Frosted Flake posted:

Some of the most striking things I ever read in GiP were in a thread years ago about basic training where people recounted black soldiers on their course marvelling at owning multiple pairs of shoes for the first time. One USAF guy remembered that when, what I suppose were rural, southern and poor, black members of his unit were painting a fence or something similar, they started singing work songs. That’s so uncomfortable, I mean, it’s really hard to
imagine that, but as you said it’s a reflection of society.

Which isn’t to say that somewhat similar dynamics don’t play out here with rural Quebec, New Brunswick and Newfoundland soldiers, that you can see differences in Canadian society that are basically invisible from Toronto or whatever. The class, regional, linguistic and other stratifications in Canadian society are there too, there are imbalances in officers and other ranks, indigenous people have separate enlistment programs etc. but it’s hard to wrap my head around how large race looms in America.

One thing worth pointing out is that motivations for enlistment, or at least type of enlistment, vary across language, gender, class and race. The working class and minorities, which as you said can often be the same thing, approach service in a way that has a distinct pattern.

They often go into combat support and (more-so) combat service support roles, the labour jobs, for short period enlistments. Learn to cook, become a mechanic, plumber, electrician, carpenter, whatever - and then get out. Here, that’s 3-4 years, after which they go into public life with skills and something to put on their resume. I’m not great at explaining it, but it’s a very pragmatic use of the military that fits with the economic draft, since they’re returning to civie street with job skills.

In Canada that pattern is shared with women and Francophones but I’m not confident in how these things are interconnected. Just that I’ve seen the pie charts over and over again. Quite a few of the women who serve for short periods get married and leave or become military wives and that’s a whole thing I don’t feel qualified to touch on or try to explain. People still joke about “the 3 reasons why women join the army”.

For one example, combat support and combat service support units in Western Canada were losing enlisted men to the oil patch as soon as they got their red seals, journeymen tickets, AZ etc. To the point where units started deliberately withholding them and the idea was floated of the military deliberately cutting part of the skills training so they wouldn’t be properly certified. This goes back to the “solutions” to retention problems being misguided to malicious.

They have also recently done the same to paid training and education for Doctors, Nurses, Physiotherapists, Lawyers and Dentists to the point where you need to be trained and qualified before joining the military - and they’re marvelling why none are. I can’t wrap my head around this, so if anyone can shine a light I’d appreciate it. Why the hell would someone who is already a doctor become a Medical Officer? They want Chaplains to already have a Masters of Divinity Studies.

Other than people who feel a sense of duty, and are willing to sacrifice civilian employment, who are they hoping to attract to these high skilled and sought after positions? They’re so clearly sabotaging themselves I don’t understand it other than idk they want to means test the positions? But that doesn’t really make sense either.

On the other hand, officers and combat arms enlisted men skew male, middle class, white, English, two or more generations Canadian. Traditionally the Long Service Professional enlists or takes his commission for life - 18-25 years. There’s way more than I can get into here but this probably touches on something Max Weber observed in the Protestant Work Ethic about a “vocation” or “calling”. This was more consciously expressed in the Late Victorian and Edwardian Army, but you can take upper middle class Anglos out of the Anglican Church but you can’t take the Anglican Church out of the upper middle class Anglos. So, these are people who make a life out of the military. Some jumped ship for the tar sands, but not at the same rate. You can argue that’s because they didn’t have transferable job skills, but that’s the point - they don’t go into it for the job skills.

Where this gets complicated is questions of the ability of the other groups to have this career if they wanted. The “fit in or gently caress off” culture and everything else might mean an indigenous person from the territories couldn’t be a moustachioed Regimental Sergeant Major if they wanted to, or a woman hang tough in Battalion as a company commander before getting an ADC billet. The military up to the 70’s and 80’s stalled out Francophone officers’ careers at the Regimental level, beyond which they’d be in command of English troops and formations, so as you said about black generals, this is not all about preference.

I just want to cap this by saying there’s an old book about the RCMP, which is facing identical problems, written for a foreign audience, and when describing the personnel system they say: “Competition for the RCMP is intense, and the Force is able to pick and choose from among the best of those seeking a law enforcement career”

and it’s that they act as if that’s still true without earning it - failing the nation, public, members, Sam Steele and Vimy Ridge - that galls me. They’re acting as if they have the “pick of Canada’s men” without understanding why people believed only the best earned the Red Serge and pushed themselves to be worthy of it. Cunningham said during the evacuation of Crete, when army generals feared the Royal Navy would lose too many ships (the RN lost 12 fleet and 7 auxiliary ships and saved over 18k soldiers) “It takes the Navy three years to build a ship. It will take three hundred years to build a new tradition.” Well, what the gently caress do they want here?

