Your comment is proving his point. We decided at some point that not all is fair in war, even if there is a war of aggression. "The Japanese started the war" wasn't a good excuse for Japanese internment. "The USA started bombing the middle east" wasn't an excuse for 9/11. "They are invading iraq" wasn't an excuse for torturing captive American soldiers or hurting American civilians. "Afghan civilians had it coming for harboring talibans" wasn't a valid excuse for droning them either.

And so on.

Not that this kind of pretty bad take hasn't been pervasive in the past month. It's just funny in a horrifying way to see a century worth of lessons just evaporating in 3 weeks. Just go on any social media and you will see the exact same argument used to justify and even promote literal war crimes against the russians because they started the war. But no, even an invading soldier does not deserve to be tortured.

Right but some npm module deleting some files is not a war crime.

So it a fair game, as far as international law goes.

It is a cyber crime. I would assume that if the victimes were e.g in the EU there would be an attempt to prosecute.

Which leads me to my next point: an essential attribute of a state under the rule of law is that the law is applied impartially, irrespective of who the victim and the perpetrator are. Doesn’t always work out, but it’s certainly what most people find fair and what we strive for.