<story><title>Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations</title><url>https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-farrell-tenyearsafter-00.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>brabel</author><text>No, you&amp;#x27;re misrepresenting it. Your rationale is that Russia is an evil empire trying to expand its borders to its former glory, and that&amp;#x27;s why it attacked Ukraine... a primary school level of simplification.&lt;p&gt;You ignore that Russia&amp;#x27;s number one fear after the collapse of the USSR was for another military invasion from the West, as had happened several times over the last few centuries... that Russia&amp;#x27;s border with Ukraine is its most &amp;quot;porous&amp;quot; border, easy to cross for whatever purpose, including a military invasion... that NATO&amp;#x27;s whole purpose since it was founded has always been to counter Russia, so the Russian&amp;#x27;s fears that NATO is an enemy are absolutely correct... that Ukraine&amp;#x27;s Euromaidan revolution caused Ukraine to go from a neutral country (or a buffer country as most people call it) to being actively hostile against Russia, which was the trigger for the Crimean invasion in 2014... that the US and UK, as guarantors of the Budapest Agreement with Russian and Ukraine, should have immediately intervened to defend Ukraine when that happened, but did absolutely nothing, giving Russia confirmation that it would be able to keep Ukraine out of NATO by force, which is really what it is trying to do currently... and finally, that every country has its motivations to do the things it does, a lot more complex and subtle than &amp;quot;being evil and wanting more land&amp;quot;, and perhaps trying to understand what those motivations are, why their culture has evolved the way it has and how it is likely to react to your actions, would go a very long way to avoiding stupid conflicts like this. But yeah, it&amp;#x27;s so much easier to keep parroting the news and thinking of the whole story as a black-and-white, villain VS hero story.</text></item><item><author>genman</author><text>I think you completely misinterpret the situation with Russia and China.&lt;p&gt;Russia and China have the objectives of their own. For Russia it is to expand their empire that in their own mind rightfully belongs to them. They didn&amp;#x27;t attack Ukraine because of US actions but because they seriously believe that they have some kind of right over Ukrainians lands, or even more seriously, that Ukrainians don&amp;#x27;t exists.&lt;p&gt;If US would have been in Ukraine, or moved in rapidly when the situation became dangerous, there wouldn&amp;#x27;t be war at them moment. We see this clearly play out in far east, where China has ambition to overtake Taiwan (what they like Russia with Ukraine believe to belong rightfully to themselves). They clearly would have already attacked if it wasn&amp;#x27;t clear that US will prevent them doing so.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m certain that they would have done it, had US backed away from Ukraine. I&amp;#x27;m also certain that what led Russia to believe that they could pull off Ukrainian invasion, was the US departure from Afghanistan, not that they did it but how they did it by letting Taliban completely humiliate them without any response. Russia believed that US is weak, not interested, and it would possibly have been like that, had Ukraine not managed to pull off very strong response.&lt;p&gt;US is there to fill the vacuum. If it was not US, it would be China (or it could Russia possibly). If not today, then eventually it would be one of them. I prefer US because it is more predictable and rule based and in the long run more favorable for the people.</text></item><item><author>brabel</author><text>Transparency is the key. Governments love secrecy because that allows them to do whatever nasty stuff they want while pretending to be righteous at the surface.&lt;p&gt;Just look at past secrets that have been disclosed recently and think: should those things really be secret? I say absolutely no.&lt;p&gt;The mentality of keeping things secret to hide your real intentions, or to not upset people too much (or they will panic!), or to keep other governments on their toes so you&amp;#x27;re ready to take them by surprise in the event of a conflict (how has that worked so far? The real threat actors will know anyway what naughty stuff you&amp;#x27;re doing to make sure they&amp;#x27;ll be the losers if the need arises - like when you just urgently need more cheap oil) is something we, all peoples of the world, need to overcome as soon as possible.&lt;p&gt;You may argue the situation in the world right now proves that governments need to be ready for conflict all the time, and secrecy gives them more power to take enemies by surprise... but you&amp;#x27;re mistaken, it&amp;#x27;s exactly the opposite! The whole China&amp;#x2F;Russia animosities are due to the West patently doing things, like keeping military bases in every weak country[1] that will let them around China and Russia, that clearly shows they have every intention to escalate to a war with them at the earliest sign of trouble, yet we lie without hesitation about it... like we&amp;#x27;re the peaceful people who keep trying to convince evil governments to change their belligerent ways. Perhaps if we stopped putting weapons pointing right at them, right at their neighbourhood, they would be better persuaded that war is not a possibility?