"The 1980's are calling to ask for their foreign policy back."

Discussion in 'The Red Room' started by Steal Your Face, Jan 8, 2022.

  1. matthunter

    matthunter Ice Bear

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    The last time I saw a dressing that well preserved, it had cider vinegar in it.
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  2. Ancalagon

    Ancalagon Scalawag Administrator Formerly Important

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  3. Ancalagon

    Ancalagon Scalawag Administrator Formerly Important

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  4. We Are Borg

    We Are Borg Republican Democrat

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    So it appears NATO will likely draw a line in the sand at the use of "weapons of mass destruction" meaning that if Russia employs chemical or nuclear weapons, NATO may actually engage.

    Other than the fact that Russia has nuclear weapons (no small consideration), given what we've seen the past month, does anyone seriously think they could withstand a full-scale war with NATO? Conventionally, I think it would be a fucking slaughter for the Russkies.

    I also think we're entering a very dangerous period in this conflict because of this fact.

    Putin is bugfuck nuts. Let's hope some general or aide with common sense does the right thing. :?:
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  5. Order2Chaos

    Order2Chaos Ultimate... Immortal Administrator

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  6. Ancalagon

    Ancalagon Scalawag Administrator Formerly Important

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  7. Tuckerfan

    Tuckerfan BMF

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    Nah, I think that they are going with an entirely different playbook for some significant reasons.

    The most parallel situation to what we're seeing now, is, of course, WWII. While the US could crack the Japanese coded messages prior to Pearl Harbor, the Allies didn't gain possession of any German Enigma machines until May of 1941 (basically two years into the war). Cracking the Japanese messages took a bit of time, and the Allies fiercely concealed the fact that they had Enigma machines because if the Germans suspected that the machines had fallen into Allied hands, they could have made some (minor) changes, that would have made it difficult for the Allies to crack the codes for a period of time. (The Bletchley Park folks managed to figure out how to crack most Enigma codes without the use of an Enigma machine later on in the war.) However, if Germany knew that the Allies had some Enigma machines, they could have fucked everything up by introducing a new model. If the Germans had added one more rotor to the Enigma machine, Allied codebreakers wouldn't have been able to crack the codes without capturing the new machine. The codes generated by such a machine would be so complicated that they wouldn't be able to be cracked until well after the development of actual computers.

    Since before the invasion, the US strategy has been to reveal just how much intel we had on what Putin was planning on doing. This not only revealed to the world that some shit was up, but also let Putin know we were reading his book. By publicizing the capture of the mobile electronic warfare system the US is telling Pootie-Poot, "You thought we owned your shit before? You ain't seen nothing yet, Borschtie!" Whatever steps the Russians might have taken to mitigate the ability of the US to intercept and decode their messages (as well as who knows what all else that the system was capable of), those have just been trashed. In order to have some hope of keeping things private, Russia is going to have to undertake rather extraordinary measures to accomplish. They're going to have to ship new orders/software/equipment/whatever to all the units operating in the field. Difficult and time-consuming. Absolutely no way that they can transmit that stuff over communication channels because anything sent over those channels will be intercepted and decoded by the US. If Russian traditions of micro-managing military units to the point where if officers can't get orders from the Kremlin they don't know what to do have continued, don't expect to see very many aggressive actions by the forces in Ukraine.
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  8. Tuckerfan

    Tuckerfan BMF

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    Ukraine returns some weapons to the Russians.
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  9. Steal Your Face

    Steal Your Face Anti-Federalist

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    Wild card bitches!
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  10. Order2Chaos

    Order2Chaos Ultimate... Immortal Administrator

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    Precisely the baseline I was thinking of, but what I don’t fully grok is why the info strategy is working so well, when the opposite was absolutely vital to WWII.
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  11. Bailey

    Bailey It's always Christmas Eve Super Moderator

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    In WWII most intelligence came from spies, who you wouldn't want to burn. In a longer conflict they also didn't want to provide the enemy opportunities to plug holes that would be needed in future.

    Would speculate that the West and especially the US is confident at the moment in not just the quality of intelligence but the variety of sources of it. So they don't think that it comes from easily plugged holes, and if anything would benefit from the Russian military being paranoid and tearing itself apart looking for leaks.
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  12. Tuckerfan

    Tuckerfan BMF

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    Additionally, the speed of global communication is significantly faster today than it was back in WWII. Things would have to be planned much farther in advance simply because it took time for information to go anywhere. Now, you can have a real-time conversation with almost anyone in the world at a moment's notice. So, you don't have to wait days for an order to prepare for an operation to reach your forces on the other side of the globe, then wait days for them to inform you that they're ready, etc. You just pick up the scramble phone, call the commander and tell them what you want to do, and they tell you when they'll be ready to do it. The amount of time that the information is actionable if it's been intercepted, isn't nearly as long as it once was.

