18 ms·

Not a comment about who's right or wrong in this war, but it is fascinating that we have entered the age of the Internet being a place where warfare is fought.

Not a comment about who's right or wrong in this war, but it is fascinating that we have entered the age of the Internet being a place where warfare is fought. There have always been people posting web content about conflicts but now with Gaza and Ukraine, it seems that the nations fighting are actively looking at the internet as the fourth field of battle. Just waiting for a random US future president to create an "Internet" branch of the military. Maybe that's already happened.

afroboy 2y ago
> Not a comment about who's right or wrong in this war. This is not a war.
germinalphrase 2y ago
Espionage/propaganda/public relations/influence campaigns are hardly new. Social media is just a new flavor to go along with the others.
- marginalia_nu 2y ago
  I do think the economy is different. You've always been able to just hire a bunch of thugs to stage an event to shape the narrative, like old-school cold war style. That takes money and effort and a modicum of skill and the risk of being caught with your pants down is not negligible. Difference today is you can stoke the flames of public outrage with just a few people, without even setting foot in the country, while maintaining a lot of plausible deniability, since the modern playbook relies heavily on uncertainty and confusion, meaning you can safely target allies without significant risk of being caught (even if you're caught, you can deny it and say it's hostile propaganda).
  - AnimalMuppet 2y ago
    Even in the old days, if your operation was caught, you could always claim that it was an enemy false flag. (And if it was your false flag and you were caught, you could always claim that it was an enemy provocation.)
  - somenameforme 2y ago
    This seems reasonable, but it runs into a little problem. If you engage in political discussion anywhere on the internet, the first thing you'll find is that people, if they have formed an opinion, have exactly 0 interest in changing their mind. If you already hold a genuine and internally formed view on e.g. the Israel - Palestine conflict, then even if somebody sat you (or me) in front of 24/7 propaganda for the other side, they'd be unlikely to ever change either of our minds. Propaganda only seems to work in two situations. The first is on topics people know nothing about. Each time the US invades some places most people couldn't even find on a map, support for it rises in accordance with the propaganda. But as people learn more, and gradually form their own values, that support tends to rapidly decline. And there are also long-term consequences, because people will remember being lied to. My views on the US war machine and geopolitics in general seem unlikely, at this point, to ever change. And they were largely formed due to the Iraq War. Irrefutable [1] and Undeniable [2] are two 21 year old articles I still go back to on occasion. The other situation is when it's true. During the Cold War we spread endless propaganda about things like having stocked store shelves. This is doubly effective in the same way that lying propaganda is doubly ineffective. Because not only does it create a desired perception, but once people gradually find out it's really true, it also tends to turn them against their own government who invariably misrepresents such situations. Again, people don't like being lied to. [1] - https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2003/02/06/irrefutable/e598b1be-a78a-4a42-8e1a-c336f7a217f4/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2003/02/06/i... [2] - https://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/06/opinion/irrefutable-and-undeniable.html https://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/06/opinion/irrefutable-and-u...
    - syncmaster913n 2y ago
      The purpose of propaganda, in its broadest definition, isn't to change minds. It is to leverage the existing contents of a mind in a way that makes you perform a certain action that is desired by the propagandist. The belief that holding strong opinions protects against propaganda is dangerous. Strong opinions is where propaganda inserts its levers.
  - vharuck 2y ago
    People also seem to discount the effects of internet operations by enemy states. For example, in 2022, the FBI blamed the state of North Korea for a string of hacks on US health systems. The "meatspace" equivalent would've been North Korean operatives infiltrating dozens of hospitals and destroying records or supplies. If that had happened, there would've been a bigger response from the government than "Mind your physical security, hospitals." But it's the internet, so who cares (besides the people immediately affected)?
- paul7986 2y ago
  Indeed and one reason i don't watch or pay attention to news media(TV, online, etc) especially political news. What to believe is real / the truth and with the advent of AI, Deep fake voices and deep fake videos the Internet becomes an even worse place for deciphering truth. Here's AI Trump and AI Biden debating live now on Twitch (video isnt great as of today but the voices are) https://m.twitch.tv/videos/2157689323 https://m.twitch.tv/videos/2157689323
- akudha 2y ago
  Yes, they’re not new. But it is ridiculously easy and cheap today to do propaganda than even 30 years ago. We’re connected to the outrage machine 24/7 now because of internet/social media/smartphones, vs say 1980. God knows what % of the population has mental issues because we watch too much Twitter and Facebook and other crap
