before anyone jumps on the pedantry bandwagon, its worth noting that even though open war hasn’t been called: the attacks on infrastructure especially cyber warfare is extremely active and, crucially, direct.
It is totally fair to say that in a digital context, Russia is absolutely at war with Europe.
As far as I can tell, they don’t even try to hide it.
True, but they’ve certainly been doing it much longer than ten years. I’ll never forget this headline [0] that struck me as purely devilish, especially in the lead up to the 2016 presidential election. Combine that with the knowledge that Trump has been anti-NATO since the 1980s [1]. Who knows how long Russia has been nudging him along. Who knows how many avenues they traverse? Take for example the letter to Senator Tom Cotton about Greenland [2]. What an embarrassment. I can only hope we are equally successful in our own PsyOps.
Some could say that in the cyber realm, they are not petty, ya! Well, or something like that.
Eversince notpetya and the colonial pipeline hack, the cyber strategy game changed a lot. Notpetya was genius as a deployment, because they abused the country's tax software deployment pipeline to cripple all (and I mean all, beyond 99%) businesses in one surgical strike.
The same is gonna happen to other tax software providers, because the DATEV AG and similar companies are pretty much the definition of digital incompetence wherever you look.
I could name other takedowns but the list would continue beyond a reasonable comment, especially with vendors like Hercules and Prophete that are now insolvent because they never prioritized cyber security at all, got hacked, didn't have backups, and ran out of money due to production plant costs.
This completely ignores that: 1. Russia was the aggressor in Ukraine, 2. Putin has made clear his desire to pursue expansionist goals through military action targeting prior members of the Soviet Union, 3. Putin regular threatens nuclear war with Ukraine, 4. Russia has shown outward hostility towards Western democracies and sought to manipulate elections with information warfare to reach their goals (most notably, 2016 US Election and Brexit), 5. Russian regularly cuts cables connecting countries, and 6. Though completely unrelated, Putin has a history of assassinating political opponents. That's wolfish behavior if I've ever seen it.
Does Europe overall feel and act like that’s the case though?
It seems as if the European war has been pushed to the background recently, and most people kind of forgot about it. If you walk down the streets of Paris or Berlin does it look like it’s wartime, do people talk about it much, do they share the latest front news and so on?
>If you walk down the streets of Paris or Berlin does it look like it’s wartime,
Like what exactly would you want them to do? Run around screaming all day because there's a war in another country 2000 km away from them?
No, people just go on with their lives, doing their jobs, taking care of family and friends, paying their taxes, so that specialized workers in the ministry of defence can take care of the war stuff for them. That's how modern society works.
It's even similar in Kiev, when you walk down the streets you see people living their lives. Gyms, bars, cafes, clubs are full and lively. People don't stop living and enjoying their daily lives just because there's shelling somewhere else in the country.
> It's even similar in Kiev, when you walk down the streets you see people living their lives. Gyms, bars, cafes, clubs are full and lively. People don't stop living and enjoying their daily lives just because there's shelling somewhere else in the country.
While it's true to a certain degree, you make it sound like Kyiv residents are having a grand old time right now. But in reality, the majority are trying very hard to keep from freezing to death as Russian attacks targeting their power and heating infrastructure have destroyed much of it.
Countless NGOs, in the past decades, pushed for mass migration to France, and called any opposing voice "nazis", the "darkest hours of our history", etc.
We know the name of their leaders, their (ethno-religious) background, etc. They aren't Iranian. They aren't Muslim. They aren't Russian...
have you seen the competence in those who manage the infrastructure? i'd say i would need significant proof before assuming anything. And IF russia is doing it, I would still say that we should put 99% blame on the absolute incompetents running the infrastructure, 1% russia.
before anyone jumps on the pedantry bandwagon, its worth noting that even though open war hasn’t been called: the attacks on infrastructure especially cyber warfare is extremely active and, crucially, direct.
It is totally fair to say that in a digital context, Russia is absolutely at war with Europe.
As far as I can tell, they don’t even try to hide it.
Not to mention the information war they have been waging globally since 2016
True, but they’ve certainly been doing it much longer than ten years. I’ll never forget this headline [0] that struck me as purely devilish, especially in the lead up to the 2016 presidential election. Combine that with the knowledge that Trump has been anti-NATO since the 1980s [1]. Who knows how long Russia has been nudging him along. Who knows how many avenues they traverse? Take for example the letter to Senator Tom Cotton about Greenland [2]. What an embarrassment. I can only hope we are equally successful in our own PsyOps.
[0] https://www.rt.com/news/265399-putin-nato-europe-ukraine-ita...
[1] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ilanbenmeir/that-time-t...
