He's not though. He was probably given some version of that statement as part of a briefing, but more importantly his businesses and campaign finance were incredibly entangled with Russian money and oligarchs at pretty much every level[1,2], not to mention his bizarre interactions with Putin.
This was his version of simply yelling the same insult back at people he didn't like: and he really didn't like Merkel (or any European leader) because unlike the despots and dictators they wouldn't just suck up to him (notably Shinzo Abe figured him out immediately and went all in on the obvious play for favor[3])
My explanation is that it doesn’t actually take a lot of deep thought to understand this dynamic. The guy who runs your local hardware store could’ve figured this one out, given the information.
The problem is that the over “educated” and credentialed class of political elites weren’t ever taught elementary common sense in their textbooks, and have never operated within institutions that have held them accountable for it.
Ergo the outsized elite hatred for Trump among the managerial elite caste, who shone a spotlight on the astonishing triviality of their ineptitude.
> Ukraine can choose whatever allies it damn pleases.
According to the existing international conventions of sovereignty that imply recognising and adhering all previous mutually signed declarations, Ukraine actually cannot choose whatever it wants, as it would violate one of the conditions (military bloc neutrality) under which their sovereignty was granted to them by the USSR in 1990 in the first place, which Russia is a legitimate successor of.
The Declaration on the State Sovereignty of Ukraine from 1990 [1], states it clearly in Chapter IX: "The Ukrainian SSR solemnly declares its intention to become a permanently neutral state in the future, which does not participate in military blocs and adheres to three non-nuclear principles: not to accept, produce or acquire nuclear weapons".
Ukraine's constitutional sovereignty has always been and still is predicated on following the signed conditions until further official negotiations and subsequent referendums, whether you like it or not.
Russia also promised not to invade or threaten the territorial sovereignty of Ukraine in exchange for Ukraine giving up their nuclear weapons, under the Budapest Memorandum.
You cannot have it both ways, and say that Russia is allowed to threaten Ukraines sovereignty because of a USSR era declaration, when Russia itself is violating declarations that they gave too Ukraine.
In practice, former USSR countries or Finland are joining NATO precisely to be protected from some "brotherly help and selfless liberation" dispensed by the Kremlin several decades down the line.
A collective entity like NATO would have to become collectively mad (not just one president, but many of them) to actively attack Russia, which still has a massive stockpile of nuclear weapons, theoretically capable of wiping humans off the Earth several times over.
And what would the casus belli even be? The only thing Russia surely has is plentiful natural resources, and it is cheaper and easier just to buy them than to wage an extremely costly and destructive war. The main mining/production regions are deep inland anyway, thousands of miles away from NATO borders.
Unless you buy their idea that "those scheming Westerners envy us our eternal glory and want to force limp-wristed decadent postmodernism and LGBT on us", there are no reasons to attack Russia.
The goal with Russia is not to attack directly but to destabilize and balkanize over the period of many decades. The goal is to be able to threaten it cheaply along a very long and exposed border not invade it expensively.
Russians themselves remember the hell that was 90s (westerners do not fully grasp how bad this decade was) when the USSR was balkanized and Russia was taken over by an American puppet.
>> Russians themselves remember the hell that was 90s (westerners do not fully grasp how bad this decade was) when the USSR was balkanized
It looks like this time the russians will enjoy the North Korean experience as well. Why would anyone be interested to deal with Russia after this invasion of Ukraine?
Most of the hardships of that period were selfinflicted.
You may want to believe Yeltsin was a US puppet all you want.
That does not change the fact that when the USSR fell, and nations had to compete on an international market, the industry of all Warsaw pact nations was utterly uncompetitive.
That does not change that there is corruption in all levels of Russian administration, and for all this time they have been a drain on Russian people and its economy.
Putin just pivoted a balanced but failing state into a petrostate with him as the head mafioso.
Want to not be easily destabilised? Choose a more reliable and accountable government. Russia had some chances for that. Now Putin has enshrined in law his rulership until his death.
History repeats itself. The bout of instability that is about to come as a result of this ill-advised, unwinnable war is self-inflicted too.
The Russians could have carried on with the previous hybrid war strategy, buying off politicians in the West, spreading their narratives, not-so-secretly augmenting the strange DNR and LNR entities in their chronic war with Ukraine, helping the Germans and others become ever more dependent on cheap Russian natural gas etc.
