The existence of this is fascinating and horrifying at the same time.
I wonder how he tests it though; when writing tons of YAML for K8s or Ansible, you usually test it in a test environment before putting it in production. Unlike the other cases though, a bug in your YAML here can literally lead people to lose their lives.
The actual horrifying part is that this is more of a coping tool than a warning system, as its utility as the latter is limited even in Kyiv. If you are not at the point of accepting your fate, but have already given up on attempting to get to actual shelter, you can set this up and only hide from glass shrapnel for an hour when the cruise missiles and killer drones arrive instead of hiding for hours while they fly all over the country through the gaps of air defense.
For anywhere closer to the frontline than Kyiv this is almost completely useless. Travel time of even non-hypersonic ballistics, hell, even of glide bombs is so short you'd be listening to your alarm and the sound of explosions almost simultaneously.
To see some statistics about the number and duration of air alerts in all regions of Ukraine, including number of media-reported explosions by region and time period, check out https://alerts.in.ua/en, they have a statistical summary section there. Click the hourglass button on bottom of the screen, then filter by time period.
The real question is why there isn't any official API that details the nature of the danger. You shouldn't have to scrape Telegram to figure out the type/speed of the air assault weapon, and the likely time on target.
BTW, also check out Kropyva, it's like Uber for artillery strikes. Very helpful with deleting Russians.
Let's not exaggerate. There are APIs that distribute the list of oblasts (regions) that are deemed to be under attack (for example https://alerts.com.ua/). The only problem is that you don't know if the attack is expected in 10 minutes, or 6 hours, and this is something that the military intelligence has, and could share with a small amount of effort. They effectively already share it via people running those channels.
Also, nothing stops you from redistributing the structured messages through multiple channels.
The problem is that you let the enemy know the detail of your intel. Using compartmentalization, they can locate leaks and determine how you are getting the intel.
As a military, you never want to give that away. Looking at WWII, the UK/US were able to decrypt messages daily from the Germans (thanks to Turing!), but they pretended they couldn't so the Germans wouldn't change their encryption scheme.
They share enough information to be useful to the civilians but not enough information to show capabilities. If everything is automated, the enemy can subscribe to the automation and work out radar capabilities, response times, and accuracy. Those are all terrible things for an enemy to use and abuse.
This is a significant mistelling of the history of the German "Enigma" device. Significant usage of Enigma was done during the war in a manner that was secure enough to prohibit interception.
Turing's methods are brilliant as are the contributions of numerous other cryptographers. They relied on numerous operational failures of some branches of the military to be possible. So it was not from "the Germans", but from specific branches of the military that failed to follow already established best practices
I'm not sure what you mean. They used daily weather reports to decrypt the enigma for that day, so I'm not sure how that is an operational failure. If you know part of the cleartext, it's possible to brute-force any encryption given enough time.
Sure, but those known text attacks were made significantly easier by German operators using (and reusing) non-random and easily guessable encryption parameters. Once the keyspace became small enough to search, they were able to brute force the encryption.
You're mentioning one technique as if it was the comprehensive method of compromising the Enigma. It was not. The example you give would only work for the Kriegsmarine transmissions for example. The Luftwaffe had its own system with its own operational failings.
Not an easy questions as it depends what's popular in the local market, you need to be where the users are even if you don't like it in cases like this. Telegram also has a great bot API, which makes it a harder sell to use alternatives (Signal, WhatsApp) or open technology like Matrix, where it's only useful for people that like to play around with technology and not regular people.
Journalists who are updating these channels have their own sources in the Ukrainian air defense network as well as OSINTers who, for example, monitor Russian radio traffic using SDR, or even sometimes have people on the ground observing the take-off of planes in Russia and Belarus (horrifically dangerous, but there are ways to send this information somewhat safely; planes tend to be loud). If one of the journalists goes down for any reason, there will be other people writing updates. Each oblast also has their own channels where they announce attacks, some of them owned by the local administration, some by the emergency services. The air defenders themselves are a bit too busy to monitor and write this stuff; often, the best they can do is to write some short messages into a group chat or a Telegram bot before things go down, and even then, all parties involved have to balance providing an appropriate warning window with not letting the timing of this information to reveal the capabilities and locations of different kinds of Ukrainian observation stations. And this whole system has to be simple, since not every trained air defender is tech-savvy in general. Many don't know what an API even is. Many Ukrainians, too, wouldn't understand how to work with an API, but they can read the warnings in Telegram.
Also don't forget that the journalists who curate monitoring channels often also accept reports about the flight paths of missiles and drones from the general public, and while there are a couple of apps for that as well that send data from the phone's GPS and compass while the user is pointing the phone at the object, again, it's a matter of having several information channels that non-technical people can easily use. Even just writing to one of them that you just heard a cruise missile fly by, specifying your rough location, can be helpful, since radar coverage is not 100%. These messages then get relayed back to the people in the Ukrainian AA who are trying to intercept these things in real time.
Then there are the obvious security concerns, personal communications and group chat access can be vetted and it's hard to break the anonymity of Telegram channels from the outside to even be able to target the authors' devices with cyberattacks. While an API must be open to the world, and thus it immediately becomes a target.
It's a messy system but it works.
Kropyva is not available to the general public and it's very far from the capabilities of similar NATO systems, its strength lies in the fact that it's an Android app that can be used on cheap tablets, so it doesn't rely on the military-industrial complex provided hardware, which is safer and more robust, but far more expensive.
I'm not sure what your implication is exactly regarding the HA community, but that aside;
I work in an industry that puts huge emphasis on the risks of software supply chain attacks; regardless of the community, in an ideal world, and in this situation, I too would be making sure any such code was very carefully reviewed by a trusted group of peers (including myself) and using signatures et al to ensure everyone is "getting what they paid for", so to speak.
This might not be relied on to the extent people's lives depend on it, but if it's important enough to use, it's important enough to be sure.
