The revelation that yesterday's outages of Twitter and Facebook may have been due to Russian distributed denial of service attacks on a blogger in Tbilsi, Georgia blogger raises disturbing questions about whether America's 56,200 troops in Germany are sufficient in number and are based close enough to potential Facebook Fronts to safeguard vital American Twittering interests.
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
Smart Aleck.
ReplyDeleteWatching CNN about 5 hours ago, they mentioned the Georgian part, but didn't say anything about Russia (which I was waiting to hear). Not sure if the information wasn't out then, or if that was editorial discretion
ReplyDeleteSteve I agree with your post, and the one before.
ReplyDeleteBut on another topic, why do you keep ignoring the topic of Singularity?
OT, but of interest to to the Steveosphere:
ReplyDeleteBe sure to catch this weekend's edition of TO THE CONTRARY WITH BONNIE ERBE on your local PBS affiliate. It eschews its usual panel format for a shockingly fair look at the environmental movement's abandonment of reduced population growth. Featured are former Colorado Gov. Dick Lamm, Roy Beck of Numbers USA, and several other members of the immigration restrictionist movement.
The good guys come off very well; the Sierra Club, not so much.
Why are there 56,000 troops in Germany? Didn't the Berlin wall come down 20 years ago?
ReplyDeleteThis calls for Instant Massive Retaliation. Launch the spam.
ReplyDeleteSources say that the Iranians are building an anti-Twitter device.
ReplyDeleteDoes every idea presented in the Steve Sailer voice deserve our attention? uhm no.
ReplyDeleteNo, this calls for the MAD
ReplyDeletestrategy. Massive Attack of Denial of Service. Russians will not be served at MacDonalds.
Why are there 56,000 troops in Germany? Didn't the Berlin wall come down 20 years ago?
ReplyDeleteFor real, but the number seems to have dropped to under 40,000.
If they start messing with the catbloggers and the teenage girls wanting to post about their plans for the evening, watch out. Those people can get mean.
ReplyDeleteYes. We must defend and preserve all avenues of Free Speech.
ReplyDeleteNot for ourselves of course. The iranians might need them.
"Does every idea presented in the Steve Sailer voice deserve our attention? uhm no."
ReplyDeleteYou commented.
This calls for Instant Massive Retaliation. Launch the spam.
ReplyDeleteTwitter is spam.
I haven't read the last comment thread, so maybe it has come up. But if the US is to have a major military presence in the Middle East (for oil interests), then it needs a major forward operating base in a civilized country as close as possible to the Middle East, and Germany is convenient since we are already there. Soldiers can have the amenities that they cannot access in the ME: women, alcohol, fast cars, top quality medical treatment, etc, etc. That said, I'd be for a much smaller contingent in Romania instead, saving billions.
ReplyDeleteMy message to the environmentalists:
ReplyDeleteGreen Space. Affordable housing. Unlimited immigration. Pick two.
Troops in German are not for leverage in Georgia -- Obama clearly made a deal with Putin to leave it to the Russians. Which of course means that Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic will simply nuke up. It's not 1938, nukes allow even small nations to push back on larger ones. You can't move or hide Moscow.
ReplyDeleteWhat's more interesting is how vulnerable internet services are. If the Russians can take down Twitter and Facebook, can elements within Pakistan's ISI attack more fundamental aspects of the Internet? BGP gateways, data centers, etc. Google, Yahoo, and other web services, particularly those using "Cloud Computing?"
[Troops in Germany are clearly an "option" for intervention in the ME. Maybe we should or shouldn't have them there, but removing them means we lose that option to intervene, decisively. We're left with a few naval and Italian based air assets.]
The bigger issue (one a lot of folks have been worrying about but can't get leverage to spend money on) is as we expand distributed computing over the internet (particularly all those companies taking advantage of Google services to run inventory, general database and other services) we increase vulnerability. To "non-War" intervention, by even weak states that have factions. Pakistan is a pit, but they have smart people there too.
LA is using Google for government email, police records, and other confidential data. I was part of a vendor team that briefly engaged the LAPD for an overhaul of their data in 2003. This is a huge change to what they are proposing now. Back then, security of data and tracking who accessed it was the biggest requirement. Cost pressures are leading governments to put stuff on the internet (Google sells excess computing capacity, basically, to business and governments as does Yahoo and Microsoft) because of the revenue crisis.
