"Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction." — Dick Cheney, before the US and coalition of the willing invaded Iraq.

I'd ask that we be more thoughtful on this and evaluate separate allegations on their own merits. Why do you think invoking Cheney's statement is relevant to this discussion?

As an aside, I'm not sure what's more frustrating:

Witnessing the Bush administration circa 2001-2004 be called out on these lies, by numerous entities, and still march inexorably toward armed conflict, or...

having to witness these lies being used to disingenuously discredit any future allegations made by the US.

I sympathize with your sentiment, but dishonesty in that case is relevant to credibility in this one.

What, besides credibility of the institutions making the allegations, are these allegations' "own merits"?

Agreed that a reflexive "they lie!" position isn't useful, but... trust doesn't seem like a reasonable default either. In the same vein, it would be naive to trust the Chinese NBS to report unflattering economic statistics honestly. Why? Because of past/recent dishonesty.

Whether it's true or not, I don't think the purpose of this announcement is to inform us. It's part of power games with China, laying public groundwork for updating the NATO mission, new departments/funding/laws/etc... That's not a general paranoia. I get this impression from the NATO statement itself.

from P4:

China’s growing influence and international policies can present challenges that we need to address together as an Alliance. We will engage China with a view to defending the security interests of the Alliance. We are increasingly confronted by cyber, hybrid, and other asymmetric threats, including disinformation campaigns, and by the malicious use of ever-more sophisticated emerging and disruptive technologies. Rapid advances in the space domain are affecting our security. The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the erosion of the arms control architecture also undermine our collective security.

Promising to engage China, followed by nonspecific cyber, WMD & space threats.

Here is where I might be paranoid, cynical or whatnot. Is defense against cyberattacks the actual goal, or is cyberwarfare just another long term raison d'etre?

"What, besides credibility of the institutions making the allegations, are these allegations' "own merits"?"

Because China hacking is fairly widespread and so this is not just about a single institution, it's about many.

There's broad consensus here, it's not just 'Dick Cheney & Co.', it's many governments, many agencies, many businesses, academic institutions and the spying/hacking takes a variety of forms.

Yes, this an 'escalation' of sorts, because making it 'NATO' makes it both firmly an issue of national security for not just the US, but for many 'important' actors.

If anything, I think there's not enough action here.

It's definitely worthwhile to keep a very close eye on misinformation and propaganda ... but I think so far we're on the right path.

It's not about the specific allegations, it's about the posture and priorities of the security state.

A few years ago, we ran out of fear and urgency on the Islamic terror thing and now we need a new top dog bad guy.

So, in your view, is security simply not a problem? Is it all a giant lie to fund the security state?

If not, where do you draw the line between real/legitimate security concerns vs. the fake ones?

That's clearly not their view. Blindly following liars into two wars has led to many avoidable casualties and has arguably made us less safe. The line between real & fake is the line between real & fake. We need to be on guard and insist on checking the intel before being led into another war.

Constant attempts to hack each other between rivals and even allies are not a big deal.

I'm not saying this is fake, our people should be doing their job mitigating this stuff and hacking them in turn, but it being blown up into a Big Deal is part of the propaganda.

> is security simply not a problem?

What problem did US solve by invading Iraq?

There is more than the most recent Iraq war. There is Vietnam (Gulf of Tonkin) and the Spanish-American War (USS Maine sabotage). Several others.

It's not disingenous and it's not discrediting _any_ future allegation, but to appropriately raise the threshold before belief.

Everything you said would be true if today's accusations were a pretext for armed conflict, but I don't believe we've reached that level of escalation. Do you?

Accordingly, I don't find comparison to prior wars helpful for discussion. Obviously opinions here may differ...

I do not expect that even if there was truth to the matter that war would be a direct consequence. I agree that citing historical false pretexts for war reduces the surface for debate of the validity of allegations of state-sponsored cybercrime. I should not have contributed in this manner. My apologies.

I think the Iraqi war was more frustrating than those two put together.

