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.