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Lead GrapheneOS developer was forcibly conscripted into a war
- theamk 1y agorelated post from few months ago: https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/21819-impact-of-ongoing-war-on-grapheneos-development https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/21819-impact-of-ongoing-war... "We avoided specifying the country or war to avoid involving GrapheneOS in a debate on forced conscription in an existential defensive war." I will follow their wishes and not specify the specific war or side, but this comment gives me all the information to figure it out.
- bawolff 1y agoI mean, afaik there is only one country in the world that is at war and is using conscription (as opposed to reserve forces or voluntary paid contracts)
- defrost 1y agoAt least five .. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription_in_Israel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription_in_Israel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription_in_Ukraine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription_in_Ukraine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription_in_Russia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription_in_Russia https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/4/11/myanmars-military-drafts-thousands-in-first-year-of-conscription-drive https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/4/11/myanmars-military-d... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription_in_Sudan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription_in_Sudan
- longfingers 1y agoI thought the existential question was the level of doublespeak. Does the country call it war?
- strcat 1y agoSee the response at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44583672 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44583672.
- wiseowise 1y agoOnly one of those is fighting existential war.
- bawolff 1y agoAll of those countries describe the wars in question to their own citizens as existential. It might be bullshit, but that doesn't really change the fact that people within each and every one of those countries may very well view them as existential. That's basically war propaganda 101 - the war is defensive and existential.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- RandomThoughts3 1y ago[dead]
- wiseowise 1y agoSupposedly we’re talking about an actual existential threat, e.g. Russia occupying Ukraine.
- dontleakkeys 1y agoWhat we're talking about is the GrapheneOS account claiming someone was conscripted, and claiming that it's an "existential and defensive" war. I assume this is basically true and that it's probably Ukraine or maybe Israel, but the way they're talking about how everyone is against them and sabotaging them makes me think we may not be dealing with a reliable narrator. I assume that there's truth to what they're saying and that they probably were swatted, and that's awful. But it doesn't feel right to me. Being betrayed seems to be a consistent part of the narrative GrapheneOS presents about itself. It's even in the history section on their website.
- strcat 1y ago> What we're talking about is the GrapheneOS account claiming someone was conscripted, and claiming that it's an "existential and defensive" war. Our lead developer was conscripted. > I assume this is basically true and that it's probably Ukraine or maybe Israel We made it clear enough it was Ukraine and later publicly confirmed it multiple times once it wasn't going to cause any issues. > but the way they're talking about how everyone is against them and sabotaging them makes me think we may not be dealing with a reliable narrator. We've never said everyone is against us. You're misrepresenting our statements. You appear to be alluding to ongoing harassment which baselessly claims that I'm insane, delusional, schizophrenic, etc. Phrasing it the way you did doesn't absolve you of responsibility for participating in it. > I assume that there's truth to what they're saying and that they probably were swatted, and that's awful. What we've said about these topics is completely accurate and your attempt at misconstruing it and sowing doubt is wrong. > But it doesn't feel right to me. Okay, so you have unfounded theories based on vibes. > Being betrayed seems to be a consistent part of the narrative GrapheneOS presents about itself. It's even in the history section on their website. The information we've provided about these topics including about Copperhead's takeover attempt on the project in 2018 is accurate. Our lead developer being a Ukrainian man is easy enough to see from GitHub. They went from by far the most active developer to completely inactive after being forcibly conscripted at the start of April. They're now able to contribute a little bit in their free time again.
- bawolff 1y agoAs far as i know, Russia mostly stopped using conscription for the ukraine war effort after popular discontent, and now mostly only uses conscripts internally, with most of the russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine being offered large sums of money to "volunteer". I was initially assuming Israel was relying on reserves for the current war, which seems to be true, but it also sounds like being in the reserves is mandatory so i guess that is conscription with extra steps. Anyways, i guess your broad point is right.
