There were BGP anomalies during the Venezuela blackout
loworbitsecurity.com
loworbitsecurity.com
AS prepending is a relatively common method of traffic engineering to reduce traffic from a peer/provider. Looking at CANTV's (AS8048) announcements from outside that period shows they do this a lot.
Since this was detected as a BGP route leak, it looks like CANTV (AS8048) propagated routes from Telecom Italia Sparkle (AS6762) to GlobeNet Cabos Sumarinos Columbia (AS52320). This could have simply been a misconfiguration.
Nothing nefarious immediately jumps out to me here. I don't see any obvious attempts to hijack routes to Dayco Telecom (AS21980), which was the actual destination. The prepending would have made traffic less likely to transit over CANTV assuming there was any other route available.
The prepending done by CANTV does make it slightly easier to hijack traffic destined to it (though not really to Dayco), but that just appears to be something they just normally do.
This could be CANTV trying to force some users of GlobeNet to transit over them to Dayco I suppose, but leaving the prepending in would be an odd way of going about it. I suppose if you absolutely knew you were the shortest path length, there's no reason to remove the prepending, but a misconfiguration is usually the cause of these things.
What most likely happened, instead of a purposeful attempt to leak routes and MITM traffic, is CANTV had too loose of a routing export policy facing their upstream AS52320 neighbor, and accidentally redistributed the Dayco prefixes that they learned indirectly from Sparkle (AS6762) when the direct Dayco routes became unavailable to them.
This is a pretty common mistake and would explain the leak events that were written about here.
Apparently that is part of implementing ECH (Encrypted Client Hello) in TLS 1.3 where the DNS hosts the public key of the server to fully encrypt the server name in a HTTPS request. Since Nginx and other popular web servers don't yet support it, I suspect the 7% of requests are mostly Cloudflare itself.
(1) https://radar.cloudflare.com/?ref=loworbitsecurity.com#dns-q...
The new development (encrypted client hello) is you no longer have to send the hostname. So someone listening in the middle would only see you connected to an AWS/etc IP. This will make blocking websites very difficult if they use shared services like cloudflare or cloud VPS hosting.
I see this as a very good development and a big win for privacy. I have been running my own DNS server for years to prevent passive logging, but could basically do nothing against the SNI leak.
Until some clueless judge orders all of cloudflare to be blocked.
Though I worry that instead western governments will beat the judges to the punch and start asking things like DNS providers or even HTTPS servers to keep logs that can be subpoenaed much like a telecom company keeps a log of each phone call ("metadata"), or else be blocked...
In terms of privacy, your DNS history probably isn't very interesting. It's almost all going to be requests for the top social media sites. Which governments have full access to the stuff you post there.
If you don’t use a CDN at all, the destination IP leaks what site you’re trying to connect to (if the domain is well known). If you use a CDN without ECH, you send an unencrypted domain name in the HTTPS negotiation so it’s visible there. ECH+CDN is an attempt to have the best of both worlds: your traffic to the site will not advertise what site you’re connecting to, but the IP can still be shared between a variety of sites.
It’ll be interesting to see how countries with lighter censorship schemes adapt - China etc. of course will just block the connection.
In theory, sites could eventually require ECH to serve anything at all. But we're very far from that.
I doubt the Chinese government would care about that. They don't depend on the west for their online services any more than we depend on them. All that would happen is that the internet would bifurcate to an even greater degree than it already has.
It's extremely helpful at home in the west as a countermeasure against data monetization and dragnet surveillance. It certainly isn't perfect but at least it reduces the ability of ISPs to collect data on end users as well as forcing the government to formally move against the cloud providers if they want the data. Not that I want the cloud providers having my data to begin with but that's a different rant.
So for example, Firefox since version 119. Or Chrome since 117
Now, for most services ECH doesn't have an encrypted target server. But the important choice in ECH was in this case it just fills that space with noise. An encrypted message also looks like noise. So you can block all the noise, in case it's secrets, or you can let through all the noise (some of which might be secrets) or I suppose you can choose randomly, but you can't do what such regimes want, which is to only forbid secrets, that's not a thing.
We've been here before. When sites starting going to TLS 1.3 lots of HN people said oh, China will just block that, easy. But the choice wasn't "Use TLS 1.3 or keep doing whatever China is happy with instead" the choice was "Use TLS 1.3 or don't connect" and turns out for a lot of the Web China wasn't OK with "don't connect" as their choice, so TLS 1.3 is deployed anyway.
For ECH, China can just require you turn it off. Or distribute their own blessed distribution. It’s the more marginal censorship regimes that will be in an interesting spot. Especially ones where the ISPs are mostly responsible for developing the technical measures.
To actually "inspect" TLS 1.3 you need the keys which are chosen randomly for each session by the parties - so either (1) you have a mathematical breakthrough, (2) you have secured co-operation from one or both parties (in which case they could equally tell you what they said) or (3) in fact you don't have inspection.
As you observe forward secrecy was already possible in TLS 1.2 and China's "Great firewall" didn't magically stop that either. In fact what we see is that China blocks IP outright when it doesn't want you to talk to an address, the protocol doesn't come into that. What we changed wasn't whether China can block connections, but how easy it is to snoop those connections.
> For ECH, China can just require you turn it off
So did they? Remember, I'm not talking about some hypothetical future, this technology is actively in use today and has been for some time.
China was already leaning on passive DPI and L3 blocking before TLS 1.3 complicated (but as I said, did not preclude) downgrading to PFS ciphers. The reason being that for about the last 10 years, many sites (including default CDN settings) used SSL profiles that only allowed PFS ciphers. For such a server, downgrade attacks are already not useful to the Great Firewall, so adding TLS 1.3 to the mix didn’t change anything.
> So did they? Remember, I'm not talking about some hypothetical future, this technology is actively in use today and has been for some time.
Google Chrome (for example) will now use ECH if the website has the relevant DNS record - but it doesn’t use the anti-censorship mechanism in the spec to make requests to servers that haven’t enabled it look like they may be using ECH. This, combined with the fact that China can just not serve the relevant DNS record by default, means it doesn’t really impact the great firewall.
This is actually a good example of the non-technical side of this: Chrome could send a fake ECH on every request, like the spec suggests. This would perhaps make China block all Chrome traffic to prevent widespread ECH. But then Chrome would lose out on the market share, so Google doesn’t do it. Technical solutions are relevant here, but even the most genius anti-censorship mechanism needs to content with political/corporate realities.
Nope. That's specifically guarded against, so double good news. 1) You get to learn something new about an important network protocol and 2) I get to tell you a story I enjoy telling
Here's the clever trick which is specified in RFC 8446 (the TLS 1.3 RFC)
In TLS we always have this "Random" field in both Client Hello and Server Hello, it's 32 bytes of random noise. At least, that's what it usually is. When a server implements TLS 1.3 but it receives a connection (in your scenario this is from a middlebox, but it might equally be somebody's long obsolete phone) which asks for TLS 1.2 then when it fills out the Random for this connection the last eight bytes aren't actually random, they spell "DOWNGRD" in ASCII and then a 01 byte. If the client seems to ask for any older version of TLS which is supported then the server writes DOWNGRD and then a 00 byte instead.
As you hopefully realise this signals to a client that a MITM is attempting to downgrade them and so they reject the failed attack. You very likely have never seen your web browser's diagnostic for this scenario, but it's very much a failure not some sort of "Danger, Chinese government is spying on you" interstitial, because we know that warning users of danger they can't fix is pointless. So we just fail, the Chinese government could choose to annoy its citizens with this message but, why bother? Just drop the packets entirely, it's cheaper.
You might wonder, why Random ? Or, can't the MITM just replace this value and carry on anyway ? Or if you've got a bit more insight you might guess that these questions answer each other.
In TLS the Client and Server both need to be sure that each connection is different from any others, if they didn't assure themselves of this they'd be subject to trivial replay attacks. They can't trust each other, so to achieve this both parties inject Random data into the stream early, which means they don't care if the other party really used random numbers or just (stupidly) didn't bother. Shortly after this, during setup, the parties agree on a transcript of their whole conversation so far.
So, if the Random value you saw is different from the Random number your conversation partner expected, that transcript won't match, connection fails, nothing is achieved. But if the Random value isn't changed but somehow we ended up with TLS 1.2 it says DOWNGRD and a TLS 1.3 capable client knows that means it is under attack and rejects the connection, same outcome.
Now, I said there was an anecdote. It's about terrible middle boxes, because of course it is. TLS 1.3 was developed to get past terrible middle boxes and it was mostly successful, however shortly after TLS 1.3 non-draft launch (when the anti-downgrade mechanism was enabled, it would not be OK to have anti-downgrade in a draft protocol for reasons that ought to be obvious) Google began to see a significant number of downgrade failures, connected to particular brands of middlebox.
It turns out that these particular brands of middlebox were so crap that although they were proxying the HTTP connection, they were too cheap to generate their own Random data. So your TLS 1.3 capable browser calls their proxy, the proxy calls the TLS 1.3 capable server, and the proxy tells both parties it only speaks TLS 1.2, but it passes this bogus anti-downgrade "Random" value back as if it had made this itself, thus triggering the alarm.
Obviously on the "Last to change gets the blame" basis Google had customers blaming them for an issue caused ultimately by using a crap middlebox. So they actually added a Chrome feature to "switch off" this feature. Why do I mention this? Well, Chrome added that feature for 12 months. In 2018. So, unless it is still 2019 where you are, they in fact have long since removed that switch and all browsers enforce this rule. That 12 months grace gave vendors the chance to fix the bug or, if they were able to, persuade customers to buy a newer crap middlebox without this particular bug, and it gave customers 12 months to buy somebody else's middlebox or (if they were thus enlightened) stop using a middlebox.
It’s not just encrypted server name indication (ESNI), it is the whole hello now (ECH)! So you don’t leak anything.
HTTPS is the name of a protocol, which is mostly used to make the World Wide Web work, but we do lots of other things with it, such as DNS-over-HTTPS aka DoH.
However HTTPS is also the name of a type of DNS record, this record contains everything you need to best reach the named HTTPS (protocol) server, and this is the type of record your parent didn't previously know about
In the boring case, say, 20 years ago, when you type https://some.name/stuff/hats.html into a web browser your browser goes "Huh, HTTPS to some.name. OK, I will find out the IPv4 address of some.name, and it makes a DNS query asking A? some.name. The DNS server answers with an IPv4 address, and then as the browser connects securely to that IP address, it asks to talk to some.name, and if the remote host can prove it is some.name, the browser says it wants /stuff/hats.html
Notice we have to tell the remote server who we hope they are - and it so happens eavesdroppers can listen in on this. This means Bad Guys can see that you wanted to visit some.name. They can't see that you wanted to read the document about hats, but they might be able to guess that from context, and wouldn't you rather they didn't know more than they need to?
With the HTTPS record, your web browser asks (over secure DNS if you have it) HTTPS? some.name and, maybe it gets a positive answer. If it does, the answer tells it not only where to try to connect, but also it can choose to provide instructions for a cover name to always use, and how to encrypt the real name, this is part of Encrypted Client Hello (or ECH)
Then the web server tells the server that it wants to talk to the cover name and it provides an encrypted version of some.name. Eavesdroppers can't decrypt that, so if many people share the same endpoints then eavesdropper can't tell which site you were visiting.
Now, if the server only contains documents about hats, this doesn't stop the Secret Hat Police from concluding that everybody connecting to that server is a Hat Pervert and needs to go to Hat Jail. But if you're a bulk host then you force such organisations to choose, they can enforce their rules equally for everything (You wanted to read News about Chickens? Too bad, Hat Jail for you) or they can accept that actually they don't know what people are reading (if this seems crazy, keep in mind that's how US Post worked for many years after Comstock failed, if you get a brown paper package posted to you, well, it's your business what is in there, and your state wasn't allowed to insist on ripping open the packaging to see whether it is pornography or communist propaganda)
Which is why it is so important/useful to Cloudflare but of much lower utility to most nginx users.
It's one way, but a H1/H2 connection can also be promoted to H3 via the alt-svc header. The DNS method is slightly better though since it potentially allows a client to utilize H3 immediately from the first request.
The short answer is that there hasn't been a ton of movement across the market at large, but since Saturday, bonds have been swinging up towards the all-time high they set last December. Can't say for certain that that movement is tied to VZ though.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/one-polymarket-user-made-more...
The radio towers we used to access to obtain the accounting data (CDRs) all had the same very weak password.
Considering the routing table size has been increasing and IPv6 need anyone shouldn't be running global routing with gear not supporting RPKI any more, the routing polices and announcing those RIR they operate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_Public_Key_Infrastruc...
If that kind of happening directly from load of added 25 routes it's quite hard to believe it.
# 10/8 prefix here only to show how to get number of new routes added.
$ sipcalc -n 24 10.0.0.0/8 | grep -c Network
25
$
But anyway, sudden change from /8 to 25 x /24 without first noticing your peers and giving them time to change that "exact accept;" to "orlonger accept;" is quite sure footgun if you don't know common principles of network management. But usually that kind of screwup blast radius is local mostly local only to that /8 prefix.
Not sure though how that could be technically avoided in BGP protocol or router control-plane (router OS config) design. Policy filters and best practices how to use them have been set for good reason. Not just to irritate and make things harder than they need to be. We certainly did not do that while I was still working.
Right, something else what could happen with that kind of sudden change is. If that peered had also other peers which had instead "orlonger" in place traffic would then switch to that, what could have some side effects like saturated links, slowness or even increased costs. Too bad, and may happen. But principle is that communicate your routing changes in good time before you actually make the changes. That will prevent most of this kind of problems ever happening to you.
