4 ms·

A Powerful Russian Weapon: The Spread of False Stories

7 points by niccolop 10y ago

osipov 10y ago
With Iraqi WMDs and Colin Powell's anthrax I think we got Russians in a distant second in this weapons race. We have a century old experience in using this weapon going at least as far back as Spanish sinking the USS Maine.
douche 10y ago
From the second page: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12377097 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12377097 (99 points, 90 comments)
carsongross 10y ago
Russia is being set up for another Cold (let's hope) War. The coordinated push is unbelievable (look at the Olympic ban). The only reason I can come up with is that the political class needs an enemy to unite the populace against.
- eveningcoffee 10y ago
  Latest news is that new Russian mister of the education and science stated that Stalin (a mass murderer) is a good guy and every different opinion is a denigration of the past. http://www.nature.com/news/putin-appoints-church-historian-as-science-minister-1.20472 http://www.nature.com/news/putin-appoints-church-historian-a... http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/08/ministry-purge-may-be-lifeline-embattled-russian-academy-sciences http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/08/ministry-purge-may-be...
- lj3 10y ago
  > the political class needs an enemy to unite the populace against. Bingo. It's a distraction. They hope if we're focused on Russia we won't notice or remember the crimes being committed by our own government and the EU. They're a convenient scapegoat. Or so they think. They don't yet realize that screaming "RUSSIAN SPIES!" every few days makes them look like they're having 60's flashbacks like a mental patient.
- dogma1138 10y ago
  Russia isn't being set up for another cold war unfortunately, it's being set up for a very very hot war. The US has ABM in Europe, Japan, Alaska and anywhere within 500 miles of an ocean. While the current generation of US ABM systems isn't sufficient to counter the current nuclear arsenal of Russia within about 10 years it would be there. Russia has either to develop an ABM shield of it's own which is both geographically and financially not feasible for them to do, or to develop new delivery mechanism and increase its warhead count to counteract the ABM. Russia's moves in renewing their nuclear arsenal pushes even more efforts, resources and political capital into US and NATO ABM deployments and development. So the situation ends being a feedback loop which makes the situation worse and worse and worse. Sadly Russia with 50,000 nuclear warheads with stealth, ECM, and decoy countermeasures capabilities is the good outcome of current policy, the bad outcome is that Russia loses the race and they cannot provide an asymmetrical answer to the ABM which forces them to strike first while they still can. It appears we don't need SkyNet for judgement day we just need congress with a hardon for ballistic missile defense and defense contractors that want to make a buck.
  - carsongross 10y ago
    Maybe if they stopped floating their country up so damned close to our war ships...
eveningcoffee 10y ago
I would call it an information freedom asymmetry. Russian current regime has thigh control over the media and social media in Russia. In addition they own many international openly Russian owned or covert Russian owned media channels that are presented in Russia as an Western media channels. As a result, Russians living in Russia and also many Russians abroad (based on my personal observations) have completely distorted understanding of the reality (compared to the Western people). You can imagine this as mentality of the Russian people is living in the heavily protected castle while mentalities Western people are living openly in the field near the castle. This situation currently allows Russian government to mount an attacks from this stronghold while leaving people inside it mostly inaffected. Naturally the situation like this is not inescapable and stories like this are good start to raise the awareness and help people to be prepared.
dogma1138 10y ago
To be said while the Russians spread stories the US spreads their ABM systems around Russia. This policy is considerably more dangerous than anything either side did during the cold war and makes a US first strike on Russia considerably more likely than ever and worse pushes the Russians into either an arms race to develop their nuclear capabilities further including producing more warheads as well as warheads with ABM countermeasures as well as pushes them to lash out with even a potential first strike as soon as they'll fear that the ABM system is about the nullify their nuclear arsenal completely. While no one can agree if MAD is the most effective strategy it has more or less prevented major global conflicts for the past 70 years, the ideological and cultural dissonance between the US and Russia is pivotal to "world peace" just as the balance of power. If there is one thing that is worse than a single global super power is 2 that agree on everything and are besties, so at least the US is doing a good job at pissing Russia off, too bad they are doing it by destroying the nuclear balance of power between the 2 super states.
cema 10y ago
Amazing comments in this thread. Just amazing. It's as if the weapon is working right here.