gdsdfe 2y ago
we entered the age ?! we've been here for at least a decade
runarberg 2y ago
[flagged]
- jamal-kumar 2y ago
  The holocaust came of age in the dawn of the information age if you count the radio as information technology, albeit a very one-sided information technology where you had the government giving everyone cheap radios that were only marked to tune to German and Austrian radio stations, unless you dared to go out at night to get an antenna up to receive others. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksempf%C3%A4nger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksempf%C3%A4nger
  - runarberg 2y ago
    This also applies to the Rwandan genocide. A lot of it was perpetrated via mass media, especially radio. But you can also claim that there were Industrialized genocides before the Holocaust, but what sets it apart is just how much it was defined by industrialized processes. The Gaza Genocide is similar, the use of AI for target selection (or rather generation), the social media campaigns, using drones for killings, etc. We haven’t seen a genocide before which uses information technology to the extent it really defines whole processes of the genocide.
    - hedora 2y ago
      Germany pioneered a lot of modern propaganda techniques in WWII: The first television broadcast on earth was of Hitler, and his chief propagandist, Goebbles, continues to have significant influence on modern propagandists. For instance, Biden's publicly compared the tactics Trump used in the 2020 "Big Lie" campaign to those of Goebbles. Of course, there was also the Hitler Youth, which was a pretty successful social engineering campaign. On the computer side of things: IBM mainframes were famously an enabling technology for the holocaust and german war machine.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - 2y ago
vitus 2y ago
> Just waiting for a random US future president to create an "Internet" branch of the military. Maybe that's already happened. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Cyber_Command https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Cyber_Command is the closest thing that we have today. It's not a formal branch, though, but rather a joint effort across the existing branches.
- jowea 2y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cyber_warfare_forces https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cyber_warfare_forces A cursory look and it seems Germany and China were first to having a specific branch, but China dissolved theirs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyber_and_Information_Domain_Service https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyber_and_Information_Domain_S... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Liberation_Army_Strategic_Support_Force https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Liberation_Army_Str...
  - greentxt 2y ago
    China's was disbanded like 1 wikipedia edit ago (46 days), if you believe that.
    - caycep 2y ago
      edit made by whatever APT hacking group du jour the PLA has in operation at the moment!
      - jowea 2y ago
        Eh they just say it split back into the usual cyberwarfare sections inside of each usual military branch, not like they actually ceased operations.
- lucubratory 2y ago
  That's much more oriented to network security, spectrum and hardware, stuff like that. For an American military organisation engaged in internet influence operations you'd want to look at the signature reduction program. Something like 50,000 people strong at this point, insane amounts of resources going into that.
axus 2y ago
I've always been a keyboard warrior, volunteering to defend my country on message boards.
anigbrowl 2y ago
We entered that some time ago; or rather, the Internet accelerates the use of such information operations. This is (imho) why Musk bought Twitter.
- cjk2 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - complianceowl 2y ago
    [flagged]
pradn 2y ago
There's a whole term for this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth-generation_warfare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth-generation_warfare
wruza 2y ago
The internet created a whole stratum of people who don’t use tv, radio and newspaper anymore. It’s not that we entered internet warfare, we just exited absolute control of large mass media. Now every TLA has to deal with it somehow. Why internet is the battlefield? Because everything in our world is based on an opinion. You can sell a lot of bs to your “client” if he has “correct” opinion. Bad news, our opinion system was designed for groups and villages, not for the internet.
xanthor 2y ago
The Internet as we think of it is already a military project. Why do you think so much emphasis is put on countries that assert sovereignty over their own information space?
dfxm12 2y ago
"Manufacturing Consent" was written in the 80s mostly in response to newspapers, but the ideas have been adapted to the Internet for some time (and talk radio, and cable news, etc.). I'm old enough to remember this from the Iraq war. Yeah, we didn't have microblogging back then, but there were Email campaigns, blogs, message boards, chat rooms, etc.
- akudha 2y ago
  Propaganda, false news etc are as old as time. It was the radio, TV and newspapers before, now it is social media and the internet. The difference now is the speed, cost and scale. It is super cheap to spread crap today than ever. Also it is quick and the reach is massive. By the way, Manufacturing Consent is a depressing book. You’d lose what little faith you have in media, if you read it…