This means not just interruption of service, but potentially, the ability of organized groups, criminal or factional, to access a wide net of confidential data and then use it or sell it.
If for example, you had about 1/4 of the LAPD's daily transactions via terminals, let alone their database, what could you sell it for, and who could you sell it to?
If you can take down Twitter, the next step is collecting data from internet transactions of government and business.
Why are there 56,000 troops in Germany? Didn't the Berlin wall come down 20 years ago?
ReplyDeletecuz they were never there for the berlin wall, but to make sure the germans don't become independent again, i.e. keep them as permanent vassals.
If you can take down Twitter, the next step is collecting data from internet transactions of government and business.
ReplyDeleteI think thats a lot harder. A lot more finesse.
DoS attacks seem to rely on brute computer force.
Romania and Bulgaria are the pits. It would take a big investment to begin to get anything good going there. And both places are corrupt in a mobbed up way.
ReplyDeleteGermany is a expensive place from which to operate, but the Germans know what they are doing and things get done in a top notch way. The working relationship with the Germans of 50+ yrs can't be replaced by anything else in Europe.
The former East block is a mess. If the US is going to go east and operate more cheaply, Poland is the better place to be, but even the Poles can't quickly replace what the US has elsewhere and Poland is closer to where the action is.
Im pretty sure Ive read that, in the aftermath of WW2, the British govt studied the costs of the war. With respect to operating in various countries.
ReplyDeleteIn terms of basing forces; the more developed the country, the cheaper it was to operate there. So a military base in a developed country is actually a cheaper option and that pretty much applies today too.
In a more backward location the military have provide everything themselves. Buildings, bricks, concrete, food, electricty, running water. Services and materials that might be provided by subcontractors in a domestic setting all have to be imported one way or another.
All that is available in US bases in W. Europe but perhaps not so readily available in E.Europe and certainly not beyond.
Green Space. Affordable housing. Unlimited immigration. Pick two.
ReplyDeleteYou mean pick one.
testy sez:
ReplyDeleteWhich of course means that Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic will simply nuke up.
With whose's money? I thought u sed that Eastern Europe was even more broke than the US?
>Green Space. Affordable housing. Unlimited immigration. Pick two.<
ReplyDeleteThat's so excellent as to be plagiarism-worthy. Thank you, Chief.
At least in one-on-one conversations, I have found that many environmentally-minded liberals just crumble when confronted with the ugly truth of how mass immigration harms the environment and contributes to resource-depletion. I am astonished that more foes of immigration don't make use of this tactic.
Kudzu Bob - It doesnt help that a Jewish magnate popped up out of nowhere and bought himself the Sierra Club. Only one triffling little condition, a change in their stance on immigration.
ReplyDeleteIts certainly been covered on vdare.com and elsewhere.
Kudzu Bob - It doesnt help that a Jewish magnate popped up out of nowhere and bought himself the Sierra Club. Only one triffling little condition, a change in their stance on immigration.
ReplyDeleteIts certainly been covered on vdare.com and elsewhere.
Which is why the TO THE CONTRARY episode was so remarkable: they covered the deal in great detail, implying that the Sierra Club sold out. It's certainly the first time I've heard that brought up on anything on PBS.
>It doesnt help that a Jewish magnate popped up out of nowhere and bought himself the Sierra Club. Only one triffling little condition, a change in their stance on immigration.
ReplyDeleteIts certainly been covered on vdare.com and elsewhere.<
Come on, who cares about the Sierra Club? Use this particular case against immigration in your one-on-one conversations with the environmentally-minded, who won’t read VDare anyway. Get out into the real world and do some old-fashioned evangelizing among your friends and neighbors.
“No matter if it is a white cat or a black cat,” the Sichuan proverb has it, “it is a good cat as long as it catches mice.” And believe me, I know from experience that this argument catches mice by the sackful.
Kudzu bob - I'm not disagreeing with you. But in MSM terms compromising the Sierra Club was a clever move.
ReplyDeleteIf that compromising itself were get as much publicity...