6,358 karma · joined February 11, 2014
Socials: - github.com/dmos62 - dominykas dot mostauskis at gmail ---
Yes, the Lithuanian tech in question is inferior, but that's sort of beside the point. The point is that it's a system unconvincingly reinventing what a significant Lithuanian ally has mastered. Further, the volunteer-based initiative begs the question: where are the state investments, official installations, official initiative in general?
I'm all for open-source hacking, volunteering, etc. But, state defence is a task for the state: defence development is too.
It is embarrassing to watch Baltic airports suspend traffic regularly because of Belorussian baloons or whole of Vilnius shuffling to underground parking structures because a drone-like radar blip appeared a few hundred kilometers away. We need meaningful investment in defence and we need it yesterday. A volunteer initiative to counter these modern airspace threats is so little so late that it's frankly upsetting.
As for deterrence, a volunteer organization for passive listening will not be part of the risk assessment in Kremlin. We need a political class that understands the price of kowtowing, the price of in-fighting, and a defensive capability that is meaningful.
As for concrete solutions, these are democratic governments: vote, discuss, don't be silent. This open-source initiative, as I said initially, is cute: and it might actually make waves where it matters: but my point this is not what we need in of itself.
Further, as I was saying before: cooperation with Ukrainians: trading technology, expertise: establishing long-term industrial relationships.
I don't know about condescension, but a degree of grounding is in order, I believe. European sense of defence is waking up, but it still needs a lot of stimulation, and patting ourselves on the back for some volunteer work is not that.
I think that in a product-centric or mission-centric perspective, effective automation is good, because it frees you up to do other important things. E.g., in gardening, time spent weeding, is time not spent surviving slug armageddon.
You can tell what kind of discussion this is by the fact that this question has to be asked.
I like imagining similar discourse when a more basic tool was invented: "A hammer is like a genie, it's all powerful, but, when you hit something with it, it interprets that super-literally, and it hits it."