&lt;p&gt;We do the same with climate change by the way... we want everyone else to change, or we won&amp;#x27;t do it alone, forgetting that we&amp;#x27;re the ones who pumped 90% of the CO2 into the atmosphere over the last 200 years of industrialization, while some countries that are now considered &amp;quot;climate villains&amp;quot; have been on it for only a couple of decades... hypocrisy at its worst.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.rferl.org&amp;#x2F;a&amp;#x2F;where-are-us-and-russian-military-bases-in-the-world&amp;#x2F;28890842.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.rferl.org&amp;#x2F;a&amp;#x2F;where-are-us-and-russian-military-ba...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>throwaway892238</author><text>Years ago, when I interviewed at places that did USG-related work, the stuff I heard about that I &lt;i&gt;didn&amp;#x27;t have to sign an NDA to hear&lt;/i&gt;, scared me enough that I knew Snowden-scale stuff was entirely within the capabilities of the US Govt. I didn&amp;#x27;t realize they would use it against us just blatantly in direct violation of every law put in place to prevent it, though.&lt;p&gt;I think the lesson I learned from the Snowden leaks is, if the government &lt;i&gt;can&lt;/i&gt; do it, the government &lt;i&gt;will&lt;/i&gt; do it - if not now, one day soon. That&amp;#x27;s... kind of a value-changing, life-changing realization. That no law will stop a government from doing what it wants. We can&amp;#x27;t stop it. But what we can do is install enough peep-holes (transparency) that when it happens, we&amp;#x27;re more likely to find out about it, so we can do something about it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Viliam1234</author><text>You can both be right at the same time. It is true Russia was invaded several times over the last few centuries. It is also true that Russia have invaded and annexed many countries over the last few centuries. Evil empires also get invaded once in a while.&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, when everyone else is hostile to you, it can make sense to consider that maybe... just maybe... you might be doing something that triggers their anger. Like, what possible reason might the countries of Eastern Europe have to hate Russia? What possible reason might Ukraine specifically have to hate Russia? Does &amp;quot;Holodomor&amp;quot; ring a bell?&lt;p&gt;It is ironic that the countries of Warsaw Pact were more likely to be invaded by Warsaw Pact than by NATO.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; trying to understand what those motivations are, why their culture has evolved the way it has and how it is likely to react to your actions&lt;p&gt;But when we do exactly this, you call it &amp;quot;parroting the news&amp;quot;.</text></comment>
<story><title>Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations</title><url>https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-farrell-tenyearsafter-00.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>brabel</author><text>No, you&amp;#x27;re misrepresenting it. Your rationale is that Russia is an evil empire trying to expand its borders to its former glory, and that&amp;#x27;s why it attacked Ukraine... a primary school level of simplification.&lt;p&gt;You ignore that Russia&amp;#x27;s number one fear after the collapse of the USSR was for another military invasion from the West, as had happened several times over the last few centuries... that Russia&amp;#x27;s border with Ukraine is its most &amp;quot;porous&amp;quot; border, easy to cross for whatever purpose, including a military invasion... that NATO&amp;#x27;s whole purpose since it was founded has always been to counter Russia, so the Russian&amp;#x27;s fears that NATO is an enemy are absolutely correct... that Ukraine&amp;#x27;s Euromaidan revolution caused Ukraine to go from a neutral country (or a buffer country as most people call it) to being actively hostile against Russia, which was the trigger for the Crimean invasion in 2014... that the US and UK, as guarantors of the Budapest Agreement with Russian and Ukraine, should have immediately intervened to defend Ukraine when that happened, but did absolutely nothing, giving Russia confirmation that it would be able to keep Ukraine out of NATO by force, which is really what it is trying to do currently... and finally, that every country has its motivations to do the things it does, a lot more complex and subtle than &amp;quot;being evil and wanting more land&amp;quot;, and perhaps trying to understand what those motivations are, why their culture has evolved the way it has and how it is likely to react to your actions, would go a very long way to avoiding stupid conflicts like this. But yeah, it&amp;#x27;s so much easier to keep parroting the news and thinking of the whole story as a black-and-white, villain VS hero story.</text></item><item><author>genman</author><text>I think you completely misinterpret the situation with Russia and China.