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

NSA Official: We Need to Prepare for the Future of War

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 214 posts

Re: NSA Official: We Need to Prepare for the Future of War

#101

Post by Gpetrium »

rafaelvasco wrote: post #61

No, in my opinion, we need to start working so that wars don't even make sense. A concept of the distant past. A future in which our descendants don't even know what wars are. In my vision there are no legitimate reasons for wars to exist at all. Of course this concept will sound alien and completely nuts for the majority, who are still in the fear based mindset; But then you can ask: So how do we protect ourselves f…

To achieve your goal, you will need to change the very fundamental fabric of humanity and the reality of resource scarcity. Here are some examples that can lead to war: economic gain,territorial gain, religion, nationalism, revenge, civil strife, defensive. Below are a few expressions of what it can look like:

* Actor A burned your crops -> Do nothing (appeasement)

* Actor B disrupted your servers causing economic losses -> Do nothing (appeasement)

* Actor C stole your technology and sold it to everyone by a fraction of your price -> Do nothing (appeasement)

* Actor D manipulated a group within your nation to cause internal conflict -> Do nothing (appeasement)

* Actor E invaded your land and claimed as their -> Do nothing (appeasement)

* Actor F used their position of power to gain concessions from you -> Do nothing (appeasement)

* Actor G defamed you, leading to society admonishing you and potentially imprisonment -> Do nothing (appeasement)

Each Actor can be seen as both individuals or nations that are in existence today. Every one has their own set of interests and rationale for acting in certain ways.

Re: NSA Official: We Need to Prepare for the Future of War

#102

Post by el_cujo »

missosoup wrote: post #62
_Understated_ wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not convinced that nuclear weapons will be fired en-mass in anger as it means total annihilation for everyone whether involved directly or not. Imagine China fired all her nukes at the US and the US retaliated while the Chinese ones were in the air... there would be nothing left of either country within a couple of hours (or however long it takes to reach across the globe). Anything left would be uninhabitable fo…

1: MAD doesn't really work anymore because of the advent of hypersonic cruise missiles and the likes of russia's Burevestnik/Skyfall. There's probably not going to be a 1980s scenario of two sides launching all out against each other and having a few minutes to contemplate the end. 2: Tactical (not strategic) nuclear weapons are very likely to be used on the battlefield in the next major conflict involving the superp…

>MAD doesn't really work anymore because of the advent of hypersonic cruise missiles and the likes of russia's Burevestnik/Skyfall.

I'm not sure that's entirely true. Even if DC gets nuked before it can react, I'm pretty sure there are dead man switch-type systems in place and stuff like submarines equipped with nukes away from home so that even if they whole country was glassed there would be some retaliation. These scenarios probably don't reflect the whole arsenal, so the retaliation wouldn't hit every square inch of the enemy's land, but I would still think that threat is enough to make you not want to start anything.

Re: NSA Official: We Need to Prepare for the Future of War

#104

Post by coldtea »

rblion wrote: post #88

Does anyone else here feel WWIII is inevitable?

Well, wars historically never stopped.

World wars happened when powers have global reach and means. In the 20th century they had that. In the 21st, even more so.

That said, in the early 20th the old European global powers were demoted from superpowers, and US/USSR emerged in their place.

But at the time the USSR leaders knew it wasn't as strong (to risk a major war with the US) and both sides had nukes, complicating the logistics. So no direct war between them (but plenty of proxy wars globally).

Today there's US, China, India as wannabe big player, Russia (still not as strong, and worse off than USSR), and a few other minor players.

(A single "pan-global" single-"country" or central government also wont stop wars. It will just make all wars civil wars and rebellions).

Re: NSA Official: We Need to Prepare for the Future of War

#105

Post by thinkmassive »

merpnderp wrote: post #87
antpls wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(I live in EU) For the 3rd and 4th points, we could rather envision a massive decentralization of power, which would be effectively a change in the model, but not necessarily in a bad way. Telecom, batteries and local energy production will allow much more flexible forms of local auto-organisations and decision-making. Parts of centralized institutions will be obsolete or further decentralized to better fit local spe…

When the NSA says power will move to the private sector, I don't think they're referring to 'the people', but the wealthy who control most of the private sector.