All of that said, it's easy enough for me to say when there isn't such a terrifying list of munitions raining down on my home when I'm trying to get some rest, so a simple step such as "not updating from a known-good configuration" might be enough.
I didn't think I'd ever read a programming tutorial on string matching Tu-95 take-offs and Kalibr launches in anything but a fictional setting, holy shit it feels so surreal. Like a modding guide for Cold Waters or something.
> Western media tend to portrait Israel in a negative light
Western media bend over backwards to report the official Israeli spin on events as often as possible and they still end up looking bad, mostly because people can get information from non-MSM sources as well.
The problem with the Palestine conflict is that there are way more than just two sides involved. People keep overlooking Iran. And the Syria disaster.
The counterintuitive bit is that a lot of western support for Israel also comes from neo-nazis who see Zionism as a perfect way to effortlessly remove the Jewish population from their home country and move it to Israel, like it's some sort of faraway colonial gulag.
Fascinating use of HomeAssistant. He mentioned uptime monitor in the next section - I wonder what he uses to ensure it stays online? I would guess some sort of UPS or battery backup.
Most of us have something in place since the winter of 2022 when the power outages were systematic due to russian strikes on civilians and infrastructure, amplified by lack of air defence. Most of us needed to work though so some got UPS, EcoFlows, generators, solar systems, even DIY batteries if the budget is low. This year it's more of the same.
What DIY batteries? Have you considered the new sodium/aluminum battery type? I am wondering if that battery could be easy to DIY because sodium and aluminum are cheap and available.
Using technology to improve lives is one thing, but using technology to survive missile attacks is just another level. Sometime I ask myself, will humans ever stop wars once and forever.
I don't think that would be stable. No war means losing the ability to fight which means eventually it'll be easy enough for just one small group to attack somebody much bigger but weaker.
If war is solved by all attacked countries surrendering immediately so one aggressor rules the world, I'm sure factions would emerge within it who are competing for power again.
Maybe a solution could come from some defensive technology permanently outperforming offensive technology? I think people would still find a way and the wars might be or begin by psychologically changing people's allegiances.
How about between Florida and New York? Or cities in red states vs their state government? It’s not zero anymore, especially when politicians challenging federal authority (eg Texas with border control) in obviously illegal ways.
We have numerous examples - Jan 6th, the Bundy standoffs, Oklahoma City, the Black Wall Street bombings - the risk isn’t zero.
That's because there's a common government that's more powerful than both of them and will stop any such war. But that common government still has to maintain its power with an army that can function.
Obviously civil wars happen all the time in places where there isn't a single powerful enough government to keep them suppressed.
Maybe you want one world government or a military alliance that includes every country and they all fight against any local wars no matter what. But what happens if some big enough group feels (or is) oppressed by that government and tries to fight it? Oppression by the majority forever is better than independence for anyone?
Seems to be just a few bad eggs that fuck it up for the rest of us. Everyone I know just wants to get along with their lives, deal with their own problems.
This is an overly broad and philosophical question. It's positioned far away. We could all get together for a cup of coffee and discuss this topic for ages.
A more grounded and practical question would be: why didn't Biden stop the war?
Now we're talking! One should expect lots of contradictory opinions, quite some hostility, a couple of MTG-like personalities with followers and of course this one specific comment downvoted to hell.
But see, that's exactly the point: opinions vastly differ on the same subject depending on whether the situation is a hypothetical one far away or a physical reality.
That’s wild. The amount of stress dealing with these attacks at any time of the day/night would likely age me by a decade. Then still expect to grind at work in a few hours or the following day.
It is wild, has been since Feb 2022, it's also "the new normal" we really want to get out of. (Not desperately enough to give in tho). Also keep in mind that this is only one of the stressors associated with war. Others include hearing about civilian casualties every week, reading and hearing horror stories from people who escaped occupation or were liberated (e.g. Bucha, Kherson...), learning about friends and acquaintances falling in battle, military draft, uncertain, but likely dire future prospects and the list goes on.
So yeah, days go like years. Don't repeat our mistakes and write to your representatives.
Inspiring and horrifying, in equal measure. When is the west going to understand that Putin respects only strength and grow a pair? We should be giving the Ukrainians everything they need. It is the right thing to do. But it is also the military bargain of the century - the Ukranians can continue to decimate the Russian Army and NATO doesn't have to lose a single soldier.
Or we can let the Russians win and have to deal with millions of Ukranian refugees. Probably followed by Russia attacking another country.
It's 2024, instead of riding our personal spaceships to habitat on Mars, we use Home Assistant software to alert us about incoming missile attacks.
War is the single most unproductive activity humans can do. Sure, maybe Putin has his rationale, but spiting on a cake is never how one can secure the cake for themself, because guess what, others can also spit on it and then the cake is ruined. A greater leader knows that the only way to really solve a problem is to do something that adds (instead of removes) value, sadly some leaders never care to learn it.
Rant aside, I want to ask a question: based on the article, it seemed that the system requires Telegram (thus Internet) and open source intel to work. Is it possible to make the system self-sustained? Is it physically possible to detect imminent attack based on soundwave/light signals? Because after the war started, Internet access maybe a difficult privilege.
> Is it physically possible to detect imminent attack
Yes. Air defense does this pretty consistently.
And then what? We (Ukrainians) have lost some components of the PATRIOT air defense system because we were out of interceptors. Imagine being an air defender on duty on the best hardware in the world, facing the missile incoming and being incapable of doing shit because you're empty because of... democracy. The very thing being protected right now from that specific missile.
Nice to see people able to use tech to help reduce/manage their stress/trauma in such horrific situations.
Good point about telegram. As much local control as possible is desirable. Do the text to speech interfaces work offline with the chosen devices ? If so, I’ll likely have a play.
