If a private corporation releasing an update to its code base to allow its own service to keep working brings us into WWIII... the root cause of the WWIII is definitely not the code update.

Exactly, this bizarre blaming the victim for provoking more violence from the aggressor is pernicious and ill conceived imo. But they might go nuclear or attack the NATO/US! Maniacs will do what maniacs do, that genie is out of the bottle. Countries have a right to control their airspace, countries have the right to acquire military equipment as they please. Invaders do not get to dictate that.

We should be careful of outright demonizing Putin. He's not just a monster and he can be reasoned with. Maybe he even has some legitimate grievances (or at least things we might choose to accomodate to avoid ...)

Perhaps we can to have systems, like the "we're testing an ICBM" system we have in place, to avoid escalations that will draw us into WW3. There must a way to get a reasoned, thoughtful and cooperative answer to this question. For example, let's say we place 5 test satellites in orbit and if you shoot one (?) of those down, you get to request blocking internet service in a geographical region, without escalating things into a space war.

That may have been the case in the past, but today he's just a monster. He had his chance at statesmanship and royally messed it up and the sooner the mad dog is put down the better and then we have to hope that the next dog won't be madder. I wonder if we'll ever see a world where Russia plays nice and stays nice.

> I wonder if we'll ever see a world where Russia plays nice and stays nice.

Unfortunately any real hope for that ship has sailed down the toilet at hypersonic speeds. Its not about the amount of good, smart, moral etc. folks that are still in Russia, in relatively educated population of 160 million there will always be quite a few of those.

But this layer is, and will be marginal and powerless in Russia unless its already part of government and thus on side of corruption, theft and organized murder. Mainstream applauds Putin genocide or not, or in best possible scenario indulges in complacency, preferring seemingly strong dictator over any uncertainty that more freedom can bring. Weakening any russian influence and strength is by far the best course of action, short term and especially long term.

Only a fool comes again and again with open hands for an embrace to a sociopath wielding blood stained knife.

Its a mistake when trying to apply western thinking and actions to Russia, they are very far from it and getting further away as we speak.

All this, and much much more. Plus yeah, Putin is a mass murderer, allies didn't negotiate much with Hitler neither. He also said and put in contracts whatever gave advantage at that moment, only to break it at first occasion.

I fear that you are right.

But then we've essentially already set the stage for a re-run.

Your recent comments have broken the site guidelines so badly that I've banned the account.

If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email [email protected] and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

And that is the point. Elon sent starlink terminals to the Ukraine because of the war.

They had been trying to launch Starlink service there since before the war and the government was dragging their feet on regulatory approval. The war caused the government to rethink that.

Rethink as in:

"@elonmusk , while you try to colonize Mars — Russia try to occupy Ukraine! While your rockets successfully land from space — Russian rockets attack Ukrainian civil people! We ask you to provide Ukraine with Starlink stations and to address sane Russians to stand."

https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/14977014840032133...

Root cause analysis in software postmortems and in business is important, but knowing the root cause that initiated WWIII is only really useful to understand in hopes of preventing WWIV.

It's irrelevant whether a private corporation software update or the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand causes a world war to break out, it must be avoided.

with that reasoning, everything can cause ww3.

We'd still be in WWIII.

Yes, god forbid private companies protect their assets. All this 'oh how will the dictator respond to perceived sleight 'x'' stuff really has to stop. It's the aggressor that is to blame not the (intended) victims.

I believe we are sending heavy armaments to Ukraine now. Also for a reason, of course.

I don't really see the problem with having a foreign Starlink operating over your country. It just provides communication, doesn't it?

Here's an example:

What if a chinese Starlink provides services in Afghanistan and the Taliban use it while the Americans attempt to control the country?

Would you be ok with it?

if the Taliban militants were using it then it's a legitimate target and I would take out the antennas. I assume the same holds for Ukraine. If Starlink is being used by Ukraine military then I think Russia is perfectly within the rules of war to target the antennas. If a software update makes them harder to target then does that make SpaceX HQ a military target? idk, probably, but in the same way FedEx is a military target. I don't see it very feasible nor advisable to launch a cruise missile targeting Hawthorne CA...

I'm no fan of the Taliban, but I'm not a big fan of the US trying to control other countries either. But I am a fan of regular Afghani people being able to communicate.