[2] https://monitoring.bbc.co.uk/product/c2018djo
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Some could say that in the cyber realm, they are not petty, ya! Well, or something like that.
Eversince notpetya and the colonial pipeline hack, the cyber strategy game changed a lot. Notpetya was genius as a deployment, because they abused the country's tax software deployment pipeline to cripple all (and I mean all, beyond 99%) businesses in one surgical strike.
The same is gonna happen to other tax software providers, because the DATEV AG and similar companies are pretty much the definition of digital incompetence wherever you look.
I could name other takedowns but the list would continue beyond a reasonable comment, especially with vendors like Hercules and Prophete that are now insolvent because they never prioritized cyber security at all, got hacked, didn't have backups, and ran out of money due to production plant costs.
The cold war never ended
...for Putin
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They started this long ago, with the first invasion of Ukraine in 2014 and a series of poisoning attacks all the way back to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Alexander_Litvine...
This completely ignores that: 1. Russia was the aggressor in Ukraine, 2. Putin has made clear his desire to pursue expansionist goals through military action targeting prior members of the Soviet Union, 3. Putin regular threatens nuclear war with Ukraine, 4. Russia has shown outward hostility towards Western democracies and sought to manipulate elections with information warfare to reach their goals (most notably, 2016 US Election and Brexit), 5. Russian regularly cuts cables connecting countries, and 6. Though completely unrelated, Putin has a history of assassinating political opponents. That's wolfish behavior if I've ever seen it.
You're conveniently omitting these all happened in response to the full scale Russian invasion of Ukraine.
But thanks for proving the point about Russia's disinformation war.
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What I am starting to appreciate about these digital infrastructure attacks is that they may be reversible and or temporary. It can be a nice feature.
Deaths resulting from such attack are not reversible.
Then you're missing the point.
If they succeed they may well not be reversible. The question is if this had succeeded would we have shrugged it off again or responded appropriately?
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Does Europe overall feel and act like that’s the case though?
It seems as if the European war has been pushed to the background recently, and most people kind of forgot about it. If you walk down the streets of Paris or Berlin does it look like it’s wartime, do people talk about it much, do they share the latest front news and so on?
>If you walk down the streets of Paris or Berlin does it look like it’s wartime,
Like what exactly would you want them to do? Run around screaming all day because there's a war in another country 2000 km away from them?
No, people just go on with their lives, doing their jobs, taking care of family and friends, paying their taxes, so that specialized workers in the ministry of defence can take care of the war stuff for them. That's how modern society works.
It's even similar in Kiev, when you walk down the streets you see people living their lives. Gyms, bars, cafes, clubs are full and lively. People don't stop living and enjoying their daily lives just because there's shelling somewhere else in the country.
> It's even similar in Kiev, when you walk down the streets you see people living their lives. Gyms, bars, cafes, clubs are full and lively. People don't stop living and enjoying their daily lives just because there's shelling somewhere else in the country.
While it's true to a certain degree, you make it sound like Kyiv residents are having a grand old time right now. But in reality, the majority are trying very hard to keep from freezing to death as Russian attacks targeting their power and heating infrastructure have destroyed much of it.
Kyiv.
And "enjoying their daily lives" diminishes real tragedies of Ukrainians' daily lives.
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Berlin recently had a blackdown caused by domestic terrorists.
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It wasn't Iran that bombed Afghanistan, Libya, and Iraq[0]. Gadaffi warned that Libya was the only thing stopping most migrants reaching Europe.
[0] at least recently
In fairness, a large chunk of those immigrants to France were "Pied Noirs" and other diaspora from its former colonial possessions, e.g., Indochina.
Countless NGOs, in the past decades, pushed for mass migration to France, and called any opposing voice "nazis", the "darkest hours of our history", etc.
We know the name of their leaders, their (ethno-religious) background, etc. They aren't Iranian. They aren't Muslim. They aren't Russian...
have you seen the competence in those who manage the infrastructure? i'd say i would need significant proof before assuming anything. And IF russia is doing it, I would still say that we should put 99% blame on the absolute incompetents running the infrastructure, 1% russia.
If you did then you'd be extremely gullible.
That seems like just victim blaming - "she was asking for it with the clothes she was wearing".
Software with vulnerabilities was defectively written.
If someone makes tanks with paper for armour, because it cuts costs, they are to blame if those tanks catch fire.
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Thankfully we'll magically stop being at war with Russia once Ukraine gives up :P
Haha yep :P
Next is Moldova.
Then Latvia and Lithuania.
Then Estonia and Northern Finland/Norway.
Then Romania and Bulgaria.
Putin has already said many times that he intends to rebuild the Russian empire to its zenith.