$ sipcalc -s 24 10.0.0.0/8 | grep -c Network
65536
Anything else I wrote about changing prefix advertisement is correct. You should and need to communicate your advertisement changes in good time to your peers and let them time to make changes.
While on their way out, if the USA could set everything back to IPv6, that would be nice.
You actually think the US would leave things better than they found them?
* The (remaining) Venezuelan government gets to point to Big Evil America to unify (or crack-down-upon) an unhappy public, and they avoid being personally tarred as unpatriotic.
* Trump et al. get to "wag the dog" as distraction from crimes and mismanagement back home.
As if. Dictators only do things that benefit themselves, and deciding to attack the US is suicide and/or world ending.
none of those documents exist since it was probably never documented to begin with so we will never know I guess.
Not easy to find one man in a haystack. Guerrilla warfare has always been insanely overpowered as a defense tactic anyways, as are terrorist attacks.
The US can realistically only be challenged militarily by Europe or Asia, assuming a unified continent, and the US is on the offensive. If it’s defensive, the US might put up a good fight against the rest of the planet.
Normally I’d say the most effective way to attack a western country would be to target kids in school playgrounds, but the US seems that regularly anyway so it would be lost in noise. Perhaps target Amazon delivery centres with drones will strike fear into the true heart of America.
Your second paragraph doesn't even make sense, but I'm thinking you just wanted to hop on the "america bad" train for a moment, so maybe it doesn't matter.
They sent over like, maybe a couple Anti Air systems? But they really couldn't spare that many in the first place!
It's not like Russia can sustain serious power off the coast of the US.
The most he can do is complain. What's Russia going to do, sanction the US?
There is, of course, both private and public international law. You don't know what you're talking about.
I am always shocked by how controversial this take can be.
I don’t think other UN or NATO states are strong enough to play this game with the US yet.
Right. These are states organizing to assert their power in their interests. It's not mandated and enforced from some over-arching entity.
My opinion, with all the caveats that come with an opinion, is that states do organise into over-arching organisations in the context of international laws, such as EU, UN, etc.
Such over-arching organisations do not have the same degree of power that a state has over its citizens, sure, but I think it still qualifies. You can theoretically also "disregard" state law, regional law, etc. The problem with that is that the power disparity is such that you can't hope to get away with it (in a perfect world and in a vacuum, that is, as many people do disregard national law and get away with it :D But thats beside the point, I think you'd agree?)
In contrast, if you go rob a grocery store, you can't just opt out of punishment. "I'm not a member of this court system" does not work as a viable defense strategy, even if some souvreign citizen types sometimes try (and always fail).
International treaties are really just statements of intent and can be withdrawn at any point. Worst that happens is that next time you try to make a treaty, your counterpart may not trust that you uphold your side of the deal. There is no higher authority to effecticely appeal to, in contrast to the grocery store case.
It stops at international law because thats the only level without a governance system over it.
There is no governance system over the USA, UK, etc.
There is a governance system over Ohio, New Mexico, etc.
You are only right if you get big enough that you are a peer of the USA, UK, etc. AKA sovereign.
And yes, of course, it can sometimes be hard to enforce international law, just like it can be very hard to enforce national laws. It is illegal to murder people in most countries, yet people murder each other and some people get away with it.
There are things like the UN which some states, not all, agree to uphold the policies of. But they are also free not to agree to uphold the policies of the UN.
So ultimately it's a bunch of peers in an an anarchic system that do the best for themselves to persist. Cooperation, war, etc.
Technology is notoriously expensive to develop and manufacture. One must either have native capacity (and thus, the wealth) to do so, or must get it from someone else.
Other Western/US-aligned countries might have the ability to do so, albeit at geopolitical and economic cost, because the only thing you're likely to gain from kicking the US out of your tech stack and infrastructure is a tech stack and infrastructure free of the US. Meanwhile American companies will be developing new features and ways of doing things that add economic value. So at best, a wash economically. Maybe the geopolitical implications are enticing enough.
Places like Venezuela? Nah. They'll be trading the ability of Americans to jack with their tech infrastructure for the ability of the PRC, Non-US Western nations, or Russia to jack with their tech stack.
The geopolitics of technology are a lot like a $#1+ sandwich: the more bread you have, the less of someone else's $#1+ you have to eat.
[Of course i agree with the broader point of dont become dependent on the technology of your geopolitical enemies]
But by now, the big wheels sure are turning for good in the EU. I’m (we’re, probably) just bitter for everything that was destroyed so need- and carelessly.
They're applying secondary sanctions on Russian oil so China and India stop buying it despite there being a war on. Hardly "turning to Russia".
I'm not sure why the author singled out Telecom Italia Sparkle.
The data would make that more likely, because deliberately adding a longer route doesn't achieve much. It's not usually going to get any traffic.
For example, maybe some misconfiguration caused these routes to be published because another route was lost. Which could very well be the actual cyber attack, or the effect of jamming, or breaking some undersea cable, or turning off the power to some place.
> The newsletter suggests “BGP shenanigans” and posits that such a leak could be exploited to collect intelligence useful to government entities. > > While we can’t say with certainty what caused this route leak, our data suggests that its likely cause was more mundane.
Furthermore, BGP routes can get "stuck", if some device doesn't handle a withdrawal correctly… this can lead to odd routes like the ones seen here. Especially combined with the long path length and disappearance of better routes.
I expect every major world power has a plan to (attempt to) do precisely that to their enemies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphite_bomb
> The US Navy used sea-launched Tomahawk missiles with Kit-2 warheads, involving reels of carbon fibers, in Iraq as part of Operation Desert Storm during the Gulf War in 1991, where it disabled about 85% of the electricity supply. The US Air Force used the CBU-94, dropped by F-117 Nighthawks, during the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia on 2 May 1999, where it disabled more than 70% national grid electricity supply.
I would not, however, take "Trump said something" as indicative of much. "It was dark, the lights of Caracas were largely turned off due to a certain expertise that we have, it was dark, and it was deadly" is both visibly untrue from the video evidence available, and is the precise sort of off-the-cuff low-fact statement he's prone to.
Trump just seems the worst person in the world to play a game of telephone with on such a subject.
For example: https://www.defensenews.com/air/2025/05/16/pentagon-silent-a...
> “The F-35, we’re doing an upgrade, a simple upgrade,” Trump said. “But we’re also doing an F-55, I’m going to call it an F-55. And that’s going to be a substantial upgrade. But it’s going to be also with two engines.”
> Frank Kendall, the secretary of the Air Force during former President Joe Biden’s administration, said in an interview with Defense News that it is unclear what Trump was referring to when he discussed an “F-22 Super,” but it may have been a reference to the F-47 sixth-generation fighter jet… Kendall said it is also unclear what Trump was referring to when he discussed the alleged F-55.
From what I remember reading, they were able to gain air dominance not because Iranian air-defense was bad, but because it was put almost completely out of service for a brief period of time by people on the ground - be it through sabotage, cyber-warfare, drone attacks from inside, allowing the Israeli jets to annihilate them.
Wouldn't that constitute air defense being "bad"? There are no "well technically it should have worked" in war. Failing to properly secure the air defense sites is bad air defense.
Although I do agree, that in war only the final outcome is important. It's just that in this case it failed not necessarily because of technology, but because of humans.
I'm having trouble thinking how power outages can be deadly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_European_heatwaves
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Texas_power_crisis
You'll get some food poisoning deaths from food that got too warm in fridges. People who rely on home medical equipment like oxygen concentrators. Car crashes in busy intersections that no longer have traffic lights. Fires from candles. etc. etc. etc.
Even critical infrastructure eventually craps out.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/22/science/atomic-clock-late...
It reminds me of when people claimed the whatsapp numbers leak put lives at risk because people might use it in countries where it is banned.
In another sense, it is similar to arguments against tasers, where they are being evaluated in a vacuum instead of being evaluated against their alternatives. If you compare tasers to guns, or power outages to bombs, then they are safe rather than dangerous.
Nah, I disagree here.
Tasers do indeed offer an alternative to guns. But they allow more force in other situations, where officers would previously have had to deescalate because "just shoot them" wasn't justified.
Cops now use a taser where zero force might previously have been used.
[1]:https://radar.cloudflare.com/routing/as8048ref=loworbitsecur...
It's over for the EU. They rested on their laurels for too long and cowardice rotted them from the inside.
I don't think Denmark will put even a smidge of resistance up. Trump is going to bark some orders, boots are going to hit the ground and it's fait accompli.
Capture Trump?
Invade the US?
The idea the EU is some bureaucratic hellhole incapable of anything is really odd and nigh-universal - I'm used to righties adopting it from Brexit & antipathy for social demoracy, but I'm not used to see it as a despondent wailing from people otherwise sympathetic to it.
Note no one even mentioned the EU - it's so universal a reaction to "US is acting bad" that it came out of nowhere. Not to pick on you: when I was first replying, I also replied as if it was the EU! Had to go back and read the comment I was replying to and corrected myself before posting.
I'd imagine programs from: the Nordics and Poland+Baltics. Maybe Germany, probably not.
Ssetting aside the whole non-proliferation thing, or expense (see NK), etc.
Let's get serious, please.
Even now, the EU Commission is trying to 'defuse' the Greenland situation by trying to invoke NATO's fifth article, as if that's worth anything without the will of the USA behind it. You know, instead of like actually drawing out plans for a military alliance, economic retribution (remember all those sanctions against Big Tech which fell apart the moment Trump made even the slightest comment against them?) or… just about anything.
Laws are worth even less than the paper they're written on, and no amount of naïve idealism (and calling it that is me being generous!) will change that. NATO membership is worthless other than as an aesthetic signifier.
Europe withdraws from the non-proliferation treaty, publicly resolves to building and maintaining a European nuclear deterrent and greenlights members who have been militarily threatened (the Baltics, Poland and Denmark) to start clandestine programmes.
The last part doesn't even have to happen. Hell, none of it has to happen. But that would be playing from strength.
Unfortunately, Europe is not politically unified enough to do this. (Same for Asia.)
For example France could gift or sell Denmark some nukes, possibly with a Rafale as a launch platform. Denmark would be an instant nuclear nation-state.
I'm not sure there is the political will though.
The others have been variants of "Celebrating liberation of the Venezuelan people from the illegitimate dictator, a new dawn for democracy! (oh and everyone (not naming names) please behave and try to be mindful of international law and human rights from now on)"
Not a single word about the dead, for one.
While the NYTimes headline names France as critical, here's Macron (still only posting) on Twitter: https://xcancel.com/EmmanuelMacron/status/200752538697719404...
Meanwhile POTUS is over there talking literally and openly about how US are "going to run things" and motivating it with taking the oil and how they don't really care about democracy one way or other.
This goes so far that one of the ministers of the government met in Spain with Delcy Rodriguez, bringing her a few briefcases of something that hasn't been explained yet, despite her being subject to a travel ban in the EU.
Of course this is a progressive government so the EU said absolutely nothing about it.
These actions by Trump are only reinforcing that we will see even more of a push for everybody to get their own nukes, even in Europe.
People do not need to yell "bad trump", to have his actions result in decisions being pushed forward like this.
Theodore: "speak softly and carry a big stick"... and nuke(s) is a BIG stick.
Yesterday:
> Adding to the alarm, Katie Miller, a right-wing podcast host and the wife of Trump adviser Stephen Miller, posted an image of Greenland superimposed with the American flag and the caption "SOON!"
https://www.nbcnews.com/world/greenland/trump-venezuela-atta...
Fragile egos. Narcissists desperately need to feel good about themselves. They're caught in a cycle: feel worthless -> do bad things (feed the ego) -> feel worthless.
Mr. Trump good.
Trump derangement syndrome bad.
If Mr. Trump does what you say eventually, then it was good. (see rule #1)
I see this frequently on HN since the re-election, won't speculate as to why: only way around the downvote is to criticize policy generically, untethered to time, with some sort of micro-focus like you're sharing new information about how things work, not discussing current events.
You're mixing up your VCs?
Same reason this post got flagged and died.
Also what was written in that comment if you can tell and why it died?
Another quick question but is there no storage of flag/died posts on hackernews? Seems like its possible with things like https://hn.live/ or I saw some other website like this as well. Perhaps, something like this can store flag/dead posts but I am not really sure if it has any use case but I am just curious what was written in that post.
they're not deleted, just hidden. you can toggle "showdead" in your profile settings.
Greenland is a massive strategic liability for the US and Europe (although the EU still has its head in the sand they are starting to wake up some).
When BGP traffic is being sent from point A to point B, it can be rerouted through a point C. If you control point C, even for a few hours, you can theoretically collect vast amounts of intelligence that would be very useful for government entities.A few thoughts: - The affected prefixes (200.74.224.0/20 block → Dayco Telecom) hosting banks and ISPs feels significant. If you're doing pre-kinetic intelligence gathering, knowing the exact network topology and traffic patterns of critical infrastructure would be valuable. Even a few hours of passive collection through a controlled transit point could map out dependencies you'd want to understand before cutting power. - What's also notable is the transit path through Sparkle, which the author points out doesn't implement RPKI filtering. That's not an accident if you're planning something (you'd specifically choose providers with weaker validation). - The article stops short of drawing conclusions, which is the right call. BGP anomalies are common enough that correlation ≠ causation. But the timing and the specific infrastructure affected make this worth deeper analysis.
Would love to see someone with access to more complete BGP table dumps do a before/after comparison of routing stability for Venezuelan prefixes in that window.
Didn't the US use Chinooks? They're supposed to be loud. And AD didn't take even one out.
If Venezuela as corrupt as most socialist countries, I have no doubt that someone in his inner circle gave him up.
Back in the days of our version of socialism we had Indian politicians selling out for $100K, leave alone $50M.
For the longest time I thought they'd gone too far, but now we're the clowns putting on a show.
