Comment by catigula
6 days ago
Cyber-warfare capabilities on this level seem pretty horrific. What if you could simply turn off the power grid of Kyiv or Moscow in anticipation of a strike? That seems extremely disorientating. What if you could simply turn off the power grid indefinitely?
Russia attacks Ukrainian power grid on a weekly basis. Not only with cyber-attacks but with actual bombs. Over Christmas 750k homes in Kyiv were without power or heating. This is not a hypothetical it's daily reality for millions of people in Ukraine.
Something like this more or less happened during the initial Israeli strike on Iran ?
From what I remember reading, they were able to gain air dominance not because Iranian air-defense was bad, but because it was put almost completely out of service for a brief period of time by people on the ground - be it through sabotage, cyber-warfare, drone attacks from inside, allowing the Israeli jets to annihilate them.
> not because Iranian air-defense was bad, but because it was put almost completely out of service for a brief period of time by people on the ground - be it through sabotage, cyber-warfare, drone attacks from inside,
Wouldn't that constitute air defense being "bad"? There are no "well technically it should have worked" in war. Failing to properly secure the air defense sites is bad air defense.
Not really. Ferrari is a great car, but with punctured tires or bad driver, it won't win any race.
Although I do agree, that in war only the final outcome is important. It's just that in this case it failed not necessarily because of technology, but because of humans.
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See the remotely operated Spike missiles: https://www.twz.com/news-features/spike-missiles-that-destro...
The unquestioning logistical and intelligence support from the US military is truly formidable, and probably expensive.
> What if you could simply turn off the power grid of Kyiv or Moscow in anticipation of a strike?
I expect every major world power has a plan to (attempt to) do precisely that to their enemies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphite_bomb
> The US Navy used sea-launched Tomahawk missiles with Kit-2 warheads, involving reels of carbon fibers, in Iraq as part of Operation Desert Storm during the Gulf War in 1991, where it disabled about 85% of the electricity supply. The US Air Force used the CBU-94, dropped by F-117 Nighthawks, during the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia on 2 May 1999, where it disabled more than 70% national grid electricity supply.
I would not, however, take "Trump said something" as indicative of much. "It was dark, the lights of Caracas were largely turned off due to a certain expertise that we have, it was dark, and it was deadly" is both visibly untrue from the video evidence available, and is the precise sort of off-the-cuff low-fact statement he's prone to.
General Caine specifically said they utilized CYBERCOM (which is the US inter-branch hacking command) to pave the way for the special ops helicopters. I personally have no doubt that any (whether or not they all were) lights being out was due to a US hack. Some of the stuff that got blown up may well have been to prevent forensic recover of US tools and techniques.
I have no doubt they used cyberattacks and electronic warfare.
Trump just seems the worst person in the world to play a game of telephone with on such a subject.
For example: https://www.defensenews.com/air/2025/05/16/pentagon-silent-a...
> “The F-35, we’re doing an upgrade, a simple upgrade,” Trump said. “But we’re also doing an F-55, I’m going to call it an F-55. And that’s going to be a substantial upgrade. But it’s going to be also with two engines.”
> Frank Kendall, the secretary of the Air Force during former President Joe Biden’s administration, said in an interview with Defense News that it is unclear what Trump was referring to when he discussed an “F-22 Super,” but it may have been a reference to the F-47 sixth-generation fighter jet… Kendall said it is also unclear what Trump was referring to when he discussed the alleged F-55.
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On the other hand, Trump has a track record of leaking capabilities.
Read about Stuxnet
It's been well known to be a major part of world power war plans for like 20 years now. Yes, it's a terrifying concept.
I don't think calling shutting down the internet horrific is appropriate at all in the context of bombings.
Ridiculous post. Power outages would kill a lot of people if sustained. A Carrington event would devastate modern society.
You mean in hospital contexts?
I'm having trouble thinking how power outages can be deadly.
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Russia tried. They haven’t managed to do anything very serious.
There are way worse things you could do, you could hide explosives in consumer electronics and infiltrate the supply lines to replace them. Then you could detonate them all simultaneously, indiscriminately murdering everyone around them as well. But of course only fascist barbarians would ever do or support that sort of thing.