Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Swedish Kings of Cyberwar

nybooks.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 94 posts

Re: The Swedish Kings of Cyberwar

#61

Post by finid »

berntb wrote: post #46
finid wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the case of Iraq, I wouldn't call it democracy. We just took a secular state and made it an Islamic state - a very unstable one at that. Did we stop there? No! We did the same to Libya. And if not for Russia, we'd have completed a trifecta in Syria.

A revolution is scary, the dice are thrown in the air and you have no clue how they fall. It didn't go well in Libya, so far. But mainly Putin and his employees seem to think that it was bad to support an uprising to get rid of the previous junta in Libya (and they are probably mostly upset because Gadaffi was a good customer). And about Syria -- how many tens of thousands (hundreds of thousands?) of civilians have t…

What ought to weigh on your mind and on Obama's are the "many tens of thousands (hundreds of thousands?) of civilians" that the "moderate Islamist" we're supporting have killed and tortured.

And do keep in mind that without the interventions in Libya and Syria, Europe would not be dealing with the immigration crisis it's facing now.

Re: The Swedish Kings of Cyberwar

#62

Post by berntb »

ggame wrote: post #59
berntb wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A revolution is scary, the dice are thrown in the air and you have no clue how they fall. It didn't go well in Libya, so far. But mainly Putin and his employees seem to think that it was bad to support an uprising to get rid of the previous junta in Libya (and they are probably mostly upset because Gadaffi was a good customer). And about Syria -- how many tens of thousands (hundreds of thousands?) of civilians have t…

Revolutions are reasonably predictable, after all, history rhymes. From my point of view I would agree that Libya was better off with Gaddafi. Gaddafi was negotiating a surrender with free elections but Hillary Clinton blocked it because she wanted him dead and needed to boost her foreign policy resume. She then bragged about it afterwards. Libya is unlikely to recover in a meaningful way for the duration of the mode…

That was yet another long list of extreme claims without references!

Edit: No references in the answer to this, as expected. (I can only blame myself for arguing with what looks like an extra account created to troll people someone don't agree with.)

(At least about modern, mainly international, politics -- what the Brits did before WWII seems quite irrelevant to anything by now.

Edit: WWII started almost 80 years ago for 's sake, there is some time limit when even people in the Middle East have to stop blaming GB...)

Re: The Swedish Kings of Cyberwar

#64

Post by ggame »

berntb wrote: post #62
ggame wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Revolutions are reasonably predictable, after all, history rhymes. From my point of view I would agree that Libya was better off with Gaddafi. Gaddafi was negotiating a surrender with free elections but Hillary Clinton blocked it because she wanted him dead and needed to boost her foreign policy resume. She then bragged about it afterwards. Libya is unlikely to recover in a meaningful way for the duration of the mode…

That was yet another long list of extreme claims without references! Edit: No references in the answer to this, as expected. (I can only blame myself for arguing with what looks like an extra account created to troll people someone don't agree with.) (At least about modern, mainly international, politics -- what the Brits did before WWII seems quite irrelevant to anything by now. Edit: WWII started almost 80 years ag…

Would you like me to google it for you?

The idea that British pre WWII history is irrelevant betrays your ignorance. Considering that Britain is the most recent world power to collapse, there is much that can be learned from them.

Also consider that we are entering a time that is quite similar to the pre-WWII era. For example; the modern hate speech laws being used against nationalist are making the nationalist more popular not less. This is basically a repeat as to what happened when Weimar Republic (Germany) used similar hate speech laws to jail the Nazis.

Re: The Swedish Kings of Cyberwar

#65

Post by dragonwriter »

berntb wrote: post #60
dragonwriter wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are literally dozens of modern democracies that have been free since WWII, how can that be too few "pairs"? There's a little under 200 countries now. The number of democracies by any definition that leaves no inter-democracy wars is a small fraction of that (though, yes, in the dozens). The ratio of democracy-democracy dyads to total dyads is smaller (for reasons which should be mathematically obvious) than t…

AGAIN: You claim that Yugoslavia was democratic before the civil war, since you claim that exact Balkan war (?) is a counterexample to the claim that democracies don't wage war. How many free elections did they have? :-) How many free transfers of power did they have? :-) (The next point here is that the democratic peace theory didn't say anything about civil wars ?) EDIT: I am NOT going to comment on Dragonwriter's…

> (The next point here is that the democratic peace theory didn't say anything about civil wars?)

The NATO-Yugoslavia war was not a civil war, even if it was motivated by one.

