A lot of people are saying it’s disconnected, but even if it was, if a string of your country’s top rocket experts started disappearing, you wouldn’t just sit idly by
What's sad is, 5-10 years ago, no adversary would think simply off-ing American scientists was effective strategy, America was a new scientist generation machine.
Now thanks to Research funding falling off a cliff and massive immigration restrictions, this is no longer true.
I really hate the discourse around this stuff. Like, yes, disguising murder as suicide is a thing and obviously three-letters agencies do it.
But someone saying publicly they're not suicidal gives you close to zero information. People with suicidal ideation almost never advertise it publicly because, one, there is a heavy amount of social stigma attached to it, and two, publicly declaring you're suicidal is a good way to get involuntarily committed to a mental health institution.
I see a ton of jokes on social media that go "remember, X is not suicidal". How the fuck would you know? This discourse is so disrespectful to people struggling with suicidal thoughts.
Then, you know, bringing up suicide and it being a warning sign they're about to? The odds have shifted a bit.
If someone is struggling with suicidal thoughts and is publicly lying about it, they shall not have my respect anyway: I'm ok with being disrespectful to them.
Things have changed. The weapon was acquired by DOD.
Ah, so a portable pulsed microwave device. Current phased array technology is certain to be able to produce a narrow and powerful beam. Current energy densities of batteries allow for a significant amount of portable power. Expecting to see "Show HN" on this soon...
It’s been a great source of fodder for conspiracy theorists though.
What if they're interrogated in an attempt to extract something very specific? The deaths could be kidnappings gone wrong.
X-Files music plays
I suppose the top AI talent may become subjects of a similar game.
So I can imagine American allies recruiting scientists en-mass, to protect themselves from America. The US has currently demonstrated a desire to take over allies completely (Canada, Greenland), and I'm sure few know who may be next. Some scientists may have simply wished to move abroad, and also, have quite valuable skills which are restricted in some way, hence them "disappearing".
not necessarily from America. The goal #1 of the US dominated NATO for example was to prevent Germany from getting nuclear weapons in exchange for protection by US. Now with US de-facto withdrawing, Germany would have to quickly get nukes (as well as missiles to carry them) - i don't see other option for Germany here giving the environment in Europe and MidEast. So they would also need such scientists. South Korea, Japan, Australia seem to be in the similar situation too. (and everybody understands that a nuclear weapons program can't be a long multi-year endeavor - somebody will try to stop you - and so it must be very fast once started, and thus you have to have ready-to-use skills and knowledge)
And at this point NATO has pretty much collapsed. Trump turned his back on Ukraine and nobody wants to join operation Epstein Fury.
No shit? Why would they have to? Is someone ready to nuke them if it turns out they’re no longer under the U.S. nuclear umbrella, or are they some special snowflakes who should have them while Iran (and most other countries) shouldn’t?
No. The nukes prevent the aggression even by a conventionally armed aggressor. Nukes ins't to win a war, it is to prevent one. Lets say Germany has successfully repelled Russian tank-and-soldiers invasion - it would still be a devastating thing for Germany which the nukes would help prevent from starting at all.
>are they some special snowflakes who should have them while Iran (and most other countries) shouldn’t?
Yes, i listed those several special snowflakes who were kept safe by the US nukes, and would need their own umbrella with US no longer providing the one. Iran's situation is obviously very different.
Yes, very different as in 'Our blessed homeland vs their barbarous wastes' meme.
We (and our allies) should have nukes because we want to prevent wars. But no one else should have them, since the situation is obviously very different (we wouldn’t want them to be able to prevent wars).
And I used to think that Little Rocketman was a crazy bastard, but it looks like I was wrong.
exactly. Iran's policy declaration of destroying whole countries (US and Israel in this case) and conducting of actual proxy-wars in order to achieve those goals make them barbarians from whom the civilization must be defended.
>we wouldn’t want them to be able to prevent wars
they don't even try. They want nukes to be able to conduct wars.
>And I used to think that Little Rocketman was a crazy bastard, but it looks like I was wrong.
absolutely. For all their tremendous faults, NK uses their nukes for deterrence as they want to genocide their own people in the comfort of personal safety. Whereis ayatollahs are hellbent on waging wars and destruction in order to spread their Islamic Revolution.
The "if" is doing the heavy lifting here. And universe has lot of "ifs". Here's one:
If this was a perfect distraction spun up to distract from Epstein files, it has succeeded and you have been had.