He's the thing with these services: if they're controlled by a single government with the intend of using them as leverage over others, that means that at some point they're going to be denied to the people. I would strongly prefer redundancy in such systems to increase their reliability.

Take GPS, for example. The US controls it, and at least initially, their goal was to be able to reduce the accuracy of GPS for other parties. Europe has its own competing Galileo satellites to increase reliability for ordinary citizens. I'm strongly in favour of that. I don't see military applications as a higher purpose than civilian use.

They are operating over Ukraine, not Russia. Very different circumstances. Much like supplying missiles for Ukraine to use is very different to supplying men.

I'm not sure the difference is as obvious as you imply. Care to elaborate?

Every major conflict since WW2 has some degree of ‘proxy’ to it - with the US and Russia arming or supporting one or both sides to some degree. Sometimes even providing direct troop support.

It’s been accepted that as long as troops from one of the side are not directly shooting at uniformed troops from the other side (sides here being US/Russia!), it’s a proxy conflict, not a direct one.

Afghanistan, Vietnam, Korean War being some of the larger versions of this.

With Russian troops on the ground right now, adding any NATO or US troops would mean it isn’t a proxy conflict anymore once someone from the US or NATO side shoots at someone in a Russian uniform. But providing weapons to Ukrainians has a lot of precedent as being ‘not a war’ between them. Even if the Ukranians use them to shoot Russians.

> It’s been accepted that as long as troops from one of the side are not directly shooting at uniformed troops from the other side

During the Korean and Vietnam Wars, Soviet pilots engaged in dogfights with Americans, which makes the amount of handwringing over just sending weaponry being a escalation laughable.

Good point on the pilots!

Also MacArthur’s pursuit of the North Koreans across the 38th parallel brought China directly into the war and precipitated a much, much larger conflict, and cost a great many American and UN Allie’s lives. It got him (rightly, IMO) fired. But that was too late.

[https://www.marshallfoundation.org/articles-and-features/mar...]

If everyone agrees that shooting at each other’s pilots isn’t a ‘direct conflict’, then it isn’t.

The US didn’t want to officially care to that level that Chinese jets (or troops) were killing US troops, because the US could waltz back home and Korea would be the one to take the hit. At least one of the parties could accept a failure, somewhat.

The stakes for Russia here (and especially for Putin), like when MacArthur crossed the 38th, are much, much higher for them. A well armed, actively hostile (well earned hostility or not), and aligned with the west Ukraine is right on their doorstep, with no meaningful geographic barriers. Historically a scary situation for Russia.

And Europe, which has a lot (depending on if we’re counting countries or $$) of influence over NATO and is nuclear armed themselves, is also existentially threatened by Russia doing what they are doing. Russia has a recent and very painful history with many of those countries. And even if the WW2 push west from Russia was precipitated by Nazi Germany, nothing they did afterwards left a warm and fuzzy feeling.

The hand wringing is because after a long period of peace that people became accustomed too, this is a real and present danger to a lot of folks livelihoods and safety even if nothing goes nuclear.

And this turns up the dial on stress in a way that no one can look at it and really be sure the other side wouldn’t go nuclear over the next step or two.

Would he be super stupid and self destructive? Yes.

But when in an information bubble and when threatened by existential threats is exactly when folks are most likely to do stupid and self destructive things.

Would you be willing to bet there is no (crazier) MacArthur, potentially one that has access to a nuke or dirty bomb or the like, in the power structure somewhere there, or even in Ukraine if you really looked?

Madmen need to be checked. Getting nuked is also terrible. Starting WW3? Just yikes.

> With Russian troops on the ground right now, adding any NATO or US troops would mean it isn’t a proxy conflict anymore

So is it a strategic move to be the first to attack?

MAD still applies, disincentivizing a direct war between the US and Russia. US nuclear policy is unspecified, Russian policy explicitly calls for the use of nuclear weapons if the survival of the Russian state is on the line. Direct war with the US could very easily lead to the Russian state fearing for its future.

> Direct war with the US could very easily lead to the Russian state fearing for its future.

Yes, that's another dimension in this complex problem.

You’d be staking out the ground first as ‘your fight’ - so in general maybe.