I don't believe that NK's nukes deter the US from doing anything. Would NK nuke Guam and risk getting carpet-bombed with nukes for endless days and nights until even the ants are dead? Artillery on Seoul doesn't matter. The US would just ask SK to evacuate it.
The US doesn't do anything about the DPRK because it's not economically relevant (i.e. it doesn't have the world's largest oil reserves etc). In an ironic way, their economy being closed-off and mostly unintegrated with the Western world maintains the peace.
They are the North Korean leadership saying that if the US (or China or anyone really) tries to surgically decapitate them (like the US just did in Venezuela) then the nukes are used to take the attackers with them
If you don't have the triad then you need to brandish your capability more ostentatiously, like France does with its deliberate refusal to commit to a no-first-strike policy. This is (one of the many reasons) why North Korea does so much sabre-rattling: they don't have a (publicly known) nuclear triad for deterrence.
CN 3
FR 2
RU 3
UK 1/2
US 3
The Russians really have a quad (they also have mobile, truck mounted ICBM's that form a significant part of their deterrent, offering some of the guaranteed second-strike advantages that the US gets from SSBN's- and which their SSBN program does not provide nearly as well as the USN does). The Chinese only recently added a manned aircraft leg of their triad with the JL-1. The Indians technically have a triad- just no silo based systems, all of their land based missiles are from TELs, and they only have two SSBN's and do not do alternate crews so more than 1/3 of the time they don't have any deterrent at sea. The Israeli's are not believed to have any sea-based ballistic missiles, their sea-based deterrent would be Popeye cruise missiles and so vulnerable to interception. The Pakistanis are still building their first sea-based deterrent. The French and the UK have no land-based missiles, they are only sea-based and airplanes. The South Africans invested in the Jericho missile more for its space launched capabilities than its warhead delivery abilities, and never really looked at anything sea-based, so far as is publicly known.
At risk of sounding like gpt, the triad is not silo/boomer/bomber, it's land-based/airborne/seaborne.
Whether or not the survivability of your land-based ICBMs are due to mobility or hardened bunkers doesn't change much at the strategic level.
I won't claim to be as much an expert on Russian doctrine, but they seem to consider their mobile missiles to be a survivable second strike weapon, while silo based missiles are obviously not. Because their boomer fleet does not offer the same assured second strike, they rely on those mobile missiles to play a greater deterrent role then the US does.
1: That is the official justification for the US silos. The real reason for silos is, if you want to build a truly insane number of strategic warheads, silos are the only way to afford it- ships and planes and even TELs are too expensive. So first the US (worried they were behind because of the Missile Gap) built a thousand Minuteman (then tripled the deployed warheads with MIRV on the Minuteman-III). Then the Soviets responded with 1000 SS-11s of their own. But if you are only building a few hundred warheads total, you don't bother with silos, they don't add as much value as other delivery mechanisms.
I'm saying: Whether or not the Russians consider their silos to be more or less survivable than their truck-based missiles is immaterial, and doesn't change the calculus at the strategic level, because one of two things has to happen in a first-strike situation:
- You blanket the entire country in nuclear detonations and pray that you catch all the trucks scurrying around like nuclear-armed mice
or
- You spam dozens of missiles at a small number of hardened targets and hope you dent them (missile sponge silos)
Either way, you're severely depleting your arsenal to an infeasible level to do this. These are both counter-force attacks where targeting is the only difference, which the Strategic function does not concern itself with. That's a tactical consideration. Survivability of a land-based asset achieved by different means is still survivability of a land-based asset. In other words, it's still functionally a triad.
In the case of France in particular, the argument I recall reading is that: a) France was entering a period of austerity in defense spending as the Cold War ended, b) its siloed missiles were obsolete and in need of upgrades which promised to be costly, and c) France isn't very large geographically, so the "missile sponges" were limited to that little plateau north of Marseille which is pretty darn close to several major population centers, where an Ivy Mike-sized airburst could endanger Avignon and Marseille, not to mention leave a plume of fallout all the way into Germany.
But I'm just an ex Air Force officer who's been to France a bunch, so idk how accurate that is.
>The real reason for silos is, if you want to build a truly insane number of strategic warheads, silos are the only way to afford it
On this I'm in complete agreement.
I've seen open-source estimates that the 33rd Guards Rocket Army can distribute their three divisions of mobile missiles across something like 5,000 square miles of Siberia, mostly steppe/taiga (which the 7917/79221 are supposed to be capable of launching from, again according to open source reporting). That's more than 10% of all of North Korea, to give an idea why it would be different for the two countries. Being open-source, I don't have a good estimate for the survivability of the TEL, but let's somewhat arbitrarily say 5PSI is the limit. A 300kt W87 can put 5PSI over 3 mi^2, so doing 5,000 mi^2 would be about 1700 of them, for a grid-square blanket search. That seems to be impracticable, just for one third of their missiles(1).
So I think it's more about guaranteed second-strike than soaking (e.g. at three warheads per silo you'd need ~600 missiles to soak up that many warheads, instead of the 70-odd from mobile). Which is why I have seen some people consider those missiles as more about assured second-strike than missile-soak, with hints that the Russians consider that their role. The Russian doctrine does not align exactly with the American one (2) for sure and there are hints that the Russians consider road-mobile to be different from silo deployments.
1: I'm not as clear on how much deployment space the 27th Guards Rocket Army, in the European parts of Russia has, and whether they will run into similar problems to the French wrt population centers. There is also a whole separate discussion about how much counter-force and counter-value are truly separate on the receiving end, given, e.g. if Barksdale gets nuked Shreveport is going to be very very sad. But the RAND people were sure they were distinct!
2: At least, as far as this monolingual American can tell. My main source for this is the Arms Control Wonk blog and podcast, which actually does read and report on what the Russians describe as their doctrine, they are my source for the "Russians seem to consider road-mobile as more survivable second-strike than silos."
The core parts for MAD land-based missile silos (to soak up the enemy's missiles) and submarines (to ensure a second strike). Planes are largely a diplomatic deterrent inasmuch as they're easy to send out and easy to recall.
But Pyongyang isn't playing MAD. It's playing credible threat. And for a credible threat, you just need missiles. (On land or on subs.) The point is that you raise the stakes of e.g. a Maduro operation to risking Los Angeles.
But again, because MAD first and foremost is a deterrent, you want to provide diplomatic offramps for both you and your adversary. This is crucial. Putting the B-52s on airborne alert sends a very strong message, but so does recalling them from airborne alert.
By their very natures, SSBNs and ICBMs are not capable of playing this role.
How do you evacuate 10 to 15 million(counting Incheon in) of people, fast? Where to?
It assumes ~130,000 casualties from a worst-case surprise attack on population centers by the North.
If a conflict started ramping up, evacuations would rapidly shrink this.
A significant deterrent, sure. But it rapidly becomes less and less meaningful as the DPRK builds its nuclear arsenal.
Erm, it's kind of demanded for people to go out and die to defend national sovereignty in nations that have a draft. For myself, I'd prefer to be vaporized than bleed out in a trench if it really comes down to it.
The problem is that if you eliminate ~20% of a nation's population, supply chains, continuity of government, and the economy aren't going to last long. Social organization breaks down much more widely than people die. The resultant pullback of all the trapping of society - reliable food supply, clean water, transportation infrastructure, electricity, heat - is going to kill many more people than the nukes will.
I could tolerate a coupe but I’d prefer a sports car :-/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Weather_Emergency_Operat...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raven_Rock_Mountain_Complex
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Greek_Island
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheyenne_Mountain_Complex
With the rise of solid fuel ICBM and then MIRV leading to the truly massive number of warheads pointed at the US, the US switched to airplanes for the most important continuity of government issues, figuring that the skies 30,000 above the US will largely be secure (presuming the plane is appropriately EMP shielded) due to the many US geographic advantages, and so it is the best place to ride out the initial attack and then take stock, get to somewhere safe, and figure out what to do from there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Looking_Glass
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TACAMO
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_E-6_Mercury
But the North Koreans can have no illusion that the skies above their country will be safe: there are several major enemy airbases a few minutes from their border, their entire airspace is routinely surveilled and powers hostile to them have made large investments in stealthy air superiority fighters, so the air is not a safe place for the DPRK continuity of government plans. The DPRK does have trains but I would not consider those safe in the event of a major war, since rails are difficult to keep secret.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taeyangho_armoured_train
So bunkers are the best they can do, given their circumstances.
What's worse is.. it worked.
Japan attacked the US first, and by Hiroshima the US had 110,000 dead in the Pacific theater. Imagine living through that before judging them.
Also perhaps worth noting that after the first bomb the Japanese government was not planning to surrender. The second dropping moved things to a deadlock where half of the ministers—both in the small war council, and the larger full government—wanted to the surrender and the other half did not.
The Emperor had to be called in—an almost unprecedented action—to break the tie. Then, even after the Emperor had made his decision, there was a coup attempt to prevent the "surrender"† broadcast:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyūjō_incident
I do not know how anyone can think that Japan would have stopped fighting without the bombings when two bombings barely got things over the line.
The book 140 days to Hiroshima by David Dean Barrett goes over the meeting minutes / deliberations and interviews to outline the timeline, and it was not a sure thing that the surrender was going to happen: the hardliners really wanted to keep fighting, and they were ready to go to great lengths to get their way (see Kyūjō above).
The Japanese knew for a year before the bombings that they could not win the war, but they figured that by holding out—causing more causalities of Japanese, Americans, Chinese, Filipinos, etc—the US would lose their resolve and terms could be negotiated so that Japan could (e.g.) keep the land they conquered in Manchuria, etc.
† A word not actually used by the Japanese in the broadcast.
I've read convincing arguments (sorry, I cannot find them now) that this reasoning is mostly bogus.
One, the decision of dropping the bombs wasn't coordinated with planners of Operation Downfall, so casualties weren't a consideration. As such, it cannot be "civilized" (because the intent to be civilized just wasn't there).
Two, those casualty numbers rest on arbitrary assumptions about what the Japanese would or wouldn't do that don't hold up to real scrutiny, and ignore a host of options other than "full scale invasion" or "nuke".
Three, you cannot discount the flex towards the USSR, an argument many Japanese to this day maintain was a major reason. Which wasn't a civilized reason either.
It seems rather immoral to a high degree to send some Americans to their deaths unnecessarily because we didn’t want to use a weapon we had in our possession to end a war that we did not start.
"Our" people?
That kind of moral calculus simply doesn't track with me: I'm neither from the US nor Japan, plus I think considerations of "civilization" fly out the window once you start thinking like this.
But also, it's a kind of goalpost shifting. Either the calculations were the justification, in which case it matters whether they were right, or they weren't. It's not right to argue "well, the actual numbers don't matter because...".
> Either the calculations were the justification
The person I responded to was trying to suggest the number of American lives saved was a lot fewer than estimates. Instead of saving 1,000,000 Americans it "only" saved 50,000 or something and because of that, the calculus to use the bomb wasn't as "good" as it otherwise would be if it had saved more lives.
I say if it saved a single American life it was worth it, and was righteous, thus the shifting around of how many American lives saved is pointless because we know the lower bound is 1, and 1 was all you needed.
It was pretty simple: you said "they’re our people and their lives matter more" and I explained that they are not "our" people because you're not talking to an US American: you're talking to a South American. They are not "my" people.
I also claimed that, in any case, arguments out of "our" vs "their" people are fundamentally not about being civilized (which was the root of the argument, let me quote it for context: "dropping nukes was both barbaric and the more civilized option. Oppenheimer et al. deserve their acclaim.").
You can make "us vs them" arguments, but it has nothing to do with being civilized, and it doesn't save anyone from accusations of barbarism. I mean, Hitler also thought in terms of "us vs them", and look how he is regarded today.
> The person I responded to was trying to suggest the number of American lives saved was a lot fewer than estimates. Instead of saving 1,000,000 Americans it "only" saved 50,000 or something and because of that, the calculus to use the bomb wasn't as "good" as it otherwise would be if it had saved more lives.
The person you responded to was me. Your understanding of my argument is incorrect. I argued that the number mattered because the actual number is used to say "the invasion [Operation Downfall] would have caused more casualties than dropping the bomb, therefore the bomb 'saved' Japanese lives too". Please don't tell me you haven't heard this argument, which is very well known and in fact was mentioned by the original commenter I was responding to. This moral calculus has been quoted thousands of times; I'm pointing out it's misleading and dishonest.
You simply can't have your cake and eat it too. Either the numbers matter or they don't; and if they do matter, it matters that they are well justified and accurate. And it matters whether they were really thinking of these numbers when they decided to use the Bomb(s), or whether they are an a posteriori justification!
(Besides, as a sibling commenter argued, more aptly than I did: US planners wanted to use the Bomb because they had it and had spent a lot of effort developing it. They were primed to use it. They wanted to test it on a real city, with real humans, and they wanted to send a message to the Soviets, too. All excuses -- Operation Downfall, American vs Japanese lives, etc -- were a posteriori, retroactively deployed to not be portrayed as cold hearted).
> I say if it saved a single American life it was worth it, and was righteous, thus the shifting around of how many American lives saved is pointless because we know the lower bound is 1, and 1 was all you needed.
This is fundamentally wrong and doesn't support the argument from "civilization" which, again, was the argument I was responding to.
If you are going to argue American lives are worth preserving more than lives from other countries, not only do I disagree (how would you feel if I told you they are less worth preserving?), but it's also not about being civilized. So we can abandon that pretense!
But we are talking about World War II, and a war in which the United States and Japan fought, with millions of casualties. Pardon me if I'm not particularly interested in what someone from South America thinks about saving American lives by using a weapon we had to stop a war that we didn't start.