You realize that this wasn't the first time the US did this, so I feel we should question these claims as much as possible.

To me, it just goes to show that you cannot take on faith or even the evidence provided by the currently speaking government official (whoever that might be at whatever time).

It's a sad position to take, but we have definitely been misled/lied to by gov't officials.

Why is this particular incident any more legit/not-fake than the totally legit/not-fake WMD evidence?

>>> There is so much doubt in this comment section around the validity of the accusations.

>>> We have a number of countries putting forward the knowledge they have mutually agreed upon. What is shared is known to a high degree of certainty. Any details that are questionable would not have been shared prematurely.

>> "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction." — Dick Cheney, before the US and coalition of the willing invaded Iraq.

> I'd ask that we be more thoughtful on this and evaluate separate allegations on their own merits. Why do you think invoking Cheney's statement is relevant to this discussion?

I think the logic is once an organization or its leaders get something wrong, you should never, ever believe anything that organization ever says ever again. Even 20 years later after the leadership and staff has turned over a couple times.

Of course, that's totally unworkable idea when applied consistently, so it's only used, knowingly or unknowingly, to reenforce existing biases.

It's not a question of getting something wrong. The Bush administration carried out a massive disinformation campaign to convince the public that Saddam had WMD - something they knew they had no good evidence for. Large parts of the media and most senior politicians in both major parties (including the current President of the US) went along with this disinformation campaign.

After that experience, I'll believe the US government only when they make all their evidence public, and even then, I'll be exceedingly skeptical.

> After that experience, I'll believe the US government only when they make all their evidence public, and even then, I'll be exceedingly skeptical.

So who do you think carried out these attacks? Do you think that China does not carry out any offensive hacking? Do you think they do, but avoid the US for some reason?

IMHO, these allegations are plausible enough to believe without strong evidence to the contrary. Taking the experience with the Iraqi WMD allegations as your North Star (to the exclusion of all other factors) seems like a heuristic that will be wrong far more often than it's right, and more often wrong than alternative heuristics.

Simply stated, the say-so of the US government does not change my belief either way.

If they claim to have evidence but don't provide it, I assume they don't have evidence, or that the evidence is weaker than they are claiming. If they do provide evidence, I consider the possibility that it has been tampered with, that its provenance is dubious, or that contrary evidence has been concealed.

We're talking about professional liars here. Not everything they say is wrong, but everything they say is suspect.

There's a few things wrong with this callback.

1) When that was stated there was serious pushback not just from US reporters but also other countries/allies.

2) It's pretty reasonable to believe that it is far easier to obtain hacking tools and knowledge as compared to weapons of mass destruction. You can't just download the knowledge and tools for nuclear weapons through the internet.

I get the cynicism and I agree that we should be doubtful and not trust our leaders at face value. But that doesn't mean that we should throw all evidence to the wind. It just demonstrates that we need to be more thoughtful in our analysis.

Logical fallacy to say that China/Russia being behind hacking is false simply because of the Iraqi war. Of course I'm sure China/Russia absolutely love and actively push this fallacy. Just as China uses US's failures on certain civil rights to deflect from their concentration camps and slave labor.

Not commenting on OP, but you are talking about a single US regime.

And Many countries did independently investigate, and refuse help.

Actually, the US worked to fabricate evidence in collaboration with the UK too. The UK had an expert produce the so called "dodgy dossier", that was used as Blair's justification to follow the US into their illegal war. The media called it out as obvious bullshit, then the guy that produced the report allegedly committed a timely suicide.

But the EU didn't join the war.

Thanks to France.

The EU does not have a foreign policy thus will never go to war. France has tried to boost their MIC as an alternative to the US and in doing so actively sought to damage US goals.

The EU doesn't ever go to war. Individual EU countries do.

The UK, Spain, Italy and a few other EU countries took part in the illegal invasion of Iraq.

Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (chemical) and they didnt find evidence of nuclear weapons outside the email trail inside their military.