A feudal oligarchy.

Re: NSA Official: We Need to Prepare for the Future of War

#107

Post by 14 »

zzzeek wrote: post #75
14 wrote: post #56

Such a bleak picture of the future where the only solution is for all of us to give up our privacy and allow the government to watch us so they can keep us safe. There are so many rants I could go off on this article I would not even know where to start but I will say this. What about the option of peace building? Why not put 1/3 of your insane military budget towards a new mission of going into the places you have t…

> Why not put 1/3 of your insane military budget towards a new mission of going into the places you have the worst reputation, the places you have wronged the most and start building up their infrastructure like water plants and schools? The critique you refer towards is familiar when we talk about terrorism operations that spin off from less powerful nations, and for many years the "war on terror" has been about det…

Instead of fighting the world we could go around making allies and all stand together against any aggression China and Russia make would be how I envision it but perhaps even that would not work. I just have to believe there is a better future then everyone fighting each other winner take all. Our earth is god damn dying and these people want to convince us the only solution is to get ready for the fight of our life. We are already in it. We need to work together to save the earth not destroy each other.

Re: NSA Official: We Need to Prepare for the Future of War

#108

Post by jacquesm »

situational87 wrote: post #14
pluma wrote: post #3

Maybe the US would do well to obsess a little less about wars? After spending 90%+ of its time existing on being at war, it sure would seem like a good time to take a break and stop attacking other countries maybe.

We just admitted defeat in Afghanistan after 18 years of.. what was the mission again? Build a government? Build the Afghan National Army? We cut out both of those groups from peace talks with the Taliban this year. We tried to keep the talks secret from the government you're negotiating peace about. I can't imagine a more awkward way to discover that mission has been a failure. This has turned into a Vietnam-scale b…

> unfortunately it's just one failure after another with almost nothing to show for it.

I really urge you to read Catch-22. It is only a failure until you inspect the books, and then you will realize the genius of it all. Lots of people made out like the bandits they are over this.

Re: NSA Official: We Need to Prepare for the Future of War

#109

Post by arzt »

coldtea wrote: post #93
_Understated_ wrote: post #9

I've often thought about what the next "Great War" would look like. Not researched it or anything but mulled it over. I honestly think the enemy will take out our power stations via malicious code that may already be sitting there waiting to go off right now. A few days after that, when people are still in total darkness and the supermarket shelves are empty then we will turn on ourselves and our "leaders" because we…

> I honestly think the enemy will take out our power stations via malicious code that may already be sitting there waiting to go off right now. Not so sure. There have been all kind of wars in the past 10-15 years, and they were pretty much conventional. Bombs, armies, attacks, and so on. No high tech wizardry needed... Not to mention, why even have things like power stations and other infrastructure reachable over t…

From the glimmers of info we do have about these things, most situations that involve them we either don't know about or involve brinksmanship. See here for reference: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/02/massive-us-plann...

Re: NSA Official: We Need to Prepare for the Future of War

#110

Post by jkestner »

cmiles74 wrote: post #67
umvi wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, NSA used to have the best and brightest until Snowden. Now NSA can't get the best and brightest because they are conscientious objectors.

This isn't a technical issue, but I think that it's important: working for the government comes with less pay, but there was always the idea that you were putting in effort for the benefit of the country. In my opinion the NSA has squandered that and they have somehow ended up in the same category as Palantir and Facebook. I'm not sure how they can fix this, but I do think it will need to be addressed if they want to…

They could start fixing it by not turning their spying tools inward, and enacting strong whistleblower protection laws.

The other half is admitting that the government did something wrong in the first place, which they can do by prosecuting officials who broke the law, retire those that quasi-legally facilitated domestic dragnets, and pardoning Snowden, Winner, etc.

That’s going to take politicians who aren’t jingoistic.

Post reply on HN