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The US is on a path to un-ban Russian state affiliated companies. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/02/us/politics/hegseth-cyber-russia-trump-putin.html https://

The US is on a path to un-ban Russian state affiliated companies. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/02/us/politics/hegseth-cyber-russia-trump-putin.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/02/us/politics/hegseth-cyber...

rectang 2y ago
That the Pentagon has announced it will cease defending Americans against Russian threats hardly means that Americans are not threatened.
- somenameforme 2y ago
  Or it means that the original bans were primarily instituted because of myopic geopolitics and not because of any meaningful threats. In particular US ire towards Kaspersky grew rapidly after it was the only antivirus that picked up on NSA/'equation group' malware. It's similar how the US banned all cooperation with China in space [1] because of some tropes about them being unable to do anything except steal American tech. That's why, to this day, there are no Chinese on the ISS. After that law China proceeded to develop, launch, and man their own space station, put a rover on Mars, and even carry out an unprecedented sample return mission from the dark side of the Moon, and just generally run circles around the US (except perhaps SpaceX) in space. Interestingly US researchers may not be able to access those Moon samples (which China shared with scientists worldwide) due to this stupid law. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_Amendment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_Amendment
  - leoc 2y ago
    Regardless what the original story behind the Kaspersky ban was, if you genuinely don't think that a Russian antivirus company represents a state-controlled threat to US organisations, public and private, in 2025 then I don't know what to say to you.
    - wqaatwt 2y ago
      Not if US and Russia become “allies”. Then UK/EU companies will become a bigger “threat”. It should go even further e.g. you don’t want ARM installing backdoors on their chips and giving hostile foreign organizations like the MI6 access to vital American infrastructure, intelligence data etc. do you? It might be the time to consider switching to Elbrus or at least mandating that all devices used by US government agencies have to use Intel’s chips.
    - TheSpiceIsLife 2y ago
      I think the argument is that non-cooperation represents a much greater long term threat to everyone involved than cooperation, collaboration.
      - rectang 2y ago
        Increased collaboration between the Russian state and the American state is bad for the ordinary citizens of both — and for freedom-loving people in Ukraine, Europe, and everywhere else.
        somenameforme 2y ago
        The US and Russia are the biggest nuclear powers in the world. Positive relations here are good for absolutely everybody. Positive relations do not mean one has to approve of the political system, ideology, or whatever else of the other side. See: Saudi Arabia which remained a key ally for many decades in spite of being wayyyyyy further off the spectrum (relative to the US) than Russia could ever be. Overtly adversarial relationships trend towards violence, sooner or later, and that's not a path we ever want to go down.
        rectang 2y ago
        The US has turned towards enabling Russia’s imperialist war, and the Pentagon article explains how it will unilaterally disarm in the face of Russian cyberwarfare, leaving Russian criminal groups to run rampant in Europe and even the US. Abetting conquest and criminality is not the sort of collaboration we should cheer.
  - wqaatwt 2y ago
    > meaningful threats True, they cease being “meaningful” the moment you surrender and stop viewing them as threats. OFC it’s all relative, Russia and similar actors having more political/economic influence in the US (and by extension globally) might not be viewed as a negative by some people.
  - ayewo 2y ago
    I appreciate your tangent wrt US vs China in space. TIL: I had no idea China had already launched their own space station: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiangong_space_station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiangong_space_station
  - watwut 2y ago
    Meh, or it was meaning threat, it is just that Trump is myoptic and completely under Putins control.

rectang 2y ago

That the Pentagon has announced it will cease defending Americans against Russian threats hardly means that Americans are not threatened.

somenameforme 2y ago
Or it means that the original bans were primarily instituted because of myopic geopolitics and not because of any meaningful threats. In particular US ire towards Kaspersky grew rapidly after it was the only antivirus that picked up on NSA/'equation group' malware. It's similar how the US banned all cooperation with China in space [1] because of some tropes about them being unable to do anything except steal American tech. That's why, to this day, there are no Chinese on the ISS. After that law China proceeded to develop, launch, and man their own space station, put a rover on Mars, and even carry out an unprecedented sample return mission from the dark side of the Moon, and just generally run circles around the US (except perhaps SpaceX) in space. Interestingly US researchers may not be able to access those Moon samples (which China shared with scientists worldwide) due to this stupid law. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_Amendment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_Amendment
- leoc 2y ago
  Regardless what the original story behind the Kaspersky ban was, if you genuinely don't think that a Russian antivirus company represents a state-controlled threat to US organisations, public and private, in 2025 then I don't know what to say to you.
  - wqaatwt 2y ago
    Not if US and Russia become “allies”. Then UK/EU companies will become a bigger “threat”. It should go even further e.g. you don’t want ARM installing backdoors on their chips and giving hostile foreign organizations like the MI6 access to vital American infrastructure, intelligence data etc. do you? It might be the time to consider switching to Elbrus or at least mandating that all devices used by US government agencies have to use Intel’s chips.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 2y ago
    I think the argument is that non-cooperation represents a much greater long term threat to everyone involved than cooperation, collaboration.
    - rectang 2y ago
      Increased collaboration between the Russian state and the American state is bad for the ordinary citizens of both — and for freedom-loving people in Ukraine, Europe, and everywhere else.
      - somenameforme 2y ago
        The US and Russia are the biggest nuclear powers in the world. Positive relations here are good for absolutely everybody. Positive relations do not mean one has to approve of the political system, ideology, or whatever else of the other side. See: Saudi Arabia which remained a key ally for many decades in spite of being wayyyyyy further off the spectrum (relative to the US) than Russia could ever be. Overtly adversarial relationships trend towards violence, sooner or later, and that's not a path we ever want to go down.
        rectang 2y ago
        The US has turned towards enabling Russia’s imperialist war, and the Pentagon article explains how it will unilaterally disarm in the face of Russian cyberwarfare, leaving Russian criminal groups to run rampant in Europe and even the US. Abetting conquest and criminality is not the sort of collaboration we should cheer.
- wqaatwt 2y ago
  > meaningful threats True, they cease being “meaningful” the moment you surrender and stop viewing them as threats. OFC it’s all relative, Russia and similar actors having more political/economic influence in the US (and by extension globally) might not be viewed as a negative by some people.
- ayewo 2y ago
  I appreciate your tangent wrt US vs China in space. TIL: I had no idea China had already launched their own space station: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiangong_space_station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiangong_space_station
- watwut 2y ago
  Meh, or it was meaning threat, it is just that Trump is myoptic and completely under Putins control.