But they had to go all in with 200 000 soldiers and try to conquer a big country that hates them and would be uncontrollable even if they actually managed to take it.
> Russia has agency but that doesnt change the fact that NATO is absolutely an existential threat to it.
NATO still exists in the first place because Russia keeps on existentially threatening the rest of Europe (and is evidently willing to make good on those threats, as Ukraine is learning the hard way).
> With the horrendous things we did to Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya... it's no wonder Russians want pushback on NATO encroachment on bordering states.
With the horrendous things Russia is currently doing to Ukraine, it's no wonder Europeans want pushback on Russian encroachment on bordering states. And unlike Russian encroachment, NATO "encroachment" is voluntary.
>NATO still exists in the first place because Russia keeps on existentially threatening the rest of Europe
Russia was on reasonably good terms with Europe for at least 2 decades.
And during that time NATO decided it needed purpose so it decided, among other things, that it needed to destroy Libya.
The same westerners who are being whipped into a white hot rage about Ukraine collectively shrugged their shoulders about that.
For some inexplicable reason NATO fucking up Libya made Putin paranoid and unwilling to accept the potential for military expansion of this offensive alliance to the most vulnerable sections of the Russian border. I cant think why.
>With the horrendous things Russia is currently doing to Ukraine, it's no wonder Europeans want pushback on Russian encroachment
Of course they do. Everybody getting caught in this crossfire of western imperialism vs. russian imperialism is scared shitless.
>And unlike Russian encroachment, NATO "encroachment" is voluntary.
> And during that time NATO decided it needed purpose so it decided, among other things, that it needed to destroy Libya.
That happened in 2011. Ukraine and Georgia attempted to join NATO as early as 2008 (and other former Eastern Bloc states did join previously), motivated by (among many other things) Russian interference in Ukraine's 2004 elections and Russia's participation in the Georgian Civil War.
Needless to say, blaming NATO's intervention in Libya for Russian interventionism throughout the multiple decades preceding it is about as bass-ackwards of an understanding of causality as trying to assert that wet sidewalks cause rain to happen.
Putin has always been paranoid. He's ex-KGB, yet all of you apologists claiming that NATO pushed him into the Ukraine war ignore that he's a dictator who invades other countries, assassinates the opposition and media, steals from the Russian people, the list goes on.
Keep on trying to make it as if he had no choice. Or that Russia had no choice.
“Russia has been at war with Europe in Ukraine for 8 years you moron” can be better expressed as simply “Russia has been at war with Europe in Ukraine for 8 years.”
You've been breaking the site guidelines repeatedly in your comments, including by calling names, personal attacks, and flamewar. This is not ok, and we ban accounts that do it. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.
Being on the right side of a war, or feeling that you are, is not a reason to post like this to HN—it's a reason to err in the opposite direction, as the site guidelines say: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
You've been posting like this on lots of other topics too, and in fact your account's commenting history is so flamewarrish that I think we have to ban this account until we get some indication that you want to use HN as intended. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
> With the horrendous things we did to Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya... it's no wonder Russians want pushback on NATO encroachment on bordering states.
With the horrendous things that Russia has done throughout it's history in eastern europe, it's no wonder that it's neighbors are worried.
That's another funny thing. The only people saying "with the horrendous things the US does..." are either Americans or Russians. People who live in eastern europe are ABSOLUTELY worried about Russia invading them. Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Ukrania of course, Georgia, Chechnia, Moldova, Romania, Slovakia. People there don't play this "both sides" bullshit game.
I'm very happy if Russia believes that NATO is an existential threat. We're not pushing them hard enough, that's the problem.
> Logically if you want an existential threat to Russia to expand up against Russian borders you must want war, no?
No you see, this isn't "NATO expanding up to"...
Countries are sovereign to choose their allies. And countries in eastern europe are asking to join a defense alliance against Russia.
Serious question, have you considered that number 1 no one is forcing eastern europe countries to join this alliance, and number 2 WHY do they want to join it? If you haven't, I'll tell you the answer: What is happening in Ukraine and what happened in Georgia and Chechnia is EXACTLY the reason why these countries want join NATO.
NATO isn't expanding up to Russia's borders. Russia is scaring every country it borders, so they're doing something about it.
