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War in the era of twitter and tiktok is kinda weird to me. I assume that information like this would have been available to military leadership in past wars an

War in the era of twitter and tiktok is kinda weird to me. I assume that information like this would have been available to military leadership in past wars and battles. But now it's available to every civilian with an internet connection. I don't know if this is good or bad or neutral. But it feels very different.

pixl97 5y ago
In the past the fog of war was thick. It may be weeks or months before knowledge of certain battles would make its ways to civilian sources and militaries had much more control over what the press published. Now we can even see some battles live streamed, but at the same time (counter)-intelligence operations can be directly viewed by the end user. As always the question of what we are seeing being spun with a false narrative or is it even real at all remains. I saw the future and it was weird.
- baybal2 5y ago
  Yes, much harder to use small detached flanking forces in a densely populated areas. They get TikToked, countered within minutes, and then hunted down with long range weapons. This is especially powerful against battaglione sized units, since their detachments are too small to bear the damage from few lost vehicles. If a convoy loses its sole fuel truck to ATGM, it's bye bye for them in such a wast flat open country like Ukraine.
- 1MachineElf 5y ago
  Unfortunately, I don't have any sources to back this up, only this anecdote from attending US elementary school during late 90s and middle school during the early 2000s. Teachers told us that during the age of muskets at least there were often crowds of civilian spectators on the sidelines during various western-European and American battles up until WW1. I suppose the emergence of chemical weapons and other 20th century WMDs had a big role in curbing that. If it's true, then it's a small parallel to what we have now.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    And projectile weapons. The chances of being hit by a broadsword from 50 meters are a lot lower than a stray bullet.
  - ethbr0 5y ago
    The First Battle of Bull Run / Manassas Junction in the American Civil War is infamous for the spectators that came down from Washington, DC and clogged the Union forces' path of retreat when they were routed.
  - simonh 5y ago
    It’s really just long range weapons. When most weapons had an accurate range of only a hundred metres or two, and masses of troop moved at walking pace, you could spectate relatively safely from a distance. However conflict tourism is still a thing even today.
pupppet 5y ago
It is weird, I feel like I’m watching a game being played out on twitch.
rambojazz 5y ago
What is even weirder to me is that what I would consider confidential information is basically broadcasted online, for example soldiers/convoys positions, plans, various activities like what equipment is being shipped from EU to Ukraine and through where... and so on...
- watwut 5y ago
  Public material support is signal both toward own citizens (who often see Russian conquest as danger to themselves in the long term) and toward Russia.
- _trampeltier 5y ago
  .. and Assange is still in jail for doing just the same ..
DyslexicAtheist 5y ago
> But now it's available to every civilian with an internet connection. I don't know if this is good or bad or neutral. I'm glad it is. In the early 90ies I was in SriLanka watching a genocide unfold in the South East that never went reported until mid 2000 where the Sinhalese killed Tamils most of them children and women. When they were done with them they shoved the dead bodies into stacks of truck tires and lit them on fire. You could smell the burning rubber miles away but despite the smell the purpose was getting rid of the evidence. (I thought it was strange because surely people would smell. Hell I was in the next village jumped onto my bike to understand what is happening. Everyone was in the streets - how would they cover it up in any case?) There were billboards ever few km showing a dead tiger (pun to the LTTE) with an army boot stomping on its throat. It looked childish almost because it was hand-painted and badly so (typical of billboards you see in poor countries). The billboard read "only a dead tiger is a good tiger". After this I went to buy newspaper nearly every day and couldn't believe none of this was ever reported. I asked people back in my home country if they had seen any news but nobody had. They did ofc always report hear about the horrific bombing by LTTE in Sinhalese territory, they talked about the horrors of these children who are so "brainwashed" to go to school and blow up a class full of Sinahlese kids. Western countries immediately issued a travel warning. but not a single page acknowledging what happened to the Tamils. Personally I'd rather live in a world where I have the opposite problem: getting drowned by propaganda and needing lots of time and visiting many rabbit-holes sifting through the data just to get a vague idea of what might be happening: That's a lot better than the absolute dystopia of smelling burning flesh and tires but nobody who is interested in it. And even years later when you finally coped with it not being 100% sure if it actually happened. Like it was all in your head. If my brother wouldn't have seen the same thing to confirm that it actually did happen I probably would have gone insane thinking my mind made it up.
syntheweave 5y ago
A high information climate reduces the effectiveness of maneuver warfare; this is easily demonstrated when I play a multiplayer first-person shooter and my enemies are employing ESP cheats. They can simply rush my position without any other strategy, which is profoundly different from how an experienced player would behave without that info. What that means at the scale of real war is that populations, even informal militia, have a much greater ability to resist professional armies using similarly simple strategies. Cyberwarfare matters to this, too; and Ukraine is a particularly dangerous foe in this regard given the strength of their IT sector. In effect, it's become quite hard to do anything much with military offensives other than intimidate opponents and bomb some stuff. It's astonishing to look back on reviews of battles from WWII and see how many costly blunders and accidental successes were made because of poor information and coordination. But that quality is also why "blitzkrieg" succeeded as a doctrine.

