Comment by reducesuffering
1 year ago
Twitter (Alperovitch / Silverado Policy, someone influential enough to be sanctioned by Russian gov.) and HN is what surfaced the Russian invasion months before it happened. No academic book or Axios or Politico article was there to inform you conclusively that early. Lesswrong and HN were also much earlier (Jan '20) to the Covid epidemic, a major geopol issue, than your sources.
I appreciate the recommendations, but you're presenting valid useful alternatives (to be used as imperfect parts of a synthesis) as "idiots" when there are major counterfactuals they were better at.
I still empathize that those institutional sources are usually much better than the average social media post or user.
> Twitter (Alperovitch / Silverado Policy, someone influential enough to be sanctioned by Russian gov.) and HN is what surfaced the Russian invasion months before it happened
The CSIS [0], Atlantic Council [1][2], Politico [3], and the IISS [4] warned about an impending Russian Offensive in violation of the Minsk Agreements months before Feb 2022.
> Alperovitch
Alperovitch had the benefit of having cofounded Crowdstrike and having worked closely with the NSC on multiple issues regarding Cybersecurity Policy, Russia-US relations, and China-US relations for almost 20 years.
He was absolutely synthesizing the same sources as the ones I provided during that time period.
[0] - https://www.csis.org/analysis/russias-possible-invasion-ukra...
[1] - https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/is-putin-...
[2] - https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/putins-ne...
[3] - https://www.politico.com/news/2022/01/21/baltic-allies-ukrai...
[4] - https://www.iiss.org/en/online-analysis/online-analysis/2021...
C'mon, you can't believe that any of those 5 sources offers the same conclusive Russian invasion information in advance as Alperovitch. Alperovitch was certainly using adjacent sources, but synthesized a strong assertion (rather than reporting potential concerns) in advance of the others. Therefore, his novel analysis (on Twitter!) was more useful than any of those, some of which are just reporting the concerns around Putin's essay or Donbas-related rotations a year before.
Essentially what I just said: "No academic book or Axios or Politico article was there to inform you conclusively that early."
And you admit Alperovitch's Twitter is useful for his NSC and geopol access.