- throwaway290 1y ago> Russia mostly stopped using conscription Some draftees are made sign the contract not just with large sums of money but also force/torture. I am told it happens almost dsily and knowing a bit what russian army is like I think it is likely. Probably more likely if you are non-slavic guy from the regions and not a big city This story is about a guy who was arrested for theft or something and was "offered" contract. Apparently cops get 100000 rub reward for one guy who they "convince". https://meduza.io/feature/2025/07/13/dozhd-18-letnego-dagestantsa-saida-murtazalieva-pod-pytkami-zastavili-podpisat-kontrakt-na-fronte-on-propal https://meduza.io/feature/2025/07/13/dozhd-18-letnego-dagest...
- strcat 1y agoSee the response at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44583672 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44583672.
- throwaway290 1y agoSorry how is it related to russia forcing draftees into contract to be sent to frontlines again?
- strcat 1y agoOur lead developer wasn't conscripted by Russia and I wanted to make sure that was clear to everyone.
- Ekaros 1y agoI think both Koreas technically qualify. Even if it is cold war at this point.
- strcat 1y agoSee the response at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44583672 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44583672.
- pyuser583 1y agoThere are two that come two mind, but one has fairly short terms of duty of to balance these kinds of obligations.
- strcat 1y agoSee the response at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44583672 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44583672.
- strcat 1y agoSee the response at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44583672 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44583672.
- tonyhart7 1y agowhy they don't just said outright??? is that controversial??
- adastra22 1y agoThere is no upside for them and their users, and lots of potential downside.
- wiseowise 1y agoAfraid to trigger Russian bots? Afraid of backlash in Ukraine? Afraid to “pick a side” in the conflict? Even though the guy is obviously on the right side of history, it might be problematic for project like Graphene to acknowledge it.
- strcat 1y agoSee the response at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44583672 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44583672.
- spankibalt 1y agoIt also opens the door to possibly inconvenient discussions with speculations about Graphene's security (referring to both products and org) in relation to, say, Israel, its military, as well as its associated espionage and sabotage efforts (e. g. Pegasus). The same swings the other way around, i. e. Graphene protecting its devs against any outside threats. Etc.
- colordrops 1y agoCould be the Israeli army, considering the graphene logo may be a nod to the Star of David.
- ThePowerOfFuet 1y agoThe logo is a nod to graphene.
- dontleakkeys 1y agoAnd it was founded by a Canadian.
- colordrops 1y agoNo, it's exactly graphene, which could (I didn't say is) be a nod to the Star of David.
- dontleakkeys 1y agoIf you have a clear and satisfying explanation in your mind about why a logo has 6-fold symmetry, and still suggest that it is secretly a star of David, I start to get worried about the direction the conversation will go. Even if that isn't how you meant it, there's an audience very willing to receive it that way and they make poor company. Let's keep things on the rails and not get the story flagged.
- colordrops 1y agoThats absurd. There is no inherently positive or negative connotation to religious symbolism. It happens everywhere, in paintings, books, movies, logos. It's fine, and there's nothing wrong with it. If your mind goes to dark places then that's your problem. I prefer to cut off dialog when problems actually arise, rather than in anticipation of hallucinated problems, Mr. Green Name.
- bugtodiffer 1y agoit said "defensive"
- strcat 1y ago> I will follow their wishes and not specify the specific war or side, but this comment gives me all the information to figure it out. The primary goal of making it public was getting him diverted away from infantry to a role related to software engineering and/or security research. It makes little to send the lead developer of a security research and engineering project to launch grenades from a trench. We got in contact with high level people who were able to intervene after he completed 45 days of basic training. He had to do several weeks of menial tasks and was just recently transferred to a more sensible tech related role. We're still down our most important developer. We deliberately made it obvious which country we were talking about without directly specifying it. A Russian opposition paper did the basic investigative journalism required to confirm what we implied: https://meduza.io/feature/2025/04/22/veduschego-razrabotchika-grapheneos-samoy-bezopasnoy-v-mire-operatsionnoy-sistemy-dlya-smartfonov-prinuditelno-mobilizovali-i-otpravili-na-voynu https://meduza.io/feature/2025/04/22/veduschego-razrabotchik... The way we approached it worked out well. It was an appeal to their military leadership based on it not being in their interest to use him as infantry, not a political statement. Ukraine forcibly conscripting men aged 25 through 60 to defend against an invader trying to wipe out their nationality is a messy topic. We had to publicly post about it to get help, that's all.