I have often caught poo poo on CSPAM for my belief in this, and deservedly so, but these institutions rely on people acting as they have meaning, not assuming it.

ModernMajorGeneral posted:

https://www.skynews.com.au/world-ne...e771b0a76bb?amp

Putin’s pamps are extra poopy today

Gripweed posted:

I haven’t been paying attention, how’s the war been going for the past few weeks? Last I heard, the Russians were falling back and had lost control of a couple major cities.

indigi posted:

it seems like Russia has basically lost and can't really hope to do anything more than hold on to the territory they/the republics controlled in January but there's still plenty of killing and dying to be done until everyone comes to terms

Gripweed posted:

Man how does Russia get to keep being a country after this?

Frosted Flake posted:

I’m just saying if the think tank and media people want some sort of titanic confrontation with Russia and/or China, they can’t take for granted that just saying the words “Queenston Heights” and “Lundy’s Lane” will be enough.

Gripweed posted:

Man how does Russia get to keep being a country after this?

𝐀𝐓𝐎𝐌𝐈𝐂 𝐂𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐑𝐘 posted:

“Kherson Effect”

Kherson.

From the very start the battle for control of the right bank was viewed as an analogue of El Alamein from the political point of view by the countries supporting Ukraine - ukrainian army timing control of the city could have been a tipping point in this particular theatre.

To be more precise, we are talking about liberating more than 50% of the territories occupied by Russian Federation since 24th of february, as well as defeating the most combat capable parts of the russian army concentrated there, (the core of the battlegroup on the right bank was composed of airborne sections, and nobody planned to let them simply leave the city).

In a word, things looked most beneficial for AFU, and, of course, such an event must result in (and did) a significant increase in restructuring in military and economic aid by Europe and USA, intended for Ukraine.

In the beginning I named this the "Kherson Effect'' exactly when, November 10th, the first results of the battle for the city could be seen. Only then did, when the russian armies withdraw from the right bank of Dnepr, USA, Norway, and Netherlands announced an offer of 660 million dollars of military aid for Ukraine, Spain and Bulgaria announced training missions for the Ukrainian army, Czechia and Kiev signed an agreement about a mutual defense cluster.

The situation, in a word, was extraordinarily beneficial for Ukraine, and "Kherson Effect" entered a new plane - Ukrainian command, deciding that the long awaited tipping point was finally reached...the process of withdrawal of various sections from the line of contact started.

Some porption of the units were withdrawn for rotation, and a more significant mass of manpower was withdrawn to Europe to participate in training programms, formation of new brigades, the the countries of the NATO bloc were organizing. The specific size of the servicemen withdrawn, is not known to me - I only know that the number is greater than 10 thousand soldiers. In total the countries of the alliance announced missions, that over the course of winter-spring period must increase the qualifications and readines of 55 thousand Ukrainian servicemen (side note, due to the events that will be explored bellow, the missions are expanding). Considering the strategic disposition at the given moment it is possible to estimate 15-17 thousand soldiers withdrawn to Europe.

Such actions, however, proved premature and hasty. Ukrainian military command clearly made a mistake in their estimated loss of combat ability of Russian units, ability to build up reserves and to concentrate them at the frontline. Euphoria from taking Kherson also blinded their eyes to another key fact: Russian sections of the right bank were not destroyed - they withdrew without logistical problems (logistics, I'll remind you, is an encompassing science - it includes not only supply of material, but also rotation of manpower).

Accumulation of multiple factors led to the winter campaign, which was expected to be a period of general quiet, beginning completely differently - with Bakhmut.

@atomiccherry 💯

𝐀𝐓𝐎𝐌𝐈𝐂 𝐂𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐑𝐘 posted:

“Psychological symbolism of Bakhmut”

Over the course of the recent months Bakhmut became an unattractive point on a map of the military theatre - no significant movement was observed on this section of the front, and the city itself lost operational, and strategic meaning due to the general state of Russian advance in Donbas.

Nevertheless, russian forces continued a low intensity advance in this direction, continued to concentrate reserves and a significant mass of manpower.