7 points by niccolop 10y ago

With Iraqi WMDs and Colin Powell's anthrax I think we got Russians in a distant second in this weapons race. We have a century old experience in using this weapon going at least as far back as Spanish sinking the USS Maine.

douche 10y ago

From the second page: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12377097 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12377097 (99 points, 90 comments)

carsongross 10y ago

Russia is being set up for another Cold (let's hope) War. The coordinated push is unbelievable (look at the Olympic ban). The only reason I can come up with is that the political class needs an enemy to unite the populace against.

eveningcoffee 10y ago
Latest news is that new Russian mister of the education and science stated that Stalin (a mass murderer) is a good guy and every different opinion is a denigration of the past. http://www.nature.com/news/putin-appoints-church-historian-as-science-minister-1.20472 http://www.nature.com/news/putin-appoints-church-historian-a... http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/08/ministry-purge-may-be-lifeline-embattled-russian-academy-sciences http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/08/ministry-purge-may-be...
lj3 10y ago
> the political class needs an enemy to unite the populace against. Bingo. It's a distraction. They hope if we're focused on Russia we won't notice or remember the crimes being committed by our own government and the EU. They're a convenient scapegoat. Or so they think. They don't yet realize that screaming "RUSSIAN SPIES!" every few days makes them look like they're having 60's flashbacks like a mental patient.
dogma1138 10y ago
Russia isn't being set up for another cold war unfortunately, it's being set up for a very very hot war. The US has ABM in Europe, Japan, Alaska and anywhere within 500 miles of an ocean. While the current generation of US ABM systems isn't sufficient to counter the current nuclear arsenal of Russia within about 10 years it would be there. Russia has either to develop an ABM shield of it's own which is both geographically and financially not feasible for them to do, or to develop new delivery mechanism and increase its warhead count to counteract the ABM. Russia's moves in renewing their nuclear arsenal pushes even more efforts, resources and political capital into US and NATO ABM deployments and development. So the situation ends being a feedback loop which makes the situation worse and worse and worse. Sadly Russia with 50,000 nuclear warheads with stealth, ECM, and decoy countermeasures capabilities is the good outcome of current policy, the bad outcome is that Russia loses the race and they cannot provide an asymmetrical answer to the ABM which forces them to strike first while they still can. It appears we don't need SkyNet for judgement day we just need congress with a hardon for ballistic missile defense and defense contractors that want to make a buck.
- carsongross 10y ago
  Maybe if they stopped floating their country up so damned close to our war ships...

eveningcoffee 10y ago

I would call it an information freedom asymmetry. Russian current regime has thigh control over the media and social media in Russia. In addition they own many international openly Russian owned or covert Russian owned media channels that are presented in Russia as an Western media channels. As a result, Russians living in Russia and also many Russians abroad (based on my personal observations) have completely distorted understanding of the reality (compared to the Western people). You can imagine this as mentality of the Russian people is living in the heavily protected castle while mentalities Western people are living openly in the field near the castle. This situation currently allows Russian government to mount an attacks from this stronghold while leaving people inside it mostly inaffected. Naturally the situation like this is not inescapable and stories like this are good start to raise the awareness and help people to be prepared.

dogma1138 10y ago

To be said while the Russians spread stories the US spreads their ABM systems around Russia. This policy is considerably more dangerous than anything either side did during the cold war and makes a US first strike on Russia considerably more likely than ever and worse pushes the Russians into either an arms race to develop their nuclear capabilities further including producing more warheads as well as warheads with ABM countermeasures as well as pushes them to lash out with even a potential first strike as soon as they'll fear that the ABM system is about the nullify their nuclear arsenal completely. While no one can agree if MAD is the most effective strategy it has more or less prevented major global conflicts for the past 70 years, the ideological and cultural dissonance between the US and Russia is pivotal to "world peace" just as the balance of power. If there is one thing that is worse than a single global super power is 2 that agree on everything and are besties, so at least the US is doing a good job at pissing Russia off, too bad they are doing it by destroying the nuclear balance of power between the 2 super states.

cema 10y ago

Amazing comments in this thread. Just amazing. It's as if the weapon is working right here.