It calls itself a defensive alliance but in the last 20 years it has been exclusively offensive. This is, of course, pretty standard orwellian doublethink.
I have considered why these countries want to join. It's for much the same reason inner city kids want to join gangs - a mix of a desire for protection and a desire to be the threat for once.
>What is happening in Ukraine and what happened in Georgia and Chechnia is EXACTLY the reason why these countries want join NATO
Georgia got whacked for the same reason Ukraine did - because it tried to join our gang. Why were we pouring money into Georgia to sway it towards that point? Well, coz it's a standard empire building tactic to stir shit up on ethnic faultlines along the borders of your opponents. Just ask the British.
I fully understand WHY kids join inner city gangs but we generally try to advise them against it for a reason. Those reasons apply here 100% - it can give you protection, but it can also get you chewed up and spat out as cannon fodder in a larger turf war.
> Georgia got hit for the same reason Ukraine did - because it tried to join our gang.
Man, Russia is really losing this game then. Because countries keep joining Nato. Findland and Sweden now. Sweden has had a policy of neutrality for 200 years LOL.
Fucking losers. If there's one immutable truth in Russian history, is that its wherewithal has never ever been able to match its ambition.
The Finland border area is where the USSR badly lost the winter war. It's naturally suited to defense.
The Ukraine border area is where the USSR almost lost to the Nazis. It is an exposed jugular. A NATO base in Mariupol could cut them off from their black sea fleet/only warm water ports and their oil fields in the caucausus like the Nazis tried to.
You dont have to be a military analyst to see that Finland and Swedens membership is less threatening than ukraine.
Finland joining NATO is absolutely threatening to Russia. Not far from the border, alongside it, is the only railway to Murmansk and the Kola peninsula, which is of prime importance to Russia.
Scaring Finland into joining NATO after their long held policy of neutrality was an incredibly counterproductive strategy for Moscow.
As said above, all nations sorrounding Russia that have joined NATO, have done so because they were and are afraid of Russia.
>Finland joining NATO is absolutely threatening to Russia
Right. It absolutely is. Just nowhere near as threatening as Ukraine-with-donbas-and-crimea-and-most-of-its-coast joining NATO.
Theyll probably be more comfortablen with Ukraine joining NATO either if they turn it into a rump state with limited access to the coast and no control over the russian speaking heartland.
Russia has been saying "if Finland joins NATO, there will be consequences" since forever. When Finland actually joins Russia says "yeah no problem it's not really a threat". This is to not lose face, _obviously_, but all these parrots all of a sudden go "oh yeah no problem, you don't have to be a military analyst to see it's not a threat". They're just parrots.
They have to, because in reality they have less to appeal people with. The ONLY thing that Russia has going to its propaganda is that they're the underdog. Everything else is a lie.
Russia does lose a lot, but I recall earlier in the year that Russia was predicted to win against Ukraine. One is a former global superpower (and current regional superpower) with cutting-edge military technology ostensibly competitive with that of the US (not to mention nukes), and the other is Ukraine.
The world has learned since then that the Ukrainian language seems to lack any words for "I surrender", and that Russian claims of military might may have been rather drastically inflated.
I have noticed that identification with dogs has become very frequent in the past decade, apparently in more territories and among diverse cultures. If there is one thing that does not promise well...
> Because the Global American Empire is always on the side of what is bad, wrong, or immoral. Here's a simple rule to guide you. If GAE says it's good, it's bad. If GAE says it's bad then it's good. Remember that the empire exists to serve its own interests which are always against the interests of regular people.
No idea why this is being downvoted. I actually think this is an excellent characterization of Russian propaganda.
Given the misinformation that western media fell for, it certainly is cringe and bluepilled. It’s like people believe the narrative they want to see and ignore reality.
I don't want to defend anyone, but at the same time, if I see accusations, I'd like to see substance and reference points, not just "they're scumbags", end of conversation.
Please, provide some details on why you think they're like that.
Not everything is a question of "does it collect data", actually.
They're collecting _some_ value from individuals, whether you understand it or not.
Your comment reminds me of Facebook's disingenuous "we we're not _selling_ the data", which just a way of distracting from the real issue. This isn't about data, it's about yet another incremental stripping down of individual's control over their intrinsics.
You seem to agree that they don't collect biometric data, so I'm not sure exactly what "intrinsics" is being "stripped down" from individuals, in this case. Could you clarify?
