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Comment by jjwiseman | Hacker News Reader

I'm not a NATO strategist or anything, so I'm adding this as a child comment, but I think the big story in the GPS/aviation world these days is probably Russia's n̵e̵a̵r̵-̵c̵o̵n̵s̵t̵a̵n̵t̵ frequent jamming of GPS over Poland, Finland, Sweden, Estonia, and Lithuania. Degrading and even neutralizing strategic infrastructure in EU and NATO countries, significantly affecting commercial aviation at the least, is a big deal. There's some reluctance to say it's Russia doing the jamming, though that seems to be the consensus among experts. I assume governments know with 100% confidence who it is.

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It should be a big story, as should be the fact that Russia invaded a peaceful neighboring country and keeps murdering, raping and torturing its residents.

But somehow much of the world pretends not to notice and only does whatever is convenient at the moment (buy Russian oil/gas, do business in Russia, stay "neutral", etc). I find it incredibly depressing, I thought that surely in the 2020s our civilization would have progressed further.

Russia will play the slowly boiled frog game to their advantage — GPS jamming is just the beginning. We will likely soon see further small incursions, each one ever so slightly larger than the previous one. And we'll hear Mr Scholz say something about doing something, but we won't see him actually do anything. Mr Macron will use grand words and do nothing as well. Austria will "declare neutrality" (easy to do when you have other countries as buffers from the aggressor).

As someone currently living in the EU close to Ukraine, I find all this very sad.

I find it rather sad too, especially the US politics at the moment where it seems one man basically can block the political system and let Putin win.

There are plenty of Russian apologists in the US as well, unfortunately

Check out the arguments made by John Mearshimer. His heart breaks for the Ukrainian people but he is focused on US policy missteps (because he is American and lives in the US) as the root cause of the problem.

No offense to you but that man’s argument has strong “I beat my wife because she deserves it” vibes.

The US has made more than its fair share of policy missteps. But to try and argue that the actions of the US somehow “forced” Russia to invade its neighbor and former satellite state to rid it of “nazis” (Putin’s quote not mine) is absurd.

> “I beat my wife because she deserves it” vibes.

Hmm. I think there is not much point in discussing

Check out this analysis of Mr. Mearsheimer's arguments:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wE-t2ePFEDc

The news is not able to keep maintaining the level of outrage at the war. They don't even try in a lot of cases because I think deep down people don't care.

That doesn't mean people don't care about the people though. Human suffering is always bad.

OSINT by Markus Jonsson (https://x.com/auonsson?s=21&t=L_vyKMe6Kz1tXjeWTeGk3g) has been tracking this for some time now.

>"There's some reluctance to say it's Russia doing the jamming, though that seems to be the consensus among experts."

Why the reluctance? I do not think there is much love lost in regards to Russia.

Well, if you identify them then you might have to do something about it. But it's not clear there's much to be done. Sometimes it's easier to deny or just not mention that someone is acting in a hostile way. The example I often think of is Iran firing missiles at U.S. warships during Operation Praying Mantis, and then, as Wikipedia puts it: "The Pentagon and the Reagan Administration later denied that any Silkworm missile attacks took place, possibly in order to keep the situation from escalating further - as they had promised publicly that any such attacks would merit retaliation against targets on Iranian soil."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Praying_Mantis

The situation with Russia is well past escalation by accusation of civil aircraft jamming. After all, they've pretty much stolen all planes they had under lease from Western owners.

Appeasement of someone like Putin is always a mistake.

So far every time the West calls his bluff he cowardly pretends nothing happened, be it HIMARS, Storm Shadow and HARM missile shipments, tank shipments, AWACS support, you name it.

He only attacked Ukraine because he hoped to win in a week, and this wouldn't have happened if the West armed Ukraine earlier. The desire not to escalate with Putin cost Europe a war.

every few weeks they're threttening to nuke some country, i think there's nothing that can be called excalation at this point (except the obvious idea to retaliate with guns, but that's a very bad idea).

Can you provide sources where they actually threaten to nuke anyone out of the blue (excluding Medvedev, he’s especially nuts)? All I can find is them clarifying their nuclear policy when pressed about it (would only use in situation of existential threat). Which seems less bellicose than US policy (as the US changed ours not long ago, seemingly allowing for first strike which is pretty insane): https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2022-12/focus/bidens-disappo...

Then you remember they called Ukraine in NATO an existential threat, and wiped their butts with international treaties that were supposed to be much more set in stone than some half-official nuclear doctrine.

However, this is all playing chicken. Whenever they were facing actual opposition, they backed down.

Which threats and treaties, specifically? I don't have a great memory - so please share actual sources.

Also, are you aware of this?: https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2019-09/news/us-completes-in...

For some speculative context: this is because of the "pivot to Asia" as the US does not have a strategic arms reduction treaty with China and is not intended to escalate the arms race with Russia (although that might be a side-effect).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum

As for INF, US withdrawal was a response to Russia testing infringing missiles first.

Maybe, but US pulled out first:

https://www.npr.org/2019/02/05/691521600/russia-pulls-out-of...

Pulling out of treaty is not as treacherous as claiming obeying the treaty, and not obeying it.

Here are a few.

https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-polytics/3503924-president-...

That is not an unbiased primary source in the slightest.

Is BFMTV also biased when reporting words directly from the mouth of Piotr Tolstoi or are you just trolling ?

If people are claiming that a country is threatening nuclear war, they damn well better be able to back it up with something more than narrative-shaping sound bytes.

Here's one.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum

Medvedev is chairman of the Russian security council though, who else would be more qualified for dishing out the weekly nuclear threat?

Which weekly nuclear threat?

Sensational out of context drive by sound bytes from the likes of Guardian, Fox News, Twitter and video gammer subreddits are not sources - they’re click bait.

https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews

Months and months of this nonsense now.

Do you really think Solovyov and Simonyan are broadcasting it without official approval?

I literally just wrote Twitter is not news. And you posted a random Twitter profile. I’m not even sure what you expect me to see there.

Show me any actual authoritative source not from social or drive-by media pointing out where the official Russian position is some kind of first strike.

Also here: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offens...

This is not a source, it’s an option piece and not even on topic. Anything from ISW is not neutral, it’s ideological due to the Nuland-Kagan connection: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F1kjvOsXwAA1tVk.jpg

You mean like Piotr Tolstoi talking about nuking Paris on BFMTV just today ? (https://fr.yahoo.com/news/calcule-proche-vladimir-poutine-%C...).

Biden did kind of the same. A few years ago he promised russia "devastating consequences if Navalny dies in prison". So Navalny did die in prison. What did Biden do? Right.

Yup. Promises and talking big works up until someone calls the bluff.

NATO in a certain way is based on that as well. If it fails a single test regarding article 5 after someone challenges it, it becomes instantly worthless.

The danger as I see it currently is that the West is tired of war and it’s an opportunity for Putin to challenge NATO. Attack a small village in a Baltic state. Are Americans and Germans and the British going to risk their lives for a small village in a Baltic country? I hope they would, but I realistically don’t see it. And that one non-response would make NATO worth less than the paper the agreement was printed on.

Sticking to the truth & what you really know, and not scape goating?

Does this affect everyone there? Google maps on people's phones etc?

No, not unless you're really close to the jammer. If you're on the ground the horizon is typically a lot closer than the jammer is (it's speculated that Kaliningrad is the location of at least some of the jammers affecting the Baltic), so you don't have line of sight to it and you're not affected. Aircraft are flying way up where they _do_ have line of sight to the jammer, so their receivers are impacted.

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