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Comment by rbanffy | Hacker News Reader

Hybrid warfare is nothing new and we’ve been seeing it clearly for the past decade, at the very least.

The article suggests that this is an escalation relative to the last few years. I don't think the article is suggesting that no such thing as sabotage had ever happened previously.

I also think the significance here is in the context of Russian aggression in Europe beyond Ukraine.

Well, with the USA now distancing itself from NATO, and aligning itself with Russia more closely than at any historical moment after WWII — even sabre rattling about expansionist conquests of its own and abandoning preservation of the international order — Germany finds itself bereft of a powerful ally and with a greatly degraded deterrent against Russian aggression. It is the right moment for Russia to advance.

It's not like sabotaging German ships will cause Germany to increase military spending or fix the Bundeswehr's comically bad procurement process so there is little risk for Russia in these actions.

they can piss of the population at least enough for them to support mor military funding, at is bad for russia, so why do that?

> I also think the significance here is in the context of Russian aggression in Europe beyond Ukraine.

Yes, and it also frames the ramp up of Russian aggression triggered by the ongoing demolition of the US. It's the deep sea cable-cutting attacks in the Baltic, today's drone attack on Chernobyl's dome, etc. We're bound to see a ramp-up in these actions in the near future, and the only peaceful exit for this scenario is helping Ukraine win by supplying it with everything they need to win. Any other scenario will involve more wars and more war fronts.

Well, they blew up an ammunition dump in the Czech Republic 10 years ago, they are sabotaging electric and fiber cables, including to a highly sensitive Norwegian air base:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Vrb%C4%9Btice_ammunition_...

https://www.thebarentsobserver.com/security/someone-cut-a-ke...

Hybrid warfare, along with gray zone, has been escalating sharply in recent years. It is a major topic of discussion in international national security circles. There is a general sense that the absence of material consequences for engaging in this activity has encouraged it.

Security circles are not known for honesty, see e.g. the Iraq "WMD".

Iraq had WMD. :-/

I looked this up recently (because I remembered a news report from after the war which casually mentioned "and some stockpiled chemical weapons were found and destroyed", but nobody seemed to pick up on that). They had leftover chemical WMDs that were in the process of being destroyed, since before the war, but were actually still in stockpiles because destroying chemical weapons is hard and they didn't wanna.

Former Iraq general Georges Sada said in his book "Saddam's Secrets." that chemical WMD transferred to Syria few months prior to invasion.

Quote:

> Both Israeli and U.S. intelligence observed large truck convoys leaving Iraq and entering Syria in the weeks and months before Operation Iraqi Freedom, John Shaw, former deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security, told a private conference of former weapons inspectors and intelligence experts held in Arlington, Va., in 2006.

> According to Shaw, ex-Russian intelligence chief Yevgeni Primakov, a KGB general with long-standing ties to Saddam, went to Iraq in December 2002 and stayed until just before the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003.

> Anticipating the invasion, his job was to supervise the removal of such weapons and erase as much evidence of Russian involvement as possible.

> The Russian-assisted "cleanup" operation was entrusted to a combination of GRU and Spetsnaz troops and Russian military and civilian personnel in Iraq "under the command of two experienced ex-Soviet generals, Colonel-General Vladislav Achalov and Colonel-General Igor Maltsev, both retired and posing as civilian commercial consultants."

Oh OK, potentially having gas shells stored outside of Iraq, sounds plausible.

Shaw’s claims were never corroborated by primary intelligence agencies, and Primakov’s involvement remains speculative. And perhaps more tellingly, the U.S. intelligence apparatus couldn't verify these claimes despite having every incentive to do so. If such an elaborate Russian operation occurred, why did it leave behind no satellite imagery, no intercepted communications, no credible human intelligence? Nothing.

The "moved to Syria" argument is essentially the Loch Ness Monster of the WMD debate, which is to say it's constantly discussed but never conclusively proven. And given the catastrophic consequences of the war, clinging to this narrative feels less like a genuine search for truth and more like a desperate attempt to avoid accountability.

Security circles were very critical of the WMD story. It was the administration that steamrolled over their objections.

A great and underappreciated point. I think at the time the important thing to understand was the inaccuracy of the story itself, on its face value and how it steamrolled over objections from the national security state at least at it had existed before the Bush admin.

I think retrospectively however, the important thing to understand is how that example is cynically leveraged in the present environment of misinformation. And how it emerged in the first place, as part of an administration attempting to steamroll over existing institutional guard rails intended to keep us in touch with reality.

but to what point? to see if they could? but if you could, why give up your "0-day"? now they know there are saboteurs beyond just suspecting or worrying about it. what did they achieve? causing the Germans to spend some money or repairs? if this was a shooting war, then okay, this is as good as a bomb as the ship is not able to join the fight. but there's not a shooting war, so what did this actually achieve?

i just don't understand the point of revealing a weakness by exploiting it unnecessarily like this

You and I do not know about what foreign intelligence knows about the imminent usage of German warships

Germany probably needs to rearm aggressively, given what Russia is doing, but doesn't have the society buy in to spend money on armed forced (or rather, doesn't have the buy in to spend less on other things).

So publishing this kind of thing might mobilize the society and convince them the risks are real.

> Germany probably needs to rearm aggressively, given what Russia is doing, but doesn't have the society buy in to spend money on armed forced (or rather, doesn't have the buy in to spend less on other things).

In spite of Russia's propaganda and continuous subversion attack on Germany's political leadership, currently we're seeing polls showing around 70% supporting Germany's military aid to Ukraine. It might not be a uphill battle to have Germany's population invested in investing in their defense.

One biased ZDF poll from the German state television. Here is another (50% against):

https://www.ipsos.com/de-de/jeder-zweite-deutsche-gegen-weit...

50% of Ukrainians want negotiations:

https://news.gallup.com/poll/653495/half-ukrainians-quick-ne...

The majority of comments in German newspapers is against continuing the war.

> One biased ZDF poll from the German state television.

Why do you blindly assert it is biased?

> Here is another (50% against):

That should be framed into context, specifically how for the last year Russia has been pumping industrial levels of propaganda onto the world in general and Germany in particular.

https://www.dw.com/en/russian-disinformation-is-growing-in-g...

All these sudden calls for disarmament and pushing Ukraine to capitulate don't happen organically when the same belligerent part also starts to target you specifically. They take place when you're enduring a constant blast from a firehouse of falsehoods over genetically engineered gay Nazi soldiers from Ukraine taking your jobs and increasing the price of eggs.

I for one was handed over a very peculiar anti-NATO protest leaflet, which said nothing more than "Bow to God, not to the media. Say no to NATO."

This is how far and how desperate the anti-europe propaganda is willing to go to erode public trust on such specific topics.

So no wonder public sentiment on their own self defense is being eroded over time. This is by design, and a part of the whole war.

That newly created account was just made to spread misinformation

Because some guy on telegram answered their recruitment drive and this was the only use they had for him?

From my understanding Russias security services and adjacent Oligarchs are not monolithic and they love to do stuff like that. The intention is to bring it as a present to the Zar and curry favor while keeping the windows away.

I don't understand either. But I have a hypothesis, that they do it to dilute the definition of the war. Like if 15 years ago they did something like that, it was probably seen as a declaration of a war. But not now, not it is just headlines in newspapers. The more they do it, the more they will be able to get away with. Like invading Poland, while saying "there is no invasion and it is someone else invading not us", and European politicians will eat any such shit just to avoid declaring a war. They do it right now, but they must be trained to eat bigger shit to swallow an invasion to EU or NATO country.

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