7 ms·

I want to point out how odd it is that no one cares about international weapons exports, except when talking about cyber weapons. USA is the #1 arms exporter i

• thriftwy 3y ago
  The difference is that there is serious deterrence against the use of conventional weapons (you can't just do a quick over the border raid), but for 0days it's all you can exploit buffet.
  • brap 3y ago
    I'm not downplaying cyber weapons, but I would argue that conventional weapons have caused significantly more damage to innocent people over the last few years than any exploit. Deaths in the hundreds of thousands, easily, not to mention injuries, damage of property, etc. Also, the use of cyber weapons is almost meaningless without physical force to back it up. A dictator (or Spain) can spy on their dissidents, sure, but they won't even have any dissidents if they don't have the guns to stay in power. While 0days are still a weapon, and I agree they can and do in fact cause harm to innocent people, I don't think that this comparison is even close.
    • yuppiepuppie 3y ago
      It could also be related to the fact that conventional weapons trade and arms have been around for a very long time. Therefore control mechanisms and rules of engagement have been set. Where as, cyber weapons are quite new and from my pov not limited in any way. Does anyone know if the sale of a cyber weapon produced in the US can be sold outside to a foreign actor without government approval? If they can be sold, I suppose that’s one other factor at play here.
    • thriftwy 3y ago
      Governments don't need guns to stay in power. It's sufficient for them to have a lawyer and some cops to put you behind bars if they wish. Resisting will just make you go behing those bars for much longer.
      • brap 3y ago
        Do the cops not need guns to put you behind bars?
        • thriftwy 3y ago
          Usually not. They might have them, especially in trigger-happy locales, but they don't use them. You're not usually dragged behind bars at the gunpoint. You're going behind bars voluntarily because the alternative is being dragged behind bars for longer and that's all.
          • brap 3y ago
            I would be very curious to see how a police force which has no credible threat of violence can operate. "You're going to jail" - "No" "Now you're going to jail for even longer!" - "Make me" Even more amusing when the citizens have guns but the "police force" does not.
            • jjgreen 3y ago
              Stop! Or I will shout "Stop!" again
            • lambertsimnel 3y ago
              In the UK, the police seem to have little trouble being violent without guns. I think it's the threat of that kind of violence that they use to e.g. jail people. Some police officers do have guns, but they're a minority (and many of them in London refused to wield guns this week, in protest about a murder charge for a firearms officer who killed an unarmed man). As far as I can tell, non-police violence here also mostly doesn't involve guns. Knife crime seems to be more widespread.
    • hotnfresh 3y ago
      Conventional weapons are dangerous the way guns are dangerous. 0days are dangerous the way a very-well-placed spy is dangerous.
  • Cthulhu_ 3y ago
    It's a weird kind of cold war; there's government agencies performing cyberattacks worldwide constantly, but it never turns into "You overstepped a mark" and resulting conflict / sanctions / consequences - at least not as far as I can tell.
    • grotorea 3y ago
      Cyberwarfare ended up quite low on the escalation ladder, but I think that's partly because the most extreme cases (i.e. where you're actually trying to destroy or incapacitate) like U.S./Israel attacks on Iranian nuclear infrastructure or Russian attacks on Eastern Europe only happen between countries that at borderline hostility anyway. Most cyberattacks are just espionage but with computers, which happens even at peacetime between allies.
• stefan_ 3y ago
  Did the Polish PiS shoot and blow up the opposition? No, they used Pegasus. I'm sure you can figure out the reason why.
• EustassKid 3y ago
  Genuine question, why are those countries dictators?
  • kombine 3y ago
    You are not being serious right now, are you?
  • brap 3y ago
    I don't understand the question. Are you asking how they came to be, or are you saying they're not?
    • EustassKid 3y ago
      Yes I mean what do/did they do to be considered dictators, not trying to argue for the opposite I just don't know.
      • 4gotunameagain 3y ago
        That is a genuine question very easily answered by wikipedia or your favourite search engine
      • r053bud 3y ago
        State-sponsored chopping up a journalist and putting the pieces in trash bags.
  • axus 3y ago
    They are effectively absolute monarchies, which can override decisions of any elected officials.
    • EustassKid 3y ago
      But can != will, I know that exploiting power is hard to resist but I am asking for specific examples as I don't really follow what happens in that area.
• faraaz98 3y ago
  Those countries are monarchies, yes. I wouldn't call them dictatorships. Based on external optics, I'd say there's a few countries that are technically democracies but give off more dictatorship vibes than the 3 you mentioned
  • JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > Those countries are monarchies, yes. I wouldn't call them dictatorships Saudi Arabia is a dictatorship and a monarchy. The monarch exercises absolute political power. (Arguably, it’s a tyranny, since its de facto leader, the Crown Prince, doesn’t exercise power through constitutional channels—he isn’t King.) Qatar and Kuwait are constitutional monarchies with something resembling a legislative counterpoint to the executive. As long as their leaders operate within their constitutions, i.e. don’t dissolve or dominate their legislatures, they aren’t technically dictators.
    • sudosysgen 3y ago
      That doesn't follow. A monarchy can be constitutional and still be absolute. In Qatar for example, the monarch appoints the cabinet and 1/3 of the parliament, which needs 2/3+1 vote to overrule the prime minister... No need to dissolve or dominate the legislature, it's both a constitutional and absolute monarchy. It's theoretically but not practically possible for the parliament to limit the king. It's a similar story in Morocco and Kuwait.
      • JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        > A monarchy can be constitutional and still be absolute Absolute means absolute, including the ability to redraw the constitution. Constitutional monarchy means limited by a constitution. > the monarch appoints the cabinet and 1/3 of the parliament, which needs 2/3+1 vote to overrule the prime minister This is not absolute. It's no democracy. But Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy. Everyone serves at the pleasure of the King, who is the King of Saudi Arabia, not King of the Saudis. "L'etat, c'est il." Political power works formally and informally. Kuwait and Qatar's emirs are exceptionally powerful. But they have political organs to contend with, even if solely for appearance's sake. That's a constraint an absolute monarch with dictatorial authority does not have. (Repeatedly over-ruling a constitutional body, or being caught coercing it, historically weakened semi-constitutional monarchs.) For the intellectual history of this, look at the Roman kings, Spartan ephors, Roman consuls and British and French monarchies. Powerful executives. But variously checked, even if from time to time they held quasi-absolute, even dictatorial, authority.
• fortran77 3y ago
  Well, there's a core group of people here with an agenda that like to pick on a tiny little country. It's that simple. And NSO isn't "Israel". It's a private company that's owned by by a UK investment firm "Novalpina Capital" as part of a suite of technology companies called "Q Cyber" that's run out of Luxemburgh. But nobody ever suggests "going after" the UK about this issue.
  • eecc 3y ago
    My sweet sunshine, if you believe a chain of shell companies residing in financial havens is enough I have a couple marble fountains from Rome to sell you.
  • brap 3y ago
    I think you’re being naive if you think NSO isn’t related to Israeli gov (in the same manner Lockheed Martin is related to US gov). Having said that, I think you’re unjustly being downvoted. I agree that there’s often a strong bias against Israel, it’s being held to standards that other countries are not, and this is only one example.
    • fortran77 3y ago
      These people don't care about Israel -- they hate Jews. That's why people in this thread are are suggesting that Spain, in 2023, expel all its Jews. See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37657822 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37657822 (They may say "Oh, we love Jews, we just don't like Israel) but it's a lie as this post proves.
      • mcpackieh 3y ago
        I see you're just quietly dropping your claim of NSO not being Israeli; you aren't bothering to defend your claim by addressing the points raised by brap. Instead you're trying to change the subject to complain about a low-karma troll who got voted down for his comment. You linked directly to his comment so it appears to be in the black, but in actuality his comment is on the bottom of the page voted down to the lightest shade of gray. You attribute that troll's comment to "these people", implying that anybody critical of Israel's relationship to NSO shares that troll's beliefs, but that's a dishonest sleight of hand.
• Adverblessly 3y ago
  USA sells weapons to Saudi Arabia. As a result, Saudi Arabia doesn't get its weapons from Russia or Iran and normalizes its relationship with Israel (which is where I live, full disclosure :P). To me this looks like the best way to bring other countries "into the fold" as well as bring peace to the middle east, until eventually the US selling weapons to Saudi Arabia will be viewed similarly to the US selling weapons to Germany. Maybe I'm just naive, but I think in most cases applying "friendly pressure" is more useful than force, and I mostly agree with your take that selling cyberweapons should be treated similarly to selling conventional weapons.
  • droopyEyelids 3y ago
    I wouldn't say it's naïve, rather it's the blackest cynicism to assert the best way to reform a murderous dictatorship is to provide it with weapons. This time you're on the living side of the equation. How would you have felt if someone made the same argument for Nazi Germany?
    • Adverblessly 3y ago
      And that's exactly why I said "most cases".
    • ekanes 3y ago
      If it were able to change the course of history, of course it might be worthwhile. If it didn't, then of course it wouldn't. The question is really how effective it is. In the abstract, more levers of influence is probably better.
      • Analemma_ 3y ago
        The new "reformist" leader of Saudi Arabia bone-saws critical journalists, so I'd say the effectiveness is zero or close to it. Has this caused anybody in the relevant positions of government or industry (or you) to update on their beliefs on whether these arms sales are a good idea?
  • FpUser 3y ago
• dopamean 3y ago
  I think the reason for this is who the cyber weapons are pointed at. It's not common soldiers or random citizens in a war zone. It's aimed at politicians and media. I don't how much everyone else cares about this (not that they shouldn't) but if politicians and the media are worried about it then we're going to hear about it a lot and in rather breathless terms.
• justin66 3y ago
  > I want to point out how odd it is that no one cares about international weapons exports Why start your comment with an obvious falsehood?
• jauntywundrkind 3y ago
  There's an internationally respected right to defend your nation But it's just so hard to see cyberweapons as a legitimate weapon for border defense & maintaining social order. Cyberweapons are a scary way to break security, to circumvent protections designed for businesses and individuals.
• TrueDuality 3y ago
  Pointing any weapons at civilians is always big news. It just doesn't happen as often with conventional weapons. Based on my own experience in the information security space, targeting civilians is both encouraged and intentional by actors including the US.
• vict0ni 3y ago
  I do NOT agree with the next paragraph, I just want to write what people probably are probably thinking about this (and maybe someone can correct me maybe?): I think people who justify weapons trade they do it because it's "for protection" and in case of selling weapons to countries it's for "defense" and/or "in case of war", whereas with 0days and spyware their use takes place outside of the limits. i.e. when in peace (see Greece Predator story). With that being said, I think that's idiotic as it almost justifies wars. Plus the sellers just get to pick who is the "good guy" (I mean, they don't want to look bad, right?)