> Either the numbers matter or they don't; and if they do matter, it matters that they are well justified and accurate.
I don't think the numbers matter and shifting around from 50,000 to 5 million or anywhere in proximity to those numbers doesn't change the categorical argument. But if someone such as yourself wants to claim the numbers matter, my number is 1. It only takes 1 American life to have been saved in that needless war to justify the usage of any* weapon to stop the war.
* I'm using any here but there are obviously limits like, using a weapon that destroys the entire world or something fantastical that would very unlikely be justified.
> This is fundamentally wrong and doesn't support the argument from "civilization" which, again, was the argument I was responding to.
> US planners wanted to use the Bomb because they had it and had spent a lot of effort developing it. They were primed to use it. They wanted to test it on a real city, with real humans, and they wanted to send a message to the Soviets, too. All excuses -- Operation Downfall, American vs Japanese lives, etc -- were a posteriori, retroactively deployed to not be portrayed as cold hearted
Japan could have surrendered and then it wouldn't have been used. Even if we just wanted to test it, it was justified. There's a lot of revisionist history that goes into these conversations with the goal of "USA BAD" and in the context of World War II I reject any and all of those assertions. It's the same lame crap that gets thrown around with respect to the Soviets and the Eastern Front.
"The US didn't do anything"
"The Soviets were the good guys fighting the good fight against the Nazis".
Both are untrue and are derived from Russian/Chinese propaganda schemes to sow self-doubt and defeatism for their own benefit.
For example, a lot of folks will claim things like the Soviets bore the brunt of the war in a moralist context in contrast with the western allies who didn't see as many lives expended. Of course that's true from a numeric context. 40 million deaths or something crazy from the Soviet side. But let's not forget, it was the Soviets who helped Germany kick this thing off by illegally invading and partitioning Poland. So... maybe those 40 million deaths were deserved. Just like the Nazis deserved to be destroyed?
> how would you feel if I told you they are less worth preserving?
I wouldn't care what you thought? In wartime, as an American, our soldier's lives are worth more than any enemy lives. This seems pretty straightforward to me. But if you want to insist you think your countrymen's lives are worth the same or less than some enemy that invaded you or that you are at war with, good luck fighting that war.
This is not an argument for "civilization", so it's very hard to follow your point.
If you don't care what I think, why bother debating with me at all?
> I don't think the numbers matter and shifting around from 50,000 to 5 million or anywhere in proximity to those numbers doesn't change the categorical argument.
On the contrary, it does change the categorical debate because the original argument ("it also saved Japanese lives") depended on those numbers. You seem to want to argue about something unrelated to what I said?
> Japan could have surrendered and then it wouldn't have been used.
It has been argued quite convincingly, multiple times already, that the Bomb would have been used nonetheless. The effort to develop it had been made, now they wanted to use it on real population centers. They were biased and primed to action. Also, it was done to send a message to the Soviets (the Japanese to this day maintain this, and while you could convincingly argue their opinion is self-serving, so is the US's).
None of this has much to do with Operation Downfall or whether Japan wanted to surrender (there were a pro and anti surrender factions, and the hardliners could maybe have been appeased. Or not. It's not self-evident there was no other way.)
More importantly, this is not a valid argument if we're going to argue about civilization. If you want to make a separate argument, go ahead, but that's not what I was reacting to.
Also, preempting your likely "I don't care about civilization": if you don't, why are you arguing in a thread precisely about this?
> "The US didn't do anything [in WW2]"
Puzzling strawman. Did I say this?
> "The Soviets were the good guys fighting the good fight against the Nazis".
I'm struggling to see the connection here. Was it because I mentioned the Bomb was also signalling to the Soviets? But that'd be true regardless.
> For example, a lot of folks will claim things like the Soviets bore the brunt of the war
They did.
> it was the Soviets who helped Germany kick this thing off by illegally invading and partitioning Poland
That's a very simplistic take, but I suspect you aren't interested in more nuanced takes. There's a lot to read on this matter.
> So... maybe those 40 million deaths were deserved
Wow. Just wow.
> I wouldn't care what you thought? In wartime, as an American, our soldier's lives are worth more than any enemy lives.
Why argue with me? You obviously care. Also, "our soldier's lives are worth more" is an argument, but not one out of civilization, which is what we were debating. As in "dropping the Bomb was a civilized option because [...]".
> But if you want to insist you think your countrymen's lives
I was just telling you how you sound when you say "our lives matter more..." as if everyone here was US American.
I don't know what you're talking about anymore with this. Can you elaborate?
> If you don't care what I think, why bother debating with me at all?
You keep replying.
> On the contrary, it does change the categorical debate because the original argument ("it also saved Japanese lives") depended on those numbers. You seem to want to argue about something unrelated to what I said?
If it saved Japanese lives that just makes it all the better, if it didn't, it doesn't matter. I think you're just not understanding the point. You're trying to make this calculation about how many lives equivalent to a moral choice made by the United States and Japan in the conduct of their war. I reject the calculation of the numbers of lives saved.
> On the contrary, it does change the categorical debate because the original argument ("it also saved Japanese lives") depended on those numbers. You seem to want to argue about something unrelated to what I said?
That's not convincing at all. If Japan had formally surrendered the United States would have not then, post-surrender gone and dropped an atomic bomb on a Japanese city. You're crazy if you think that is the case. There is no room for debate here and nothing you can say, including showing me letters, papers, whatever will change my mind. I'm close-minded to that idea.
> Puzzling strawman. Did I say this?
> I'm struggling to see the connection here. Was it because I mentioned the Bomb was also signalling to the Soviets? But that'd be true regardless.
Nope, not puzzling. It's just a common theme. It's always "question the United States actions", "talk about the United States", "the United States is bad and does bad things all the time" and saying things like the US would have dropped an atomic bomb on Japan after it formally surrendered is aligned with the same kinds of things people say about the Soviets or whatever. It's just the same playbook of anti-Americanism propaganda that serves just one purpose which is to make people in the United States (and honestly the west in general) want to withdraw from the world and let autocrats and their toads take over.
The common themes are:
US bad for dropping atomic bomb on Japan, all the calculations about lives saved are wrong
The US didn't do anything of consequence in Europe it was all the Soviets because they lost the most people, despite the fact that they started the damn war alongside Germany and are the bad guys too
The western front was only full of old Germans, if the rest of the allies had to face the real German army like the Soviets did they wouldn't have done XYZ
> That's a very simplistic take, but I suspect you aren't interested in more nuanced takes.
Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. I'd encourage you to read up more on the Soviet - Nazi alliance. Both governments were evil. The Soviets got what they asked for by trusting the Nazis and invading and annexing another country. While there is undoubtedly nuance to that arrangement, at a high level the Communists and Nazis got together and decided to start partitioning Europe.
Rejecting this is like the whole "clean Wehrmacht" thing or how Rommel was a "good general" since he wasn't in Europe. No, both groups were just as bad as the Nazi regime they fought for.
> Also, "our soldier's lives are worth more" is an argument, but not one out of civilization, which is what we were debating. As in "dropping the Bomb was a civilized option because [...]".
You are implying that the Japanese were civilized at this time.
> I was just telling you how you sound when you say "our lives matter more..." as if everyone here was US American.
I know how I sound. Our soldiers lives do matter more than the lives of enemy soldiers. In the case of the war against Japan they mattered much more than Japanese lives, soldiers or otherwise. I know you think this is some sort of controversial thing to say, but this seems rather routine to me.
Yes you do. I explained it multiple times already. If you don't, I suggest you pay more attention instead of replying to comments you admit you don't understand.
> You keep replying.
You claimed you didn't care about my opinion, yet here you are. Why? Sport?
> I reject the calculation of the numbers of lives saved.
Thanks for the straight answer. However, the person I was replying to didn't reject the calculation, which is why they mentioned it, and this is what I challenged. Clearer now?
> Nope, not puzzling. It's just a common theme. It's always "question the United States actions", "talk about the United States", "the United States is bad and does bad things all the time"
That's your own baggage. Argue with the things I actually said, not with "common themes". You seem to be upset about things I haven't argued, at least not here. I cannot be held responsible for whatever irks you on the internet, much like I cannot be upset at you for whatever BS Trump or the alt-right spews.
> Soviets good, West worked with Nazis, West didn't do anything, bombing Japan to end the war is immoral, blah blah blah
I don't know your internet circles, but most of what I hear is "America won WW2", "Soviets are as evil as Hitler", etc.
> Both are untrue and are derived from Russian/Chinese propaganda schemes to sow self-doubt and defeatism for their own benefit.
No... I suggest you read "The Myth of the Eastern Front" (2008) by American historians Ronald Smelser and Edward J. Davies, which is a scholarly work (well regarded and widely referenced and cited) that describes among other things American shifting views on WW2's Eastern Front (as well as documenting the "Clean Wehrmacht" myth, and others). These are not Russian/Chinese infiltrators, but well regarded American scholars.
What you identify as "revisionism" is actually a shift away from German-dictated histories of WW2, and towards a more balanced view.
> Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. I'd encourage you to read up more on the Soviet - Nazi alliance.
I expected you to extend me the courtesy of assuming I knew about Molotov-Ribbentrop. Like I said, there were nuances to the situation, even mentioned "there's a lot to read on the subject". I assume you don't care -- or you think anyone who disagrees with any action of the US is simply ill-informed or Russian/Chinese influenced -- but there are nuances on this topic (e.g. how the USSR foresaw war with Nazi Germany, how it sought an anti-German pact with the UK and France which was rejected). But I won't be dragged into defending the Soviets or whatever when it has very little to do with the original topic.
> You are implying that the Japanese were civilized at this time.
Well, they were in some sense and they were barbaric in others (ironically this is what the OP claimed of the Bombs!). But let's take it for granted that the Japanese were pretty savage towards the people they invaded: even then, your own civilization doesn't depend on your foe's. It's an inherent trait.
I know this may be hard to grasp when following your "us vs them" logic.
> I know how I sound
Apparently not; you don't seem aware of how jingoistic you sound. Or that when you say "our", this being a relative word, it pays to know your audience who may or may not be "yours".
Ok. I don't understand I guess. Whatever :)
> You claimed you didn't care about my opinion, yet here you are. Why? Sport?
I'm here for a broader audience to read. Do you care about my opinion?
> Thanks for the straight answer. However, the person I was replying to didn't reject the calculation, which is why they mentioned it, and this is what I challenged. Clearer now?
But I was replying and rejecting the calculation because the calculation doesn't matter, at least in my opinion. Again if 1 American life was saved it was worth it and Civilized so it isn't relevant whether 50,000 lives were saved (Japanese, American, otherwise) or 5,000,000.
> That's your own baggage. Argue with the things I actually said, not with "common themes". You seem to be upset about things I haven't argued, at least not here.
Nope. I know what you're doing because it's a common pattern and the same tropes are repeated. Even in this very article you're defending the Soviets illegally partitioning and invading Poland alongside the Nazis as "nuanced".
> I don't know your internet circles, but most of what I hear is "America won WW2", "Soviets are as evil as Hitler", etc.
Well the Soviets were quite evil. That's a simple fact and we can state that up front.They were arguably more evil than the Nazis over the long term but still categorically evil so it doesn't quite matter just who is winning the evil Olympics.
I don't know where you hear America "won" World War II. Vast majority of Americans accept and understand that the Soviets fought the Germans in the east which was hugely important for defeating the Nazis. While the United States fought Japan in the Pacific which was also incredibly important. There's a common phrase here in the United States that the war was won with Soviet Blood, British Intelligence, and American Steel.
> I expected you to extend me the courtesy of assuming I knew about Molotov-Ribbentrop. Like I said, there were nuances to the situation, even mentioned "there's a lot to read on the subject".
But at the end of the day, the broader actions are what matter, not the nuance. I can't tell if you are familiar with Molotov-Ribbentrop because your previous comments seem to be aghast that I suggested the Soviets, who helped kick off the war, deserved what happened to them.
> I assume you don't care -- or you think anyone who disagrees with any action of the US is simply ill-informed -- but there are nuances on this topic (e.g. how the USSR foresaw war with Nazi Germany,
I think people who repeat obviously untrue things, like suggesting the US would have dropped atomic bombs on Japan just to test them after Japan surrendered, don't debate in good faith and are also ill-informed.
> how it sought an anti-German pact with the UK and France which was rejected).
Nuance right? Or does that only count when it's the Soviets?
> Well, they were in some sense and they were barbaric in others. But let's take it for granted that the Japanese were pretty savage towards the people they invaded: your own civilization doesn't depend on your foe's. It's an inherent trait.
> I know this may be hard to grasp when following your "us vs them" logic.
Sure. I declare we are civilized because we bombed Japan and turned them into a peaceful democracy. During a war, it is us versus them. This is basic stuff. There's nothing we need to take for granted about the Japanese. They were rampaging, murdering lunatics. Korea, China, the Philippines, Malaysia, and more suffered under their brutal regime of violence and repression.
> Apparently not; you don't seem aware of how jingoistic you sound. Or that when you say "our", this being a relative word, it pays to know your audience who may or may not be "yours".
Nope, I'm pretty aware. My audience isn't you, it's other readers who happen to stumble upon your argument. If they think I sound overly-Patriotic because I reject your claims, so be it. My opinion doesn't change because you don't like it.
By the way, you said you're not American. What country are you from?
Well, better read more closely then before replying :)
> I'm here for a broader audience to read. Do you care about my opinion?
If I didn't care about your opinion, I wouldn't answer -- I'm using human logic, not ET-logic.
> But I was replying and rejecting the calculation because the calculation doesn't matter, at least in my opinion.
Understood. Unfortunately, you got confused about who you were replying to; it wasn't me who argued the calculation mattered. I actually argued the calculation was a retroactive justification, not the actual one. I can see you got lost here. Maybe for the benefit of, you know, your "broader audience" you could have replied to that other commenter.
