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Seems like this is only news for two reasons: 1. tanks are interesting. 2. people get excited about cancelling strangers on the internet over whatever loose pre

Seems like this is only news for two reasons: 1. tanks are interesting. 2. people get excited about cancelling strangers on the internet over whatever loose pretext they can. How else can you explain this profoundly mundane story ending up on the front page of a tech news site? What's next, we going to start chiming in on soldiers who don't renew their military IDs in time? Y'all are acting like he leaked plans for the Army's top-secret death ray, or a bunch of videos of helicopters killing civilians, not a boring piece of paper work nobody in the military cared about enough to declassify after decades of service.

joe-collins 5y ago
Many people on this website work with governments. National security topics intersect with technology often: Snowden, Reality Winner, the OPM hack, SolarWinds, really anything involving the NSA. There's hardly a day we don't read about some state-backed threat actor. Does it not seem reasonable, then, that a violation of fundamental classification policy catches interest? The impact of the leak shouldn't be measured in the material revelations that might be in those documents, especially should they be so underwhelming as many seem to think. Rather, the impact is that a person of rank chose to execute such a violation for such an overwhelmingly trivial reason. Imagine, if you can, the impact that act might have on morale within that military, and on the capacity for the social pressures within that organization to maintain adherence in the future.
krisoft 5y ago
I don’t know what is news and what isn’t. But I know why I find it interesting. There is a very human element in it. I can totally imagine what goes on in the leakers head: He really knows that tank. He worked with it since forever. And the game developers are wrong. They got some detail wrong. And not just any detail, but an important… no, not just important but a crucial detail! He can tell them, but they wont believe him. Why would they? He could be anybody. So he puts his credentials in his forum profile. But the developers might still be ignoring him. This might happen for a myriad reasons, but he decides it is because they don’t believe him still. Those fools! How could he show them? Ah, he will just upload this manual, that should prove he is right and the developers will be forced to accept defeat! Super silly, but you can just see how one can walk themselves into this situation. One can also imagine it from the developers side. They are probably at least a little bit interested in tanks and weaponry. At least some of them. It is possible that they even have aspirations to make a very realistic tank simulator. Some obnoxious loudmouth user drops a leak on them. Publicly! They can’t use this info now or their game might get banned for “national security” reasons. They can’t even let it be ambigous if they have used it or not. If they get banned in the west their business might as well shut down the next day. They have to distance themselves publicly and dramatically. ( Now of course this might not be how it went down. I can imagine many variants. But it is a sticky situation none-the-less.) The third interesting bit here is the question of what makes a good game. Is a change which makes the tank simulator more realistic also always makes it more fun? Are there also game ballance considerations? Or maybe some detail would barelly change the player experience but would require a complete rewrite of their simulation engine. Is it worth implementing still? These are the perspectives and questions which made this article interesting to me. I don’t even know what “canceling strangers” would even mean in this situation.

joe-collins 5y ago

Many people on this website work with governments. National security topics intersect with technology often: Snowden, Reality Winner, the OPM hack, SolarWinds, really anything involving the NSA. There's hardly a day we don't read about some state-backed threat actor. Does it not seem reasonable, then, that a violation of fundamental classification policy catches interest? The impact of the leak shouldn't be measured in the material revelations that might be in those documents, especially should they be so underwhelming as many seem to think. Rather, the impact is that a person of rank chose to execute such a violation for such an overwhelmingly trivial reason. Imagine, if you can, the impact that act might have on morale within that military, and on the capacity for the social pressures within that organization to maintain adherence in the future.

krisoft 5y ago

I don’t know what is news and what isn’t. But I know why I find it interesting. There is a very human element in it. I can totally imagine what goes on in the leakers head: He really knows that tank. He worked with it since forever. And the game developers are wrong. They got some detail wrong. And not just any detail, but an important… no, not just important but a crucial detail! He can tell them, but they wont believe him. Why would they? He could be anybody. So he puts his credentials in his forum profile. But the developers might still be ignoring him. This might happen for a myriad reasons, but he decides it is because they don’t believe him still. Those fools! How could he show them? Ah, he will just upload this manual, that should prove he is right and the developers will be forced to accept defeat! Super silly, but you can just see how one can walk themselves into this situation. One can also imagine it from the developers side. They are probably at least a little bit interested in tanks and weaponry. At least some of them. It is possible that they even have aspirations to make a very realistic tank simulator. Some obnoxious loudmouth user drops a leak on them. Publicly! They can’t use this info now or their game might get banned for “national security” reasons. They can’t even let it be ambigous if they have used it or not. If they get banned in the west their business might as well shut down the next day. They have to distance themselves publicly and dramatically. ( Now of course this might not be how it went down. I can imagine many variants. But it is a sticky situation none-the-less.) The third interesting bit here is the question of what makes a good game. Is a change which makes the tank simulator more realistic also always makes it more fun? Are there also game ballance considerations? Or maybe some detail would barelly change the player experience but would require a complete rewrite of their simulation engine. Is it worth implementing still? These are the perspectives and questions which made this article interesting to me. I don’t even know what “canceling strangers” would even mean in this situation.