I have a project that might be able to help with your situation. A Raspberry Pi based sound localization system. It’s very accurate. Last weekend I localized an explosion (fireworks) to within 20m from the actual location with 4 recorders. two of which were 3km from each other.
Unlike most ARUs (autonomous recording units) which are based on microcontrollers and need post processing to determine an event start time, the Pi system could be used as the basis for a real time localization system as the system times is sub microsecond accurate.
With likely a small amount of new development and co-operation with your friends you could be alerted in real time when artillery or gunfire is getting close to you. Along with a map location of where it was fired from
My license forbids government use (attaching consequences to the small developer unfriendly cyber resilience act that is stealing from small developers and giving to rich ones) but personal civilian use is just fine.
(PS. I agree on with the sentiments of the above authors about war. It’s sad that our governments instead of putting everything into driving to peace are spending our future climate change defence money on destruction and they are gunning for it with an insane appetite)
Not sure what you're trying to say. Global warming is a human activity, global warming is unproductive, global warming is caused by one human activity, that activity is unproductive?
Not sure if you are writing this in good faith or not, but let me assume you are:
The parent said "War is the single most unproductive activity humans can do", without giving much details about a metric (it is very productive if your business is to build weapons, but counter-productive if your business is to save lives).
But assuming that the metric was something along the lines of "doing good for society", then global warming is a lot more counter-productive than wars. Global warming and wars are the result of human activities (in case that was not clear).
So yeah, we would certainly save more human lives by keeping our wars (I mean, without nuking the whole planet) but working all together to reduce the impact of global warming. Meaning that IMHO, "war is NOT the single most unproductive activity humans can do". Not that it is good, quite obviously.
Mobile operators have added microphones to 4G cell towers throughout Ukraine to triangulate suspicious sounds.
Starlinks provide decentralized access to the Internet both on the frontline and back in the rear. Together with batteries, solar panels, and petrol/natgas/diesel generators, they can be relied on to provide 24/7 Internet access for a while even if something happens to the ISPs. Lots of people now have them even though they are a bit expensive, and the Ukrainian government had also set up a network of locations where civilians can gather to warm up, charge their devices, and send messages over Starlink, in the worst-case scenario of a major infrastructure breakdown.
More broadly, it's harder than it seems to knock out both the entire backbone of the Ukrainian Internet network and the backbone of the mobile carriers, at once. It's easier to target the power stations. Even then, it is possible to get at least some power as long as the fossil fuel logistics are maintained. A 180W solar panel that costs around $100 can, in decent weather, provide enough power to charge a phone and power a Starlink. So power is a major problem, but it also has solutions.
Some of the telegram channels are government run, so it's not just open source intel
Of course it would be possible to detect these things yourself, you would just need an extensive radar network covering 600k km2 of Ukraine, and as much of Russia as you can. You'll need quite a variety of systems to detect both hypersonic missiles and slow low flying drones.
> War is the single most unproductive activity humans can do.
I think I totally disagree with this. So many inventions have been the result of war, even outside of WW2/the Cold War.
For example, what would Israel look like today if there was no threat of since its founding? I doubt it would be anywhere near as advanced as it is today.
War is terrible, and I'm not advocating for it, but I don't think you could necessarily say it's unproductive.
This is just the same old disproven "hard times lead to strong men, strong men lead to good times, good times lead to weak men, weak men lead to hard times" nonsense.
If you paid any attention to what the talking heads driving the culture war discourse in the US have openly said about what they have been doing, it's obvious that the "culture war" is about as much the fault of progressives as the Ukraine war is the fault of Ukraine. "DEI" and "wokism" is just the current designated battleground after drag queens, "CRT", "BLM" and masks/vaccines. The goal is to frame non-issues as apocalyptic imminent threats in order to create political momentum for otherwise unpopular politics of rolling back civil justice advancements (e.g. gay rights, reproductive rights, Black rights, women's rights).
War does not lead to technological progress. War accelerates technological progress. A majority of groundbreaking research happens outside the private sector and war economies usually see more direct state control of the economy and more state involvement in R&D, supported by heavy public spending. If you want to take a lesson from war driving technological progress, you could just do this in peace times.
It sounds like the peace time decadence is not kerfuffles over pronouns but entertaining a privatized economy concerned more with ROI for investors than contributing to a shared public effort.
> If you want to take a lesson from war driving technological progress, you could just do this in peace times.
that's exactly the point though. unless we're threatened with annihilation, or at least loss of access to valuable resources, we as humans don't seem very good at this kind of thing. we'd rather spend it on corruption, bullshit jobs, vanity projects, etc.
Not at all. I think you've confused the word "progression" with "desperation".
Killing is the most basic instinct of animals, a dog can do that if aggravated enough. In fact, a stupid strong dog can be much more violent than a smart strong dog. It's not anything advanced, really. So as war, which is just a form of mass killings.
Peace, on the other hand, is more advanced. It takes a lot effort, maneuver, calculations and compromise to make it happen.
Technological progress will happen (if not happen in a better way) without war, it could be driven by market, or people's wish etc.
War makes people desperate, so they wish to have something to keep them safe immediately, including methods/tools that makes them good at killing (formally called "Defense"). That's why we humans figured out how to build nuclear bombs BEFORE nuclear power stations.
There are also countless example on how wars halted progress. Do you know how many scientists lost their lives because of wars? How many regular people and their potentials gets destroyed because of wars? And how high the reparation could cost to repair what's lost the wars?
All and all, calling "war leads to progress" is a complete void-filled nonsensical bullshit. Kerfuffles, if keeps people safe to enjoy their lives, is way more productive than that.
Isn’t history showing that letting aggressors nibble away at norms and borders and letting them get away with it ‘to avoid escalation’ is just emboldening the aggressor?
So countries should have attacked the US when it committed it's illegal wars in the middle east, to stop emboldening the aggressor? I don't think that would have created a better world.
