31–40 of 64 posts
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The better question is why the media is starting to distract you over there in USA with UFOs and Russians again.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/putins-revenge/ Because it's not a distraction. ...well...the UFOs thing is...
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I seriously doubt that a full-scale military assault on Russia is 1) going to be productive in the long run and 2) really not justified just to protect a cable. Given the ultra-big egos of donald and vladmir, any act that one might interpret as an assault would very likely result in massive amounts of firepower launching at civilian targets. Maybe I'm alone in accepting some spotting internet connection to Europe vs…
The problem from a game-theoretic point of view is that if your opponent believes you won't retaliate over something small, they can just keep nibbling small chunks. Better to have the public believe that you're super territorial and will react violently to the slightest provocation. I think Vlad and Donnie know this and incorporate it into their public images, which is part of the reason you describe them as "ultra-…
That's how you end up fighting wars nobody wanted. If you threaten Armageddon over every little thing and then don't deliver, nobody is going to take you seriously when you're, well, serious.
I'm convinced that's how the US ended up bombing Serbia - the Clinton administration tried to buy a little cheap grace by threatening the Serbs, thinking Milosevic would knuckle under and that would be that. But they were ignored. More threats followed and were also ignored. At some point Clinton had to do something or nobody on the planet was ever going to believe he had the backbone to carry out a threat.
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The best story surrounding this was a mole who was identified via taps on Russian cables. They were unwilling to prosecute him for fear of tipping off the Russians so he got off and was used to funnel disinformation.
My favorite part was that the Russians detected our undersea tap, found it, and put it in a Moscow museum complete with the stamp "Property of United States Government."
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Typically not.
Wait, really? That’s shocking to me - I would have assumed the entire link was encrypted E2E. Are there technical limitations that make this infeasible?
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Typically not.
Wait, really? That’s shocking to me - I would have assumed the entire link was encrypted E2E. Are there technical limitations that make this infeasible?
Making others believe you're able and willing to interfere with cables is an effective and bloodless way of force projection. For a player like Russia, who's always been big on visible activities shrouded in a hint of plausible deniability, this fits.
But aren't terrestrial cables more vulnerables than undersea cables? Cutting undersea cables require sophisticated technologies. Cutting terrestrial cables just requires a local guy with a map and some TNT. It's impossible to protect thousands of km of cables.
Given that it's 2017 and a huge fraction of the traffic is HTTPS anyway, is there any practical benefit to this?
Putin style politics, blackmailing like the Mafia. Sadly Trump starts to imitate this.
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https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/putins-revenge/ Because it's not a distraction. ...well...the UFOs thing is...
You're just backing up his point about Russia.
Thief: No sir. You're paranoid.
Man: That is my wallet. I can see my ID!
Thief: See, I told you that you were paranoid.