I don't agree to anything, because I don't know enough about it. They SAY they don't collect data, they SAY it's a zero knowledge proof. Who knows about that.
What I know is that they're extracting some value from people who (like me) likely don't understand the implications. This isn't complicated.
Because you so confidently asserted that they were "all scumbags" who have no "credibility", I'd expected much more certain evidence about the nefariousness of Worldcoin.
I, like you, believe it is very important to remind folks that they should clearly understand the value prop of an exchange before they participate in it.
But I don't think that calling "scumbags" the folks behind any proposed value exchange (like Worldcoin) that you yourself (self-admittedly) don't fully understand the implications of, is a way to achieve that.
You asked me exactly what "instrinsics" are people being stripped from. So according to that article, people are being robbed of the ability of proving their own identity. If that startup succeeds, people will no longer be able to prove their identity other than thru them. This is really dangerous stuff.
You see, the mistake you made here is assuming that without understanding the details you can't come to any conclusions. But that is wrong. There's some things that I don't need to know the details of to accurately determine they're nefarious.
> If that startup succeeds, people will no longer be able to prove their identity other than thru them.
The article doesn't at all claim that the startup seeks to monopolize world wide human authentication!
For the benefit of "bystanders", the TLDR of the article is that (1) WorldCoin is collecting biometric data (not just a cryptographic hash of it), (2) Worldcoin switched compensation of its "operators" from a stablecoin to a brand new cryptocurrency, (3) perfecting the tech to authenticate being a human while preserving anonymity itself might be very valuable, and (4) the fact that brand new cryptocurrency is distributed to everyone might make the cryptocurrency itself very valuable.
I think 1 is valid concern if true; 2, IIUC, wasn't done "behind the backs" of anyone, so it's fine, 3 and 4 are very true. Thank you for linking the article!
> The mistake you made here is assuming that without understanding the details you can't come to any conclusions.
You are free to choose whatever standard of evidence you see fit, but personally, I will always choose to reserve strong judgement (like calling someone a scumbag) until I am confident that I fully understand the details.
> You are free to choose whatever standard of evidence you see fit, but personally, I will always choose to reserve strong judgement (like calling someone a scumbag) until I am confident that I fully understand the details.
You'll get played in life a lot.
Example: you were repeating zero-knowledge nonsense, whereas I saw right thru it. You get played a lot.
A "one way function" (ie, a hash) is not non-sense. It is entirely technically feasible (eg, Apple's NeuralHash)[0]. WorldCoin still maintains that participants can elect to submit only the hash of their iris scans.
> You'll get played in life a lot [if you reserve strong judgement (like calling someone a scumbag) until you're confident that you understand the details].
I mean, I can just refuse to play games I don't understand? For example, I don't know enough about the web3 space to cast strong judgement (positive or negative) on it. So I simply don't participate in web3. (But I keep on trying to learn about it).
Personally, I think I can avoid "being played" without calling folks whose work I don't understand scumbags.
Sam Altman has done other stuff too. Like this comment asks, the same thing for you https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32087778. Why so focused on defending someone who failed upward (see what happened to his startup Loopt) and is now super powerful?
That's not my intention! For all I know, he might actually be a scumbag (to borrow the term from our friend in this thread). I'm genuinely trying to understand the web3 space (you can look at my comment history), which is why I started this thread by asking about whether our friend was aware of the zero-knowledge proof thing.
The quibble over the "scumbag" name-calling is because I was surprised that our friend would feel comfortable calling someone a scumbag, when they, self-admittedly, don't understand how WorldCoin even works.
You kept focusing on the scumbag thing though. Seemingly more than web3. At least three comments specified having issues with the scumbag specific issue as if it’s some insane social faux paux and even if it was, this isn’t some fancy dinner. All of this is why it’s so curious
No one said that’s the only thing that makes him a scumbag. Do we now need to dutifully lay out all our arguments for why someone might be a scumbag before saying so? That seems like a really high bar to push for. It would take far too long to do that each time especially as proponents for the person can just demand more arguments and proof.
Especially because they could have done a basic search for what the person was talking about. Not everything needs to be cited if it’s an easy search away.
Agree with not just this comment but your comments as a new throwaway (I assume?) account in general. Though I don’t care about the CCP enough to be as anti CCP as you. Tho Ofc I am anti CCP