Re: The Swedish Kings of Cyberwar

#66

Post by logfromblammo »

dragonwriter wrote: post #47
berntb wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding Sweden and WW II: If Sweden shouldn't have been a "lapdog" -- which side of the war should it have joined? With Norway or with Finland? Not a simple choice, neither now nor at the time. And regarding USA today: Check the democratic peace theory -- democracies don't fight wars with each others. (Not even USA. :-) ) So it is arguably in the Swedish interest to help all democracies be as strong and informed as…

> Check the democratic peace theory -- democracies don't fight wars with each others. The Democratic Peace theory has always been bunk: even when it was formulated, for any definition of democracy restrictive enough for the claim "Democracies don't fight wars with each other", the number of available democracy-democracy pairs is so small compared to thr number of pairs of countries that the expected number of wars be…

The US went to war with Mexico. Or, more accurately, Mexico went to war with itself, and the US supported the secession bloc well enough to legally adopt it.

Then the US went to war against its own secession immediately afterward.

Mexico, the United States, and the Confederate States are (were) all democratic republics, and their constituent states are all democratic republics.

And does it have to be a shooting war? Because democracies wage economic wars against each other quite frequently.

Re: The Swedish Kings of Cyberwar

#67

Post by robert_foss »

nugator wrote: post #42
robert_foss wrote: post #21

I find the pressure Sweden was exposed to by the US to ram this legislation through making us literally spy on our neighbors appalling. Sweden was at the time threatened with being delisted from a US preferential trade list if it did not comply. As a result of bowing down to the US, Sweden is now complicit in the crimes of the US. The global spying, the drone killings it leads to, the increased pressure Russia finds…

"... the increased pressure Russia finds itself under (and has to act out against)." Sounds a bit biased to my Swedish ears.

"has to" might be a bit of an overstatement, but I don't find it the least bit surprising that is provokes some sort of a response.

Re: The Swedish Kings of Cyberwar

#68

Post by tormeh »

>Belgacom, a Belgian telecom company whose clients include the European Commission and the European Parliament.

So an EU member helps the US hack the EU? Wow. I mean, why is that even necessary? Why not just forward the emails?

Re: The Swedish Kings of Cyberwar

#69

Post by alasdair_ »

toyg wrote: post #33
croon wrote: post #3

Interesting read for a variety of reasons. As a countryman of Sweden, I think it's sad that we've been playing lapdog throughout history. Germany during WW2, and now the US. The article refers to much less publicized occurances, but there's also lesser stories (but important signaling) like the piratebay court cases farce. Is Russia up next as our masters, when they want to secure their fiber pipeline? It's in cases…

The EU discourse is complicated, but in short: US interests and EU finances do not currently allow Europeans to develop a voice independent of NATO; and without a shared defense policy independent of US, there is little space for a shared foreign policy that can push back on this sort of topics. Ironically, what could change this state of things is the antagonistic US/UK isolationism currently on the rise.

I don't think it's ironic. In The Foundations of Geopolitics, Alexandr Dugin (an ultra-right wing thought leader that seems to heavily influence Russian military thinking) explains how to make Russia a superpower once again. Putin is reportedly a big fan.

Dugin outlines a playbook that is chilling in its real world implications today. For example, he advocates propoganda aimed to have Britian leave the EU, the invasion of the Russian speakung parts of Ukraine, US to become anti-immigrant and isolationist and the ceeding of certain islands bacj to Japan to improve Russian relations and weaken Japan's reliance on the US.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics

I've yet to find a complete English translation.

Re: The Swedish Kings of Cyberwar

#70

Post by alasdair_ »

toyg wrote: post #33
croon wrote: post #3

Interesting read for a variety of reasons. As a countryman of Sweden, I think it's sad that we've been playing lapdog throughout history. Germany during WW2, and now the US. The article refers to much less publicized occurances, but there's also lesser stories (but important signaling) like the piratebay court cases farce. Is Russia up next as our masters, when they want to secure their fiber pipeline? It's in cases…

The EU discourse is complicated, but in short: US interests and EU finances do not currently allow Europeans to develop a voice independent of NATO; and without a shared defense policy independent of US, there is little space for a shared foreign policy that can push back on this sort of topics. Ironically, what could change this state of things is the antagonistic US/UK isolationism currently on the rise.

I don't think it's ironic. In The Foundations of Geopolitics, Alexandr Dugin (an ultra-right wing thought leader that seems to heavily influence Russian military thinking) explains how to make Russia a superpower once again. Putin is reportedly a big fan.

Dugin outlines a playbook that is chilling in its real world implications today. For example, he advocates propoganda aimed to have Britian leave the EU, the invasion of the Russian speakung parts of Ukraine, US to become anti-immigrant and isolationist and the ceeding of certain islands bacj to Japan to improve Russian relations and weaken Japan's reliance on the US.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics

I've yet to find a complete English translation.

Post reply on HN