It's possible, the fight for the settlment would have continued to have a purely local character, but one factor entered the play, the above defined "Kherson Effect"; in light of that success the Ukrainian military command left itself without a large portion of reserves, completely ignoring the mounting pressure on Bakhmut (ignoring it to the point that no fortifications were built around the settlement during summer, that under normal circumstances appears to be standard practice for AFU).

In previous months of fighting the ukrainian army was rather effective in avoiding battles of attrition, by using a system of echelon defenses and superiority in manpower - in the event of mounting pressure on one or another section of the front the units withdrew to the next defensive line, then the attention of russian generals would shift to other directions of operations (for example during battles for Lysychansk-Severodonetsk agglomeration AFU at the same time attempted attacks in Kherson and Kharkiv directions - this effectively distracted Russian forces).

But with Bakhmut things went differently: from one point of view, at the moment the AFU does not possess the forces for a diversionary strike, from another, after a series of successes, achieved during the fall campaign, they're unwilling to abandon the settlement. Put simply, the city became a focal point of so called "psychological symbolism" - it does not possess a significant meaning from the point of view of military art, but the battle for it can't be finished due to the heightened social expectations (before this we could observe an analogues picture with battles for Snake Island).

Russian command, on the other hand, since spring period strived to create exactly this situation, in which Ukrainian armies would be forced to expend large quantities of resources and manpower, striving to hold some region of the front - in a word, conceptually we're talking about an operation that's closer in spirit to the first world war: drawing the opponent into a prolonged battle of attrition.

To understand the question - over the past weeks forces of 57th, 65th mechanised brigades, 95th AAB, 40th artillery brigade, 5th separate assault regiment of AFU, 80th AAB, and also parts of Dnepr teroborona. It's not difficult to guess, this level of activity of tied to the difficult situation of the defenders, and the recent scandalous statements by european politicians, news media, and representatives of military departments, are tied to the battles for this specific settlement, - defence of Bakhmut is rather expensive for AFU from the point of view of combat losses (of course we are not talking about "tens of thousand dead", that propagandists from both sides love so much, but of several thousand - it's entirely possible that this is enough to cause a sensation in Europe).

The conditions of the positional dead end of Bakhmut serve as the starting point that will the determine the course of events in the near future. The plans of AFU commanders to form strike groups from reformed and retrained sections are postponed - they will have to be used to stabilise the frontline the moment they arrive from the training camps of NATO countries, and, of course, the whole process itself is postponed until middle of spring at the minimum.

Bakhmut appears (at the very least, in this given moment) to be a tipping point,it characterises the current flow of combat.

While me in the mean time will start to examine, the how and why the structure of military aid for Ukraine changed.

@atomiccherry 💯

Gripweed posted:

Man how does Russia get to keep being a country after this?

Organ Fiend posted:

Man, how does a nuclear armed state just straight up invade another country, gently caress everything up, kill hundreds of thousands of people, and then just continue to exist? No country has ever survived doing this. Ever.

Certainly not within the last two decades.

Twice.

Organ Fiend posted:

Man, how does a nuclear armed state just straight up invade another country, gently caress everything up, kill hundreds of thousands of people, and then just continue to exist? No country has ever survived doing this. Ever.

Certainly not within the last two decades.

Twice.

Jazerus posted:

as it turns out many countries invade other countries and kinda gently caress it up and do it badly, then declare victory and go home to very few long-term consequences

Gripweed posted:

Russia got what every western military has wanted for the past 70 years; a classic war against a standing army with tank battles and poo poo. And they got defeated by the Ukrainian army. This wasn’t counter insurgency, it was a good old fashioned war and they got defeated badly by a much smaller country. It’s humiliating.

Gripweed posted:

Russia got what every western military has wanted for the past 70 years; a classic war against a standing army with tank battles and poo poo. And they got defeated by the Ukrainian army. This wasn’t counter insurgency, it was a good old fashioned war and they got defeated badly by a much smaller country. It’s humiliating.

Gripweed posted:

Russia got what every western military has wanted for the past 70 years; a classic war against a standing army with tank battles and poo poo. And they got defeated by the Ukrainian army. This wasn’t counter insurgency, it was a good old fashioned war and they got defeated badly by a much smaller country. It’s humiliating.