    So, unless you're planning to do a direct military confrontation (or expect the Ukrainians to do so), the publication of the intel is more valuable than simply sitting on it and watching what happens. In the past, when folks talked about cyberwarfare, they just thought about it as an offensive weapon, we're now seeing it being used as a psyops weapon. Not only is Putin worried that folks within the government are ratting him out to the rest of the world, but the Russian military commanders are also now paranoid that any orders they give (or are given) will wind up in the hands of the Ukrainians who will be able to blunt the efforts, if not beat the shit out of them.
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  13. We Are Borg

    We Are Borg Republican Democrat

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    :repost:

    http://wordforge.net/index.php?posts/3400584/
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  14. Tuckerfan

    Tuckerfan BMF

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    This military "expert's" predictions from a month ago as to what was going to happen with the invasion of Ukraine make for some interesting reading.



    And hey, if you want the full analysis by him, it's only $100/mo. to subscribe to his newsletter! Clearly worth every penny!
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  15. Forbin

    Forbin Do you feel fluffy, punk?

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    Guinan wants her hat back.
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  16. MikeH92467

    MikeH92467 RadioNinja

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    There was more to cracking Enigma than grabbing the machine. Just as important as getting a machine was getting the schedules for the rotor changes. The Brits had gotten ahold of one of the machines from Poles who got out just ahead of the Wehrmacht in 1939. The Poles were well on their way to cracking Enigma before then. One of the subtle advantages for Bletchley Park's codebreakers was that the German were so confident in the machine itself that they neglected some basic precautions. For example, the U-Boats got weather reports every day, and it wasn't that hard to filter out the word "weather" and account for those letters. There was also one officer who also started his transmissions with the same phrase: "Heil Hitler". The Brits hit the jackpot in 1941 when HMS Bulldog captured U-110 before the captain could scuttle it. The Brits managed to keep it a secret by keeping the POWs under intense security and swearing the Bulldog's crew to secrecy (probably along with references to hangings and firing squads to blabbermouths). An interesting problem arose three years later when the Americans captured U-505. By then the Allies were reading Enigma traffic before the Germans and the last thing the Top Brass who knew about it, was for the Germans to learn that a machine (and codebooks) had been captured. That was kept secret as well and the full story never came out until the 70s. Another link.:storm:
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  17. tafkats

    tafkats scream not working because space make deaf Moderator

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    They're gonna throw cheesesteaks at the MiGs?
  18. Ancalagon

    Ancalagon Scalawag Administrator Formerly Important

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    Take for what it is worth.
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  19. MikeH92467

    MikeH92467 RadioNinja

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    I think the Russkis have got this logistics thing bass-ackwards.... :chris:
    Ukraine has lost at least 74 tanks—destroyed or captured—since Russia widened its war on the country starting the night of Feb. 23.

    But Ukraine has captured at least 117 Russian tanks, according to open-source-intelligence analysts who scrutinize photos and videos on social media.

    In other words, the Ukrainian army might actually have more tanks now than a month ago—all without building a single brand-new tank or pulling some older vehicle out of storage.

    The Russians meanwhile have captured at least 37 Ukrainian tanks—a sum inadequate to compensate for the roughly 274 tanks it is believed to have lost to all causes.

    :lolol:
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  20. Tuckerfan

    Tuckerfan BMF

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    If you're in the market for a pre-owned yacht, Finland's the place to go.
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  21. tafkats

    tafkats scream not working because space make deaf Moderator

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    Fuck it, seize all the yachts.

    The odds that their owners aren't criminals are infinitesimally small.
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  22. MikeH92467

    MikeH92467 RadioNinja

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    I can't imagine how anyone could get rich in Russia without being a crook or in cahoots with Putin's goons. :clyde:
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  23. We Are Borg

    We Are Borg Republican Democrat

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    I think tafkats was speaking even more broadly than just Russia.

    Because if the James Bond films have taught us nothing, it's that bad guys love their yachts.
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  24. MikeH92467

    MikeH92467 RadioNinja

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    Robin Williams used to say that cocaine was God's way of telling you you have too much money. I'd say superyachts have replaced cocaine. :chris:
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  25. shootER

    shootER Insubordinate...and churlish Administrator

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  26. Ancalagon

    Ancalagon Scalawag Administrator Formerly Important

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  27. Ancalagon

    Ancalagon Scalawag Administrator Formerly Important

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  28. matthunter

    matthunter Ice Bear

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    That and it's embarrassing to admit they can't manage to kill or capture him when he's pretty much stationary.
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  29. Demiurge

    Demiurge Goodbye and Hello, as always.

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    And, of course, it wasn't just the spies that the Allies didn't want to burn - it was the fact that the encryption was broken. The Brits went to incredible lengths to make it appear that there was a reason other than breaking Enigma for their intelligence. They often would divert planes to locations that they knew about already just to ensure that secrecy, and of course there was the Coventry raids that Churchill made the decision to allow to continue unopposed so the Germans wouldn't realize enigma was broken.

    But that's perhaps the real cruxt of why they are so willing to display intel now - the Russians are barely using any OpsSec in their communications in the field, and much of their equipment isn't military grade, it's civilian. This is almost certainly yet more examples of their corruption. There's nothing to keep secret, because so much of it wasn't secret in the first place!
  30. Demiurge

    Demiurge Goodbye and Hello, as always.

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