U.S. State Department phones hacked with Israeli company spyware

Without US involvement, those never would've even been around long enough to become conflicts.

If we had pulled out twenty, thirty years ago, they would've been much smaller conflicts. They only get to these proportions because they have strategic value to US hegemony and so we keep arming them and escalating tensions.

> After a hypothetical Taiwan annexation, Okinawa is next. The PRC have made their claims clear. This is the bloodshed the US is preventing.

Taiwan would've surrendered without much of a fight, long ago, if not for US involvement. Taiwanese presidents would not have gotten so bold if not for their big US brother waving carrier groups around. I spent two decades there witnessed firsthand how the culture and anti-Chinese sentiment grew louder as US-China relations continued to deteriorate and Taiwan felt increasingly safe hiding behind the US.

I get your point, that sometimes MAD can be a deterrent, but in this case, we created those flashpoints ourselves, it's only a matter of time before they destabilize. The longer we wait, the worse it's going to get, as the weapons on both sides continue to get more lethal and resource conflicts escalate. Conversely, Hong Kong and Tibet fell without much of a fight because the Chinese army saw no real resistance.

The US can't prevent bloodshed indefinitely, merely postpone it until some future boiling point. The same thing we did in Iraq and Afghanistan. We suck at nation building and "peace"keeping. We defend places only until they are no longer strategically important to us, and then we let them implode, former allies be damned.

> You may be fine with the idea of millions dying because you hate America or whatever. I'm not.

"Millions dying" is probably an inevitability of the new world order, at this point. What I'm not OK with is the US pretending like we can still control the world the same we did in the post-WW2 years, forevermore, with no repercussion. We can't even govern our own country anymore, and we expect to safeguard the world? Who are we kidding?

> Also the fact you think I was alluding to the US allies nuking each other following an American withdrawal shows you really don't understand the situation there at all.

Well, I did ask. I'm still asking. I really don't know what you're referring to. I think regional spheres of influence, vs a failed US global hegemony, would still be the long-term, big-picture, less-lethal route with fewer overall casualties.

There's a big, big difference between acting against your ally, and irresponsibly proliferating technology that's used against them. cf. France's Exocet sales and the Falklands, though much lower impact this time.

They did.

"A State Department spokesperson declined to comment on the intrusions, instead pointing to the Commerce Department's recent decision to place the Israeli company on an entity list, making it harder for U.S. companies to do business with them.

NSO Group and another spyware firm were "added to the Entity List based on a determination that they developed and supplied spyware to foreign governments that used this tool to maliciously target government officials, journalists, businesspeople, activists, academics, and embassy workers," the Commerce Department said in an announcement last month."

Yes.

"A State Department spokesperson declined to comment on the intrusions, instead pointing to the Commerce Department's recent decision to place the Israeli company on an entity list, making it harder for U.S. companies to do business with them.

NSO Group and another spyware firm were "added to the Entity List based on a determination that they developed and supplied spyware to foreign governments that used this tool to maliciously target government officials, journalists, businesspeople, activists, academics, and embassy workers," the Commerce Department said in an announcement last month."

> The Israeli government had strong incentive to do this, and accounts on the ship were that this was clearly intentional. Why is this so hard for you to believe?

Because an imputed motive is not proof of anything, and there's no way "accounts on the ship" could provide the information you claim they do (knowledge of the attackers mental state).

I don't think anyone disputes that the Israelis attacked the ship intentionally, but you can say the same about most friendly fire incidents. The question is if the people who made the attack deliberately decided to attack what they know to be an American ship.