It's easy to say things like this about your geopolitical enemies, but allies get away with it all the time.
Iraq attacks and takes over Kuwait. And then threatens to invade Saudi Arabia.
But US the the 'aggressor' for rolling this back?
And the US gets many allies and works through the UN to do this, but it is somehow 'illegal'?
It sounds like in your perfect world, Saddam keeps Kuwait, also gets Saudi Arabia, and the US just sits on its hands after terrorists kill thousands in NYC because being 'aggressive' is always bad no matter what.
This is just military production. It's like the growth you have when a hurricane destroys a city and you have to rebuilt it. It doesn't accumulate, it's just a waste.
BTW look up North Korean economy growth after the war :) North Korea was always the rich part. It was developing so fast after the war. And somehow now the South Korea has Samsung and Kia and Subaru, and North Korea has starvation.
North Korea was totally isolated from the world economy after the Soviet Union fell.
The only economic bloc which cut Russia off was American allies and there's nothing Russia gets from them which can't be supplied elsewhere.
Russia switched from buying German cars to buying Chinese cars and changed the logo on their McDonalds and Starbucks branches. They now have access to inferior imitation brie and french wine is 2x the cost now but they'll probably cope.
If military spending were the only thing pushing GDP up, the deficit would be showing up in throttled consumer spending. It isnt. Indeed, if the sanctions were working as intended the military wouldnt be able to produce either, but they obviously are.
Sanctions limit supply of goods but that’s not the real way they bite. They slow down the economy a bit. Worse alternatives are used. Domestic sales are lower. That slowdown accumulates as lost growth. Brie and Mercedes’s aren’t the point in and of themselves.
And for specialized items such as aircraft parts and chips, it forces them to do without or invent an equivalent local supply chain at enormous cost.
All that wasted money is diverted from making Russia stronger.
Russia is such a poor country compared to its neighbours that it’s very easy for them to have a lot of catch-up growth.
USSR and China were sanctioned as well during the cold war. There was intentional difference in how they were sanctioned to cause them to split off.
Both of these things worked as intended, causing USSR and China to work against each other and ultimately causing USSR to collapse. USSR was growing faster than the west early on. By 80s its economy was barely working.
It just takes time. Russia is in much worse starting condition already than USSR was in 70s, it is more isolated, it has less allies, it's further behind in tech.
If you want to believe Russia is doing fine, go ahead, it's just a very weird take.
Members of the Neo-Nazi Azov battalion were hosted in the British parliament just a few days ago. My jaw literally dropped when I saw the photo of bumbling buffoon Boris Johnson standing with them.
So we should tell the US to stop driving its ships and planes right on the Chinese border? And directly through the Taiwan strait.
Who is the aggressor in your mind here? Note: China don’t have any military assets off the US west coast… meanwhile then US has multi thousands of soldiers within staging distance of Chinese coast line from the very bottom to the very top.
US ships and aircraft stay in international waters and airspace near China, or in the territorial waters and airspace of allies who give it permission. That includes the Taiwan strait.
Allowing China to prevent US or other aircraft to operate in such international waters or airspace would amount to giving them control over it, which is why it’s important to have regular freedom of navigation sailings and flights.
Chinese ships and aircraft are violating the territorial waters and airspace of other countries in the region, especially in the South China Sea. It’s annexing territory that belongs to other countries. It’s not at all the same thing.
I see because the US border is near there? Not on the other side of the Pacific Ocean.
Anyone familiar with history, recall that Mexico was bigger? Did the Chinese get involved in that conflict? I guess what we are saying is they should have to stop an aggressor annexing territory?
Oh wait, but that was actual land, where as the annexing you are talking about is ocean… ocean that the US has filled with military bases. Do you think the conflict between China Vietnam and Philippines is unrelated to US activity? Maybe you should lookup a map if US military bases and perhaps you’ll change your mind in who the aggressor is.
China, except for Tibet and Korea (Both neighbouring countries) has never invaded another country. Should we look at the US? Just in that region It’s invaded Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Laos, China directly. Philippines indirectly.
So countries may only send their aircraft and ships along their own border now? Anyone is free to operate in international waters. And, yes, Chinese military ships do at times sail just outside US territorial waters to monitor naval exercises.
It’s quite telling that the examples you have to bring up of the US annexing territory are from over a century ago, before we had developed modern concepts of international law. We’re supposed to be past the era of annexation by force.
The area that China is annexing is not empty ocean, it’s a set of islands that belong to other nations, like the Philippines. Those are not theirs to take, and it’s a breach of international law, but their military power and UNSC veto means they can get away with it.
And, no, the conflict is not because of US activity. It’s because China, as it quite openly states in various forms including its doctrines, believes it has the right to regional hegemony over neighbouring countries. They, in turn, obviously don’t want that, so they’ve invited the US in as an ally. None of those are ‘aggressor’ moves toward China, because even the largest US military facilities in the area only have sufficient forces for defensive actions, not for an attack on mainland China.
The US didn’t invade Korea, it was part of a United Nations force protecting South Korea from attack by the north. It invaded Japan after being attacked first at Pearl Harbor. It was invited into South Vietnam, at the time under attack from North Vietnam. Laos I’ll give you, that was illegal and unacceptable. The US has never invaded China, it had a post-war force at the request of the then-government to disarm and repatriate the remainder of the Imperial Japanese Army from Manchuria. Similarly, it liberated the Philippines from the Japanese and immediately restored its pre-war democratic government. That’s not an ‘invasion’ as you cast it.
Of course of this is to say the US has always done good or is perfect. Far from it. But your whataboutism and insistence that China has done no wrong is ridiculous.
In the past two decades alone China has been in border disputes and land grabs with nearly all its neighbours, encroaching on territory in India, Bhutan, and the South China Sea. This should not be considered acceptable either.
None of my examples (except China) were from over a century ago, nor were they from before the United Nations (or League of Nations existed).