> Nope. I know what you're doing because it's a common pattern and the same tropes are repeated.
This thing you're doing is really bizarre, claiming to know my thoughts. I find it fascinating. Do you always debate like this?
> Even in this very article you're defending the Soviets illegally partitioning and invading Poland alongside the Nazis as "nuanced".
Nope. I was explaining the nuances of a situation which had more angles than what you implied. You were asking me to read on Molotov-Ribbentrop, yet you don't seem much well read on the subject if you ignore these nuances...
Have you read the Smelser & Davies book I mentioned?
> I don't know where you hear America "won" World War II.
I don't know how you can ignore this widespread take.
> I think people who repeat obviously untrue things, like suggesting the US would have dropped atomic bombs on Japan just to test them after Japan surrendered, don't debate in good faith and are also ill-informed.
"Obviously untrue" is begging the question; I mean, it's precisely what we're debating! In your adult life you'll sometimes face people who will argue that something you believe in is false or untrue, and this doesn't automatically make them bad faith arguers or ill-informed.
I consider someone to be arguing in bad faith when they feign ignorance, put words in other people's mouths, argue against strawmen, or consistently use cheap rhetorical tricks. Not by mistake, or a one-off, but consistently. Like you're doing now.
> But at the end of the day, the broader actions are what matter, not the nuance. I can't tell if you are familiar with Molotov-Ribbentrop because your previous comments seem to be aghast that I suggested the Soviets, who helped kick off the war, deserved what happened to them.
Both matter: broader actions and nuance. Being aghast at someone who claims 40 million people deserved to die has nothing to do with Molotov-Ribbentrop or any pact. Again... I'm aghast but not in defense of the Soviets, just at your callousness.
> Nuance right? Or does that only count when it's the Soviets?
No, nuances also apply here as well. It doesn't count only when it's the Soviets. There were nuances to the reasons for dropping the Bomb as well. Is this another of your "common tropes" you're constantly fighting against? Please, I urge you to engage with the positions that are actually stated, not with some imaginary enemy you've constructed.
> Sure. I declare we are civilized because we bombed Japan and turned them into a peaceful democracy.
Ok, this is a straightforward, honest position. You think dropping the Bomb was ok because it won the war. Also you make some non sequitur about the Bomb turning Japan into a peaceful democracy (completely bizarre logic, it doesn't follow that it was the bomb). You've repeatedly ignored arguments by me, and others here, that argued that it wasn't necessarily the Bomb that won the war, but whatever. I understand this is your position; I think it's wrong.
> There's nothing we need to take for granted about the Japanese. They were rampaging, murdering lunatics. Korea, China, the Philippines, Malaysia, and more suffered under their brutal regime of violence and repression.
Do you understand the expression "let's take for granted"? It seems you're hell-bent on arguing where there's no argument.
> Nope, I'm pretty aware. My audience isn't you, it's other readers who happen to stumble upon your argument. If they think I sound overly-Patriotic because I reject your claims, so be it. My opinion doesn't change because you don't like it.
My opinion doesn't change because you don't like it either. But, I posit, by sounding jingoistic you're not doing yourself any favors.
> By the way, you said you're not American. What country are you from?
Why does it matter? I'm South American. I'm not from: Russia, China, Japan, Venezuela, North Korea or any country deemed a rogue state or hostile actor by the US. I don't believe in American exceptionalism or their Manifest Destiny. People are entitled to dissenting opinions about the US, right? (I hope, at least!)
Nope. I prefer to read not so close and just reply anyway.
> Understood. Unfortunately, you got confused about who you were replying to; it wasn't me who argued the calculation mattered. I actually argued the calculation was a retroactive justification, not the actual one. I can see you got lost here. Maybe for the benefit of, you know, your "broader audience" you could have replied to that other commenter.
I'm saying that it doesn't need to be retroactively justified, and even if the numbers are high or low it doesn't matter. The action was justified until Japan formally surrendered and ended the war. What you're trying to debate it seems to me is around agreements or disagreements about the justification of using the bomb, my criteria is that we were still at war with Japan, and so the justifications, either accurate at the time or retroactive, are irrelevant. It's possible that what you are suggesting around the number of lives saved was a revision, which I don't agree or disagree with, but you are later implying a moral failure because of that revision, and I am rejecting that there was ever a moral failure by using the bomb provided we were still formally at war.
If you want to reject a moral claim about the revision of the justification, I don't really have much to debate here. Whatever the facts are, are the facts. But if you are making a moral claim about the usage of the bomb, that's different.
> This thing you're doing is really bizarre, claiming to know my thoughts. I find it fascinating. Do you always debate like this?
I debate and discuss things depending on various contexts.
In this context you're engaging in a group of common debate tactics (for example, you're afraid to say what country you are from, yet you're happy to speak English and criticize the United States and only the United States) that are a well-known pattern of anti-American and anti-Western sentiment. I just noted the patterns and identified your discussion points as being among them.
For example, let's change the subject and talk about the evils of the Soviet Union. And no we don't have to stay on topic, nobody is reading our nonsense anyway.
I know you won't do that though, because you don't know much about Soviet atrocities, and you won't be able to engage in a strict criticism of Soviet actions unless you introduce nuance (excuses) and find ways to make Soviet atrocities the fault of western countries.
If that's not true, prove me wrong. Let's spend some time now talking about the awful things the Soviets did.
> Nope. I was explaining the nuances of a situation which had more angles than what you implied. You were asking me to read on Molotov-Ribbentrop, yet you don't seem much well read on the subject if you ignore these nuances...
> Both matter: broader actions and nuance. Being aghast at someone who claims 40 million people deserved to die has nothing to do with Molotov-Ribbentrop or any pact. Again... I'm aghast but not in defense of the Soviets, just at your callousness.
Actions matter more than nuance, the nuance is just an excuse to justify the actions of the side you want to support. It sucks that so many Soviet Union, uh, members I guess? I'm not sure how to best describe that hellish autocratic government, but at the end of the day the Soviet Union colluded with the Nazis, and so I'm not really shedding a tear for them losing soldiers or civilians fighting the same maniacs they colluded with.
> Ok, this is a straightforward, honest position. You think dropping the Bomb was ok because it won the war. Also you make some non sequitur about the Bomb turning Japan into a peaceful democracy (completely bizarre logic, it doesn't follow that it was the bomb).
Well I said we bombed Japan, not necessarily it was because of the atomic bomb. But I acknowledge of course that specific context could be interpreted differently than my intention.
I'm suggesting that dropping the bomb, or any other action was just another action that our civilized country took and the end result was that we took over influence of Japan and civilized it and made it a peaceful democracy.
(besides obvious stuff like just raping people or whatever)
> You've repeatedly ignored arguments by me, and others here, that argued that it wasn't necessarily the Bomb that won the war, but whatever. I understand this is your position; I think it's wrong.
I think it's very much up for debate whether the bomb was actually what got the Japanese to surrender. It's possible and debatable that we could have just continued to bomb Japan without the atomic bomb and we would have seen a surrender anyway.
But it is not up for debate that the Japanese military were very much divided on whether or not to continue to hold out against the United States up until the usage of the atomic bomb and some were still holding out (if my memory serves correctly) even after the reports of the first bomb. You're suggesting that I'm ignoring your arguments, but I'm not, I'm disagreeing with them.
> Do you understand the expression "let's take for granted"? It seems you're hell-bent on arguing where there's no argument.
The specific language used matters. When you introduce the term "let's take for granted" you are implying that there is another option to be considered, such as that the Japanese weren't rampaging, murdering lunatics at the time. It's not an assumption to be taken for granted that the Japanese were as I described, it's simply a fact.
Another way to look at it is you can replace "let's take for granted" with "let's suppose" or "let's pretend". That term or variation of those terms, in my view, aren't valid to be used here because we don't suppose that the Japanese were rampaging murderous lunatics from around 1938, they were as a matter of fact.
> My opinion doesn't change because you don't like it either. But, I posit, by sounding jingoistic you're not doing yourself any favors.
I'll posit by sounding anti-western and anti-American you're not doing yourself any favors.
> Why does it matter?
Why are you afraid to say where you're from?
It shows. Maybe you should read closer so as to debate the actual statements and not something you imagined.
I had typed a longer answer but then realized it's pointless. You seem intent on setting some kind of trap or gotcha, which is pointless. It's also against the HN guidelines, but you already know this.
You've already decided I fit a "common pattern" and that I'm anti-American and anti-Western (that's hilarious, I was born and live in Trump's very own Western hemisphere. Plus good luck arguing that anti nuclear weapons Americans are anti-American), so stay with that opinion. I have nothing to gain by telling a bad faith troll my country, and you haven't justified why you need this information.
I hope you can overcome your anger.
Just because I disagree with you and characterize your arguments as following a similar pattern as other anti-American and anti-Western rhetoric doesn't mean anything I said is a "trap" or a "gotcha" or against guidelines. Though accusing others of trolling or bad faith tends to be against the rules.
You don't know the first thing about me, or what I think of any given country, so by accusing me ahead of time of "bad faith trolling" of your country" you're engaging in the same behavior you are accusing me of. You've already decided I fit a common pattern and will troll your country!
The fact of the matter here is that I disagreed with your points and said why, and all you did was accuse me of saying I ignored your arguments. But I did not, I addressed them head-on and shared my point of view.
During that time you couldn't say what country you were from so perhaps we can discuss your country too, and you can't bring yourself to criticize the Soviet Union or its mass murders and genocide and collaboration with the Nazis because you're just engaging in anti-American and anti-Western rhetoric. You say I've already decided that you fit a common pattern. No, I didn't decide that, you just provided the evidence.
Goodbye.
Seventy two Japanese cities, including Tokyo, were already completely destroyed before the two atomic bombs were dropped. The two cities destroyed by atomic bombs were on a list to be destroyed regardless.
To the people killed, injured, or left in the shell of a city with no food or water it made very little real difference whether the cause was HE+incendiaries OR high burst shockwave from atomic bomb - the M&M statistics (death and injury, both immediate and following) were similar in either case.
The greatest military imperative to drop the atomic bombs were pragmatic .. they were developed at vast expanse for use on Germany but were not ready until after Germany surrended .. to close off an R&D program without a live target test on targets already targetted for destruction just seemed ... wasteful.
After the bombs were dropped, everything changed. Public awareness and perception. The need for post war PR. The start of the Cold War race with soviets over atomics. The pressing need for auto biographies and centre staging from actors late to the story, etc.
Much of the "justification" for dropping atomic bombs was retconned after the fact.
Were we at war with Japan? Yes. Therefore any action we take to end that war was justified, including continuing to bomb Japanese cities, industrial areas, and civilian centers until the war is concluded and they surrendered. Testing weapons even would be acceptable. Japan was still fighting us. Nations test weapons during war all the time which is partially how weapons development occurs.
Not that these things are enforced, of course, see bombings throughout SE Asia during Vietnam and the international punishment dealt out to Kissinger.
> I think that's the point you are broadly missing.
Did I?
Let me be clearer. There was no particular examination of the justifications for killing civilains specifically in the cases of the two cities destroyed by atomic weapons.
Why?
Because any such moral examination had already taken place many many months before; broadly in the case of heavy bombing campaigns in Europe and more specifically at the start of the Japanese bombing campaign that most appear to have forgotten.
Before H & N were bombed with the first atomic weapons 72 other cities had already been destroyed, including Tokyo. H & N were 'just' two targets on a list more than a hundred cities in length.
> Therefore any action we take to end that war was justified
Yeah, maybe take some moral and ethics classes, look into why there's pushback over actions in Gaza, etc.
There's no simple 'therefore' here.
Gaza (what a bizarre thing to bring up anyway) has nothing to do with actions taken by any nation during World War II. It's not even a war between nations. Unless you count Iran since they're the ones causing so much pain for everyone by inciting terrorist organizations in the region and ensure there can be no peace.
> During wartime justifications for carpet bombing do matter .. see Geneva Conventions et al.
Not all wars are created equal, and not all actions taking during one war can be justified during another. For example, the United States using an atomic bomb on Iraq (regardless if the invasion was justified or not, but for the sake of argument here we can assume it's justified) would be morally wrong in any context.
Why is that the case?
Because the United States unofficially (if memory serves) declared war on Iraq, invaded Iraq, and did so with overwhelming military, economic, and political superiority. Iraq posed no existential threat to the United States. Just because it's a war doesn't mean you get to use everything in your arsenal.
When you compare that with the war against Japan, you find a very different picture.
World War II as a whole, including the war against Japan was an existential war requiring the full participation of all of society, civilian or otherwise. This was the same case on the eastern front of the war. The Nazis were exterminating people. The Soviets (and anyone else for that matter) were justified in bombing Nazi population centers, including carpet bombing, or even dropping their own atomic bomb on Berlin if that brought an end to the war.
Concepts and ideas around things like the Geneva conventions fail in these existential total war scenarios for two reasons:
1. They are arbitrary, and applied and justified post-hoc. Specifically the Geneva conventions weren't agreed upon prior to 1949 IIRC and so applying their moral and legal justification to actions prior to that as though one group broke a treaty or acted immorally doesn't make a lot of sense except of course as a way to criticize western powers. If you want to argue about how some countries violated what were later the Geneva conventions by their military activities, the only thing you're really telling me here is that all countries were very bad because the Japanese sure as hell violated the Geneva Conventions, and you know very well the Soviets did too, as did the Nazis. So if you want to criticize the US for dropping the atomic bomb, I criticize the other countries involved in the war equally, and I'd also criticize countries who stayed neutral during the war and did not fight to liberate Europe and Asia.