In this case for instance, if NATO had moved in before Russia into Ukraine however, that would be really, really bad.

A big factor behind this war already is Russian insecurity about NATO strength and being frozen out of traditionally Russian territory.

It would be a bit like Russia occupying some of the Aleutians all the sudden. Not likely to go well. Sudden double flashes not well.

Thanks for your answer which is insightful. As you explain there is asymmetry in the case of countries that are close to a border of one of the actors (either US or Russia).

So can we expect other similar moves from Russia into countries that are not part of NATO and which have no common frontiers with US?

They have been for awhile. Georgia, for instance.

They’ve been threatening countries like Finland, Sweden, etc. every time they consider it too.

When it was non-western aligned Soviet breakaway republics, it was easier to ignore.

The invasion of Ukraine was too obvious and ham handed. Moscow has doubled down on the threats to those on the fence since then, enough to push folks back over to the other side.

Which likely just pushes Russia more solidly into doubling down/existential threat mode.

Here is some timely news on the topic.

[https://news.yahoo.com/finland-and-sweden-moving-toward-poss...]

That depends on whether you like to see your metal objects glow in the dark.

This is because men have consciousness, and could understand consequences of his actions, and even most enhanced AI now does not have consciousness.

Forecasts say, this will change in nearest decades, but at the moment machines considered incapable.

Some people have other opinion, but for us important, that Russian govt agree with what I write.

According to Russia Ukraine is not a real country.

According to Russia Russians protesting the war aren't really Russians either. But what Russia thinks is utterly irrelevant, it is no longer connected to objective reality.

We definitely are sending heavy armament to Ukraine. Long range artillery, extremely effective missiles, the list is quite extensive.

The Chinese government are building a 13,000 satellite constellation. https://spacenews.com/china-establishes-company-to-build-sat...

Neither of the electronic warfare officials referenced in the article - Brig. Gen. Tad Clark, Dave Tremper in the office of SecDef — raised any hint of concern.

The US is sending artillery, those are heavy weapons by any reasonable definition. The main "red line" that has been repeated over and over is that NATO will not intervene with its own troops.

The US has sent heavy artillery to the Ukraine.

There is no objective standard and no court that decides what action will 'pull is into WWIII'. Maybe German tank shipments will be too much, maybe Starlink terminals, maybe a bad Putin meme. What crosses the line is solely decided by the Russian government, and they do not care at all whether coming generations will deem their actions legitimate or not.

In this case it is extremely dangerous to err on the side of caution, or Putin will be able to apply salami tactics and get whatever he wants.

If a Chinese / Russian company wants to sell internet access to US customers, why would I want the government to be able to tell me I don't have the right to connect to it.

> We are not sending heavy armament to Ukraine for a reason

Unfortunately that is not true anymore [1]. Otherwise I 100% agree with the sentiment of your post.

[1] https://liveuamap.com/en/2022/21-april-pentagon-says-new-800...

Unfortunately? How do you expect Ukraine to win without help?

If winning means more tens of thousands civilians dead then the logical thing is to not to want Ukraine to win. But, then again, most of the users from here are from half a world away, so those are only numbers for them, all that counts is the W.

So apparently you claim to be Romanian. Just one question: what is wrong with you? It seems like you don't understand that the orcs will attack us next, or you're an orc yourself pretending to be Romanian.

The what now? They didn’t invade us in August ‘68, they definetly won’t do it now, with the Americans on our side. And I’d ease it down with the warmongering rhetoric (again, “orcs”, really?) if I were you, because last time we thought we were militarily better than them, the Russians, we had our grand-fathers and grand-grand-fathers die horrible deaths from Odessa all the way to Kazan.

This is a former-USSR internal kerfuffle, it’s the “Yugoslav” civil war translated to the former Soviet space. Thankfully we’re a not a former Soviet republic. I wouldn’t want to live in Estonia or Lithuania right now, though.

And if Z wins, we will be ruled by mafioso. You will not like it if/when Western Democracy falls.

Your advise came late... WWIII is already started few years ago, only most still haven't noticed. And yes large part of it was born out of corporate interest and their pernicious mix with the public.