It was not illegal

An invasion of another country that is neither carried out in self-defense against an imminent attack nor authorized by the UN Security Council is illegal under the UN Charter. This is one of the central principles of the modern international system.

> Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (chemical)

Even the US government admitted after the war that it could find no evidence of an Iraqi WMD program. All the US found were a few misplaced ancient, rusting artillery shells from the 1980s. These things were unusable, and were more of a danger to the people handling them than anything else. This is not the WMD stockpile the US claimed Saddam had. Nobody would ever have accepted to go to war on the basis of, "We think there are still a few misplaced, unusable artillery shells with degraded chemical agents in Iraq."

HN frowns on political commentary so I'll attempt to be brief

The vast majority of the most recent wars have not been UNSC authorized. UN involvement is not necessary for a war to occur nor do they prevent wars or proxy wars between countries on the UNSC. The "modern international system" is an ideal. The US was attacked.

>ancient, rusting artillery shells (from the 1980s)

20-30 years old isnt ancient, they were serviceable, and they had chemical weapons in the quantity for the potential of wmds. That is only what they found, and I imagine there were more not found.

>Nobody would ever have accepted to go to war

There was reasonable evidence they had more that the allied force didn't find. The international community is more to blame for the conditions after involvement than the instigators 10+ years on. A neighbor is beating up another neighbor and both are blaming it on someone else.

> The vast majority of the most recent wars have not been UNSC authorized.

Unless those wars are fought in imminent self-defense, then they're illegal. The invasion of Iraq was an especially egregious violation of international law for two reasons:

1. The US knew that the UN Security Council would reject a resolution authorizing war, so it decided in the end not to ask.

2. The war had catastrophic consequences for Iraq. It's not every day a country of 20+ million people is invaded and its government overthrown. Hundreds of thousands of people died as a result.

A third factor making this war particularly egregious is the deliberate campaign of disinformation that was carried out in order to justify it.

> The US was attacked.

Not by Iraq.

> 20-30 years old isnt ancient, they were serviceable, and they had chemical weapons in the quantity for the potential of wmds.

This is how the NY Times described the small number of chemical artillery shells found scattered across Iraq:

> Filthy, rusty or corroded, a large fraction of them could not be readily identified as chemical weapons at all. Some were empty, though many of them still contained potent mustard agent or residual sarin. Most could not have been used as designed, and when they ruptured dispersed the chemical agents over a limited area, according to those who collected the majority of them.

These were the misplaced remnants of the chemical weapons program that Iraq dismantled in the 1990s.

> There was reasonable evidence they had more that the allied force didn't find.

The US occupied Iraq for nearly a decade. It's simply not credible to claim that there was any sort of sizeable stockpile that the US did not find.

last response

>> The US was attacked.

>Not by Iraq.

Saddam gave material assistance to suicide bombers and network. It would suggest had they not gotten rid of him some of the perpetrators would have tried again. The resulting catastrophe was the result of neighbors meddling in their affairs and an internal domestic power struggle.

>These were the misplaced remnants of the chemical weapons program that Iraq dismantled in the 1990s.

if it was dismantled it wouldn't exist.

>It's simply not credible to claim that there was any sort of sizeable stockpile that the US did not find.

it probably wasnt in Iraq anymore.

Source please.

The first hit for "dodgy dossier suicide" is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Kelly_(weapons_expert)

Edit: I can't reply to the child but here are some salient quotes from the wiki...

"I will wait until the end of the week before judging – many dark actors playing games. Thanks for your support." - Dr Kelly

"it was subsequently established that neither the knife nor the blister packs showed Kelly's fingerprints on their surfaces"

"The former leader of the Conservative Party, Michael Howard, and the former Liberal Democrat MP, Norman Baker, both think Kelly was murdered.[173] In 2007 Baker published The Strange Death of David Kelly in which he argued that Kelly did not commit suicide."

That's a source that a man killed himself. It was suggested he was actually murdered by the Brit govt. Source for that claim?