- xyzal 1y agoA friendly reminder that anyone can support the defending country. https://war.ukraine.ua/donate/ https://war.ukraine.ua/donate/
- wahern 1y agoTechnically anyone, but it might constitute treason for citizens of at least one country.
- BobaFloutist 1y agoAnd they should get all the more respect for it if they do anyway.
- triyambakam 1y agoThe country isn't specified. How do you know?
- strcat 1y agoWe've said they're Ukrainian in several places. We avoided being explicit about it for the initial announcement to focus on getting help. We avoided specifying it to avoid our post being perceived as a political statement against Ukraine or attracting a bunch of negative attention. We only got targeted with an insignificant amount of additional attacks due to this announcement because of how it was worded. It's fine to simply say it's Ukraine now instead of only heavily implying it.
- giingyui 1y agoThat’s some damn bad bus factor.
- strcat 1y agoHe was conscripted in April and the project successfully continued on and ported to Android 16 in June. It's doing fine. It was a massive hit to the project but it won't die because of it.
- wiseowise 1y agoWhy do people jump to conclusion that he is necessarily sent right into the meat grinder? Army is not only generals and meat waves.
- FirmwareBurner 1y ago[flagged]
- readthenotes1 1y agoWhat makes you think that? Denmark has forced conscription and there's zero trench warfare going on.
- dijit 1y agoIs Denmark at war? I wasn’t aware.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- kawsper 1y agoInterestingly lots of Danes have been asking the same question. The opposition tried (without luck) to get an answer in 2008-2014, latest after the Snowden revelations. Certain rules in our constitution kicks in if we’re at war.
- FirmwareBurner 1y ago>Interestingly lots of Danes have been asking the same question. Such a bad faith argument in poor taste. What's there to keep asking? The answer is pretty simple: do you have invading soldiers, drones, bullets and artillery shells coming to kill you right now, YES or NO? YES - you're in a war, NO - you're not. You can argue that maybe you're in a smoldering "cold war", but that's an entirely different kettle of fish compared to an outright kinetic war where you fight for your survival on a daily basis. It's not that they're not in the same ballpark, they're not even in the same galaxy.
- graphenecheck 1y agoThe GrapheneOS author frequently claims to be targeted by many actors, governments, other open source projects... https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS > GrapheneOS has only ever posted about Braxman in response to his misinformation about us. In his latest video attacking us, he engages in clear libel towards our team. > GrapheneOS is currently under a state sponsored attack attempting to misrepresent it as being for criminals > Due to F-Droid deliberately causing friction and annoyances for GrapheneOS users > There's currently an example of one of these attacks on the project ongoing across Swedish forums and social media.
- draftendirekt 1y ago[flagged]
- dontleakkeys 1y agoLooks like Micay stepped down as leader of the project in 2023?
- strcat 1y ago[dead]
- other8026 1y agoThat's not at all correct. Members of GrapheneOS readily admit when there are things that can be improved, but will call out misinformation when needed. The fact that you're bringing up the Rossmann video after saying that is very telling. There's a huge difference between technical discussion and what was very clearly an attack by Rossmann. He clearly knew what he was doing. The video was made shortly after GrapheneOS's founder was swatted. He was understandably upset about that and with Rossmann and Rossmann recorded a private conversation and used that to attack not only GrapheneOS, but also its founder in an attempt to harm GrapheneOS's reputation. Louis didn't actually stop using GrapheneOS, so that part was a lie. It's clear that he was still using GrapheneOS in his later videos. It's pretty low to bring that video up here. If you have a real technical issue with GrapheneOS, then you could bring that up instead.
