Russia invades Ukraine

[Bonded]

Canada should go all in on soft war and become the best digital disruptor in the west. Start hacking like the North Koreans and pumping misinformation like the Russians.

[Cheese]

Putin boasted about the "Oreshnik" medium-range ballistic missile system, claiming Russia has several ready for deployment. "Dozens of warheads, self-destructing blocks, attack the target at a speed of Mach 10. The temperature of the striking elements reaches 4000 degrees.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1862098111360868496

https://twitter.com/user/status/1862097989835088354


South Korea showed reluctance to supply weapons to Ukraine, despite efforts by Ukrainian Defense Minister Umerov and his delegation

https://twitter.com/user/status/1862091343863992508


Russian Patriarch Kirill on nuclear weapons: Christians not afraid of end of world

https://twitter.com/user/status/1862111701535010865


This many regions in Ukraine were targeted by Russia's massive combined attack tonight, on November 28. It was almost the entire country.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1862109750609010748

https://twitter.com/user/status/1862059140480180603


What westerners don't yet understand about Russian mentality is its complete freedom from moral constraints. Despite Russia's imploding economy, Russians spent around $500,000,000 today on a massive missile attack aimed solely at Ukraine's systems of heating, electric and water, amidst freezing winter temperatures.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1862069085128790212


As the US again urges Ukraine to mobilize every single able bodied Ukrainian CIVILIAN male between the ages of 18-60 to defend Ukraine AND THE FREE WORLD against Russia, I cannot help but think of how the US is TOO COWARDLY to do the following:

https://twitter.com/user/status/1862022684986536188


An unusually agitated Russian soldier who returned from the war opened up, saying that no one goes there except for money, and that all the patriotism is complete nonsense

https://twitter.com/user/status/1861912708548804751


The primary goal of Russia's invasion of Ukraine is to steal their resources and meet its broader strategy of market monopolization and price manipulation.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1862076972790411682


Chinese Ship’s Crew With a Russian Captain Deliberately Dragged Anchor for 100 Miles to Cut Baltic Cables

https://twitter.com/user/status/1862118547637362732

[Huntingwhale]

Originally Posted by Bonded

Canada should go all in on soft war and become the best digital disruptor in the west. Start hacking like the North Koreans and pumping misinformation like the Russians.

The west is so far behind on utilizing disinformation as a weapon, it's not even funny. Stuck behind the old fart mentality that unless it's tanks rolling across the border or bombs dropping on western cities, you aren't at war.

Meanwhile russia and other authoritarian leaders realize that there's no need to win a shooting war when you can have a bunch of neckbeards tapping away on keyboards and having their targets destroy themselves from within with a bunch of coordinated posts and disinformation campaigns. It's disgusting how far behind we are on even comprehending what is happening and even more disgusting the complete lack of defending against it.

There should swarms of western-bots, bidenbots, whatever-bots doing the exact same thing those countries do to us, on significantly larger scales, punishing them for every campaign they send our way. With a successful recent campaign to get Trump back in power, Romania seems to be the next victim with the potentially next president a nutjob rightwing tiktok star that came out of nowhere, yet is already being traced back to russian disinformation campaigns.

So many missed opportunities to issue payback to those parties, who laugh at us for wasting money on thousands of tanks that sit in storage and never get used, in which we're too scared to send enmasse to the country doing the dirty work for us. The Ukrainians seem to understand this and actually fight back with government-organized hackers, but it's not enough. There should be coordinated western government-sponsored hackers doing the exact same thing back to the russians.

[Itse]

Originally Posted by Huntingwhale

The west is so far behind on utilizing disinformation as a weapon, it's not even funny. Stuck behind the old fart mentality that unless it's tanks rolling across the border or bombs dropping on western cities, you aren't at war.

Meanwhile russia and other authoritarian leaders realize that there's no need to win a shooting war when you can have a bunch of neckbeards tapping away on keyboards and having their targets destroy themselves from within with a bunch of coordinated posts and disinformation campaigns. It's disgusting how far behind we are on even comprehending what is happening and even more disgusting the complete lack of defending against it.

There should swarms of western-bots, bidenbots, whatever-bots doing the exact same thing those countries do to us, on significantly larger scales, punishing them for every campaign they send our way. With a successful recent campaign to get Trump back in power, Romania seems to be the next victim with the potentially next president a nutjob rightwing tiktok star that came out of nowhere, yet is already being traced back to russian disinformation campaigns.

So many missed opportunities to issue payback to those parties, who laugh at us for wasting money on thousands of tanks that sit in storage and never get used, in which we're too scared to send enmasse to the country doing the dirty work for us. The Ukrainians seem to understand this and actually fight back with government-organized hackers, but it's not enough. There should be coordinated western government-sponsored hackers doing the exact same thing back to the russians.