2. They don't map correctly to wars where one or more of the participants is intent on committing genocide or otherwise exterminating the actual population of the other. And in total war scenarios the civilian population is building and funding the war efforts and thus become legitimate targets. Otherwise it would be illegal and immoral to bomb a tank factory because you kill civilians. It's not. You know that, and I know that.
See bombings by the Soviets and mass starvation of civilians by them and the Chinese. See any number of things done by other countries not named the United States. Let's talk about those as examples going forward instead. We're well aware of all the criticisms of the United States but I don't care about those, I'm interested only in criticisms of the actions of non-western countries and how they have acted in morally bankrupt ways with the usage of their weapons.
That urgency and willingness to surrender was before Japan knew that the USSR had already agreed with the allies to declare war on them at the Yalta conference in February. The USSR committed to declaring war on Japan "two or three" months after Germany fell, which happened on May 8th. They declared war on Japan on August 8th.
We did not forward any of this information onto the other allies. Instead we chose to nuke Japan on August 6th. The Emperor was allowed to remain as a figurehead.
[1] - https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/28458-document-39b-magic-...
More to the point, while Hiroshima and Nagasaki were horrible events, they were cheap lessons compared to what it would have cost humanity to establish the taboo of nuclear warfare later, in Korea or elsewhere, with bombs 10x to 1000x their size.
And I don't think there were any real lessons learned. We nearly nuked ourselves during the Cold War multiple times. And today, with bombs that make Hiroshima and Nagasaki look like primitive weapons, you have people acting like nuclear war isn't something 'that' fearful. We killed hundreds of thousands of people largely for the sake of trying to get a slight geopolitical edge over the USSR. And that's far better than the alternative of there being no reason at all. In no world are the arguments about it saving lives valid, even if you attach 0 value to the life of the Japanese for having audacity to be born in the wrong country.
----
Leo Szilard was a critical scientist in the story of the atomic bomb, and he's also full of just amazingly insightful quotes. [1]
- Suppose Germany had developed two bombs before we had any bombs. And suppose Germany had dropped one bomb, say, on Rochester and the other on Buffalo, and then having run out of bombs she would have lost the war. Can anyone doubt that we would then have defined the dropping of atomic bombs on cities as a war crime, and that we would have sentenced the Germans who were guilty of this crime to death at Nuremberg and hanged them?
- A great power imposes the obligation of exercising restraint, and we did not live up to this obligation. I think this affected many of the scientists in a subtle sense, and it diminished their desire to continue to work on the bomb.
- Even in times of war, you can see current events in their historical perspective, provided that your passion for the truth prevails over your bias in favor of your own nation.
So no, they wouldn't be considered war crimes, any more than the equally-destructive firebombing of Tokyo and Dresden would be considered war crimes. Meaning, of course they would be considered war crimes, but only if the victims had won the war. That's the idea behind war. War is about doing the worst stuff you can do to the other guys, then doing whatever you can to claim the moral high ground afterward. So it's best avoided when possible.
Szilard was a great guy, and in fact he was behind the original missive to FDR that kicked the program into gear. It's as impossible -- and as inappropriate -- for us to judge him and his motivations as it is for us to second-guess Truman's decision to drop the bombs. However, he's all wet with that particular argument. Unlike Germany there was never any question that the Allied side would win the war, bomb or no bomb. The question was, what would be the cost, and who should pay that cost. I'm fine with Japan paying it. They would certainly have done the same to us, and they would certainly have skipped the subsequent navel-gazing.
By the way, it's easy to argue that the 'slight geopolitical edge' that the Bomb gave us over the USSR saved millions of lives in the future. For instance, it's far from clear that North Korea wouldn't be better off today if MacArthur had been allowed to have his way.
Imagine that the Russians had either somehow beaten us to the Bomb, or had invaded Japan in the absence of our ability to deter them. Given a choice between suffering Hiroshima and Nagasaki at our hands, and suffering a half-century of Communist rule, do you really think Japan would be better off in the latter scenario?
The history of Korea is another example of this stuff, and nothing like people think. After the Korean war South Korea was ruled by a series of US backed brutal dictators. When the first was overthrown, he lived out his final years in Hawaii, just to be replaced by another, and so on. South Korea only started to become what you think of today in the 6th Republic, which began in the late 80s. The only difference between North and South Korea is that we aimed to economically attack North Korea and economically support South Korea. And given South Korea is now having an extinction level fertility crisis, the final page of how things turned out is still yet to be written.
- Soldiers on both sides wear uniforms.
- When they can, Ukraine defends from trenches away from civilians.
- When urban combat seems unavoidable, Ukraine evacuates their civilians.
- Ukraine is a vast country, with plenty of safer areas to move to.
- Other countries have also accepted large number of Ukrainian war refugees.
Gaza is the opposite: Hamas fighters disguise as civilians, they defend mostly from urban areas, they never attempt to evacuate civilians (sometimes the opposite), it's a small territory, and no countries are accepting Gazan war refugees in significant numbers.
There's no military on the planet that could fight Hamas in Gaza without causing significant civilian harm.
Given these behaviors Russian forces would be justified in just carpet bombing these sort of areas that Ukrainian forces are entrenching, but they have chosen not to. By contrast that is precisely what Israel does, and also what the US does not only in WW2 but e.g. in Iraq and Afghanistan where killing dozens of civilians to get somebody who might be an enemy is considered a justifiable engagement.
And again this gets back to what I just said about this not even necessarily being about morality or ethics. Israel is in a vastly worse place now than it was on October 8th 2023, and it's unlikely things will be improving for them in the foreseeable future. Behaving good in war is simply in one's own best interest on any sort of timescale beyond the immediate.
[1] - https://www.amnesty.org.uk/press-releases/ukraine-military-e...
I disagree with this premise. There are many examples of Russia striking civilian gatherings or infrastructure.
For example their Hroza village strike killed 59. If we're trying to be charitable to Russia, it's possible they knew of some important off-duty officer present in Hroza. But with our limited public info, there were no signs of any valid military targets. Can you name any IDF strike that looks worse than that?
> Israel is in a vastly worse place now than it was on October 8th 2023
There was no way Israel could have fought Hamas without significant civilian harm and bad PR. The choice was to fight a very messy war against an enemy that disguises as civilians, or leave them alone to plan the next Oct 7.
As Golda Meir put it: "If we have to choose between being dead and pitied, and being alive with a bad image, we’d rather be alive and have the bad image."
In WW2 partisans would intentionally induce brutal retaliations precisely because they thought it would expose the character of the occupier, garner support for themselves, radicalize the population, and generally further their interests. And they were right. It's paradoxical because those retaliations were intended to enforce control, yet they invariably achieve the exact opposite - a recurring theme throughout history. Again getting back to the point I'm making - the reason to behave good in war is because it's in your own best interest.
Where did you see that estimate? Some estimates were ~40k, with many more recruits added during the war. And not everyone attacking the IDF was Hamas-affiliated. PIJ alone had thousands of fighters, and as we saw on Oct 7, sometimes random Gazans join in on fighting too.
> They've killed people in the hundreds of thousands in Gaza now.
Hamas themselves claim ~70k, which already includes fighters and non-combat deaths. There are a lot of questionable works trying to embellish the numbers. One of them used garbage data like WhatsApp chats. Another ended up with an estimate of 380k deaths for age 0-5, which is impossible since there were never that many in Gaza.
It's interesting to compare to Ukraine, because we don't see the same desperate attempts to embellish numbers there. Zelenskyy said "tens of thousands" were killed in Mariupol, which is one significant digit; he didn't pretend to have more precision than that. He didn't send out a Google form so that they could claim a specific (but dubious) count. We didn't see a bunch of Western academics desperately trying to justify higher death counts.
For instance the Lancet carried out a study using a variety of sources for cross-referencing, including things like obituaries, and found ~70k deaths in the first 8 months of the war, a war that's now been going on for years. And those deaths they measured were also only those caused directly and immediately by Israel due to traumatic injury. Famine, disease, despair, an other such deaths are not counted and bring it up substantially higher.
Politics in the US waxes and wanes, increasingly between extremes. Israel has already alienated itself from one 'side' in America, and is gradually doing the same with the other. Consequently, the fate of Israel in the future is more uncertain than ever - imagine an Israel not only lacking US support, but with an antagonistic US government in charge. And they also aren't exactly making friends with Russia or China. Making enemies of the world as a micronation is generally not a wise path to go down.
As for Ukraine, there's similarly a clear picture. There's no doubt that civilians are being killed but there's also no doubt that the vastly overwhelming majority of all deaths are military. So the situations simply aren't comparable.
To kill a billion people by conventional bombs would require years of sustained effort costing trillions of dollars, and I imagine the army doing that killing would collapse under the moral horror of its own actions far before that number is reached. On that other hand, thousands of nuclear weapons can be deployed by a very small group of amoral people with instantaneous destructive effects.
[0]https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/swiss-air-force-lands-fighter-p...
And even if all of those fields are destroyed in the US, the 747s modified for AF1 (VC-25s) are capable of in flight refueling, they can stay up for about three days before the oil needs to be changed on the engines and they are forced to land. So they can still reach Australia or some place far away from the US if the rest of the US is totally destroyed.
The US is vulnerable to that scenario as well, even though the military’s willingness to comply with literally textbook illegal orders is not encouraging.
They drive old cars, have slow internet and can't visit the coliseum. They're not invited to the cool parties.
Plenty of places have uranium and unless they are being watched like Iran they can just set up clandestine enrichment operations.
There are 9 nuclear-armed states today. Likely this has set us on a path where nuclear war is inevitable.
It's really hard to guess how retaliation would happen in practice, a large-scale nuclear war certainly isn't inevitable.
The most likely targets for nuclear strikes right now are also non-nuclear states.
It's scary, but in some scenarios one nation can absolutely nuke another nation without threat of getting nuked themselves. In reality, the cat coming out of the bag looks more like that than nuclear armageddon.
It's scary, but it's fine!
In 1998 neither India nor Pakistan were considered members of the nuclear warhead club.
Then India detonated 5 warhead sized kiloton and sub kiloton class thermonuclear (fusion / hydrogen) weapons .. and within 20 days Pakistan responded with six atomic tests (non fusion, larger than warhead size).
The interesting thing about that exchange is that India suprised the world intelligence community pants down with capability and execution, and Pakistan's speed of response was equally suprising.
Despite the spectacle of rapid cross fire of eleven nuclear weapons and tense international responses the small nuke treats didn't escalate into anything larger .. and likely served to keep heads a little cooler wrt both India and Pakistan.
All up there has been > 2,000 nuclear detonations across the globe, some definitely intended to intimidate or otherwise push the envelope of possibility.
In that light another small nuke that avoided civilians and had a military target is unlikely to escalate although it would certainly cause a collective intake of breath and give pause.
I said Russia dropping a nuke on a Ukranian military site will not escalate into a nuclear war. I say this because so many people assume that it would and it makes no sense.
Of course, other options such as biological weapons have been explored in the past. Ukraine wouldn't necessarily have to invest all that much to prepare retaliatory operations capable of killing millions of Russians in the case of a nuclear attack.
The only problem with such less orthodox means is that they're almost necessarily covert, and therefore can provide limited deterrence. "We have ways to impose immense costs if necessary" just doesn't sound that scary when the means are a secret.
Game theory works when players know the payout matrix. When the assumed payout matrix is shown to be false, you get very chaotic, almost random results, because you can't assume that your opponents will correctly choose the rational choice. With WMDs, the consequences of that can be deadly. That's why both nuclear proliferation and "limited" nuclear war are such fraught choices, and why the major nuclear powers have worked so hard to avoid them. They've run the game theoretic simulations and understand that it doesn't lead anywhere good.
I agree with you. It's really bad and it's a slippery slope. It's also true that there are many scenarios where you can launch nukes without repercussions. That's the misperception I'm pointing out.
It seems extraordinarily unlikely we'd have attempted such a thing if Venezuela had nukes.
And frankly, the Venezuelan military is absolutely tiny and has been facing the same economic issues as the rest of the country. They have 24 F-16s, but rumor is none of them work anymore, maybe some SU-30s, but those would be shot down pretty much as soon as they were scrambled. There was pretty heavy bombing before hand to knock out AA. And they bombed Chavez's tomb, which is quite a dick move of there wasn't any AA there; blowing up a graveyard for shits and giggles on an op is some shit even cartels have a little bit more respect than to do.
IDK, the whole thing seems like equally could have been mostly what it says on the tin, with no more than the normal intelligence HUMINT/SIGINT/*INT cloak and dagger crap to have the right intelligence.
Is that confirmed? because i think that would be a textbook example of a war crime.
I think people are suspicious because Maduro allegedly didnt seem to make it to a bunker in time, which if things are being bombed and helicopters are showing up on radar, one would think he would have sufficient time to get to some secure room, which in turn would delay things enough for reenforcements to arrive.
I think some of the suspicion is that we are talking about helicopters not fighter jets, which seem like they would be easy to take out even with how degraded their military is. But idk
https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cly1x12v33jt
> One image claiming to show the tomb actually shows the aftermath of a real US strike on the nearby Cagigal Observatory. The observatory is reportedly used by the General Command of the Bolivarian Militia branch of the Venezuelan military.
> We’ve also seen a viral image claiming to show extensive damage to the mausoleum but this appears to be an an AI-manipulated version of a real picture of the building published in 2013.
> Plus, the Hugo Chavez Foundation posted its own videos on Monday to show people the tomb was intact and called on people in Venezuela not to spread speculation.The videos displayed Monday’s date on a phone before zooming in on the Cuartel de la Montaña 4F to show there was no visible damage to the building.