- other8026 1y agoThis was months ago. The official announcement was in the middle of April. See this response from the official GrapheneOS X account. > We're in communication with him and he has been diverted away from combat. https://x.com/GrapheneOS/status/1933311869122720069 https://x.com/GrapheneOS/status/1933311869122720069
- closewith 1y agoWhat an odd comment by the person. Why would a software developer of all people be particularly worthy of protection in wartime?
- alex_duf 1y agosoftware is a useful skill during a war. The same way you probably wouldn't send a doctor to a fight as the doctor is more useful to help with the wounded, a software engineer with an infosec background(as I assume the lead dev of graphene would) could be extremely useful to the war.
- Havoc 1y agoLots of skills are useful during war…
- jltsiren 1y agoSoftware is a common skill, especially among military-age men. Probably around 5% of those employed in that group have software-related jobs. Doctors are rarer, and they also need more training to become productive, which makes them harder to replace than software developers. You can argue that a specific individual has specific skills and experience that make them more valuable to the country in a non-fighting role. But software developer is just another common job.
- h4kunamata 1y agoThe "system" hates what they cannot control. GrapheneOS, Proton, all are victim of such direct attack. I checked the guy GOS mentioned: Robert Braxman. One single photo gives you all the vibes from the guy. It is the same as "Stop Killing Games" movement with Pirate Software totally against it while spreading misinformation. Bad for him tho, the internet uncovered all the lies and bs, that guy's life is finished lmao For GOS, they need some serious security analysts to review Robert's doing and exposed everything, just like "Stop Killing Games" heroes did. Not that we don't trust GOS but the position they are in, make it easy to be judged as "bias" by the media, only them Robert and cia will stop this bs.
- strcat 1y agoThis was not an attack on GrapheneOS. Our lead developer is Ukrainian and his country is being invaded so there's ongoing forced conscription of men aged 25 through 60.
- sunshine-o 1y ago> Lead GrapheneOS developer was forcibly conscripted into a war Just this headline should really scare us. Grapheneos is a fantastic project and we should all support them but recent headlines here on HN make me believe we are just delaying a little what is unavoidable. Meaning, soon you will need: 1/ A common spyware smartphone turned off with your digital ID and banking app or whatever. 2/ Another device you can reasonably trust and use with confidence, hopefully with Internet connectivity. I do not know what that second device will be: - probably a PinePhone - or a ClockworkPi uConsole with cellular modem - maybe one of those LilyGo T-Deck with cellular modem The open source community have greatly contributed to the success of Android but today I would rather have the smart people of GrapheneOS working on the real escape plan rather than trying to keep us just a little bit longer in the Google trap. I understand they are working on their own hardware which is a bold step toward this direction.
- other8026 1y agoGrapheneOS isn't going anywhere. People keep getting all anxious when they see news and don't seem to understand the facts. The lead developer was conscripted, but the rest of the development team prepared for Android 16 and the port was completed in a couple of days. Device-specific repositories were not included by Google this time, so while the port was finished quickly, they had to work around this. And now GrapheneOS has finished the Android 16 port. So I'm not sure why people need to freak out and start using insecure devices because they _think_ something will happen with no proof. The fact is GrapheneOS is still going strong. And you can see they've been talking about talks with a big OEM on their socials, so even if new Pixels can't be supported in the future, other OEMs are interested.
- sunshine-o 1y agoTo be clear I am freaking out about the Android ecosystem. As of today I already need an 2 Android phones 1/ One Google Android phone for my banking app with Google Integrity API working 2/ One GrapheneOS phone for everything else I could switch bank for the 3rd time, sure. But how long can I run away? So what I meant is hopefully in the future we will have a GrapheneOS hardware device, but they might also need to fork or leave AOSP. Because trying to be in the Google Android ecosystem and out of it at the same time became impossible or too costly. We can't spent most of our resources trying fit in instead of creating our own path.