It only needed to be more profitable than business, which is often was in a zero-growth environment. And it was obviously risky.

The key thing was that nobody wanted a prolonged war, because it was expensive and pointless. Losing was often preferable. Sure the victors would kill some, enslave some, and rob some, but for most people, life would go on as before. Some elites would be different and they would swear allegiance to a different king, but most things would remain the same.

The idea that war is unprofitable and best avoided if possible was already a big theme in Sun Tzu's Art of War. War is insanely expensive, both in terms of the people, resources and infrastructure lost, and in terms of the opportunity cost of what you could have done instead.

Sure, in principle putting in some fixed amount of resources to get a piece of land forever is worth it eventually. But that's not how it usually works out. If you conquer land from somebody, they don't roll over and accept that. Chances are you will be back on the same battlefield, fighting over that same land a couple decades later. Or if it's large enough empires fighting each other you fight over a different piece of land in a couple years. But either way, the country that can maintain peace without too many concessions and focus on their economy tends to be better off. The only major exception is colonization, where you fight against people who don't have a cohesive country that could retaliate later on.

The cost of war has arguably gone down a lot in the last two centuries or so, since we can now fight total war and have farmers ploughing the field at the same time, due to the insane efficiency gains in agriculture. At the same time the benefits of gaining land have gone down. Doubly so the benefits of gaining bombed-out land where the population was displaced by said war.

Indeed. To conquer (resources, mainly land) converting (to your culture, historically more often than not your religion or general philosophy about society/life...) the people now owning it is way more efficient than invading by waging war on them.

> The value of the land in a long run tends towards infinity, especially if it is populated with taxable people and factories.

The taxable people often end up dead and the factories destroyed.

Since about the (Second) Industrial Revolution going after land really hasn't been a good way to gain wealth. Sarah Paine, Professor of History and Strategy at the US Naval War College has some interesting ideas in "The Geopolitics and History of Continental and Maritime Power":

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0QrOjqXx8U

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcVSgYz5SJ8

> That said, I've held that belief for over a decade and haven't had it tested.

MAD was possible because both cold war adversaries could verify. Satellite photos and espionage kept the score and the mutual decision was "Let's not". Cyber enjoys no such legibility, so there's a very real danger that one actor thinks "We'll get away with it, they won't/can't retaliate".

There is a large scale war going just now in which the only cyber attack of any effect has been bricking a bunch of KA-SAT terminals. This belief of yours might be more of a science-fiction story.

the sat terminal attack was nothing compared to the one that hit Puerto Rico. https://www.npr.org/2021/06/11/1005413481/a-fire-and-cyberat...

Thanks for being constructive though.

That's the point, nothing of the sort is happening. One of the most competent state actors in this area finds cruise missiles to be far more effective than your imaginary doomsday scenarios of cyber attacks. It's just not a thing.

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