Was the OSRS economy affected by the strikes? I'm assuming they didn't disrupt internet access for most Venezuelan citizens but I have not looked into it yet.
Yes, it looks like it definitely was: https://x.com/eslischn/status/1104542595806609408
There were BGP anomalies during the Venezuela blackout
111–120 of 476 posts
Re: There were BGP anomalies during the Venezuela blackout
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's like arguing against the police arresting criminals because it will incentivize them to acquire weapons. The only consistent action for the US to take, given they - and much of the world - do not consider Maduro the legitimate President of Venezuela, was to remove him from power.
Terrible take in the 2nd premise of your argument. Is Venezuela a sovereign nation or a colony? Can similar logic be applied against Russia or even the US?
The sovereignty of Venezuela is not the right argument here, because practical sovereignty is not absolute and there are just war grounds for Maduro's capture. The man was an awful tyrant.
However, just because there are just war grounds for Maduro's capture per se doesn't mean the operation was justified by just war principles. It wasn't. It takes more than just the fact that the ruler is tyrannical to justify an operation like this. Operations like this can risk civil war and all sorts of horrible fallout that also need to be considered. There must be a realistic plan following the removal of the tyrannical leader. As always, justice must be upheld always. And of course there are the procedural and legal aspects that Trump totally ignored.
Re: There were BGP anomalies during the Venezuela blackout
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nuclear capability by itself isn't a complete deterrent. It has been widely reported that the US military has made contingency plans for a decapitation strike and seizure or destruction of nuclear weapons in Pakistan in case the situation turns really bad there. Real deterrence requires a credible second-strike capability on survivable platforms such as submarines.
> the US military has made contingency plans for a decapitation strike and seizure or destruction of nuclear weapons in Pakistan in case the situation turns really bad there. Real deterrence requires a credible second-strike capability on survivable platforms such as submarines. The existence of a plan does not equate to the feasibility of its execution. A submarine-based deterrent is indeed the "gold standard" for s…
>There is enough pain for the US that they wouldn't actually attack Pakistan.
The US does have the advantage that the surviving Pakistani nukes might very well end up flying to India instead :)
Re: There were BGP anomalies during the Venezuela blackout
#114Re: There were BGP anomalies during the Venezuela blackout
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ukraine wouldn’t have been invaded if they hadn’t given up their nuclear weapons.
Why not? Russia invades. Ukraine launches nukes. Every major city in Ukraine is ash. Several major cities in Russia are ash. Millions die plausibly. That scenario is not what would happen from an invasion. Zelensky would not have used nukes to prompt the death of millions instantly. He would have proceeded with the same defensive war. The false premise rests on: it's better for everyone to die than live under Russian…
This isn’t how nukes would get used. They wouldn’t just fire them at cities to start with. It would most likely be something tactical, but perhaps end up escalating to insanity anyway
Re: There were BGP anomalies during the Venezuela blackout
#116I guess one of the interesting things I learnt off this article(1) was that 7% of DNS query types served by 1.1.1.1 are HTTPS and started wondering what HTTPS query type was as I had only heard of A, MX, AAAA, SPF etc...
Apparently that is part of implementing ECH (Encrypted Client Hello) in TLS 1.3 where the DNS hosts the public key of the server to fully encrypt the server name in a HTTPS request. Since Nginx and other popular web servers don't yet support it, I suspect the 7% of requests are mostly Cloudflare itself.
(1) https://radar.cloudflare.com/?ref=loworbitsecurity.com#dns-q...
Re: There were BGP anomalies during the Venezuela blackout
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ukraine wouldn’t have been invaded if they hadn’t given up their nuclear weapons.
Even setting aside that Ukraine never had the technical means or infrastructure to operate/maintain those weapons, I don't think they would have dissuaded Russia or actually been used. Russia could turn them into a wasteland in response and 6 million people (including hundreds of thousands of men of military age) weren't even willing to stay in Ukraine, much less fight for the country. If Zelensky were to give an ord…
The idea that a nation state could not make use of the hundreds of nuclear weapons in its territory is just absurd. It's sillier than the people that think disk encryption will spare them the crowbar to the face. Beyond the whole chauvinistic idea that it was "Russians" that built them in the first place.
Re: There were BGP anomalies during the Venezuela blackout
#118I assume that nuclear capability would rule out a target from this kind of snatch operation, and that this event will add pressure to proliferate.
Nuclear deterrent is absurd. You have to assume everyone is willing to die over every single thing short of obliteration. So what's the scenario then? Venezuela has nukes. The US abducts Maduro. Venezuela launches its nukes, everyone dies on both sides. Please, explain that laughable premise. Everyone in Venezuela dies for Maduro? Go on, explain it, I'll wait. Back in reality: Venezuela has nukes. The US abducts Madu…
There is something in between 0 nuclear weapons used and all nuclear weapons used.
Re: There were BGP anomalies during the Venezuela blackout
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think have thousands of artillery shells aimed at Seoul is the larger deterrent.
The nukes are to deter the US. They have been steadily increasing their missile range to first reach regional bases like Guam and now the all the way to the continental USA, and are now even launching a nuclear powered and nuclear armed ballistic missile submarine https://www.hisutton.com/DPRK-SSN-Update.html
The nukes are a bargaining chip (disarmament). Basically, if your country has the human and tech capital to develop a nuke, you probably should because it's free money.
I don't believe that NK's nukes deter the US from doing anything. Would NK nuke Guam and risk getting carpet-bombed with nukes for endless days and nights until even the ants are dead? Artillery on Seoul doesn't matter. The US would just ask SK to evacuate it.
The US doesn't do anything about the DPRK because it's not economically relevant (i.e. it doesn't have the world's largest oil reserves etc). In an ironic way, their economy being closed-off and mostly unintegrated with the Western world maintains the peace.
Re: There were BGP anomalies during the Venezuela blackout
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
From bgp hijacking? Almost certainly not. It would probably rule out the type of decapitation strike the US did, but bgp hijacking is way way below on the escalation ladder.
Nuclear capability wouldn't necessarily rule out this kind of a decapitation strike, it's just that it's very hard to imagine this kind of an operation actually being successful in any nuclear-capable country. The US couldn't just fly a bunch of helicopters to Pyongyang or Tehran and do the same within 30 minutes. Most likely every single one of those helicopters would end up being shot down.
Maybe Pakistan, or Israel.