  - SCUSKU 2y ago
    I think one of the big takeaways for me was aside from deliberate manipulation of media by the government and willing media partners, that journalists also self censor in a way because they are operating in a professional environment and within a certain Overton Window. Maybe it's not what I should remember most, but it did help remind me that when your livelihood is based on what you say you will be much more measured, regardless of the subject. Probably why people look to social media or Substack for more independent people who have a longer leash, less on the line, and more to gain, since that's where you get your interesting although many times wrong takes (e.g. Ivermectin for Covid, or Lab Leak Theory)
- bostik 2y ago
  And let's keep in mind that the term "Public Relations" was explicitly chosen as a Newspeak-term because Edward Bernays realised that the actual term for a war time methodology, "propaganda", was too loaded.[0] And honest. Internet is a communications medium. It was destined to be flooded with propaganda, whatever you try to call your particular flavour. Or as I have been saying since the 1990's, the only difference between marketing and propaganda is that with marketing at least you are trying to peddle a product instead of an ideology. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays
shrubble 2y ago
Eglin Air Force Base and their involvement with Reddit...
sva_ 2y ago
Wasn't there something with the Canadian military fighting (what they called) misinformation on social media during the pandemic? Seems like it's already ongoing.
- betaby 2y ago
  Canadian government was the source of misinformation on social media during the pandemic! Literal curfews were in place with propaganda machine saying how good idea it was.
  - dylan604 2y ago
    For purposes of conversation and allowing for a moment your idea is true, to what purpose was the curfews imposed? Who benefited? How? Why were the curfews necessary to achieve those goals?
    - tredre3 2y ago
      > to what purpose was the curfews imposed? The stated purpose was to flatten the curve. > Who benefited? The government. > How? By giving the impression that they were doing something. > Why were the curfews necessary to achieve those goals? They weren't, as far as we know. In Quebec's case they were still scrambling to justify them a few hours before the press conference: https://www.thesuburban.com/news/legault-s-curfew-decision-was-not-backed-by-public-health/article_aa6fa61c-7f7c-5433-a46f-22bcbb1648f5.html https://www.thesuburban.com/news/legault-s-curfew-decision-w... https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/curfew-legality-quebec-effectiveness-covid-19-1.5864191 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/curfew-legality-queb...
      - dylan604 2y ago
        [flagged]
        sva_ 2y ago
        I think the person you replied to named the purpose as "giving the impression that they were doing something", which is shockingly often the case with politicians: They'll do what they believe will get them voted for again. I don't think it is necessary to insult people as 'conspiracy nutters' on here. If you don't want to discuss something with someone, just give them a downvote and move on. No need to be uncivil.
tintor 2y ago
US already has https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Cyber_Command https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Cyber_Command
bitcurious 2y ago
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-Q-Tel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-Q-Tel The US hasn't been especially loud about it, but it's been a dominant force in 'internet warfare.'
caycep 2y ago
https://www.cybercom.mil https://www.cybercom.mil how competent they actually are at this, who knows...
dwater 2y ago
My first semester of college in Fall of 1999, I wrote a paper about cyber warfare and the summary was that the superpowers were already doing it, and the only thing expected to change in the future was the resources that were online and susceptible would increase the scale of cyber war.
s1k3s 2y ago
Go to the Wikipedia pages of these events and click on "Talk" at the top or see the history of those pages. The amount of people fighting over this information war is mindblowing. If anything, this makes me question the accuracy of historical events that happened before humanity had access to such tools.
- poincaredisk 2y ago
  My understanding is, historians know that the source material is 90% bullshit (texts written to appease an ego of some lord, chronicles of war against "subhuman" enemies, religious scriptures), they just know how to find the remaining 10%.
  - delian66 2y ago
    How do they know that?
throwup238 2y ago
> Just waiting for a random US future president to create an "Internet" branch of the military. Maybe that's already happened. Cyber Force! They have cyber marines, cyber carriers, cyber destroyers, cyber bombers, cyber jets, and cyber drones. They even have their own sister agency called Veterans Affairs where veterans can go to get virtual healthcare treatment.
mrcartmeneses 2y ago
How luxurious of you to have such thoughts in the face of genocide
moate 2y ago
I think we’ve been here for a while, and I don’t think you make an overt branch to fight covert wars, you just roll it into the NSA or ops for some (all?) other branches of the military.
DrScientist 2y ago
Look up Bell Pottinger and Iraq. US military spent over half a billion on war propaganda - outsourced to experts.