Guess you need to look at the nations that took part in the various battles during the annexation of Hong Kong, Opium Wars etc. The US was not involved?
Didn’t say China has done nothing wrong, just if we are looking at nations that need to be reigned in. The US has done more to damage other countries sovereignty than basically the rest of the world combined. So it seems weird to focus on China…
So the US is just protecting Phillipines sovereignty… randomly? Interesting take on it. I wonder why they don’t care about Myanmar… same region… very clear cut destruction of a democracy (which was the reason they went to Vietnam…)
Or even Australia, that time they assisted in the sacking of a prime minister to protect their mining interests. Or the fact they passed laws to try to undermine nations (specifically its allies)to purchase drugs as a whole to prop up the pharmaceutical industry.
It’s not whataboutism. It’s the US is shit to everyone, and the fact that people even talk about China (unless you’re a Uighur, Tibetan, or Filipino) is just falling for US propaganda.
> None of my examples (except China) were from over a century ago, nor were they from before the United Nations (or League of Nations existed).
I was referring specifically to the example you provided of US annexation of formerly Mexican territory. As far as I know the US hasn't annexed territory since 1945. Which is also when the world collectively changed its approach in an attempt to avoid great powers creating another World War, and shifted to a model where annexation by force is a bad thing. Rather have stable borders shifted by appeals to the ICJ than by rolling tanks over the borders. It has never been a perfect system, of course, but by and large it held as a set of norms until recently.
> Didn’t say China has done nothing wrong, just if we are looking at nations that need to be reigned in. The US has done more to damage other countries sovereignty than basically the rest of the world combined. So it seems weird to focus on China…
That's a very myopic US-centric view, and I think one that can only be held because there's much more accessible
> So the US is just protecting Phillipines sovereignty… randomly? Interesting take on it. I wonder why they don’t care about Myanmar… same region… very clear cut destruction of a democracy (which was the reason they went to Vietnam…)
I never said it was random. Clearly, it's also of strategic value to the US. I said it's because they were invited in by those countries, and remain only because the democratically-elected governments that host them continue to renew those agreements and alliances because it's in their interests too. Myanmar is run by a military junta that doesn't want to be an ally of the US. In contrast, South Vietnam invited the US in.
> It’s not whataboutism. It’s the US is shit to everyone, and the fact that people even talk about China (unless you’re a Uighur, Tibetan, or Filipino) is just falling for US propaganda.
That's exactly whataboutism, and the fact that you think that nobody should even talk about China unless they're Uighur, Tibetan, or Filipino just proves the point. Everyone has an interest in a peaceful, stable, and fair global order, and that means opposing the actions of any country that threatens it whether it's the US, China, Russia, or any other power. China's clearly stated ambitions to take over Taiwan by force, for instance, would massively and negatively impact the rest of us through the knock on effects to the global economy and the shortage of key electronic parts like chips.
It’s not nobody should talk about China, it’s that it literally hasnt done anything worth talking about compared with a whole host of countries…
If you think the view is myopic… how about you challenge it? Who’s disturbed more foreign nations than the US? Like in the history of civilisation.
Myanmar was not run by a junta, it was a democracy and they did invite the US and are desperately asking for help right now… just like Vietnam did. So what is different?
I would say because the US only wants to fuck with China and couldn’t care less about these other nations. Which you also admit is the case. What is “strategic” about protecting the Philippines? The answer is China, most specifically “containing China” - but why “contain” a country that has never expressed ill will towards you?
Is the US also containing India?
It is like people purposely pretend the US are the “Good guys” and ignore any other possibility.
If you point this out, it’s whataboutism (a made up term pretending to be a fallacy used generally to justify American exceptionalism)
The US was rightly condemned for its invasion of Iraq, and more should have been done by the world’s nations to prevent it. We have that opportunity with China and Taiwan now, and letting it happen just because other major powers have done stuff too would be a mistake.
The USSR (and now Russia) and China have ‘disturbed’ just as many foreign nations as the US. Both have long pursued interventionist foreign policies, covertly and overtly supporting sub-national groups that worked in their interests. Even in the most recent years we have Russian intelligence causing a string of coups throughout Africa and funding and supporting disruptive extremist groups, and China has been caught spying on the African Union’s governance structures in order to influence continental policy and coerce leaders.
It’s less publicised and less visible because, unlike the US, neither Russia nor China have a free and unfettered press and civil society who can obtain and report on leaks and other embarrassing information.
It’s not enough that Myanmar was a democracy, because soon after winning elections that administration launched a genocidal campaign against the Rohingya. There’s also no strategic interest for the US there. As I said earlier, alliances happen when the two align.
The US’s strategic interest in that area is not to ‘fuck’ with China, but to preserve a rules-based order that’s open for international trade. If China is allowed to take over the entire South China Sea and other surrounding areas they can close it to any traffic whenever they want, they’ll be more easily able to take over Taiwan and maybe even countries like the Philippines, and there’ll be nothing stopping them from annexing more and more territory. We saw in the 1930s what allowing this sort of thing can lead to. I’d say it’s in all our interests, not just the US’s, that China not be allowed to simply annex more territory. I’d similarly be opposed to the US or any other country trying to annex territory by force.
China has been rightly condemned for "speaking" of invading Taiwan. What would you like the world to do for this "thought crime" given no invasion has occurred? Surround the country in military bases? We've done that, has that helped defuse the situation?
China have pursued interventionist policies? You are going to need to cite that. Which African leaders did China coerce?
Your reasoning for "less publicised and less visible" doesn't make sense... couldn't the "free press" of the US shine a light on it? Taiwan has a free press...?
I think you need to understand Myanmar better, it was the military that launched the genocidal campaign, and it was the military that overthrew the democracy. Converting a state that shares a land border with China to be an ally of the US feels way more strategic than the Phillipines... or even Taiwan for that matter (sans the microchip manufacturing capacity).