The west has utilized these strategies forever. Not shooting back isn't the problem, and shooting back only escalates the problem as information warfare is really kind of a bioweapon, it doesn't really respect borders and problems created have a tendency to circulate.

What we need is to get serious about defense and making better social media platforms, and forcing social media platforms to become better.

Taiwan has also achieved a lot by actually educating its population. (They're obviouslu a huge target for Chinese propaganda.)
I highly recommend the podcast "Your Undivided Attention" and specifically their episode "Future Proofing your democracy in the age of AI" from last February.

[Itse]

Finland mostly has a policy of not discussing the details of their support to Ukraine, mostly just vague numbers.

A whole new drone production facility as a joint project with Ukraine, opening "early next year" is however an exception.

https://www.helsinkitimes.fi/finland...-partners.html

Joint efforts with Ukraine are becoming a bit of a thing in Europe, maybe this is something Canada should also be looking into?

The benefits are obvious. There's money in government budgets for supporting Ukraine, this way much of that money goes into beefing up our local arms production (and creates local jobs), while Ukraine helps with up-to-date expertise, and Russians help by providing live targets for field testing and further development.

[Huntingwhale]

Originally Posted by Itse

The west has utilized these strategies forever. Not shooting back isn't the problem, and shooting back only escalates the problem as information warfare is really kind of a bioweapon, it doesn't really respect borders and problems created have a tendency to circulate.

What we need is to get serious about defense and making better social media platforms, and forcing social media platforms to become better.

Taiwan has also achieved a lot by actually educating its population. (They're obviouslu a huge target for Chinese propaganda.)
I highly recommend the podcast "Your Undivided Attention" and specifically their episode "Future Proofing your democracy in the age of AI" from last February.

To be blunt, whatever strategies the west is using on the information warfare front is failing miserably. The proof is in the pudding; Brexit, Trump back for round 2 and the various pro-russian leaders that have been instilled recently throughout Europe. That's not to mention what happened in Georgia and Moldova recently. If we think we are doing a great job going tit-for-tat, we need to check the scoreboard and come to the realization that we are well behind and not doing enough.

As they say, the best defence is a good offence and that is especially true to a russian leadership that only understand force. Constantly defending means we are constantly behind the 8ball, always reactionary and not proactive. It can be called escalatory, red line, whatever other big word of the day. But in the end we are losing miserably and it is eating western societies from the core. We can either play by the magical rulebook our opponents have no desire to follow, or was can sack the #### up and take the fight to them before it's too late.

I agree with the social media part. Education is key and I heard a few countries that have instilled social media education as a way to combat it. But simply put, we're too stupid/lazy to do that on this side of the ocean. We simply do not take this problem seriously enough.

[BloodFetish]

China sanctions their own population's access to the global internet.

We should be able to do the same to a bad actor's connection to the global internet.

[Itse]

Originally Posted by Huntingwhale

To be blunt, whatever strategies the west is using on the information warfare front is failing miserably. The proof is in the pudding; Brexit, Trump back for round 2 and the various pro-russian leaders that have been instilled recently throughout Europe. That's not to mention what happened in Georgia and Moldova recently. If we think we are doing a great job going tit-for-tat, we need to check the scoreboard and come to the realization that we are well behind and not doing enough.

As they say, the best defence is a good offence and that is especially true to a russian leadership that only understand force. Constantly defending means we are constantly behind the 8ball, always reactionary and not proactive. It can be called escalatory, red line, whatever other big word of the day. But in the end we are losing miserably and it is eating western societies from the core. We can either play by the magical rulebook our opponents have no desire to follow, or was can sack the #### up and take the fight to them before it's too late.

I agree with the social media part. Education is key and I heard a few countries that have instilled social media education as a way to combat it. But simply put, we're too stupid/lazy to do that on this side of the ocean. We simply do not take this problem seriously enough.

I definitely agree that we're not taking this seriously enough.

I think you are however blind to the fact that the kinds of troubles we have in the West is stuff that's been happening on colonized countries forever. CIA has a long and very well known history of repeatedly and successfully destabilizing countries and getting various US friendly authoritarians into power in South America.

Russia especially ia good at utilizing new technologies, and they've put a lot of effort into building up longterm alliances with people in the West, and I would agree that they are ahead in that kind of influence. (Then again, Russia has always been ahead in that game. Soviet Union had a lot of influence in western political life throughout it's whole existence, while Western powers were often struggling to even understand the basics of what was going on in Kremlin politics.)