I doubt you'll find a credible source - the security services are afterall very good at what they do. It's all circumstantial, but at the time you'd have been hard-pressed to find a single citizen who believed Kelly very conveniently killed himself at just the right time to prevent further damage to the government and their web of lies with the US.

I'm not sure I see what the theory is here. I could understand an argument that Kelly was killed to send a message, but it's hard to see what damage it could have prevented. If anything, his death confirmed the web of lies; the whole thing wouldn't have been a big deal if it were just a question of minor messaging details as the government was claiming.

It wasn't about sending message. The theory is that Kelly could have revealed he was told to fake evidence, and could have provided confirmation of who knew what, and importantly, when.

It was about timing too - it was a critical point for Blair and Bush getting the war they so desired. Keeping in mind there was already huge opposition to the war, proper 1st hand evidence being revealed at that point could well have resulted in Blair having to stand down, and potentially even the British not joining the war. Which of course the US services would not have liked.

The timeline's definitely not right for that. The British had already joined the war; Kelly died 4 months after the invasion.

Then I must concede that I am mis-remembering the timeline.

That's shit though. That can be said of anything. Moon landings were faked but the CIA is very good at what they do.

There is a bit of a difference - we have an abundance of evidence disproving the fake moon landing stories. OTOH, there were no witnesses of Kelly's death, and the timing was so very convenient - frankly, it's naive to think our security services wouldn't do this, especially with what was at stake. Keep in mind the the US and UK were fabricating evidence as justification for an illegal war. One that they knew would claim many, many casualties, and for which they must have known would end up destabilising the whole region and growing fundamentalists and terrorists (this was certainly obvious to many at the time).

I do see your point, mind, but I don't think such damning circumstantial evidence is "shit"; by that logic, MI6 could never be responsible for anything, unless of course they signed a confession.

From late 2002 to 2003, it was very much the international consensus that Iraq might have active WMD programs. The Security Council never authorized a war, but they did issue a unanimous resolution declaring that Iraq was in violation of its disarmament obligations and offering "a final opportunity to comply".

Many countries did also provide help, even though they knew the "single US regime" was likely to be lying & fabricating.

This regime has remained in power ever since Bush's 8 year reign of terror. In fact, they were in power even before George W. Bush's administration. The name of the president may change, but the people running the US war machine remain the same.

I always see this is trotted out as to say that Iraq did not possess WMDs, however technically it is wrong, as WMDs (chemical weapons in this case) were found after the invasion, (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_and_weapons_of_mass_destr...). While there was no evidence of nuclear weapons or an active program I believe that a better quote should be used since the pretences that it is quoted for are technically wrong.

Of course, because WMD is a manufacturered phrase with tautological utility. A kitchen knife wielded in a sinister way is capable of mass destruction.

No, there's a pretty stable presumptive meaning of "weapons of mass destruction". It means radiological, biological and chemical.

There are always people trying to expand the definition, but it's usually from more left-leaning critical schools of thought that want to classify landmines, sanctions or guns as WMD.

But in official usage, it's been pretty stable at those three.

The utility is in the muddying. To use the broader term (WMD) instead of the specific (chemical weapons) is to imply the broader abuse. While the specific abuse is something the US turned a blind eye to a generation previously (chemcial weapons by Iraq against Iran)

It's not a manufactured phrase.

A knife is not generally a weapons.

Saddam 100% had WMD's and was capable of making more.

But he didn't have an active program, stockpiles were small and there wasn't really a huge risk of him selling to 'terrorists' etc..

The misrepresentation was really one of magnitude and capabilities and especially how the information is presented.

"He Has WMD's" is very true and legitimate (different than 'he has a knife'), but obviously the misrepresented context makes it a giant lie.

To this end, I suggest that the US would do better in their public communications if they revealed some Twitterable/TikTokable visuals and graphics which highlighted the nature of some of the incursions, so as to more strongly make their case i.e. it's easier to believe 'something material' than accusations.