"Rules based order" - Wow, straight out of "Western nations' talking points". You honestly sound like the communists quoting Mao from the little red book. Is the US following this rules based order? Seems to me China is following those rules more than the US ever did. Which rules is china breaking?
Like when the US signed the treaty that said space would not be militarised, then it created the "space force", and banned china for the ISS.
Or that it wouldn't imprison people unfairly (according to both its own constitution AND its international treaties), so it created prisons on foreign soil to imprison them unfairly.
Or that it helped establish the United Nations but then lied to them, and ignored them when it invaded Iraq... well and Pakistan... which no one even mentions.
When it established the five-eyes then used that infrastructure to spy on its own allies.
Did you mean domestically? Like how it impeached its last president twice, has since convicted him as a felon... so he can't vote? But can still run as president? That rule based system?
> China has been rightly condemned for "speaking" of invading Taiwan. What would you like the world to do for this "thought crime" given no invasion has occurred? Surround the country in military bases? We've done that, has that helped defuse the situation?
Has it been? Where are the peace campaigns arguing against an invasion? The urges to use diplomatic methods and to win over the Taiwanese public for a peaceful 'reunification' if that's what they want?
> China have pursued interventionist policies? You are going to need to cite that. Which African leaders did China coerce?
Through both espionage[0][1][2] and economic and political coercion.[3][4][5]
>Your reasoning for "less publicised and less visible" doesn't make sense... couldn't the "free press" of the US shine a light on it? Taiwan has a free press...?
Do you think Chinese officials or whistleblowers involved in those programmes are going to speak to American or Taiwanese media? Seriously? These leak in democratic countries because there is a domestic free press that people can speak to. Russian and Chinese officials are not going to pick up the phone to the New York Times or the Washington Post...
>I think you need to understand Myanmar better, it was the military that launched the genocidal campaign, and it was the military that overthrew the democracy. Converting a state that shares a land border with China to be an ally of the US feels way more strategic than the Phillipines... or even Taiwan for that matter (sans the microchip manufacturing capacity).
The US and other Western countries condemned the coup and instituted sanctions against the military officers involved. What more do you want them to have done, invade?
>"Rules based order" - Wow, straight out of "Western nations' talking points". You honestly sound like the communists quoting Mao from the little red book. Is the US following this rules based order? Seems to me China is following those rules more than the US ever did. Which rules is china breaking?
This is not an American concept, it's a global one created in the aftermath of WW2's immense destruction, aiming to encourage countries to resolve disputes peacefully though diplomacy and the use of international institutions like the United Nations and the International Court of Justice. And that violent interventions should follow international law and be channeled through the United Nations Security Council where the immediate principle of self defence doesn't apply. The United Nations Secretary-General often refers to the term and concept.[6][7]
The US broadly follows it, though as I've said before I regard the invasion of Iraq as being contrary to it and a black mark on the US's history and credibility. I'd say that secret CIA 'black sites' and extraordinary rendition fall in the same category and are rightly condemned. China is not following it in many cases, including Tibet, its encroachment on Bhutan, its threats and promises to invade Taiwan, and its takeover of the South China Sea. It's following a traditional 19th century view of 'might makes right' and annexation by force.
Once again, this is not a 'US good, China bad' debate as you seem so eager to turn it into. We can and should condemn any country that acts this way, whoever it might be.
Show of force, easy as that. Pirates get deterred when cargo ships have gunmen armed to the teeth with AK-47 and look for easier targets, Russian ships get deterred from Ukrainian autonomous naval drones, and China gets deterred if random fisher boats get escorted in their territorial waters by an US carrier group.
I checked (for those unfamiliar with western terms, this is 南沙諸島) and it seems like Taiwan also has territory claims there, does it mean Taiwan is also attacking foreign soil right now?
What's the difference? Do you mean that Taiwan's claim is purely on paper and they actually admit it's Philippines territory because they did nothing to vessels around?
Also, according to Wikipedia page [1]:
> The Republic of China (ROC), which ruled Mainland China before 1949 and has been confined to Taiwan since 1949, also claims all of the Spratly Islands.
and under "Military occupations":
> Occupied by Taiwan (ROC)
> Centre Cay, Zhongzhou Reef
> Itu Aba Island, Taiping Island
What would you do? Install a favorable dictator? Thanks to warmongering there isn't much of a diplomatic route to peace where we still need it. Petty ulterior motives held by world 'leaders' have made it hard.
"Controversy surrounds that appointment, since it was alleged - first in a Tortoise Media podcast and then in the Sunday Times - that the peerage was granted despite a warning from the security services that it posed a national security risk."
People were very happy to overlook Russian misbehavior so long as the money kept coming.
Some form of action should have been taken when they invaded Crimea in 2014 and Georgia 2008. But even in retrospect its hard to say what except shutting down Nordstream and stopping investments. I still find it difficult for Europe to accept going to war with Russia over Crimea, but I guess this timeline is worse. Sanctions has limits, like we see with North Korea and Venezuela. The worst part of this timeline is that we guarantee that the only way a autocrat is safe, is when he has nukes.
> What would you do? Install a favorable dictator?
Oh, there's a lot between not doing anything at all and repeating the mistakes from Iranian days:
- provide economic / humanitarian aid contingent on progress in democratic values and actually audit where the money goes. This ended being effective around 2010 when China began hitting the global stage though.
- supporting countries or democratic, pro-Western parties/groups that are threatened by an aggressor (e.g. every former Soviet state)
- when supposed "allies" end up funding our enemies (e.g. Saudi-Arabia, who not just financed Bin Laden and is the main ideological driver in fundamentalist madrasas (religious schools) all over the world, thus being the main contributor to Islamist terrorism), cut them off. Hell the Saudis butchered a journalist (a father of U.S. citizens) in an embassy and we didn't do shit. Instead, we allow Saudi-Arabia and Qatar to host fucking World Cups. What a bunch of bullshit.
