India launches attack on 9 sites in Pakistan and Pakistani Jammu and Kashmir • Hacker News Board

Re: India launches attack on 9 sites in Pakistan and Pakistani Jammu and Kashmir

#581

Post by lelanthran » Wed, May 07, 2025, 3:59 PM UTC

babyent wrote: post #255

throw63 wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and for me that’s science and tech tree maxed out. Hate to ruin it for you, but as soon as the economic elites don't need the masses anymore (eg because AGI produces goods and entertainment better than we do), we'll become a liability, dead weight, so they'll quickly use that same maxed out tech that made us obsolete to make us gone.

If enough people can be convinced of a “serious” extraterrestrial event we might be able to speed up that science and tech tree. Honestly think about the spending and the opportunities it will unlock. Not to mention we might all stop fighting each other and work together… on science and tech. So much of the science and tech we use today was the result of some similar storytelling, and it has sometimes had some real c…

You should have preceded that with "Watchmen spoiler alert".

Re: India launches attack on 9 sites in Pakistan and Pakistani Jammu and Kashmir

#582

Post by bilbo0s » Wed, May 07, 2025, 4:03 PM UTC

fooker wrote: post #320

bilbo0s wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China has been building Chinese-only gated company towns in Pakistani military properties OK. Now I'm a bit skeptical as well. I mean, the Chinese have been building Chinese-only gated company towns in [insert global south nation here] military [and everywhere else] properties for a long time now. Not really sure how that translates into Chinese authoritative decision making in matters of wars between nations? For th…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_power Usually it is the US influencing small countries and having a say in military decisions. Also coming up next is a full blown Chinese military base in Gwadar, something the USSR broke itself trying to get to. > Far greater than 50%. If you want to go with the stick yes. For the carrot, it's a bit different, you just have to dangle it. If China says jump, Pakistan will ask how h…

Sorry. Not buying it. Wayyy too many places to get money these days. It’s a multipolar world.

Again, no matter how important you think you are, you’ll need to do a whole lot more than dangle carrots to get that level of influence nowadays. There’s just too many power players for small nations to not play one against the other.

Re: India launches attack on 9 sites in Pakistan and Pakistani Jammu and Kashmir

#583

Post by justin66 » Wed, May 07, 2025, 4:04 PM UTC

llm_nerd wrote: post #541

justin66 wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd forgotten about Zelensky's prewar media strategy. Whoops. Regarding Russia: did the strange televised meeting of Putin's war cabinet (whatever it would be called), wherein everyone went around the room and voted "yes" to invasion even though a couple of them looked like they were in a hostage video, happen before or after tanks rolled into Ukraine? In my mind that's a "prewar" thing but maybe I got the sequence o…

That weird meeting I think you're thinking of- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8B0mWzB4GOQ (I recalled it as well and with normal searching could not find it, even with date winnowing, but asking Gemini 2.5 Pro and it immediately gave me that resource) This meeting happened just before the invasion. Far too late for anyone to really do anything, and long after most of the "are they/aren't they?" discussions happened.…

These are good comments and there's a lot more that could be said.

> As an aside, that absolutely bizarre security council meeting is virtually indistinguishable from the North Korea-style Trump administration meetings that we now see weekly, where it's a circle of embarrassingly laughable platitudes and servitudes by a cowed and pathetic administration.

To be fair there was a lot of this during the first Trump administration, only moreso near the end when plenty of the cabinet secretaries weren't real secretaries, just "acting" secretaries of various sorts. It's just that now they're all operating on that level.