This is meaningless. You're saying that since we have gotten it wrong in the past it must be wrong this time? That's not how it works. Show me your superior intelligence that contradicts this.

No, he's saying since the USG used a lie in order to further its' interests and which caused more than 500k deaths, it should not be trusted when it says anything about any other adversary.

>The U.S., NATO and other allies

Okay. What about NATO and "other allies" then?

Yeah, it turned out to be ISIS.

I would be happy to believe them if they released more technical details. Otherwise, just sounds like a typical "best-guess" based on geopolitical considerations.

For example, the NYTimes just published a piece about a "Rogue" section of the Commerce Department that used racial profiling targeting Chinese Americans:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/16/us/politics/commerce-depa...

I don't think they should share more tech details.

I recall an incident long ago where it was back and forth - you don't know, we know, you don't have proof, we have proof, share proof - it's all bs.. then the frustrated investigators released a trail of this addy, this pic, which was also used for this and that..

what came of it?

not a damn thing changed other than teaching the other side what they needed to not do to not get caught in the same way.

If we are not going to put a missile into a building to stop office building 123456 - because of their theft, then keep the proof under wraps.

a public statement like this does nothing but make it reasonable for us to continue similar theft - meh. no proof needed for that.

I'm surprised given how much of it is already in plain sight. Sit down with any security engineer and you're going to hear a bunch of stories about strange network activity they've observed over the years. And this is just the stuff that's been detected.

Not to say I don’t believe that China is actively attacking networks and services (if they don’t then they’re lagging behind and it’s embarassing), but I can understand the skepticism of grand claims when the latest was that tiktok was impacting national security.

If you don’t believe Tiktok is a national security threat you are hopelessly naive.

MyFitnessPal, Strava, etc are threats to national security and they’re US based, but you think that Tiktok isn’t because someone you don’t like said it is? That’s playground logic.

> If you don’t believe Tiktok is a national security threat you are hopelessly naive.

Yeah, it's pretty much a bomb waiting to be used. It might not have been used yet, but that's no reason to claim it's harmless and sleep next to it.

Though, Facebook and Twitter are not much better, and only somewhat less exploitable by the same adversary (there's capitalism for you).

Given the goals of the US, anything that weakens US hegemony can be regarded as a national security threat. Naturally, any internationally successful social media technology not under the control of US corporations counts.

If you are not American, though, the TikTok drama has been one of the more darkly amusing spectacles.

The US isn't the only country that has claimed TikTok is a national security threat though.

India disagrees with you but ok.

> when the latest was that tiktok was impacting national security.

Wait, it wasn't? I'm not sure why this is a controversial opinion. Social media has often been linked to information leakage. Geo tagging of photos was part of the proof that was used to show that Russia invaded Crimea. Similarly US soldiers have had their locations revealed when posting on Facebook/Twitter/Instagram. In fact if you're over seas and talking to your partner back home they generally have another soldier listening to the conversation. Given all this why is it surprising that a large social media platform that focuses on videos (which reveal more info), grabs a lot of data, and is connected to the US's largest geopolitical adversary is considered a threat?

There's NEVER any evidence posted, just "experts agree". In the past they at least trotted out that a "russian IP" or a "Chinese tool" was used ( e.g. the strings command showed Chinese strings in the binary). Evidence so flimsy a computer literate teenager would not be convinced. Now they can't even do that?

Sorry but a bunch of politicians agreeing isn't evidence. I have a higher standard.

Comment sections are not a reliable source of information.

China is just the bogeyman of the hour. If it were more politically convenient to blame Russia or Iran you'd suddenly find the same evidence pointing a different way.

Russia and Iran do cyberattacks all the time. We have good evidence of these attacks from many sources. Same with China. The idea that these attacks are just being made up or we don't have evidence who executed them is either willfully ignorant (a google search will provide plenty of evidence) or actively malicious.

> The idea that these attacks are just being made up or we don't have evidence who executed them is either willfully ignorant (a google search will provide plenty of evidence) or actively malicious.