- aggressive, actually effective sanctions instead of just making the lives of a few oligarchs a tiny bit more difficult
- increase our own security posture in terms of military and provide a credible retaliation threat towards any potential aggressor
- invest into academic research on other countries. That one got shamefully disbanded after the collapse of the USSR and the shift towards prioritizing STEM over humanities - we now lack the academic capacity for actually understanding other countries or provide actual evidence-backed advice to politicians. Instead we got completely dependent on think tanks and consultancies.
- respond in-kind to Russia and China banning Western activities: they effectively force pro-democracy organizations to close shop? Fine, no more Chinese police stations in Western countries. They engage in cyberwarfare? Fine, we cut them off from the Internet. They refuse to allow Western countries fair and equal access to their markets? Fine, we ban investments from China and force-divest existing investments, and raise tariffs on their exports.
The last part is the easiest... over decades we believed in "change by trade", we hoped that they would become similar to us culturally. That worked in certain areas - McDonald's and Coca-Cola show that - but politically, we didn't give a slightest interest in both countries getting ever more authoritarian. And now it's biting us in our collective arses.
> supporting countries or democratic, pro-Western parties/groups that are threatened by an aggressor (e.g. every former Soviet state)
Every one? I am from one of those states, and most of them are even worse democracy-wise than Russia.
The only thing we have over Russia is not going after neighbors' territories, and even that's debatable (see conflicts between Armenia and Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan vs Tajikistan).
Your governments do overlook serious human rights violations, though, when it suits them. We had widespread protests in January 2022 that were brutally suppressed by the government, which ended up killing more than 300 protesters (that's according to official figures that are thought to be undercounted).
No fucks given by Western propaganda or government talking heads because several European, US, and Canadian companies have massive investments in our oil, gas, and minerals industry.
About six months ago Macron visited Astana to beg for uranium fuel after France got kicked off from Niger, and a group of political activists tried to seize the rare moment and did everything they could to meet him for a few minutes and talk about human rights violations in our country. You can probably guess the result of that endeavor.
One of the major gas projects (managed by Shell IIRC) ends in 2030, and I have a strong suspicion "human rights violations" will become a permanent theme in our relations right after that moment.
> Every one? I am from one of those states, and most of them are even worse democracy-wise than Russia.
I agree, and part of the cause is that us Western countries don't give a shit. We don't even give a shit about those countries right on our border like Ukraine or Bosnia.
> No fucks given by Western propaganda or government talking heads because several European, US, and Canadian companies have massive investments in our oil, gas, and minerals industry.
Or because they were bought off such as in the case with the massive corruption by Azerbaijan.
> About six months ago Macron visited Astana to beg for uranium fuel after France got kicked off from Niger, and a group of political activists tried to seize the rare moment and did everything they could to meet him for a few minutes and talk about human rights violations in our country. You can probably guess the result of that endeavor.
My opinion of Macron is probably just as low as yours, the only thing the guy can do is talk. All talk, no act.
People talk too easily about countries as if they are a person. I have lived in the east, I have lived in the west: every actual person has problems, everybody thinks their problems should come first, too many people have the tendency to think "outside influence" is very strong and lots of people think they have "the solution" which is different than what their government does.
At the end of the day I think the (boring) truth is that many countries end acting similarly to the average citizen. Including their fears, stupidities, insecurities and knowledge.
Yes, "the west of Europe" does not care as much as some people think about "the east of Europe", same way "the east of Europe" does not care that much about I don't know, Yemen, Myanmar or Sudan (just to name places with horrible conflicts that nobody seems to care about, unless they delay their Amazon package by a couple of days...).
Eh, it wasn't as much a jab against France or Macron in particular, as just an example of the general policy. Pretty much all of Europe (and US, and Canada) behave in a similar way and see us as a well of natural resources to be scooped out dry and then thrown aside. Some people here call it a new form of colonialism. Every country follows their interests and that's fine, as long as we don't hear lectures about this or that thing while those same lecturers behave in a hypocritical way contrary to what they're saying.
Edit: as opposed to China and Russia that pour serious money into large infrastructure projects like the new Silk Road. Russia has only started doing this recently, though. People have their reservations about those countries, but can't help but see the difference between e.g. China that builds railroads and power plants, and Western countries that only suck out money, paying tiny salaries to local workers and circumventing things like air pollution regulations.
Well, the EU could have put a ban on selling riot control gear to Putin's forces back in 2012 when he used it to suppress massive pro-democracy protests in Moscow, not in October of 2022 like they actually did. This set the tone for everything that happened afterwards.
I said this already under a (now flagged and dead) comment, but it's worth repeating — "your" (not your personally) one-sided propaganda and continuing support for Putin (if indirect) have made "you" lose whatever anti-war and pro-West opposition there was in Russia. I only wish we'd seen how convenient Putin is for "the West" a decade earlier. This was particularly obvious in June 2023 during the short and failed putsch of Wagner PMC. If you care at all, you can dig into my comment history from the beginning of 2022 and see how my own opinion has changed. It's a pretty typical example, I think.
Things I would not do. Basically anything that Joe did, do the opposite.
In 2014, when Joe was VP and lead person on Ukraine, I would not have refused to give lethal aid to Ukraine. And when Ukraine used our training to try to take back Crimea, I wouldn't have chastised the Ukraine government for trying to resist Putin.
When Putin built up forces on Ukraine's border to restart hostilities in 2021/2022, I would not have cowardly evacuated all US personnel from the country. I would have surged more in to deter.
