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Israel may have destroyed Iranian centrifuges simply by cutting power

theintercept.com

201–210 of 287 posts

Re: Israel may have destroyed Iranian centrifuges simply by cutting power

#201
post #109
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you implying that if they were a richer, more prosperous country, then they couldn't afford it? I'm confused

If the job market is more saturated, there’s simply fewer people available to do bullshit work, at the necessary bullshit cost. Resources would be naturally allocated to more valuable efforts, and lured by better wages, by the market. As a general rule, the richer the country, the more expensive humans are, and the commodities become cheaper (relative to income) In the US, I can’t afford a full time maid. In India, I…

I understand your point, but how does minimum wage for unskilled workers factor? For example, in the US you could pay some $8/hour to 500 teenagers to achieve the same net result. No?

Re: Israel may have destroyed Iranian centrifuges simply by cutting power

#202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? I don't know how an attack on a military base could be less of a terrorist attack.

The 2001 attack on the Pentagon is usually cast as a terrorist attack in the West. Words change: terrorism is now really more about who committs the attacks, and how much you like them, than the mode of attack or the target.

Pretty sure that is more due to conflation with the WTC than it is a double standard.

Re: Israel may have destroyed Iranian centrifuges simply by cutting power

#203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a hilarious position to take. Israel should relax because losing 5% of its population (and another 5% due to later side effects), which includes most of its export and good portions of its youth, technically wouldn't destroy every part of the country.

Sorry, but I didn't say that. OP ludicrously exaggerated for rhetorical purposes the destructive power posed by a single nuke and I corrected it.

https://www.geonames.org/IL/largest-cities-in-israel.html

Sorry I didn’t do a full break down on on how to eliminate all life in a country. Others have certainly made efforts to exterminate Jews. Perhaps you would care to study how that went.

Only a few big cities. So maybe a dozen nukes would be sufficient.

Re: Israel may have destroyed Iranian centrifuges simply by cutting power

#204
post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Iran is a large nation of millions of people with a relatively developed government (even if we don't like the way it is currently structured). I doubt they would initiate a nuclear strike, knowing it means their annihilation. Also, most modern statements by Iran focus on the "Zionist regime", not the literal killing of the residents of Israel. You can find similar rhetoric in the United States about the CCP. > what…

You cannot find similar rhetoric from the US vowing to destroy China. In fact, you'd find the exact opposite. Your other points rely on a rational actor... rational actors don't take freight ships hostage nor kidnap tourists.

> rational actors don't take freight ships hostage not kidnap tourists.

Israel has kidnapped tourists before. Vanunu is still trapped in Israel.

Where has Iran said that they intend to use nuclear weapons?

Re: Israel may have destroyed Iranian centrifuges simply by cutting power

#205
post #11
post #6

This makes you wonder if we might see a resurgence in old school control systems without processors, and def no networks. The Manhattan project was able uranium purified to get a bomb working without PLCs and networks. All else being equal it's more expensive, but not compared to being unable to keep your network safe from attack. You need to reconfigure the line? Send eight techs down one by one to set new parameter…

It seems that there's also some lack of defense-in-depth going on - if the centrifuges need power to power down, why isn't that built into each one? It's interesting that the Manhattan project had to build everything themselves - which if Iran was NOT using off-the-shelf parts and instead was developing everything in-house they'd be less susceptible to certain types of attacks.

> and instead was developing everything in-house

This article says they used air-gapped Siemens industrial control systems:

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/revealed-how-a-secret-du...

Re: Israel may have destroyed Iranian centrifuges simply by cutting power

#206
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...and Iran routinely attacks Israel. Most recent attacks have targeted Israel's water supply, a civilian ship, funding Hezbollah to fire rockets on their behalf, training guerillas in Syria and Lebanon... Gone are the days where threatening to wipe jews off the planet was considered rhetoric. Play stupid games win stupid prizes.

>Gone are the days where threatening to wipe jews off the planet was considered rhetoric. I'm not going to defend the current iranian gouverment, but aren't jews in Iran a recognized minority and have a seat in parliament? So it seems they don't have anything against the religion per se.

Even "wipe Israel off the map" is false Israeli propaganda. Here's an explanation https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/did-a...

Re: Israel may have destroyed Iranian centrifuges simply by cutting power

#207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LONG predate? Sure, instances of Muslims attacking Jews certainly do, just as instances of Jews attacking Muslims certainly predates Mandatory Palestine by thousands of years. But in the centuries preceding Mandatory Palestine, there was not a sizable Jewish population in the area.

> Jews attacking Muslims certainly predates Mandatory Palestine by thousands of years. Probably not, since Islam is not thousands of years old.

Thousand*, my fault for making it plural.

Re: Israel may have destroyed Iranian centrifuges simply by cutting power

#208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Israel that much different? It seems like if you're committed to empowering all BIPOC you would not restrict their access to the weaponry needed to defend their homelands. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samson_Option

Is this some kind of a bad joke? Because some countries have BIPOC if they want nukes to not hinder their empowerment nobody should intervene. If all the countries in MENA have nukes, this would be terrible for everybody, it would exponentially rise the risk of nuclear warheads being used.

Is there an impartial standard that we could use in determining which countries we should allow to have nukes?

Why should the US allow Israel to have nukes when we spend so much energy preventing Iran from doing the same?

Re: Israel may have destroyed Iranian centrifuges simply by cutting power

#209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just the other day i was watching a video of protestors taking down a drone with hundreds of laser pointers. People are literally having laser battles in the streets with police robots. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=drone+lasers+protestors&t=fpas&iar...

I knew someone with plans to protest traffic ticket cameras by aiming a directional photocell at the flash and wiring it to activate a laser aimed at the camera for a few seconds. I wonder if they ever got around to it.

Low tech alternative: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRnlRurTwFg

Re: Israel may have destroyed Iranian centrifuges simply by cutting power

#210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Manhattan project was able uranium purified to get a bomb working without PLCs and networks. By enlisting thousands of young women to watch the knobs and dial buttons. https://outrider.org/nuclear-weapons/articles/women-who-buil... They didn't even know they were building the bomb. They just had to enter the room, dial knobs back-and-forth for 8-hours/day, and then go home. Today, that sort of stuff SHOULD be a…

still impressive secrecy management

But still not good enough.

Legend has it that Stalin knew about the American bomb before Truman knew about it. Hiring literally thousands of high-schoolers without much job training has the advantages of being cheap back then, but you don't really know who was or wasn't a Soviet Agent.

Similarly: having literally thousands of modern techs build a bomb manually would only turn the computer-security problem into a human-security problem. Who do you trust? Who do you keep track of?

There's something to be said about trusting fewer people: and checking those few people more vigorously. That simplifies the human-security portion of the puzzle, even if it complicates the computer-security portion.

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