Gripweed posted:

Russia got what every western military has wanted for the past 70 years; a classic war against a standing army with tank battles and poo poo. And they got defeated by the Ukrainian army. This wasn’t counter insurgency, it was a good old fashioned war and they got defeated badly by a much smaller country. It’s humiliating.

Gripweed posted:

Russia got what every western military has wanted for the past 70 years; a classic war against a standing army with tank battles and poo poo. And they got defeated by the Ukrainian army. This wasn’t counter insurgency, it was a good old fashioned war and they got defeated badly by a much smaller country. It’s humiliating.

Военная хроника posted:

The AFU is suffering heavy losses in Bakhmut because of NATO's COIN tactics. What it means

Soldiers of the 71st, 58th and 53rd brigades of the AFU who were captured in early and mid-November near Bakhmut claim that the training course in the UK and in Ukraine, supported by instructors from the US, Canada and Australia, was not designed for intensive combat and is harming the Ukrainian infantry.

According to the Military Chronicle, AFU soldiers underwent training under the NATO COIN program (from the English term Counterinsurgency). The COIN program was created to fight "non-state forces" and insurgents and does not assume the enemy has effective artillery and heavy weapons, which are in large quantities available to the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation.

In addition, a full six-month training course was not conducted for the AFU. For assault units, the accelerated course was held in 20 days, and for regular infantry the training took two weeks.

After the course, Ukrainian servicemen trained to COIN standards began to die en masse in combat. Initially losses were recorded in the Kherson direction, but now the most massive losses of the AFU are observed in the Artemivsk and Krasnolimansk directions, where forces of the AFU southern grouping were redeployed.

Because of the large losses of the AFU in Bakhmut in September, October and November, American instructors were sent to units of the 30th, 53rd and 71st AFU brigades to help with the management of the Ukrainian infantry and reduce the casualty rate.

According to the captives, training of the AFU in COIN tactics both abroad and at the Yavoriv training ground was built around actions by small mobile groups. At that, the main directions in training were maneuvers on light equipment (the so-called war of pickups), storming buildings and practicing the filtration of civilians.

The Military Chronicle has previously written about mistakes made by American officers (https://t.me/milchronicles/1357) when planning counterattacks by the AFU near Bakhmut. This was due to a misunderstanding of the capabilities of the Russian Armed Forces and the Wagner PMCs, which have a large number of artillery and heavy equipment.

Subscribe to the War Chronicle (https://t.me/milchronicles)
*** Translated with https://www.deepl.com/Translator (free version) ***

Danann posted:

https://twitter.com/SamRamani2/status/1599147888012976129

Wagner's also getting popular on the internet it seems.

Majorian posted:

I understand, but I think the U.S.' role in hobbling Europe's nuclear energy programs is smaller than you're assuming. Germany's anti-nuclear energy movement started in earnest in the 70s, back when the U.S. had a lot of money invested in building new plants. Denuclearization was against U.S. economic interests up until recently. Accidents like Three-Mile Island and Chernobyl really sent it into overdrive. Siemens, which built all of Germany's reactors, fully exited the nuclear sector after Fukushima. I agree with you that Germany should have been building reactors this whole time, and that the public response to these accidents was incredibly stupid. But I'm sorry to say that it was a largely organic response. The German public has no one to blame but themselves.

Futanari Damacy posted:

Kids are going nuts for this Wagner!

Futanari Damacy posted:

Kids are going nuts for this Wagner!

Frosted Flake posted:

Some of the most striking things I ever read in GiP were in a thread years ago about basic training where people recounted black soldiers on their course marvelling at owning multiple pairs of shoes for the first time. One USAF guy remembered that when, what I suppose were rural, southern and poor, black members of his unit were painting a fence or something similar, they started singing work songs. That’s so uncomfortable, I mean, it’s really hard to
imagine that, but as you said it’s a reflection of society.

Which isn’t to say that somewhat similar dynamics don’t play out here with rural Quebec, New Brunswick and Newfoundland soldiers, that you can see differences in Canadian society that are basically invisible from Toronto or whatever. The class, regional, linguistic and other stratifications in Canadian society are there too, there are imbalances in officers and other ranks, indigenous people have separate enlistment programs etc. but it’s hard to wrap my head around how large race looms in America.

One thing worth pointing out is that motivations for enlistment, or at least type of enlistment, vary across language, gender, class and race. The working class and minorities, which as you said can often be the same thing, approach service in a way that has a distinct pattern.

