This is one guy who says he is a tech expert taking wildly incorrect guesses as to why the Taliban succeeded. It's basically a long HN comment.
Did America just lose Afghanistan because of WhatsApp?
31–40 of 44 posts
Re: Did America just lose Afghanistan because of WhatsApp?
#32Read ghost wars and directorate S. Few simple narratives explain afghanistan. It is a clusterfuck but for reasons that are definitely not at all related to whatsapp. In the simplest expression it has been a proxy war with pakistan or at least pakistans psuedo-separate intelligence services. If you want to talk win and lose, we "lost" afghanistan in february 1989 when the soviets left and we promptly abandoned all the…
From what I gather Pakistan has never been a good ally to the US. Still they receive both military and humanitarian aid to the tune of billions each year. And they were the ones sheltering Bin Laden and from what I can gather the ISI - Pakistani intelligence is the ones funding Taliban. It strikes me as very strange that the US hasn't pressured Pakistan more over the years and that it has accepted this behavior all t…
The problem is how much shit will we put up with to stop an islamic majority nuclear power from collapsing into the hands of a jihad leaning ideology.
Pakistan's intelligence service, ISI, is very good at playing the game of "Boy it'd be a shame if this nuclear information/material were to fall into the hands of say, the iranians. Did you know we could really use some money for fighter jets to help defend us from india?"
There are no good options in this region.
Re: Did America just lose Afghanistan because of WhatsApp?
#33[flagged]
Re: Did America just lose Afghanistan because of WhatsApp?
#34What aren't any media outlets picking this up? While the issue is larger than whatsapp, this is an angle that's worth acknowledging and discussing -- An insurgent force used an American tech platform to take over a country, while a former President is banned from that service. Regardless of what you think of the situation, this definitely falls into the category of "man bites dog".
[deleted]
Re: Did America just lose Afghanistan because of WhatsApp?
#35What aren't any media outlets picking this up? While the issue is larger than whatsapp, this is an angle that's worth acknowledging and discussing -- An insurgent force used an American tech platform to take over a country, while a former President is banned from that service. Regardless of what you think of the situation, this definitely falls into the category of "man bites dog".
Picking up what? A blogpost by Preston Byrne? A person you have never heard of until today?
Let's take a look at his credentials:
"Preston Byrne is a partner in the New York office of Anderson Kill. A corporate lawyer with extensive experience working with cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies, Preston is a member of the firm's Technology, Media and Distributed Systems group as well as its Corporate and Commercial Litigation Group. Preston writes and speaks about, and is quoted widely by print media on, technology law matters."
So this blogpost is basically giant hn comment. Any media outlet that "picked this up" would be laughed at. He actually quotes himself at the bottom of the article lol
Re: Did America just lose Afghanistan because of WhatsApp?
#36What aren't any media outlets picking this up? While the issue is larger than whatsapp, this is an angle that's worth acknowledging and discussing -- An insurgent force used an American tech platform to take over a country, while a former President is banned from that service. Regardless of what you think of the situation, this definitely falls into the category of "man bites dog".
Picking up what? A blogpost by Preston Byrne? A person you have never heard of until today? Let's take a look at his credentials: "Preston Byrne is a partner in the New York office of Anderson Kill. A corporate lawyer with extensive experience working with cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies, Preston is a member of the firm's Technology, Media and Distributed Systems group as well as its Corporate and Commerci…
Don't fall into the trap of credentialism. While the author may not be known outside of the Bitcoin world, he points to a whole slew of public social media posts that clearly show the Taliban usiing a service run by a large American tech company to do all sorts of things that would get most American users banned.
Any decent journalism outfit should at least dig into that a little bit - perhaps reach out to Facebook and ask if they had noticed any of this. After all, this was the same company that didn't see anything unusual about American political ads being purchased in Rubles back in 2016.
Re: Did America just lose Afghanistan because of WhatsApp?
#37What aren't any media outlets picking this up? While the issue is larger than whatsapp, this is an angle that's worth acknowledging and discussing -- An insurgent force used an American tech platform to take over a country, while a former President is banned from that service. Regardless of what you think of the situation, this definitely falls into the category of "man bites dog".
Picking up what? A blogpost by Preston Byrne? A person you have never heard of until today? Let's take a look at his credentials: "Preston Byrne is a partner in the New York office of Anderson Kill. A corporate lawyer with extensive experience working with cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies, Preston is a member of the firm's Technology, Media and Distributed Systems group as well as its Corporate and Commerci…
I suppose he meant the fact that whatsapp is used by taliban.
Re: Did America just lose Afghanistan because of WhatsApp?
#38Read ghost wars and directorate S. Few simple narratives explain afghanistan. It is a clusterfuck but for reasons that are definitely not at all related to whatsapp. In the simplest expression it has been a proxy war with pakistan or at least pakistans psuedo-separate intelligence services. If you want to talk win and lose, we "lost" afghanistan in february 1989 when the soviets left and we promptly abandoned all the…
From what I gather Pakistan has never been a good ally to the US. Still they receive both military and humanitarian aid to the tune of billions each year. And they were the ones sheltering Bin Laden and from what I can gather the ISI - Pakistani intelligence is the ones funding Taliban. It strikes me as very strange that the US hasn't pressured Pakistan more over the years and that it has accepted this behavior all t…
You nearly have it figured out :)
Re: Did America just lose Afghanistan because of WhatsApp?
#39What aren't any media outlets picking this up? While the issue is larger than whatsapp, this is an angle that's worth acknowledging and discussing -- An insurgent force used an American tech platform to take over a country, while a former President is banned from that service. Regardless of what you think of the situation, this definitely falls into the category of "man bites dog".
Picking up what? A blogpost by Preston Byrne? A person you have never heard of until today? Let's take a look at his credentials: "Preston Byrne is a partner in the New York office of Anderson Kill. A corporate lawyer with extensive experience working with cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies, Preston is a member of the firm's Technology, Media and Distributed Systems group as well as its Corporate and Commerci…
More impressive then some of the 'Journalist' that have articles posted here from Axios, Atlantic, NYT, etc who's only credentials are that they are warm bodies willing to shill for whoever will pay them most.
Re: Did America just lose Afghanistan because of WhatsApp?
#40Interesting story, but the short answer is no, the U.S. did not "lose" Afghanistan because of an app.
It lost because it (by that I mean the U.S. public) never believed in the mission there (which never had much of a strategic rationale in the first place). And because the Taliban, despite enormous setbacks, never lost faith in theirs.
Yes the narrative is "complex" and there's also Pakistan, etc. But in a nutshell, that's what it boils down to.