Did I say anything about governments? Let's crowdfund it.

This reminds me of when Mark Thatcher tried to crowdfund a coup in guinea and failed spectacularly. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Equatorial_Guinea_coup_...

(It is of course illegal to crowdfund coup attempts and jailbreaks in foreign countries, although whether a prosecution takes place is entirely political)

That reminds me of the guys who popped Carlos Ghosn from Japan. Lesson is don’t do it. It’s against the law even if you think it’s the right thing.

If people used "the law" as their sole guidance and moral compass, we'd still be living under kings.

He totally got out of Japan though.

There must be a crypto betting market out there where you could create a "Journalist will not be rescued from Belarus" bet and people could start betting against it until it became profitable enough for a mercenary company to do it.

This is such a dystopian comment, sounds like straight out of a William Gibson / Neal Stephenson / Vernor Vinge book.

I've seen crypto betting markets [1] that have bets on whether or not Joe Biden will still be President at the end of the month. Ostensibly they are about his old age or Trump proving the election fraudulent or some such. But another way to construe them is as an inducement towards assassination.

1 - https://polymarket.com/market/will-joe-biden-be-president-of...

You want to crowdfund sending paramilitary operatives into a foreign country, an act of war. Got it. What could go wrong?

It's 2021, things going wrong seems like a given at this point.

Call me irresponsible, but I am weirdly optimistic about the potential for our floundering to have unexpected upsides

Absolutely. 5th generation warfare, motherfucker.

The Russians are the world's undisputed masters of this, so it's time we paramilitarize back.

Also, time to fuck Russia, hard. Putin's parkinsons won't come soon enough, and what comes after might even be worse. We should offer a visa for every Russian woman under 18. Starve the country of mothers, and their birthrate is already abysmal.

Imagine thinking that money solves such problems.

Who are you going to pay for that? Your neighbor Joey, he will go and perform an intelligence operation in a foreign country? Or maybe some professional CIA-as-a-service corporation?

Money seemed to be enough to get Carlos Ghosn out of Japan [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Ghosn#Flight_from_Japan

But money was not enough to prevent the two men who freed him from being extradited to Japan.

Money was enough for those men to accept the possibility of being extradited to Japan.

I might go. But I'm not sure an out of shape balding programmer would be much help.

It's appealing to try to help this person, though. Maybe other people feel the same.

We'll use you as a distraction. You can walk up to the guards and fake a heart attack. Larry, Moe & Curly will then sneak behind the guards. I promise, it will not be an episode of Keystone Cops.

For sure I do.

The main problem is that a paramilitary group (us) has a disadvantage vs a government agency (them). They have the people, the equipment, and the home territory. There's also the language barrier; most of the people we'd recruit wouldn't be able to blend in, which is crucial for an op like this.

There's also the question of logistics. It would be hard to transport weapons across country borders. The most likely way to do it might be to start the op in a neighboring country. But if you want to drive, you'll probably be stopped at a checkpoint. Walking isn't very appealing. I suppose you could parachute in, Fortnite-style, but that's pushing the boundaries of believability. Plus that Mig they sent to intercept the civilian plane might have a few things to say about that.

That poor guy. I wish there was something to do for him.

It's been done:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Wings_of_Eagles

Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Eagle

> Imagine thinking that money solves such problems.

Money (ie, power) creates and solves such problems; it just doesn't do that under the sun.

I mean Mark Prince has shown that he and his family's companies are happy to murder for hire. That's probably a good starting point if you want killers that operate with at the support of a major Western government.

> Or maybe some professional CIA-as-a-service corporation?

Actually I'm pretty sure there are PCMs who could handle it.

Crowdfunding mercenaries to go against nation states would be very cyberpunk.

Executive Outcomes returned this last year, IIRC. They pulled off some extremely crazy thing in Indonesia a long time ago, and still have access to top talent.

An actual useful reason for crypto (other than money laundering)

Yeah it's not like you were going ask Shadowrunners for a refund.

you act as if you've never watched a heist movie

The likelihood of collateral damage makes this a bad idea. It's better just to sanction all gov't officials (e.g., refuse to let them travel outside of Belarus, cancel their Netflix, etc.), until he is released.