Re: India launches attack on 9 sites in Pakistan and Pakistani Jammu and Kashmir

#584

Post by ivell » Wed, May 07, 2025, 4:10 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #562

ivell wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They wouldn’t. New Delhi would have to get something that is worth more than that territory in return. What would that be? Pakistan and India had an agreement to peacefully resolve issues already in 1972 Simla agreement. But they continue to send terrorists to murder indian civilians on indian soil. They never followed the agreement. They invaded twice after that agreement. Anything that India gets out of Pakistan c…

> Anything that India gets out of Pakistan cannot be trusted Then the only security solution for India is invading and replacing Pakistan’s government. Anything less is needlessly drawing out the violence out of caution and cowardice. The fact that this is obviously overkill belies that there is room for diplomacy. Also! Not how diplomacy works! A fundamental fact about international relations is it’s anarchic. If yo…

>>Also! Not how diplomacy works! A fundamental fact about international relations is it’s anarchic. If your model of international relations requires trust for diplomacy, you’ve fundamentally missed how geopolitics works.

Actually trust is a significant factor in geopolitical setup. This is why NATO was stable for a long time and Trump's statements are read as a threat to NATO.

Many nations trust the signed agreements are kept. If those are not followed, then there is no point in signing those agreements.

If there is no trust, then there will be military build up to manage the risks. The fact that this does not happen to western countries is due to high degree of trust among them (France will not attack Germany tomorrow).

>>Look at the history of France and Germany negotiating territory exchanges, including under duress.

Significantly different economy, society and government. Hard to negotiate when the whole existence of the government depends on anti-India stance, when the economy is dependent upon aid from IMF, and high levels of illiteracy and radicalization (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamization_in_Pakistan)

Re: India launches attack on 9 sites in Pakistan and Pakistani Jammu and Kashmir

#585

Post by mrguyorama » Wed, May 07, 2025, 4:16 PM UTC

gmokki wrote: post #436

owebmaster wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It just suffered an unprovoked invasion It was such a great coincidence they had a huge army trained and armed by the west at the same time.

I don't think there were western armaments in Ukraine even though Russia invaded Ukraine over ten years ago and they have been fighting ever since. In the second phase of the invasion both sides still used old Soviet equipment until West finally decided that sanctions are not enough to stop Putin

By the time of Russia's most recent invasion, NATO had been doing some minor training with Ukraine to "westernize" their military. It only took a little bit. They also provided bits and pieces of equipment, primarily anti-tank missiles. Donald Trump in his first term tried to coerce Zelensky into opening up an "investigation" into Hunter Biden by threatening to withhold those weapons. There were impeachment hearings.

Then leading up to the actual invasion (Which US intelligence called weeks in advance, don't know why everyone is insisting that it wasn't expected, maybe they should reconsider who they pay attention to) the US was convinced it would be a steamroll fight and then Ukraine would run an insurgency, so they provided thousands more anti-tank missile launchers.

It wasn't until Ukraine had mostly stopped the invasion convoy that the west took them seriously, and it took even longer for the west to start providing supplies.

Re: India launches attack on 9 sites in Pakistan and Pakistani Jammu and Kashmir

#586

Post by selimthegrim » Wed, May 07, 2025, 4:19 PM UTC

nindalf wrote: post #393

enugu wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They were unable to locate the terrorists even after two or three weeks and needed a distraction. This does not make sense. When France attacked Daesh in 2015 after the terrorist attacks in Paris or when the US attacked Afghanistan after 9/11, the objective wasn't to target the exact people who carried out the attacks, but the organization behind the attacks. People can always be found as long as the organization r…

> There was a sharp drop in the terrorist attacks in Kashmir after the 2019 confrontation. There were fewer terrorist attacks, certainly. I'm sure the Indian government would like to believe that the 2019 strike had an effect, but far more likely causes are - Money. Pakistan's economy has stagnated and the country has lurched from one IMF bailout to the next (2019, 2023, 2024). It got so bad at one point that politic…

They were also suggesting that they should import less foreign expensive cheeses

Re: India launches attack on 9 sites in Pakistan and Pakistani Jammu and Kashmir

#587

Post by ivell » Wed, May 07, 2025, 4:19 PM UTC

ben_w wrote: post #552

ashoeafoot wrote: post #545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its not, you goto look at how the actors in the region act and invest. Some of the regions rich seem remarkable calm towards a muklear armed iran.