1. Did Ukraine control the nukes, or did Russia?
2. Could Ukraine keep them working on its own?
3. If nukes stop invasions, why do nuclear countries still get attacked?
On top of that the Soviet nuclear lockout systems are rumored to be much simpler than the American ones. Whereas the American system is rumored to be something like the decryption key for the detonation timings (without which you have at best a dirty bomb), the Soviet lockout mechanism is rumored to just be a lockout device with a 'is locked' signal going to the physics package. If that's all true, taking control of those nukes from a technical perspective would be on the order of hotwiring a 1950s automobile.
Taking physical control would have been more complex, but everything was both more complex and in some ways a lot simpler as the wall fell. It would have ultimately been a negotiation.
2) See above.
3) Which military nuclear power has been attacked by the kind of adversary that you can throw a nuke at? Yes, it doesn't remove all threats, but no solution does. Removing a class of threat (and arguably the most powerful class of threat in concrete terms) is extremely valuable.
Your computer is designed and built in China therefore your computer belongs to Chinese and China. Right?
> See above
Maybe you should see how good the Ukraine was at keeping their naval assets after they used the totally legal methods to obtain them. Maybe then you would have a clue on how good they could had maintained them.
The previous owner was the USSR, who ceased to exist, and who Ukraine was a part of.
> Maybe you should see how good the Ukraine was at keeping their naval assets after they used the totally legal methods to obtain them. Maybe then you would have a clue on how good they could had maintained them.
Are you talking about the ships that weren't originally that Russia mostly scuttled on their way out of Sevastopal, in addition to stuff like a 70% completed nuclear powered carrier that even Russia couldn't maintain the sister to, and didn't fit in any naval doctrine that made sense for Ukraine?
Not quite.
> and who Ukraine was a part of
Oh, so there were some wedding contract what stated what in case the parties.. part - there would be the transfer and division of assets? When why Belorussia didn't received their part of the navy? Kazakhstan? Georgia? Baltics, because they surely "were parts of USSR"?
> Are you talking about the ships that weren't originally
That weren't originally what? I know you degraded to just throwing words with your blanket knowledge but again you can find out the fate of the ships the Ukraine used totally legit means to obtain from Russian Federation with a quite short trip to Wikipedia.
Actually, exactly. We're specifically talking about the arsenal of the 43rd Rocket Army of the Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces. A force not reorganized until much later to be under the Russian Federation, and the relevant 1990 Budapest Memorandum occurred before the 1991 creation of the CIS.
Rather than a vague "not quite", would you care to elaborate?
> Oh, so there were some wedding contract what stated what in case the parties.. part - there would be the transfer and division of assets? When why Belorussia didn't received their part of the navy? Kazakhstan? Georgia? Baltics, because they surely "were parts of USSR"?
I think a divorce settlement is actually a pretty good model actually. Those other states rankly didn't have the means to keep them, but should have been otherwise compensated for that loss. However, as I described above, Ukraine literally designed and built large portions of these systems as was capable of keeping them.
> That weren't originally what? I know you degraded to just throwing words with your blanket knowledge but again you can find out the fate of the ships the Ukraine used totally legit means to obtain from Russian Federation with a quite short trip to Wikipedia.
I'm dyslexic and accidentally a word while editing. Are you incapable of telling what was meant by context, or where you just looking for a reason not to address the point made?
Good, you made a first step, now do the other two.
> but should have been otherwise compensated for that loss
It's quite amusing what you are clearly imply what some state shouldn't be compensated at all.
> Are you incapable of telling what was meant by context, or where you just looking for a reason not to address the point made?
Yes, I'm incapable of telling why you threw something completely unrelated to the question. I'm not LLM.
> Ukraine literally designed and built large portions of these systems as was capable of keeping them.
Ah, yes, the mighty Ukraine who solely done that, right? Every other nation, state and people in the USSR didn't do shit to that. I have a feeling you are thinking about that issue as some sort of video game: just a couple of factories and a bunch of special units. But the things are not like that in RL.
This is uncalled for: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Why not take the thread somewhere constructive by writing out a more complete, stronger argument?
The question is whether china would be capable of maintaining the equipment they created and have physical possession of, not whether they can root it without physical access.
Russia may have just continually pushed the envelope until it became clear there wasn't a bright red line, and eventually someone would push the button.
And the point of nukes isn't to launch them. By then you've already lost, you're just making good on your offer to make the other shmuck lose too.
They don't even need that. They just needed ambiguity.
Ukraine absolutely fucked up giving up its nukes, that's abundantly clear with the benefit of hindsight.
Do you understand that nuclear weapons don't work like that, and leaders with nuclear buttons give orders to launch nuclear weapons every few months? And only they know they're using a training launch code; everyone else finds that out when the missiles does not fly off at the end of the launch sequence.
Russia invades. Ukraine launches nukes. Every major city in Ukraine is ash. Several major cities in Russia are ash. Millions die plausibly.
That scenario is not what would happen from an invasion.
Zelensky would not have used nukes to prompt the death of millions instantly. He would have proceeded with the same defensive war.
The false premise rests on: it's better for everyone to die than live under Russian occupation. That would overwhelmingly be chosen false by the population in question that is being invaded.
All those people that lived under Soviet Russia occupation, they were better off dead in nuclear fire than living under said occupation? Obviously not what the masses would have chosen (just look at what they did choose to do while living under Russian occupation - how many gave up their lives to fight back?). It's fundamentally why nuclear weapons as deterrant is largely fraudulent. They're solely viable as a last option against total oblivion at the hands of an enemy: it entails everyone dies, which means there has to be a good enough reason for everyone to die to justify use.
As someone from a country that used to be under russia n boot - the fireball is preferable.
Well, Russian occupation usually means your town slowly undergoes mass extermination and genocide....
so yes? nuclear fireball is potentially preferred
Tactical nukes are in ambiguous territory. Russia launching a blizzard of nukes at Ukraine is difficult to distinguish from Russia nuking NATO. To turn Ukraine into glass, Russia would need to gamble that Washington and France trust it.
Which is indistinguishable from a Russian first strike. Russia glassing Ukraine is about as rational as it launching a first strike. So serious people would have to weigh–based on incomplete information–whether Putin is still in charge and if tens of millions of lives might be saved if we neutralise their silos first.
Outside nuclear holocaust, Russia, on launching a strategic nuclear strike on Ukraine, would have crossed a red line Beijing, New Delhi and Tehran each value. (The last because Russia's justification for glassing Ukraine is easily copy-pasted by Israel.)
It's really not. Once they've launched, it's pretty clear where they're going. All NATO needs is enough time to respond, and they absolutely have that.
> Outside nuclear holocaust, Russia, on launching a strategic nuclear strike on Ukraine, would have crossed a red line Beijing, New Delhi and Tehran each value. (The last because Russia's justification for glassing Ukraine is easily copy-pasted by Israel.)
If you look, their nuclear policy is to respond overwhelmingly to a nuclear strike. India for instance has officially said they "will not be the first to initiate a nuclear first strike, but will respond with punitive retaliation should deterrence fail". https://web.archive.org/web/20091205231912/http://www.indian... That's diplomatic speak for 'we reserve the right to glass you after any nuclear strikes in our territory'.
What are you basing this on? Even back when warheads were strictly ballistic we couldn't do that. Russia's arsenal, today, contains maneuverable warheads.
Flip it around: if we committed to a first strike on Russia and China, is there a world in which we wouldn't say it's to glass North Korea?
> All NATO needs is enough time to respond
This is not how strategic nuclear exchanges are ever modeled. Because it's now how strategic war plans are ever written.
Use it or lose it. Silo-based missiles are sitting ducks. By the time nukes are landing in Ukraine they could be landing across a good chunk of Europe and Turkey.
> If you look, their nuclear policy is to respond overwhelmingly to a nuclear strike
I'm not saying India will nuke Russia. I'm saying India and China would both exact a price from Russia for normalising nuclear war in the modern context. This has been repeatedly messaged by both in respect of the Ukraine invasion.
> Flip it around: if we committed to a first strike on Russia and China, is there a world in which we wouldn't say it's to glass North Korea?
Because while you can't tell how far a missile is going to go, you can tell how far it has gone. We're more than capable of tracking that a missile has gone past what would make sense for a Russian strike on Ukraine.
And you'd be able to tell if a launch made sense to attack NK from the US or not. Orbital mechanics and the burn patterns of ICBMs don't really let you redirect at the last minute, and the trajectory wouldn't really make sense.
> This is not how strategic nuclear exchanges are ever modeled. Because it's now how strategic war plans are ever written.
> Use it or lose it. Silo-based missiles are sitting ducks. By the time nukes are landing in Ukraine they could be landing across a good chunk of Europe and Turkey.
Europe and Turkey have no silo based weapons left. It's all either airborne or submarine delivery these days.
In this scenario the weapons are all already in the air, or on submarines where they've been as safe as they always are.
> I'm not saying India will nuke Russia. I'm saying India and China would both exact a price from Russia for normalizing nuclear war in the modern context. This has been repeatedly messaged by both in respect of the Ukraine invasion.
Once again, the context here is a Ukrainian nuclear (even if tactical) first strike, and the subsequent Russian retaliation. "Punitive" retaliation is all of their strategy. This has already been normalized. Which is why a "tactical" nuclear strike would never make sense.
Generally speaking, a bunch of Russian silos lighting up would put us at DEFCON 1. We’re not waiting until it passes Ukraine. It we want to engage any boost-phase ABM, we’re not going to let it. (Which leads to its own issues.)
> you'd be able to tell if a launch made sense to attack NK from the US or not
At some point. But waiting will cost you precious minutes, and you don’t know what else is in position e.g. off your coast.
> Europe and Turkey have no silo based weapons left
I was unclear. I meant conventional forces that would be targets in a first strike.
> "Punitive" retaliation is all of their strategy. This has already been normalized
Strategic retaliation for tactical nukes has not been normalized. This is still entirely ambiguous and hotly debated.
Again, flip it around. If you knew China and Russia would stand down if they thought you were just nuking North Korea, you could use that to gain material advantage in a first strike.
I already said they'd be at DEFCON 1.
> At some point. But waiting will cost you precious minutes, and you don’t know what else is in position e.g. off your coast.
Waiting might also keep you out of a nuclear war. They know exactly how long they can wait.
> I was unclear. I meant conventional forces that would be targets in a first strike.
Convential forces are inconsequential wrt a full nuclear strike.
> Strategic retaliation for tactical nukes has not been normalized. This is still entirely ambiguous and hotly debated.
I already quoted you the exact policy from one of your examples.
> Again, flip it around. If you knew China and Russia would stand down if they thought you were just nuking North Korea, you could use that to gain material advantage in a first strike.
If you were retaliating because NK had already set off a tactical nuke in your territory? Once again, the orbital mechanics don't work like that. Looking at it, the only thing you could hit from US silos launched so that they look like they're hitting North Korea would maybe be Hong Kong. Which once those missiles go past North Korea, China is already considering it a first strike and retaliating, so you didn't really gain anything.
If you notice, most countries with nuclear weapons also have published and publicized nuclear use policies. These documents usually highlight lines and conditions under which they will consider the use of nuclear weapons. This is by design. Ambiguity in nuclear policy invites miscalculation. Of course, you don't want complete certainty, lest you risk your enemy push right up to your line and no further; you want your lines defined, but a little blurry, so that the enemy is afraid to approach, much less cross. This is called strategic ambiguity. This is why Russia has been criticized a lot by policy experts for their repeated nuclear saber-rattling. They're making the line too blurry, and so Ukraine and their allies risk crossing that line accidentally, triggering something nobody truly wants to trigger.
In the case of a nuclear-armed Ukraine, given Russia's tendency to like to take over neighboring countries, they could include "threats to territorial integrity" as a threshold for going nuclear. They could also be a little more 'reasonable' and include "existential threat to the state" - which the initial 2022 invasion very much would fit.
What this looks like in practice is that Russia, in their calculations, would factor in the risk of triggering a nuclear response if they tried to take Ukrainian territory. Now, they may believe, as you seem to, that Ukraine would not risk the annihilation of its people over Crimea/Donbas. At which point, Russia would invade, and then Ukraine would have to decide. If Ukraine does not escalate, then they will lose deterrence and credibility for any future conflicts, assuming they survive as a state. If Ukraine does escalate, announces to Russia they will launch a nuclear attack to establish deterrence (reducing ambiguity that this is a full nuclear exchange), and then launches a single low-yield nuke at Russian invading troops, they place the ball back in Russia's court: Ukraine is clearly willing to employ nukes in this war - do you believe they won't escalate further, or do you believe they will launch their full arsenal if you continue?
This is essentially a simplified version of deterrence theory. The idea is to give the other side all possible opportunities to de-escalate and prevent a full nuclear exchange. If you do not back up your policy with actual teeth - by using nukes when you said you would - you're signalling something very dangerous.
This is also why nuclear-armed states do not tend to rely solely on their nuclear deterrence. They want a solid layer of conventional capabilities before they have to resort to their proverbial nuclear button. A strong conventional force keeps conflicts below the nuclear threshold, where deterrence theory tends to get very dangerous, very fast.
Most nuclear doctrines are ambiguous by design. ("Reserve the right," et cetera.)
But they are not. We can thus look at the people who make decisions, but not at the countries themselves. So, it’s most likely not about joining NATO, but about European integration and economic growth.
The only reason Ukraine joining NATO is a problem is if Putin/Russia (or someone else) wants to attack them.
I know there's a real risk of peaceful trade, mutual alliance, humanity, and democracy from breaking out in such circumstances but somehow I think the risk might be worth it for the billions of us who aren't completely fucked up megalomaniacs.
I mean, that's objectively not true since Libya, who attacked no one, but had a NATO bombing campaign to assist their civil war.
NATO is no longer a purely defensive pact.