Tools to fake such attribution and evidence were literally part of the leaked NSA/Equation Group toolkit.

and yet, we were able to accurately attribute the code released in that leak as being developed by NSA.

We know it was the NSA because of leaked NSA documents that admitted to the affiliation. Not from the tools themselves.

Interesting; could you share your source on that?

I had only previously heard [0] that similarities in the tools were discovered by Kaspersky, not that there were any leaked docs that pointed the finger back at NSA themselves. Are you maybe thinking of PRISM/Wikileaks?

[0] - https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/02/how-o...

Sure, and we should be willing to entertain skepticism of specific incidents when justified. The idea that there's no such thing as real attribution, that it's always fabricated based on political convenience, is just unproductive nihilism.

There is such a thing as real attribution. Just not from IPs and tools that are easily faked. You need more than that, and indeed there were many cases were we got more than that.

Agreed, but this seems to be one of the cases where we got more than that. I don't have time to read the indictment in a ton of depth, but it tells a very detailed story about some of the hackers and how they organized the hacking; it's not just "the IP matched so it's gotta be them".

> There is such a thing as real attribution. Just not from IPs and tools that are easily faked. You need more than that, and indeed there were many cases were we got more than that.

And there are most likely a lot of cases where:

1) "...we got more than that," and...

2) ...data from "IPs and tools that are easily faked" is the only information that could be released publicly without compromising sources and methods.

It's a hopeless wish to want to be able to independently assess (as an amateur!) intelligence findings in all cases. If trusting the official assessments isn't acceptable (cross-checked with general knowledge of the situation), about the only reasonable alternative position is to remain agnostic.

The CCP runs concentration camps and is actively perpetuating ethnic cleansing. That doesn't seem "of the hour." That ignores CCP doings for the past 30+ years that have cost millions of lives.

It's also instituted a very oppressive social credit system and runs an enormous censorship apparatus that it will be increasingly able to turn outwards in the future.

Its really about their ability to destroy Western democracy - which is already happening.

It's more complicated than that. Few decisions, particularly ones regarding foreign policy, are made on single factors.

They would also stop big bunch of other things.

The US has too many internal problem to be the world savior. Every time the US looks outside its border, it's for its sole selfish interests. Human rights enforcement around the world is (unfortunately) not something we can reasonaly expect from US. Also the U in US is extremely optimistic. Different states would act completely differently if allowed to.

The world need to look for a different hero: any proposal?

(For a good laugh, I reccomend watching the excellent "When the Yogurt took over" on Netflix)

Democracy, human rights, and self-determination as a concept should be the hero.

Refer them to the DOJ indictment and CISA advisory

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/four-chinese-nationals-workin...

https://us-cert.cisa.gov/ncas/alerts/aa21-200a

I was in France when the US started the Iraq war, now I live in China. Sorry if I doubt lol, it's just impossible to trust them now. And the attacks and humiliations I faced as a French (soft ones, ofc, in the US medias) really didn't help.

So no, having a lot of countries saying China bad poopoo together is not enough anymore for me.

> What is shared is known to a high degree of certainty.

Not to me, not to you. You're just believing them. My kid believes in Father Xmas "to a high degree of certainty."

See also Dick Cheney

They could just give us the evidence.

The nature of comment sections like this don’t matter in the slightest if anyone is actually worried about it affecting anything, this isn’t copyright reform.

Exchange being hacked has 0 relevance to HN commenters, their knowledge, or their influence. Absolutely nobody cares about the technical specifics, or technical effects of this. This is an exec level political issue, and is more related to the recent trade wars than infosec.

There is a frankly stupid amount of bipartisan US consensus on confronting China. MENA is being put to simmer. A form of “rapprochement” with Russia is underway, and the EU & NATO are barking when told.

The comparisons to the Iraq war are apt in the sense there’s essentially nothing anyone outside those circles can do about this.

Bonus points for the fact there’s 0 chance of this going kinetic anytime soon, so no blood, guts, and (non climate) refugees to affect PR going forward.