Hacker News Reader

Russia is great at stuff that can be automated cheaply like influence campaigns. They're not so great at physical hardware and logistics and so forth. Not everyone is good at everything.

Messing with elections by fooling the most volatile and eager to be fooled is not a genius move.

> and being a moment away from conquering Europe while simultaneously being too incompetent to beat Ukraine

TBF, I don't think anyone has seriously espoused this fear since the war in Ukraine bogged down. It's become very clear that NATO folks overestimated Russia's conventional military capability - and along with the Russians, underestimated how rapidly drone warfare was evolving.

The cold-war era risk still facing us is more that one of the unhinged megalomaniacs currently in power in Moscow/Washington decides to press the big red button and end it all

An animal is most dangerous when deeply wounded.

Let me remind you that launching nuclear weapons close to your border is an issue, launching them half a continent away not so much.