You fail to spot the real enemy though: it's not a WWIII between Russia, China and USA/UK. It's a war between a little oligarchy and the rest of the humanity. War between USA/UK +submissive allies and Russia is just a war between two oligarch cohort, war for Taiwan and south Pacific in general (perhaps Solomon and Chagos Islands (see Diego Garcia) just toward the Philippines will probably follow again for more practical purposes like the China desperate need for food vs the USA/UK desperate struggle to keep dominance of the seas. Those wars though are not much WW wars, they are just some big&powerful confronts to remain in power/increase it. The real global war is the classic élites vs the people. Time since first nazi-fascism series against socialism is enough to restart a new nazi-fascist era and that's precisely what happen now.

I think you overlooked that Putin's Business Empire is itself private industry, funding itself via the work of the Russian people and land, and is trying to do just that.

> Of course it’s the person with a German name parroting this lie

This sort of attack will get you banned here if you keep it up. Didn't we have to warn you about this just recently? Seriously not cool.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: your track record is already beyond the line at which we'd normally ban an account. I'm not going to ban you this time because you've also posted good comments, but it's past time to correct this, so please do.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31054808

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30928186

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30608897 (March 2022)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30501710 (Feb 2022)

lol. Yeah, censor my reply instead of explaining how exactly my comment is against the guidelines.

The double standard is palpable. Criticizing Scholz for lying is apparently a no-go but we can call Putin a monster https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

If you mean https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31111304, your reply was flagged by users. I don't know if that's 'censorship' or not but moderators didn't touch it.

You can't seriously be questioning how snarkily attacking someone for the ethnicity of their name is against the HN guidelines? That, plus all your other comments attacking other users, are way outside what's acceptable here. If that's not obvious to you after reading https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html, I'm not sure what else to say.

If we didn't ban such accounts, we might as well not moderate this place at all, so please fix this.

I’m just pointing out the unsurprising coincidence that he is a German speaker repeating falsehoods German leadership is peddling to Germans exclusively in the German language.

Nowhere else in the world will you see anyone pushing the lie that Ukraine isn’t being supplied with heavy weapons.

I really don’t know how you can spin this into an attack. sschueller is simply a victim of propaganda, that’s not an unreasonable thing to point out. I just added useful context to the outrageous lie he is spreading.

Let me remind you of the principle of charity (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...)

Reading my comment as a personal attack is miles away from the most charitable interpretation.

If your intention isn't to attack others, that's great—but in that case the burden is on you to express your intention more clearly.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

If you can't or won't do that, we're going to have to ban you, even if you're right that your comments are perfectly innocent and everyone else is just reading them wrong. That's because we have to go by how these things affect the threads. If you post things that look like trollish swipes, and feel like trollish swipes, they're guaranteed to have the effect of trollish swipes. There isn't much difference between arson and negligence if the goal is not to have the house burn down.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

Please provide a source.

What tanks specifically are they sending and how are they training the Ukrainians to operate them?

The Ukrainians do not own any US tanks and do not have any infrastructure to operate or maintain such tanks. If the US were to send such equipment it requires a lot more than just the tank. This is also why the US and others do not want to do this as it involves sending US personnel to train/coordinate etc.

US has not sent over any tanks to Ukraine. It is, however, sending tanks to Poland to replace their tanks sent to Ukraine, and has sent artillery to Ukraine.

Yes, exactly, this is very different than directly sending such weapons to Ukraine. It also has to be seen from the Polish view, free upgrade to US tanks. They also tried it with their aircraft hoping for US fighter jets in return.

Either way, heavy armaments have been sent to Ukraine, some of them directly from the US.

Poland sent tanks to Ukraine, it’s not a big secret even if you’d like to pretend that it is.

I’m not sure why you’re getting caught up on the US, that’s just weird and makes it seem like you might have some ulterior motives.

US is sending other kinds of heavy armaments to Ukraine.

Poland sent tanks to Ukraine that were very similar to the ones that they already know how to operate.

You really should stop with the namecalling the personal attacks and in general being a jerk.

GGP said

> We are not sending heavy armament to Ukraine for a reason and the government needs to make sure that their policies also apply to companies like SpaceX.

First, that's wrong (apart from Germany), second, how does this reason (that Western tanks require training and logistics Ukrainians don't have) square with 'mak[ing] sure that their policies also apply to companies like SpaceX'? It's a complete nonsequitur if that's the case.