Can Pakistan can ship nukes to Iran fast enough for the Iranian economy to supply in return a militarily useful quantity of anti-air and anti-missile defence systems? On a timescale of "shooting currently happening"? If not, that's a problem for the rest of the decade, whereas an escalating situation on this border could've already evaporated a few cities between me having read the headline 20 minutes ago and pressin…

It is not that they didn't try supplying Iran with nuclear tech.

https://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/pakistan/nytimes0...

Re: India launches attack on 9 sites in Pakistan and Pakistani Jammu and Kashmir

#588

Post by prmph » Wed, May 07, 2025, 4:23 PM UTC

krisoft wrote: post #465

nblgbg wrote: post #61

I believe it's mostly overstated. Pakistan is not economically strong enough to participate in a war, and India is not interested either. However, the Modi government wants to project strength. They were unable to locate the terrorists even after two or three weeks and needed a distraction. So, they targeted some areas in Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK). In response, Pakistan claimed to have shot down four Indian air…

> Pakistan is not economically strong enough to participate in a war They have nukes. They don't need to be rich to do massive damage. Sure doing so would have terrible consequences, but cooler heads sometimes don't prevail. Or only prevail after much suffering and pain.

They are not going to use nukes.

I always wonder at the people who have this idea that states are going to use nukes on a whim. The taboo against the use of nukes is very strong, so strong that I believe nuclear armed nations would rather wage conventional warfare even at great cost, and consider nukes only in the extreme situation where the very survival of the state is seriously threatened (and even then I'm doubtful nukes would be used). The only other realistic situation where nukes are used is in an accidental scenario.

That is why conventional military strength is still very much important in the world now. The Europeans are finding this out a bit late.

It's also why Putin is a great actor and bluffer. Trust me, he's the last person who would think of using nukes, despite appearances to the contrary. Now, if he were to somehow use nukes on an actual populated area, I believe the western powers would NOT use nukes in retaliation, so it seems like he would have a found a way out of MAD. But, the conventional response (likely a containment rather than an attack on Russia, e.g., a no fly zone and destruction of military assets, with the threat of nuclear retaliation backing it up) would be so strong that the Russia would be effectively neutralized. If they persist in nuking, then all bets are off, WW3 begins, and civilization could end.

Re: India launches attack on 9 sites in Pakistan and Pakistani Jammu and Kashmir

#589

Post by Aloisius » Wed, May 07, 2025, 4:26 PM UTC

amai wrote: post #293

Are their any natural resources in Kashmir worth fighting for? Oil? Gas? Lithium? Rare earth metals?

Supposedly half a trillion dollars in lithium resources, but how much of that is commercially viable to extract isn't known.

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

Re: India launches attack on 9 sites in Pakistan and Pakistani Jammu and Kashmir

#590

Post by dfadsadsf » Wed, May 07, 2025, 4:32 PM UTC

ashoeafoot wrote: post #510

wqaatwt wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there was never a separate country called "Ukraine" before 1991 By your standards there was no separate country called Russia between 1918 and 1991. So how is this different? Also absurd argument. There was no country called Belgium until the 1830s. So what? > So this distortion of reality works the other way round So your justification for distorting reality is that other people are allegedly doing that so it’s fi…

the nazis came as far as they did because a ton of peoole greeted them as liberators and joined their new oppressors to fight for a free homeland. You dont do that unless you really hate the empire you are imprisoned in..

Germans were pretty good at exploiting ethnic grievances in multiple countries - Czhech vs Slovak, Croats vs Serbs, Bulgars vs Greek and Hungarian vs everyone that have nothing to do oppression and fight for homeland.

People underestimate what a clusterfuck of ethnicities pre WW2 Eastern Europe was. Resettlement after WW2 created much cleaner ethnic maps and arguably the reason we had 80 years of mostly peace (Yugoslavia was last country with mix of ethnicities and wars in 90ies cleaned up it too).