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Comment by WatchDog | Hacker News Reader

> ...the Department of the Interior settled on a single justification for blocking turbine installation: a classified national security risk.

To speculate on what this risk is, the two obvious risk I can think of would be:

- Susceptibility to seabed warfare[0]. A rival nation can sabotage the infrastructure and maintain deniability, like we have seen with the Nord Stream sabotage[1].

- Potential interference with passive sonar systems, the turbines are likely to generate a fair bit of noise, which could potentially make it harder for SOSUS[2] to detect rival submarines.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seabed_warfare

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

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOSUS

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If the latter were true, the permits would have never been granted. The permits took years of back and forth, public and government commentary.

The former is a threat vector but one that can be priced into the ongoing maintenance costs.

> A rival nation can sabotage the infrastructure and maintain deniability, like we have seen with the Nord Stream sabotage.

We didn't see that with Nord stream. It was not a rival nation, but an allied one unfortunately. And Germany did nothing. Zero.

Sometimes, not to do something can be the right (morally, technically, economically, ...) thing to do.

You don't always need to present the other cheek to do right. Neither do you always need to retaliate.

Nord Stream finally made it clear to Germany that "convenience" isn't a durable energy market strategy.

It's not correct though that Germany has done "nothing". The suspects are pursued by Germany, https://www.dw.com/en/nord-stream-poland-blocks-extradition-... so there's that.

If you mean though whether there's a will in Germany (nevermind a commitment or funding) to rebuild Nordstream ... you're right, nothing has happened

What happened was beyond reprehensible. If the winter of 2022 was not unusually warm and the gas stockpiles had emptied, not only would the entire Eurozone (350 million people) have plunged into a massive economic crisis, but people would literally die.

Convenience, and cheap gas, was definitely a good strategy. Up until the point where our ally, the USA, would try to get Ukraine to NATO, provoke Russia to invade, and then help the Ukrainians blow up the pipeline.

The world is moving away from the US and I really cannot wait. They have done much more damage globally than good.

How many Ukrainians are you willing to let Russians kill in return for cheap gas?

No Ukrainian would've died if they hadn't flirted with Nato.

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