But let's consider for a second, what would the West benefit from successfully attacking China and Russia hard? Do we want to destabilize Russia? Do we actually want help get corrupt, inept leaders into power there? Not really.

The main reason Russia is more successful in its influence campaign currently is because Putin has extremely broad and frankly insane goals. Weakness, internal fighting and political, social and economical instability are all just goals in themselves, there doesn't need to be any direct or even obvious longterm benefit to Russia. Bad things for the West is a goal in itself. Weak and bad leaders in the West are a goal in itself, it doesn't need to achieve anything. When you have a built a huge net, it's very easy to score a lot of goals.

Putin is mob boss trying to strengthen his own position by bringing everyone else down, and an ex-KGB man still fighting the Cold War decades after the West thought it was over. The West are not Putin nor do we want to behave like that, we have different systems and beliefs and thus different interests.

What the West wants, generally speaking, is NOT more corruption, instability and economic weakness in Russia and China.

We also have much more open societies, where power is more dispersed and people have more (broadly speaking) more rights. It's also much easier for populists with the right backing to create brand new power by creating new political movements. This naturally makes us a softer target.

Yes, we should take the threat more seriously and start treating Russia especially as the hostile power that it is, but that'smot the only reason they have more success in information warfare.

(China is more of a competing/adversarial power rather than an outright hostile power, and it's less clear what their strategy and goals are.)

[Coach]

Originally Posted by BloodFetish

China sanctions their own population's access to the global internet.

We should be able to do the same to a bad actor's connection to the global internet.

Should be the opposite. Should be finding a way to get open internet in those places as much as possible. Porn is the great peacemaker.

[Bonded]

https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/29/europ...ntl/index.html


Putin is a happy boy

[Locke]

Originally Posted by Bonded

https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/29/europ...ntl/index.html


Putin is a happy boy

Oh my God....he's sending Captain Crunch and Count Chocula to negotiate peace...oh yeah. This'll go well. I can see it now.

[Cheese]

Zelensky is going to tell him to go pound sand!

[Ozy_Flame]

It's a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation for Ukraine assuming the U.S. is just going to acquiese to Russia in terms of frozen frontlines. That is effectively waving the white flag on illegal annexation.

I think Europe, Canada, Austria, and Asian allies are going to need to step up as the U.S. departs in both leadership and support. Russia having the means to re-arm and likely attack again in a few years time would be even worse than what they're doing today.

It's probably time for some serious, old school European espionage too.

[Locke]

I was too young to really experience the Cold War, we should really have a sequel.

[burn_this_city]

Aleppo has fallen to the FSA, without Russians and Iranian forces, the Syrian Army is falling apart. Biggest events in Syria since 2016.

[Huntingwhale]

Originally Posted by Ozy_Flame

It's a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation for Ukraine assuming the U.S. is just going to acquiese to Russia in terms of frozen frontlines. That is effectively waving the white flag on illegal annexation.

I think Europe, Canada, Austria, and Asian allies are going to need to step up as the U.S. departs in both leadership and support. Russia having the means to re-arm and likely attack again in a few years time would be even worse than what they're doing today.

It's probably time for some serious, old school European espionage too.

The wild thing about russia rearming that doesn't get talked about enough is that when they re-arm, it's not going to be an army of more modern tanks, jets or other large-sized mechanical equipment requiring a team to operate. It is going to be cheap, plentiful and deadly drone warfare on a scale not even imagined possible. Russia will be, if they aren't already, the worldwide leader in drone warfare production, technology and terrorism. That should freak out anybody who imagines what terrorism of the future looks like.

Yet another domino effect of not stepping up to stop russia much sooner, as this bought them a few years of getting ahead of the curve.

[burn_this_city]

https://twitter.com/user/status/1862526579156357321

[activeStick]

So, the current government in power is led by Assad. Aren't there a lot of different groups of rebels in Syria? Are ISIS and ISIL there? Are these rebels them? I remember in one of the past civil wars, there was also the Free Syrian group that was backed by the US? Actually, I guess this group is likely them?

[SebC]

Originally Posted by activeStick

So, the current government in power is led by Assad. Aren't there a lot of different groups of rebels in Syria? Are ISIS and ISIL there? Are these rebels them? I remember in one of the past civil wars, there was also the Free Syrian group that was backed by the US? Actually, I guess this group is likely them?

These guys are, at the very least, heavily involved.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tahrir_al-Sham (HTS)

[afc wimbledon]

There are no good guys in Syria sadly, except maybe the Kurds, Assad is a bastard but he isnt a fundy religious bastard and in the end he might be the least worst for most Syrians