If your inference is true then Ukraine's membership would be entirely orthogonal to any intervention NATO took to prevent Putin from committing genocide against his own people.
If NATO would come to Ukraine's aid anyway, then again their membership doesn't matter.
All NATO membership adds is a promise of defence.
No, it wasn't put on paper anywhere.
No, it wasn't mentioned (much) when the countries of eastern Europe all chomped at the bit to join NATO in the 90s.
No, it completely makes the Budapest Memorandum bunk.
No, the people of Ukraine absolutely do not have the agency to want to pivot towards the EU and become wealthy and stable like the former Warsaw Pact countries did. It must have been the CIA, so Budapest is bunk again!
(and other lies the war apologists tell themselves)
It would probably rule out the type of decapitation strike the US did, but bgp hijacking is way way below on the escalation ladder.
The US couldn't just fly a bunch of helicopters to Pyongyang or Tehran and do the same within 30 minutes. Most likely every single one of those helicopters would end up being shot down.
Would your answer change if China were somehow guaranteed to not intervene? Because I'm not sure the obstacle here is North Korean defenses, so much as Chinese intervention.
Tehran? I think it'd go more or less like Caracas did.
No. The obstacle isn't Chinese intervention, the obstacle is that such an operation would have to be significantly larger and it would take longer. There would be much more air defense assets to suppress, and some of them would be impossible to effectively defeat.
A helicopter assault on either of those cities would in the most optimistic scenario take hours of preparatory bombing, which would give a plenty of time for nuclear retaliation by North Korea. Both countries would also certainly have better safeguarding mechanisms for their heads of state, during that bombing they would be evacuated and now you'd probably be looking at the very least at a weeks-long operation.
Assassination is a different thing, but I would suspect that for purely psychological reasons a rapid kidnapping operation like this would be far less likely to invite anything more than symbolic retaliation than a single targeted missile strike. This kind of operation would be far more confusing for the enemy than a simple assassination, and the window during which for example nuclear retaliation might make sense tends to be rather small.
>Tehran? I think it'd go more or less like Caracas did.
Tehran doesn't have a fancy air defense network, but it does have one. They'd have shot down every single helicopter. You don't even need fancy missiles, a bunch of .50cal machine guns will do the trick.
I have serious doubts they can manage anything more than a fizzle yield, but also only give them a one-in-three chance of a successful ballistic launch. It may be the case that they don't even have the preparatory work done, in which case hours isn't enough to launch, they'd need days/weeks. In any event, we're talking about one or two missiles only, and the Navy's ability to shoot those down in the midcourse/terminal phase is sufficient for such a small salvo.
If North Korea wanted to nuke us, they'd be better off handing the warhead off to some terrorist group to truck it across the Mexican border. Supposing their stuff is even small enough to smuggle.
>Tehran doesn't have a fancy air defense network, but it does have one.
But it doesn't have a China willing to rush in with 1 million PLA infantry. Which is really North Korea's only saving grace. Even if we got Kim out before they could mobilize, they'd be strutting and posturing for weeks, and there are any number of places they could fuck things up in retaliation. Korea, Taiwan, Philippines, Japan, they might even stir shit up with India. They could, one supposes, send a few divisions to Russia on loan, and enter into the Ukraine fray. And no clever strategy is going to counter that stuff. Some of this stuff they're already considering and only hesitant... a North Korea operation might goad them into working up the courage to try it.
Why is that? Of the 6 North Korean nuclear tests, only the first one was so low-yield that it might have been a fizzle.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_weapons_tests_...
One, nobody exactly allows independent observers so we only really get seismo readings from those tests. And they don't make alot of sense. Yields should've been higher for plutonium cores, it's not lightweight stuff. And I wouldn't put it past them to have somehow pulled a fast one to fool foreign intelligence agencies (though stockpiling thousands of tons of high explosives fake a successful nuclear test seems beyond farcical). Just seems wrong.
Would that even work? I'd expect there to be obvious spectral differences, making such deception unrealistic.
https://www.armscontrol.org/blog/2013-04-26/ims-detects-radi...
The xenon isotopes involved have short half lives so if they were not produced by a nuclear explosion, they would have had to be released simultaneously by e.g. reprocessing a "hot" fresh batch of irradiated uranium at the same time as the underground explosion. This is not impossible, but it looks increasingly convoluted compared to an actual nuclear test.
Also, contra the upthread assertion that "Yields should've been higher for plutonium cores, it's not lightweight stuff," there is nothing about plutonium that drives high yield. The United States manufactured a large number of low yield (1.7 kiloton) plutonium warheads in the late 1950s:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W25_(nuclear_warhead)
If North Korea aimed to make missile-deliverable weapons from the beginning (which makes sense because they don't have heavy bombers like the Cold War powers did at the beginning of their arms race), it also makes sense that their weapons tests would be focused on validating compact/lightweight designs instead of trying for high yield.
Similarly, if a head of state is killed by poison or other similar means, you could hardly expect nuclear retaliation when their successor later discovers what happened.
An important part of deterrence is broadcasting that you've done this though. It all works much better if your enemies approximately understand your processes
The existence of a plan does not equate to the feasibility of its execution. A submarine-based deterrent is indeed the "gold standard" for survivability, but it is not the only standard. There is enough pain for the US that they wouldn't actually attack Pakistan.
The US does have the advantage that the surviving Pakistani nukes might very well end up flying to India instead :)
These are the states whose Senators are in play this year [1].
Let's say Trump decides it's fuck-around-with-Islamabad-o'clock. He fucks around. Pakistan nukes at India. How many of those Senate seats flip as a result? I'm going to guess none.
Let's go one step further. Pakistan nukes Al Udeid and Camp Arifjan (both theoretically within range of their Shaheen-III). American troops are killed. Does the President's party lose any seats? At that point, I'd bet on a rally-'round-the-flag effect.
The truth is there isn't political downside to the President fucking around with Pakistan. Its nuclear deterrent isn't designed to contain America. And it can't threaten us with maybe the one thing that could make Trump suffer, a refugee crisis.
If America does something to pakistan, then pakistan wouldn't bomb India but rather America
In your scenario India did literally nothing. I know the rivalry but even then India has its own nukes and if India wasn't part of the plan then case would be on America
A much more likely scenario is that Pakistan's military would take over (Pakistan has never been really stable after its independence) and their ties with china would grow and China would feel threatened as well and if things go the same as venezuela that is that Trump says that they would control pakistan for time being (similar to venezuela) then China would be genuinely pissed and a WW3 conflict can arise considering China could send their military there and the possibility of nuke could be a choice if the war really happens between America/China but the possibility of it is really really slim and depends on how the war goes.
This is a mistaken assumption. It is very likely that the nukes would always fly to India unless the US somehow communicated their intent before acting.
In a situation where you're launching nukes in retaliation, you're usually not waiting very long to think about where you're going to be sending them to.
This isn't an option. Not within a nuclear window. The only bases within range are Al Udeid and Camp Arifjan. Hence its inclusion in the above scenario.
> then China would be genuinely pissed and a WW3 conflict can arise
This is tantamount to saying Pakistan can't actually retaliate. Which is my point. Pakistan's nuclear deterrent doesn't actually deter America. China does.
It does, US cannot disregard the consequences of a strike on India regardless of their relationship with India.
On a normal day it'd probably not be a huge problem for Pakistani ballistic missiles to penetrate those bases’ own air defenses. However if the US was planning a strike, there'd certainly be Aegis BMD coverage there, which would be a problem. It's possible they'd even deploy THAAD to protect some bases.
The US could probably bomb even Beijing, it doesn't really tell you anything that they were able to bomb Iran also.
Still probably quite a bit different then helicopter inserted decapitation strike.
The only consistent action for the US to take, given they - and much of the world - do not consider Maduro the legitimate President of Venezuela, was to remove him from power.
However, just because there are just war grounds for Maduro's capture per se doesn't mean the operation was justified by just war principles. It wasn't. It takes more than just the fact that the ruler is tyrannical to justify an operation like this. Operations like this can risk civil war and all sorts of horrible fallout that also need to be considered. There must be a realistic plan following the removal of the tyrannical leader. As always, justice must be upheld always. And of course there are the procedural and legal aspects that Trump totally ignored.
Furthermore, Trump has revealed that once again, he's full of shit. He and his people have been chanting their opposition to regime change operations and various military involvement for years, even until a few months ago. And now, voila.
Reality is not that black and white. We may no longer have formal colonies, buy the world is still carved up by spheres of influence by the superpowers. Displease them and you'll find out how limited your sovereignty really is.
You have to assume everyone is willing to die over every single thing short of obliteration.
So what's the scenario then? Venezuela has nukes. The US abducts Maduro. Venezuela launches its nukes, everyone dies on both sides. Please, explain that laughable premise. Everyone in Venezuela dies for Maduro? Go on, explain it, I'll wait.
Back in reality: Venezuela has nukes. The US abducts Maduro. Venezuela shakes its fists at the sky, threatens nuclear hell fire. Nothing happens. Why? The remaining leadership of Venezuela does not in fact want to die for Maduro.
With Iran, North Korea, or Ukraine, the calculus is different.
Now do this same exercise for Taiwan.
US attacks, Maduro threatens to launch nuke(s) ... then what? Do you call bluff?
Maduro was capture in a militair base (as he did a Saddam, switching sleeping locations), he almost made it into a safe room. What if he had nukes and made it to the safe room. You know the expression "Cornered rat"... For all he knew, the US was there to kill him. The US killed his 30 Cuban bodyguards so high change Maduro thought its his end.
> "Cornered rat" refers to the idiom that even weak individuals become desperate and dangerous when given no escape, often applied to intense political or military pressure.
The scenario that you called, that nobody wants to die for Maduro, is you gambling that nobody want to die for him or not follow the chain of command! Do you want to risk it? No matter how many precaution you take, are you really sure that not one or more nukes go to Texas or Miami?
This is why Nukes are so powerful, even in the hands of weaker countries. It gives a weaker country a weapon that may inflict untold dead to the more powerful country (let alone the political impact). Its a weapon that influences decision making, even in the most powerful countries.
Do you think the US and EU would have hesitated to send enough arms to keep Ukraine comfortably fending off Russia if they weren't afraid of the nuclear threat that Russia kept toying with?
Why would it?
1. "Nuclear capability" is not binary. The available delivery mechanisms and the defensive capabilities of your adversary matter a lot.
2. MAD constrains both sides. It's unlikely that an unpopular Head of State getting kidnapped would warrant a nuclear first strike especially against a country like (Trump's) America, which would not hesitate to glass your whole country in response.
3. It's extremely risky to "try" a nuke, because even if it's shot down, does it mean your enemy treats it as a nuclear strike and responds as if it had landed? That's a very different equation from conventional missiles. E.g. Iran sends barrages of missiles because they expect most of them to be shot down. It's probably not calculating a scenario where all of them land and Israel now wants like-for-like revenge.
Heads of state are generally pretty good at delegating the C&C of their nukes to people they are pretty popular with. That's orthogonal to popularity polls of the populace.
You could automate the process or compartmentalize it enough so that no one knows they are essentially committing suicide. But in that case you are removing human reason from the loop and your system will be too sensitive.
Essentially you have an automated deadman’s switch. Either you tune it to be too sensitive and the thing goes off because you went out of contact for a few hours—likely resulting in your own death.
Or you tune it to be not sensitive enough and your attacker takes advantage of the delay to take control of or destroy the system.
Why care whomever is in power next? You could just do your job.
So, the solution is to press the nuclear button, get a couple hundred million dollars from an offshore account in Cyprus, and live in any country of your choice. Why care about polls in this hole, and what the US will do with this hole in response to the use of nuclear weapons?
The chances of all of those people escaping the country after nuking the US is close to zero. The entire country would mostly likely be completely destroyed before you could make it out. Even if you did make it out, your friends and extended family definitely won’t.
And good luck spending that money when the US is intent on hunting you down. In this scenarios your boss wasn’t safe with a nuclear deterrent, you’re definitely not.
I think this is a situation where even if Venezuela had nukes, this still would have happened.
a. Don’t use nukes, everyone moves one rung up the ladder. b. Use nukes. Ladder is destroyed, everyone dies horribly.
Using nukes only makes sense if everyone is going to die horribly anyway. It’s an empty threat otherwise.
Our systems are designed around ICBM detection.
A tactical/suitecase nuke like the old US Army Green Light teams wouldn't trigger that. In fact, it would likely take awhile to trace. The "limited nuclear war" concept.
We can see that nobody was going to resist the operation in Venezuela, so it doesn't really matter that Venezuela doesn't have nukes. Using nukes isn't just a matter of pressing a button, it involves a lot of people and processes - thus any significant opposition inside the force or just widespread sabotage will make it unusable.
But it seems equally likely to me that he was sold out by somebody in the VZ government/military. And that the paltry military resistance was because they saw direct confrontation with the US as suicidal.
Not impossible but certainly in the tinfoil hat range of possibilities.
It sounds stupid. Maduro has no way to enforce the deal, and the US has no incentive to fulfill this deal.
> We can see that nobody was going to resist the operation in Venezuela, so it doesn't really matter that Venezuela doesn't have nukes.
To use it, no resistance is matter. One person must do their job to launch a nuclear weapon. That's all.
> it involves a lot of people and processes
It doesn't matter. Nuclear deterrence exercises are conducted regularly. And their peculiarity is that no one except the person with the red button knows whether it's an exercise or whether the missiles will actually be launched this time.
So when the order to launch comes, many people will be performing a large number of complex processes which will result in the use of nuclear weapons. Because they regularly receive such orders and carry out these processes.
Clearly and empirically, BGP can shut off parts of the Internet, just as Trump wanted to do in 2015.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/dear-donald-trump-no-you-1322...