Hacker News Reader

Comment by mapt | Hacker News Reader

Both of these actions are extraordinarily illegal under US law and FAA regulation for a number of reasons. Among them - Permanently blinding a human pilot can be done at 1000 times the range that it takes to melt aluminum, and laser weapons are powerful enough that secondary scatter off shiny surfaces is a real hazard.

We have a civilian airspace, and we have laser weapons, and we have CBP/ICE MAGA militia dabbling in military work. No two of those are safe to have at the same time in the same place.

View on HN

The USA is moving away from concepts like 'laws' and 'illegal' and more towards a system based on vibes and bribes.

It’s always been a case of ‘if they can’t catch you/enforce it, it didn’t happen’.

It’s absurdly blatant now, however, and backlash is likely to be pretty crazy in 5ish-10ish years once it’s impacted enough people.

By then the opposition will have been renditioned to black holes or killed.

The current opposition maybe. No empire/government/strongman lasts forever.

Russia has been a basket case for the better part of the last 1,000 years.

History sucked for a very long time. It is not a natural law that things will just get better.

Sure, but it is a natural law that the specific strongman in charge dies eventually. So far at least.

Every tsar was different, Stalin and Lenin had their own flavors, etc.

Sure it may suck, but the flavor does change? And that is something!

Not if the democrats can help it

Laws and morality have always been bendable. It’s just that doing the bending requires a certain competence that was somehow lost.

It used to be they had enough shame to try to cover it up. That certainly is in the past!

I hate these free floating quotes and sayings, but maybe the “malice vs. incompetence attribution” idea applies here.

‘sufficiently persistent incompetence is indistinguishable from malice’? or did you mean a different quote?

"Vibes and bribes" is such a wonderfully apt description of our current regime.

Hey now, the system of “checks” and “balances” is still holding up - the checks clear, and the balances go up.

> We have a civilian airspace, and we have laser weapons, and we have CBP/ICE MAGA militia dabbling in military work. No two of those are safe to have at the same time in the same place.

Day of the Triffids, but only for small border city.

I'm rather confused by this. The military is a branch of the government. Are they really subject to the laws of the US & the regulations of the FAA? The Posse Comitatus Act is often cited here, but so long as the military force believes they are defending against a foreign force there is no actual prohibition on the use of force.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com