&lt;p&gt;Russia and China have the objectives of their own. For Russia it is to expand their empire that in their own mind rightfully belongs to them. They didn&amp;#x27;t attack Ukraine because of US actions but because they seriously believe that they have some kind of right over Ukrainians lands, or even more seriously, that Ukrainians don&amp;#x27;t exists.&lt;p&gt;If US would have been in Ukraine, or moved in rapidly when the situation became dangerous, there wouldn&amp;#x27;t be war at them moment. We see this clearly play out in far east, where China has ambition to overtake Taiwan (what they like Russia with Ukraine believe to belong rightfully to themselves). They clearly would have already attacked if it wasn&amp;#x27;t clear that US will prevent them doing so.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m certain that they would have done it, had US backed away from Ukraine. I&amp;#x27;m also certain that what led Russia to believe that they could pull off Ukrainian invasion, was the US departure from Afghanistan, not that they did it but how they did it by letting Taliban completely humiliate them without any response. Russia believed that US is weak, not interested, and it would possibly have been like that, had Ukraine not managed to pull off very strong response.&lt;p&gt;US is there to fill the vacuum. If it was not US, it would be China (or it could Russia possibly). If not today, then eventually it would be one of them. I prefer US because it is more predictable and rule based and in the long run more favorable for the people.</text></item><item><author>brabel</author><text>Transparency is the key. Governments love secrecy because that allows them to do whatever nasty stuff they want while pretending to be righteous at the surface.&lt;p&gt;Just look at past secrets that have been disclosed recently and think: should those things really be secret? I say absolutely no.&lt;p&gt;The mentality of keeping things secret to hide your real intentions, or to not upset people too much (or they will panic!), or to keep other governments on their toes so you&amp;#x27;re ready to take them by surprise in the event of a conflict (how has that worked so far? The real threat actors will know anyway what naughty stuff you&amp;#x27;re doing to make sure they&amp;#x27;ll be the losers if the need arises - like when you just urgently need more cheap oil) is something we, all peoples of the world, need to overcome as soon as possible.&lt;p&gt;You may argue the situation in the world right now proves that governments need to be ready for conflict all the time, and secrecy gives them more power to take enemies by surprise... but you&amp;#x27;re mistaken, it&amp;#x27;s exactly the opposite! The whole China&amp;#x2F;Russia animosities are due to the West patently doing things, like keeping military bases in every weak country[1] that will let them around China and Russia, that clearly shows they have every intention to escalate to a war with them at the earliest sign of trouble, yet we lie without hesitation about it... like we&amp;#x27;re the peaceful people who keep trying to convince evil governments to change their belligerent ways. Perhaps if we stopped putting weapons pointing right at them, right at their neighbourhood, they would be better persuaded that war is not a possibility?&lt;p&gt;We do the same with climate change by the way... we want everyone else to change, or we won&amp;#x27;t do it alone, forgetting that we&amp;#x27;re the ones who pumped 90% of the CO2 into the atmosphere over the last 200 years of industrialization, while some countries that are now considered &amp;quot;climate villains&amp;quot; have been on it for only a couple of decades... hypocrisy at its worst.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.rferl.org&amp;#x2F;a&amp;#x2F;where-are-us-and-russian-military-bases-in-the-world&amp;#x2F;28890842.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.rferl.org&amp;#x2F;a&amp;#x2F;where-are-us-and-russian-military-ba...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>throwaway892238</author><text>Years ago, when I interviewed at places that did USG-related work, the stuff I heard about that I &lt;i&gt;didn&amp;#x27;t have to sign an NDA to hear&lt;/i&gt;, scared me enough that I knew Snowden-scale stuff was entirely within the capabilities of the US Govt. I didn&amp;#x27;t realize they would use it against us just blatantly in direct violation of every law put in place to prevent it, though.&lt;p&gt;I think the lesson I learned from the Snowden leaks is, if the government &lt;i&gt;can&lt;/i&gt; do it, the government &lt;i&gt;will&lt;/i&gt; do it - if not now, one day soon. That&amp;#x27;s... kind of a value-changing, life-changing realization. That no law will stop a government from doing what it wants. We can&amp;#x27;t stop it. But what we can do is install enough peep-holes (transparency) that when it happens, we&amp;#x27;re more likely to find out about it, so we can do something about it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>chrz</author><text>&amp;quot;Russia&amp;#x27;s number one fear after the collapse of the USSR was for another military invasion from the West[...]&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Nice, Russia is just defending itself. Excuse me i need to go laugh out loud somewhere</text></comment>