afroboy 2y ago

> Not a comment about who's right or wrong in this war. This is not a war.

germinalphrase 2y ago

Espionage/propaganda/public relations/influence campaigns are hardly new. Social media is just a new flavor to go along with the others.

marginalia_nu 2y ago
I do think the economy is different. You've always been able to just hire a bunch of thugs to stage an event to shape the narrative, like old-school cold war style. That takes money and effort and a modicum of skill and the risk of being caught with your pants down is not negligible. Difference today is you can stoke the flames of public outrage with just a few people, without even setting foot in the country, while maintaining a lot of plausible deniability, since the modern playbook relies heavily on uncertainty and confusion, meaning you can safely target allies without significant risk of being caught (even if you're caught, you can deny it and say it's hostile propaganda).
- AnimalMuppet 2y ago
  Even in the old days, if your operation was caught, you could always claim that it was an enemy false flag. (And if it was your false flag and you were caught, you could always claim that it was an enemy provocation.)
- somenameforme 2y ago
  This seems reasonable, but it runs into a little problem. If you engage in political discussion anywhere on the internet, the first thing you'll find is that people, if they have formed an opinion, have exactly 0 interest in changing their mind. If you already hold a genuine and internally formed view on e.g. the Israel - Palestine conflict, then even if somebody sat you (or me) in front of 24/7 propaganda for the other side, they'd be unlikely to ever change either of our minds. Propaganda only seems to work in two situations. The first is on topics people know nothing about. Each time the US invades some places most people couldn't even find on a map, support for it rises in accordance with the propaganda. But as people learn more, and gradually form their own values, that support tends to rapidly decline. And there are also long-term consequences, because people will remember being lied to. My views on the US war machine and geopolitics in general seem unlikely, at this point, to ever change. And they were largely formed due to the Iraq War. Irrefutable [1] and Undeniable [2] are two 21 year old articles I still go back to on occasion. The other situation is when it's true. During the Cold War we spread endless propaganda about things like having stocked store shelves. This is doubly effective in the same way that lying propaganda is doubly ineffective. Because not only does it create a desired perception, but once people gradually find out it's really true, it also tends to turn them against their own government who invariably misrepresents such situations. Again, people don't like being lied to. [1] - https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2003/02/06/irrefutable/e598b1be-a78a-4a42-8e1a-c336f7a217f4/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2003/02/06/i... [2] - https://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/06/opinion/irrefutable-and-undeniable.html https://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/06/opinion/irrefutable-and-u...
  - syncmaster913n 2y ago
    The purpose of propaganda, in its broadest definition, isn't to change minds. It is to leverage the existing contents of a mind in a way that makes you perform a certain action that is desired by the propagandist. The belief that holding strong opinions protects against propaganda is dangerous. Strong opinions is where propaganda inserts its levers.
- vharuck 2y ago
  People also seem to discount the effects of internet operations by enemy states. For example, in 2022, the FBI blamed the state of North Korea for a string of hacks on US health systems. The "meatspace" equivalent would've been North Korean operatives infiltrating dozens of hospitals and destroying records or supplies. If that had happened, there would've been a bigger response from the government than "Mind your physical security, hospitals." But it's the internet, so who cares (besides the people immediately affected)?
paul7986 2y ago
Indeed and one reason i don't watch or pay attention to news media(TV, online, etc) especially political news. What to believe is real / the truth and with the advent of AI, Deep fake voices and deep fake videos the Internet becomes an even worse place for deciphering truth. Here's AI Trump and AI Biden debating live now on Twitch (video isnt great as of today but the voices are) https://m.twitch.tv/videos/2157689323 https://m.twitch.tv/videos/2157689323
akudha 2y ago
Yes, they’re not new. But it is ridiculously easy and cheap today to do propaganda than even 30 years ago. We’re connected to the outrage machine 24/7 now because of internet/social media/smartphones, vs say 1980. God knows what % of the population has mental issues because we watch too much Twitter and Facebook and other crap

gdsdfe 2y ago

we entered the age ?! we've been here for at least a decade

runarberg 2y ago

[flagged]

