The teenage hitmen recruited to kill across Europe | Hacker News Reader

The teenage hitmen recruited to kill across Europe

bbc.com

50 points165944709124 comments

> violence-as-a-service (VaaS)

This being used unironically makes me sad.

This is a social problem and technology cannot solve this one.

If you don't solve what comes after the so-called "abundance", "UBI (doesn't work)", "utopia", "AGI" that is religiously being talked about here, it will unfortunately be paved with VaaS (violence-as-a-service).

It is a road we don't want to go down, but there are places on the internet where this is celebrated and getting normalized, ever since the UnitedHealth executive got Luigi'd.

To me, far more than it being about skyrocketing inequality and concern about where people will land in the future (though this is certainly part of it), the much larger social problem is the flippant disregard for others displayed by the wealthy and powerful with little to no consequence.

Propaganda outlets like Fox, Newsmax, and OAN can only distract people for so long in the face of increasing cruelty hitting more and more of them directly, and with neither party* seemingly interested in reversing course (despite lip service to the contrary), it wouldn't be surprising should a growing number of people believe it's time to move beyond the soap and ballot boxes.

* I won't claim that both parties are equally at fault, but if group A sets a fire and pours gasoline on it, while group B remains content to sit and watch things burn rather than try to put the fire out, I'm not sure it matters.

> UBI (doesn't work)

[citation needed]

All the research says it will work.

All the trials say it will work.

The only things I've seen that say it won't work are "economists" who believe in trickle-down economics, and armchair psychologists who claim that if you give people enough money to survive without having to work, no one will ever work again (trivially disprovable by observing people who inherited staggering wealth, and yet chose to go into business).

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2022/09/violence-as-a-service-br...

VaaS: Its name suggests that it will be a scalable service.

The underlying problem in most cases (of youth violence across the world) is drug addiction. I recently spoke to someone who had to quit an overseas job and return home because his teenage son had started engaging in criminality, after a drug addiction problem at school. He was telling me how widespread the problem is, and how accessible drugs are to kids via online channels.

The underlying problem in most cases of drug addiction is poverty, or lack of human connection and meaningful work.

Yes, addiction has a physiological component in many cases...but people who are happy and fulfilled in their lives have a much, much easier time quitting highly addictive drugs than people who are poor, lonely, and disconnected.

In this specific case, the gang would not have existed if Sweden had stricter asylum laws and background checks in the 1980s-90s.

Much of the Foxtrot Gang is associated with the PUK as much of the Kurdish community in Scandinavia is Sorani (Kirkuk-Sulaymaniyah-Kermanshah)

It is strange that Sweden thought it was too peaceful and decided to import violent crime

Possibly to balance being one of the world's largest arms exporters?

Many such cases.

Denmark has no more room in its prisons. Opinions are shifting away from importing infinity third world migrants, and news media is now allowed to talk about it, but not enough to meaningfully shift votes in the last election, so it's going to be more of this for the forseeable future.

There's nothing wrong with asylum or immigration as long as it's also paired with vetting.

The issue is, vetting is hard and most countries suck at doing background checks due to a lack of staff.

It doesn't help if the decision to grant asylum becomes effectively irreversible.

You mean drug prohibition

No. I mean synthetic drug addiction. I know where you're going with this, and I once supported what you're saying; but there's enough evidence now (with addictive substances) to say that accessibility is going to make things worse.

Very concerning.

> Using the messaging app Signal, he guided Natland at every stage of his journey before handing him on to a logistics man with the username "1".

The same encrypted messaging platform most people here use are also used by criminals.

This will be another reason why Europe wants to either ban Signal (not a good idea) or have Chat Control legislation. We do not want any of that.

- the article should have been titled: Introducing Violence-as-a-Service (VaaS) on HN

Prediction markets going to make this worse

You have paedophilia as a service going on for decades , so doesn't really surprise you would get something like this.

"Since 2022, the Foxtrot Network is thought to have been responsible for about 35 murders as well as a number of attacks and attempted attacks on Israeli targets in Europe including two involving explosives and hand grenades. The gang recruits teenagers to carry out the attacks for cash, but it almost never has to pay out as they often get caught.

...

The leader of the Foxtrot Network, Rawa Majid, has fled Sweden and his later operating base in Turkey, and is now based in the Iranian capital Tehran. Police believe some of the VaaS attacks have been carried out for the Iranian regime, including a hand grenade attack on the Israeli embassy in Copenhagen, though other attacks are part of Foxtrot's drugs turf wars.

...

The links to the Iranian regime started after October 2023 when Majid fled to Tehran, Salihu said. 'He had to make a deal to be able to live freely in Iran, under condition that he and his network work for the regime.'

The Foxtrot Network and Majid were sanctioned by the UK government in April 2025."

This article on pay to kill is paywalled

It's accessible for me in the US. But if it's not available where you are, try here: https://archive.is/qjCGK

thanks; also in US perhaps they have a certain number of free articles a month thing

When the revolution comes, the BBC will be the first against the paywall.

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