They often go into combat support and (more-so) combat service support roles, the labour jobs, for short period enlistments. Learn to cook, become a mechanic, plumber, electrician, carpenter, whatever - and then get out. Here, that’s 3-4 years, after which they go into public life with skills and something to put on their resume. I’m not great at explaining it, but it’s a very pragmatic use of the military that fits with the economic draft, since they’re returning to civie street with job skills.

In Canada that pattern is shared with women and Francophones but I’m not confident in how these things are interconnected. Just that I’ve seen the pie charts over and over again. Quite a few of the women who serve for short periods get married and leave or become military wives and that’s a whole thing I don’t feel qualified to touch on or try to explain. People still joke about “the 3 reasons why women join the army”.

For one example, combat support and combat service support units in Western Canada were losing enlisted men to the oil patch as soon as they got their red seals, journeymen tickets, AZ etc. To the point where units started deliberately withholding them and the idea was floated of the military deliberately cutting part of the skills training so they wouldn’t be properly certified. This goes back to the “solutions” to retention problems being misguided to malicious.

They have also recently done the same to paid training and education for Doctors, Nurses, Physiotherapists, Lawyers and Dentists to the point where you need to be trained and qualified before joining the military - and they’re marvelling why none are. I can’t wrap my head around this, so if anyone can shine a light I’d appreciate it. Why the hell would someone who is already a doctor become a Medical Officer? They want Chaplains to already have a Masters of Divinity Studies.

Other than people who feel a sense of duty, and are willing to sacrifice civilian employment, who are they hoping to attract to these high skilled and sought after positions? They’re so clearly sabotaging themselves I don’t understand it other than idk they want to means test the positions? But that doesn’t really make sense either.

On the other hand, officers and combat arms enlisted men skew male, middle class, white, English, two or more generations Canadian. Traditionally the Long Service Professional enlists or takes his commission for life - 18-25 years. There’s way more than I can get into here but this probably touches on something Max Weber observed in the Protestant Work Ethic about a “vocation” or “calling”. This was more consciously expressed in the Late Victorian and Edwardian Army, but you can take upper middle class Anglos out of the Anglican Church but you can’t take the Anglican Church out of the upper middle class Anglos. So, these are people who make a life out of the military. Some jumped ship for the tar sands, but not at the same rate. You can argue that’s because they didn’t have transferable job skills, but that’s the point - they don’t go into it for the job skills.

Where this gets complicated is questions of the ability of the other groups to have this career if they wanted. The “fit in or gently caress off” culture and everything else might mean an indigenous person from the territories couldn’t be a moustachioed Regimental Sergeant Major if they wanted to, or a woman hang tough in Battalion as a company commander before getting an ADC billet. The military up to the 70’s and 80’s stalled out Francophone officers’ careers at the Regimental level, beyond which they’d be in command of English troops and formations, so as you said about black generals, this is not all about preference.

I just want to cap this by saying there’s an old book about the RCMP, which is facing identical problems, written for a foreign audience, and when describing the personnel system they say: “Competition for the RCMP is intense, and the Force is able to pick and choose from among the best of those seeking a law enforcement career”

and it’s that they act as if that’s still true without earning it - failing the nation, public, members, Sam Steele and Vimy Ridge - that galls me. They’re acting as if they have the “pick of Canada’s men” without understanding why people believed only the best earned the Red Serge and pushed themselves to be worthy of it. Cunningham said during the evacuation of Crete, when army generals feared the Royal Navy would lose too many ships (the RN lost 12 fleet and 7 auxiliary ships and saved over 18k soldiers) “It takes the Navy three years to build a ship. It will take three hundred years to build a new tradition.” Well, what the gently caress do they want here?

I have often caught poo poo on CSPAM for my belief in this, and deservedly so, but these institutions rely on people acting as they have meaning, not assuming it.

Danann posted:

_{(from t.me/milchronicles/1360, via tgsa)}

Part of it seems to have come from that captured paratrooper interview that was being passed around but the part about light mobile groups was evident from the videos released by the Ukrainians around Kharkov.

Some Guy TT posted:

The Russian government is coordinating cyberattacks on Ukrainian critical infrastructure with missile and other physical strikes as Russian troops retreat from formerly occupied areas of Ukraine, Microsoft said in a report published on Saturday.

And the Kremlin could seek to expand cyberattacks against Ukraine’s supportive neighbors in an attempt to disrupt military and humanitarian supply chains and weaken European populations’ support for Kyiv, according to the report.