jamal-kumar 2y ago
The holocaust came of age in the dawn of the information age if you count the radio as information technology, albeit a very one-sided information technology where you had the government giving everyone cheap radios that were only marked to tune to German and Austrian radio stations, unless you dared to go out at night to get an antenna up to receive others. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksempf%C3%A4nger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksempf%C3%A4nger
- runarberg 2y ago
  This also applies to the Rwandan genocide. A lot of it was perpetrated via mass media, especially radio. But you can also claim that there were Industrialized genocides before the Holocaust, but what sets it apart is just how much it was defined by industrialized processes. The Gaza Genocide is similar, the use of AI for target selection (or rather generation), the social media campaigns, using drones for killings, etc. We haven’t seen a genocide before which uses information technology to the extent it really defines whole processes of the genocide.
  - hedora 2y ago
    Germany pioneered a lot of modern propaganda techniques in WWII: The first television broadcast on earth was of Hitler, and his chief propagandist, Goebbles, continues to have significant influence on modern propagandists. For instance, Biden's publicly compared the tactics Trump used in the 2020 "Big Lie" campaign to those of Goebbles. Of course, there was also the Hitler Youth, which was a pretty successful social engineering campaign. On the computer side of things: IBM mainframes were famously an enabling technology for the holocaust and german war machine.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- 2y ago

vitus 2y ago

> Just waiting for a random US future president to create an "Internet" branch of the military. Maybe that's already happened. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Cyber_Command https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Cyber_Command is the closest thing that we have today. It's not a formal branch, though, but rather a joint effort across the existing branches.

jowea 2y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cyber_warfare_forces https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cyber_warfare_forces A cursory look and it seems Germany and China were first to having a specific branch, but China dissolved theirs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyber_and_Information_Domain_Service https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyber_and_Information_Domain_S... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Liberation_Army_Strategic_Support_Force https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Liberation_Army_Str...
- greentxt 2y ago
  China's was disbanded like 1 wikipedia edit ago (46 days), if you believe that.
  - caycep 2y ago
    edit made by whatever APT hacking group du jour the PLA has in operation at the moment!
    - jowea 2y ago
      Eh they just say it split back into the usual cyberwarfare sections inside of each usual military branch, not like they actually ceased operations.
lucubratory 2y ago
That's much more oriented to network security, spectrum and hardware, stuff like that. For an American military organisation engaged in internet influence operations you'd want to look at the signature reduction program. Something like 50,000 people strong at this point, insane amounts of resources going into that.

axus 2y ago

I've always been a keyboard warrior, volunteering to defend my country on message boards.

anigbrowl 2y ago

We entered that some time ago; or rather, the Internet accelerates the use of such information operations. This is (imho) why Musk bought Twitter.

cjk2 2y ago
[flagged]
- complianceowl 2y ago
  [flagged]

pradn 2y ago

There's a whole term for this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth-generation_warfare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth-generation_warfare

wruza 2y ago

The internet created a whole stratum of people who don’t use tv, radio and newspaper anymore. It’s not that we entered internet warfare, we just exited absolute control of large mass media. Now every TLA has to deal with it somehow. Why internet is the battlefield? Because everything in our world is based on an opinion. You can sell a lot of bs to your “client” if he has “correct” opinion. Bad news, our opinion system was designed for groups and villages, not for the internet.

xanthor 2y ago

The Internet as we think of it is already a military project. Why do you think so much emphasis is put on countries that assert sovereignty over their own information space?

dfxm12 2y ago

"Manufacturing Consent" was written in the 80s mostly in response to newspapers, but the ideas have been adapted to the Internet for some time (and talk radio, and cable news, etc.). I'm old enough to remember this from the Iraq war. Yeah, we didn't have microblogging back then, but there were Email campaigns, blogs, message boards, chat rooms, etc.