pixl97 5y ago

In the past the fog of war was thick. It may be weeks or months before knowledge of certain battles would make its ways to civilian sources and militaries had much more control over what the press published. Now we can even see some battles live streamed, but at the same time (counter)-intelligence operations can be directly viewed by the end user. As always the question of what we are seeing being spun with a false narrative or is it even real at all remains. I saw the future and it was weird.

baybal2 5y ago
Yes, much harder to use small detached flanking forces in a densely populated areas. They get TikToked, countered within minutes, and then hunted down with long range weapons. This is especially powerful against battaglione sized units, since their detachments are too small to bear the damage from few lost vehicles. If a convoy loses its sole fuel truck to ATGM, it's bye bye for them in such a wast flat open country like Ukraine.
1MachineElf 5y ago
Unfortunately, I don't have any sources to back this up, only this anecdote from attending US elementary school during late 90s and middle school during the early 2000s. Teachers told us that during the age of muskets at least there were often crowds of civilian spectators on the sidelines during various western-European and American battles up until WW1. I suppose the emergence of chemical weapons and other 20th century WMDs had a big role in curbing that. If it's true, then it's a small parallel to what we have now.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  And projectile weapons. The chances of being hit by a broadsword from 50 meters are a lot lower than a stray bullet.
- ethbr0 5y ago
  The First Battle of Bull Run / Manassas Junction in the American Civil War is infamous for the spectators that came down from Washington, DC and clogged the Union forces' path of retreat when they were routed.
- simonh 5y ago
  It’s really just long range weapons. When most weapons had an accurate range of only a hundred metres or two, and masses of troop moved at walking pace, you could spectate relatively safely from a distance. However conflict tourism is still a thing even today.

pupppet 5y ago

It is weird, I feel like I’m watching a game being played out on twitch.

rambojazz 5y ago

What is even weirder to me is that what I would consider confidential information is basically broadcasted online, for example soldiers/convoys positions, plans, various activities like what equipment is being shipped from EU to Ukraine and through where... and so on...

watwut 5y ago
Public material support is signal both toward own citizens (who often see Russian conquest as danger to themselves in the long term) and toward Russia.
_trampeltier 5y ago
.. and Assange is still in jail for doing just the same ..

DyslexicAtheist 5y ago

> But now it's available to every civilian with an internet connection. I don't know if this is good or bad or neutral. I'm glad it is. In the early 90ies I was in SriLanka watching a genocide unfold in the South East that never went reported until mid 2000 where the Sinhalese killed Tamils most of them children and women. When they were done with them they shoved the dead bodies into stacks of truck tires and lit them on fire. You could smell the burning rubber miles away but despite the smell the purpose was getting rid of the evidence. (I thought it was strange because surely people would smell. Hell I was in the next village jumped onto my bike to understand what is happening. Everyone was in the streets - how would they cover it up in any case?) There were billboards ever few km showing a dead tiger (pun to the LTTE) with an army boot stomping on its throat. It looked childish almost because it was hand-painted and badly so (typical of billboards you see in poor countries). The billboard read "only a dead tiger is a good tiger". After this I went to buy newspaper nearly every day and couldn't believe none of this was ever reported. I asked people back in my home country if they had seen any news but nobody had. They did ofc always report hear about the horrific bombing by LTTE in Sinhalese territory, they talked about the horrors of these children who are so "brainwashed" to go to school and blow up a class full of Sinahlese kids. Western countries immediately issued a travel warning. but not a single page acknowledging what happened to the Tamils. Personally I'd rather live in a world where I have the opposite problem: getting drowned by propaganda and needing lots of time and visiting many rabbit-holes sifting through the data just to get a vague idea of what might be happening: That's a lot better than the absolute dystopia of smelling burning flesh and tires but nobody who is interested in it. And even years later when you finally coped with it not being 100% sure if it actually happened. Like it was all in your head. If my brother wouldn't have seen the same thing to confirm that it actually did happen I probably would have gone insane thinking my mind made it up.

syntheweave 5y ago

A high information climate reduces the effectiveness of maneuver warfare; this is easily demonstrated when I play a multiplayer first-person shooter and my enemies are employing ESP cheats. They can simply rush my position without any other strategy, which is profoundly different from how an experienced player would behave without that info. What that means at the scale of real war is that populations, even informal militia, have a much greater ability to resist professional armies using similarly simple strategies. Cyberwarfare matters to this, too; and Ukraine is a particularly dangerous foe in this regard given the strength of their IT sector. In effect, it's become quite hard to do anything much with military offensives other than intimidate opponents and bomb some stuff. It's astonishing to look back on reviews of battles from WWII and see how many costly blunders and accidental successes were made because of poor information and coordination. But that quality is also why "blitzkrieg" succeeded as a doctrine.