Bleak outlook: Microsoft’s report comes after nearly 10 months of brutal war in Ukraine, which has seen Russia hacking Ukrainian satellite systems, energy companies and other critical infrastructure, galvanizing international worries about how Moscow will next deploy its sophisticated cyber capabilities.

Expanding battlefield: In November, Microsoft blamed Russia for October ransomware attacks on infrastructure companies in Ukraine and Poland aimed at attacking companies involved in providing military and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine. Now, the tech giant says that campaign could be “a harbinger of Russia further extending cyberattacks beyond the borders of Ukraine,” with a focus on “countries and companies that are providing Ukraine with vital supply chains of aid and weaponry this winter.”

The October attacks had limited success — Microsoft said local defenders and its own experts “helped contain the attack’s impact to less than 20 percent of one targeted organization’s network” — but Microsoft assesses that Russian hackers “almost certainly collected intelligence on supply routes and logistics operations that could facilitate future attacks.”

Splintering the alliance: Russia is likely to expand its use of influence operations to “reduce support for Ukraine’s defense” by exploiting tensions in Europe over energy prices and shortages, according to the report, which cited Russian propaganda outlets’ steady promotion of European protests over issues such as inflation. Russia could also seek to stoke anti-migrant resentment as more people flee Ukraine amid power outages.

Missiles and malware: Microsoft has observed Russian cyberattacks targeting the same sectors as Moscow’s recent missile barrages retaliating against Ukrainian territorial gains.

In addition, the report says that destructive cyberattacks spiked in October after two relatively quiet months, with wiper malware attacks — meant to erase hard drives and make recovery more difficult — on energy, water and transportation infrastructure paralleling Ukraine’s ground counteroffensive.

Fifty-five percent of the roughly 50 organizations hit by Russian wiper attacks since February are critical infrastructure companies, Microsoft said.

Allies on alert: Microsoft is not alone in tracking these threats. NATO has also been keeping a close eye on developments in Ukraine, and the alliance has also seen evidence of Russia coordinating physical strikes with cyberattacks.

“We’ve seen cyber being used before the actual attack started, for example through defacing government websites and spreading disinformation to try to scare the population,” David van Weel, NATO’s assistant secretary general for emerging security challenges, told reporters during a virtual briefing on Friday. He said that NATO has tracked the use of deepfakes as well, including doctored videos of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy telling troops to surrender.

“We’ve seen cyber being used in conjunction with kinetic attacks, so whilst the military infrastructure was hit physically, it was also hit by cyberattacks,” van Weel noted.

Horseshoe theory posted:

You know who else went nuts for Wagner...

Some Guy TT posted:

sorry i dont know who this fellow is could you tell me his name that i might google him

Lostconfused posted:

<sub>(from t.me/atomiccherry/519, via tgsa)

(from t.me/atomiccherry/520, via tgsa)</sub>

Truga posted:

Southpaugh posted:

The part I bolded indicated to me that some real decision makers have decided to make the military unattractive to trained recruits. That receiving military training, which would normally be considered a valid route up the social ladder for many people, is being dispensed with makes think that the military is not really something that the civilian politicians there are interested in perpetuating. Probably for various moral reasons while also eyeing up contracts and budget allocations.
They may be thinking of it as dead labour rather than a requirement to maintain canadas position in the global pecking order. Canada has always reminded me of Ireland to a certain extent, you have the global military hegemon next door and they'll start eyeing you up if they get hungry.

PawParole posted:

So the Ukrainians are successful because they out-Sovietted the Russians? That is ironic.

Cao Ni Ma posted:

I dont know why your getting this from these posts in particular.

Some Guy TT posted:

“We’ve seen cyber being used before the actual attack started, for example through defacing government websites and spreading disinformation to try to scare the population,” David van Weel, NATO’s assistant secretary general for emerging security challenges, told reporters during a virtual briefing on Friday. He said that NATO has tracked the use of deepfakes as well, including doctored videos of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy telling troops to surrender.

Cao Ni Ma posted:

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/biden-vowed-consequences-saudi-arabia-oil-production-cut-us-no-plans-f-rcna59799

Saudi Arabia got Biden to come in and beg to them after the US said they will toughen their views on them because of Kashogi, of course the US backs down when the chips are down and SA tells them to gently caress off.