akudha 2y ago
Propaganda, false news etc are as old as time. It was the radio, TV and newspapers before, now it is social media and the internet. The difference now is the speed, cost and scale. It is super cheap to spread crap today than ever. Also it is quick and the reach is massive. By the way, Manufacturing Consent is a depressing book. You’d lose what little faith you have in media, if you read it…
- SCUSKU 2y ago
  I think one of the big takeaways for me was aside from deliberate manipulation of media by the government and willing media partners, that journalists also self censor in a way because they are operating in a professional environment and within a certain Overton Window. Maybe it's not what I should remember most, but it did help remind me that when your livelihood is based on what you say you will be much more measured, regardless of the subject. Probably why people look to social media or Substack for more independent people who have a longer leash, less on the line, and more to gain, since that's where you get your interesting although many times wrong takes (e.g. Ivermectin for Covid, or Lab Leak Theory)
bostik 2y ago
And let's keep in mind that the term "Public Relations" was explicitly chosen as a Newspeak-term because Edward Bernays realised that the actual term for a war time methodology, "propaganda", was too loaded.[0] And honest. Internet is a communications medium. It was destined to be flooded with propaganda, whatever you try to call your particular flavour. Or as I have been saying since the 1990's, the only difference between marketing and propaganda is that with marketing at least you are trying to peddle a product instead of an ideology. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays

shrubble 2y ago

Eglin Air Force Base and their involvement with Reddit...

sva_ 2y ago

Wasn't there something with the Canadian military fighting (what they called) misinformation on social media during the pandemic? Seems like it's already ongoing.

betaby 2y ago
Canadian government was the source of misinformation on social media during the pandemic! Literal curfews were in place with propaganda machine saying how good idea it was.
- dylan604 2y ago
  For purposes of conversation and allowing for a moment your idea is true, to what purpose was the curfews imposed? Who benefited? How? Why were the curfews necessary to achieve those goals?
  - tredre3 2y ago
    > to what purpose was the curfews imposed? The stated purpose was to flatten the curve. > Who benefited? The government. > How? By giving the impression that they were doing something. > Why were the curfews necessary to achieve those goals? They weren't, as far as we know. In Quebec's case they were still scrambling to justify them a few hours before the press conference: https://www.thesuburban.com/news/legault-s-curfew-decision-was-not-backed-by-public-health/article_aa6fa61c-7f7c-5433-a46f-22bcbb1648f5.html https://www.thesuburban.com/news/legault-s-curfew-decision-w... https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/curfew-legality-quebec-effectiveness-covid-19-1.5864191 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/curfew-legality-queb...
    - dylan604 2y ago
      [flagged]
      - sva_ 2y ago
        I think the person you replied to named the purpose as "giving the impression that they were doing something", which is shockingly often the case with politicians: They'll do what they believe will get them voted for again. I don't think it is necessary to insult people as 'conspiracy nutters' on here. If you don't want to discuss something with someone, just give them a downvote and move on. No need to be uncivil.

tintor 2y ago

US already has https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Cyber_Command https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Cyber_Command

bitcurious 2y ago

>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-Q-Tel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-Q-Tel The US hasn't been especially loud about it, but it's been a dominant force in 'internet warfare.'

caycep 2y ago

https://www.cybercom.mil https://www.cybercom.mil how competent they actually are at this, who knows...

dwater 2y ago

My first semester of college in Fall of 1999, I wrote a paper about cyber warfare and the summary was that the superpowers were already doing it, and the only thing expected to change in the future was the resources that were online and susceptible would increase the scale of cyber war.

s1k3s 2y ago

Go to the Wikipedia pages of these events and click on "Talk" at the top or see the history of those pages. The amount of people fighting over this information war is mindblowing. If anything, this makes me question the accuracy of historical events that happened before humanity had access to such tools.

poincaredisk 2y ago
My understanding is, historians know that the source material is 90% bullshit (texts written to appease an ego of some lord, chronicles of war against "subhuman" enemies, religious scriptures), they just know how to find the remaining 10%.
- delian66 2y ago
  How do they know that?

throwup238 2y ago

> Just waiting for a random US future president to create an "Internet" branch of the military. Maybe that's already happened. Cyber Force! They have cyber marines, cyber carriers, cyber destroyers, cyber bombers, cyber jets, and cyber drones. They even have their own sister agency called Veterans Affairs where veterans can go to get virtual healthcare treatment.

mrcartmeneses 2y ago

How luxurious of you to have such thoughts in the face of genocide

moate 2y ago

I think we’ve been here for a while, and I don’t think you make an overt branch to fight covert wars, you just roll it into the NSA or ops for some (all?) other branches of the military.

DrScientist 2y ago

Look up Bell Pottinger and Iraq. US military spent over half a billion on war propaganda - outsourced to experts.