When Putin restarted invasion in 2022, I would not have conditioned lethal aid on not shooting across border, tying Ukraine's hands. Instead, I would have conditioned it on attacking any military or military supporting targets anywhere in the theatre of war. Since Russia has defined the boundaries of this as well within their country, they only have themselves to blame for how deep these weapons would reach into Russia. Then we wouldn't have the ridiculous situation we just had where Putin was able to get his forces ready for the Kharkiv offensive in plain view, but Ukraine was not allowed by Joe to attack them until they actually started crossing the border.
There was a peace deal before (Minsk agreement). Agreements with Russia are not worth the paper they're signed on. Any peace deal Putin is willing to sign is just to consolidate his gains and get more time to prepare for another attack.
The thing is he planned an invasion for a long time, and failed quite badly at it - the first weeks there was barely any aid to Ukraine and still Ukrainians managed to push the Russians back.
This is not that much about US or Russia interests, but about Ukrainians and they are currently fighting the Russians for 2 years. Implying they have no choice or they are only manipulated seems more like propaganda (will let the reader decide for whom). Many east Europeans still have memories about what it meant to be under Russian influence and oh boy that was shitty... No need for propaganda there.
US and Russia made aggression wars, but while they imagine they are "world powers" they don't seem to have a great track record unless the population in that country does not firmly oppose (just the most obvious examples: Afghanistan - couple of times each, Vietnam, Ukraine)
It'll make interesting Hollywood movie, but not going to matter when it's Russia invading Ukraine.
US is going to let both collapse then rebuild New Ukraine where it is, and it'll be 100% Western country because of that. Plus few more around. All because of Russian footgun.
I like to call it people's revolution. You can go to Ukraine and ask the people around what they think about the Euromaidan instead of reading conspiracy theories from Russian propaganda.
> I mean, imagine if Brazilian intelligence backed a coup in Mexico, then built several military bases, intelligence bases and black sites across the country, then used them against US interests.
So you're saying the US would invade Mexico in that case?
There was no "CIA-backed coup" in Ukraine. A president that caved in to Russian pressure to back out of tighter economic relations with the EU saw massive protests in response, ordered to shoot protesters, killed over a hundred of them, and then fled the country when he understood that he would be facing criminal charges. Ukrainian parliament deposed him with votes 328-vs-0. Even members of his own party voted against him.
The joint spy bases were established after Russia invaded Ukraine to monitor what's going on in the invaded parts of Ukraine.
> I mean, imagine if Brazilian intelligence backed a coup in Mexico, then built several military bases, intelligence bases and black sites across the country, then used them against US interests. Would the US really put up with that? Should they? The hypocrisy is real.
Imagine if the United States invaded Sonora and Baja California under the excuse that they're protecting Americans there, looted factories and other businesses, established concentration camps, tortured and executed anyone who resisted, forced millions to flee their homes as refugees and gave their property away to settlers from landlocked states of the US ("I've always wanted to live by the ocean!"), and started forcibly conscripting all Mexican males from Sonora and Baja California into fighting against the rest of Mexico. And imagine that you blamed Mexico and its allies like Brazil for propping up defenses along the remaining border. A bit insane, don't you think?
No there wasn't, and the article you linked is from one of those bottom-feeders who keeps circulating long-debunked anti-American conspiracy theories. And the NYT article you linked earlier says that CIA provided instructors for Ukrainian commandos in 2016, which is two years AFTER Russia invaded Crimea and Donbas in 2014. 2022 was only a renewed assault on Ukraine.
> What are they actually doing wrong on the world stage
Threatening their peaceful, democratic and de facto independent neighbour, Taiwan, might count. They're doing it right now, encircling the island with military vessels.
I don't know which government is yours, but in Taiwan there's no need for any FUD, China does everything it can to make people fear it.
I've seen you touting your opinions as "the world waking up" but I hope the downvotes make you realize that they are in fact not representative, no matter how much your TikTok bubble tells you otherwise.
That's what you seem to think, when in reality your opinions are extremely controversial. I don't really need to argue about this. The downvotes and flags speak for themselves.
Any opinions/arguments that go against government narrative are going to be controversial - it doesn't mean such arguments should be dismissed out of hand.
FYI, you are breaking HN rules by talking about downvotes.
> And please stop spreading anti-Chinese sentiment - it's bordering on racism. When was the last time China invaded another country? What are they actually doing wrong on the world stage, other than being more economically powerful than the US?
There's boatloads of evidence of Chinese fishing fleet fishing illegally (and way too much) even as far away as Africa [1]. Then there's the constant saber rattling around Taiwan, going as far as to "punish" Taiwan for having a clean, fair election just recently. And then there's the territorial takeover of Philippine land [2].
China is hardly unique in fishing waters they aren't meant to. Plenty European countries, including France and Spain, have been doing that kind of thing for decades.
But the west isn't (literally!) up in arms over that; all the anti-Chinese rhetoric spewed forth by the five eyes is transparent BS, likely designed to manufacture domestic support for when the US decides China needs some "good ole US democracy".
China building small bases in disputed territory is slightly concerning, but given how the US builds bases all over the world, it feels deeply hypocritical for the US to complain about China enhancing it's defencive posture - especially with all the anti-Chinese sentiment coming from US Congress.
Im just a guy who knows people on both sides....? The "russian bot" argument is crazy weak, the only prevalently parroted opinion here is the opposite.
Russia are the ones bombing both Syria and Ukraine. And no I dont feel sorry for Iran who are the ones helping Russia bomb Ukraine. Both Iran and Russia have blood on their hands.
History did not start on Oct 7, that's deceptive framing. Before Oct 7, Israel was already murdering more Palestinian children. That's the main difference.
5 Feb 2024 — At least 507 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank in 2023, including at least 81 children, making it the deadliest year for Palestinians since the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) began recording casualties in 2005. [https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/02/shocking-spik...]
I wonder how he tests it though; when writing tons of YAML for K8s or Ansible, you usually test it in a test environment before putting it in production. Unlike the other cases though, a bug in your YAML here can literally lead people to lose their lives.