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Israel may have destroyed Iranian centrifuges simply by cutting power

theintercept.com

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

#271

Post by boomboomsubban »

CivBase wrote: post #227
bosswipe wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trump violated the JCPOA first. Why should Iran hold up their side of a broken agreement? The JCPOA was working fine but Netanyahu didn't like it because he wants to destabilize Iran.

> Why should Iran hold up their side of a broken agreement? Because - and correct me if I'm misunderstanding things - so far as I can tell it wasn't really an "agreement" to begin with. The US essentially just said they would tolerate an Iranian nuclear program so long as it adhered to a set of guidelines which assured Iran was being honest about their goal of pursuing a peaceful nuclear energy program. The US was pr…

>Because - and correct me if I'm misunderstanding things - so far as I can tell it wasn't really an "agreement" to begin with.

Your somewhat understanding things. It definitely was an agreement, passed by the UN, the EU, and thus somewhat the US.

The disagreement is whether a congressional vote is necessary as well, which most UN agreements don't require but allow for congress to vote against them. There weren't enough senators against the agreement for that to happen, but because there weren't enough to vote in favor of it either Trump's team argued it wasn't an official treaty.

So whether it was an official agreement is somewhat unclear, but your description that it was an ad-hoc trust building exercise is not correct.

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

#272

Post by gaius_baltar »

avar wrote: post #23
dragontamer wrote: post #12

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…

The youth unemployment rate in Iran is ~25%, overall rate is 10%. They issue their own fiat currency, and their GDP per capita is comparable to Thailand and Botswana. So yes, they can probably afford to have a bunch of people tweak knobs in a factory all day.

> So yes, they can probably afford to have a bunch of people tweak knobs in a factory all day.

But what would prevent this system from being compromised?

Seems pretty easy for an adversary to "inject an exploit in these controllers" by paying a few of them to keep the knobs in the wrong position for a bit more time than strictly necessary, or to flip a switch earlier/later than ideal.

Auditing this is seems worse than checking the code for an old-style, non-networked, PLC.

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

#273

Post by whimsicalism »

ars wrote: post #268
whimsicalism wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eesh, I am not a fan of the modern Israeli state, which I consider to be pseudo-apartheid, but this is straight up anti-semitism. Surprised to see that here.

This is why when Jews tell you someone is not "anti-zionist", they are actually antisemitic, you should probably believe them. True anti-zionists, who are not also antisemitic, are extremely rare.

Incredibly rare? I am one of them, and my many anti-zionist jewish friends are not anti-semitic either.

I don't deny that anti-semitism exists, but to suggest that a principled opposition to Israel is "extremely rare" is bogus.

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

#274

Post by edanm »

whimsicalism wrote: post #266
jkkorn wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think of judaism as ethnicity. You can be an atheist jew and be granted Israeli citizenship. Israel is the historic homeland of the jewish culture/people. I'd liken it to something like Country X giving special immigration privileges if you have ancestry from country X. They don't deny citizenship if you're palestinian, granted it's as difficult if you were trying to get citizenship coming from any other country

I have a solid conception of judaism, I've lived in places with thriving jewish communities my entire life, and am sephardic-descended myself. > it's as difficult if you were trying to get citizenship coming from any other country Nope, it's more so. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizenship_and_Entry_into_Isr... In general, I am opposed to ethnostates and granting nationality based on what bloodline you come from. I…

(For context, I'm a Jewish Israeli)

I'll be honest - I'm also opposed to "ethnostates" in general, and would much prefer the world moved beyond looking at each other based on ethnicity.

But given the fact that Israel was kind of explicitly created because the world hasn't moved past looking at ethnicity, I'm not sure what my solution is. I'm an Israeli Jew - I know that if Israel wouldn't exist, my life would be far more dangerous. And that's not a hypothetical - a huge chunk of my family were murdered for no other reason than being Jewish. The only guarantee I have that this won't happen again is that there is a strong Jewish state.

Do I like that the world is like this? No! Not at all. But that's the way the world is. And considering that most other groups do have effectively their own countries, I don't see a reason that Jews shouldn't also have their own country.

(This is all talking about the concept of an "ethnostate" in specific, not getting into the question of whether Israel being founded in the location it is was wrong in the first place - the arguments above would work just as well if Israel had been founded anywhere else.)

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

#275

Post by jokoon »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #33

Say what you will, but being able to smuggle a bomb into a heavily fortified military installation is pro. I'd give a lot for a peek at that world: the planning, the logistics, the people. They probably have one of the most sophisticated spy networks in the world.

The mossad is known to be the best intelligence service is the world.

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

#276

Post by dang »

nullserver wrote: post #19

Israel is fighting for its existence. Iran leadership routinely makes threats to destroy America and Israel. This often get ignored or dismissed. But like waving a gun in a cops face. Well bad things happen. One nuke will piss America off. One nuke and Israel will just be gone, completely. Iran is probably capable of this, or close. From Israel standpoint the logical step is to bomb Iran military into the Stone Age.…

You started an utterly hellish flamewar with this comment and perpetuated it downthread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26799318). That is seriously not cool. We've had to warn you about this before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26363306. If you continue to abuse HN like this, we will ban you.

Please read the rules and stick to them: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. That means no more flamewar comments.

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

#277

Post by dang »

knowaveragejoe wrote: post #32
Daho0n wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If much of the world wants you dead (your words, not mine) then maybe it's time to look in a mirror. Edit: HN commenters are so thick. First of all GP says everyone hate Israel. So that must include you the reader of this comment. If you actually take that shit serious and then have a problem with my comment instead all I can say is that you should look in a mirror too. It's a fat lie. Not everyone hates Israel. Actu…

Elaborate on what you think they should see in the mirror.

Please don't respond to flamewar comments by perpetuating the flamewar. That just damages this place even further, and the site guidelines specifically ask you not do:

"Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#278

Post by dang »

Daho0n wrote: post #27
nullserver wrote: post #19

Israel is fighting for its existence. Iran leadership routinely makes threats to destroy America and Israel. This often get ignored or dismissed. But like waving a gun in a cops face. Well bad things happen. One nuke will piss America off. One nuke and Israel will just be gone, completely. Iran is probably capable of this, or close. From Israel standpoint the logical step is to bomb Iran military into the Stone Age.…

If much of the world wants you dead (your words, not mine) then maybe it's time to look in a mirror. Edit: HN commenters are so thick. First of all GP says everyone hate Israel. So that must include you the reader of this comment. If you actually take that shit serious and then have a problem with my comment instead all I can say is that you should look in a mirror too. It's a fat lie. Not everyone hates Israel. Actu…

Flamewar comments will get you banned here. No more of this, please.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: actually, you've posted so many of these that I've gone ahead and banned you. 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.

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

#279

Post by dang »

mamon wrote: post #174
knowaveragejoe wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elaborate on what you think they should see in the mirror.

If one person thinks you're an asshole they might simply be wrong about you. If everyone in the world thinks you're an asshole then you, almost by definiton, are one. There's a reason why there's a separate word in most languages for "anti-semitism" but not for "anti-italianism" or "anti-brasilianism".

We've banned this account. You can't do this here, and we've warned you before. Not cool.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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