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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   29600 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 6, 2023

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Turns out USA did blew out Nord Stream: How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline.

It was obvious to anyone paying attention, but now it's pretty much confirmed.

Of course I already see the people married to the opposite conclusion trying to discredit the journalist (on of the most decorated and impactful journalists of all time), and his sources: anonymous: (as if established publications didn't use anonymous sources).

  • -22

Anyone who considers themselves a rationalist should have wide error bars on their conclusions for the pipeline bombing. Previously, there had been basically no evidence one way or the other as to who did it. People were just guessing based on their priors, which is fine, but being supremely confident in those guesses is bad epistemic hygiene.

This claim by Hersh is fairly weak evidence. The main problems:

  • Its only evidence is a single anonymous source. Journalists use anonymous sources all the time, but it still makes it less credible than someone who's willing to stake their reputation on the claim. Some of Hersh's previous claims (like his ridiculous Bin Laden story) used anonymous sources, but the claims crumbled under internal contradictions.

  • Most of the story is unfalsifiable.

  • One of the few bits that could actually be falsified, doesn't support Hersh's claim.

I'm not saying this claim is guaranteed to be wrong, but it needs a lot more evidence before it's convincing.

Of course I already see the people married to the opposite conclusion trying to discredit the journalist (on of the most decorated and impactful journalists of all time

Yeah, obviously, because how much you believe this story is based entirely on Hersh's reputation. Most of this story cannot be verified, so you're trusting that Hersh did his due diligence on this anonymous source to make sure they weren't a Russian agent or some nobody that was blowing smoke out of their ass. Hersh's previous work should be concerning in this regard. He's a journalist who seeks to attack US foreign policy no matter what. He'll always err on seeing the US as the Big Bad. Sometimes this leads to him being right like with Mai Lai, other times it leads him to be wrong like with Bin Laden or Syrian chemical weapons.

You're just more likely to trust him because he's claiming something that conforms to your preconceptions.

People were just guessing based on their priors

I did not guess based on my priors, I learned about all the instances in which US officials and presidents opposed, sanctioned, and threatened to stop the pipelines:

  • Obama administration opposed the pipeline

  • Trump administration sanctioned any company doing work on the pipeline

  • Biden administration made opposition to the pipeline a top priority

  • Biden said he was "determined to do whatever I can to prevent"

  • Nuland said "If Russia invades, one way or another, Nord Stream 2 Will. Not. Move. Forward."

  • Biden said "If Russia invades…then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it." and after being questioned "I promise you, we will be able to do that."

  • After the attack Blinked said the bombing was a "tremendous opportunity to once and for all remove the dependence on Russian energy," and "offers tremendous strategic opportunity for years to come."

  • Nuland said "Senator Cruz, like you, I am, and I think the administration is, very gratified to know that Nord Stream 2 is now, as you like to say, a hunk of metal at the bottom of the sea."

How would this not suggest a very strong motive?

I agree that the US certainly didn't like the pipeline, because it correctly grasped the dangers of dependency on Russian gas. A lot of the pro-Russia accounts like to treat Biden's "we will put an end to it" statement as an ominous threat or smoking gun, when it was actually referring to a secret deal where Biden agreed to remove sanctions on NS2 if Germany agreed to end the pipeline if Russia invaded.

You're selectively gathering statements that fit your preconceived notion of what you think happened, ignoring evidence to the contrary, and then passing the resulting conclusion on as established fact. If someone wanted to do that in the opposite direction and say that Russia sabotaged their own pipeline, it would look like this.

For the record, I certainly think it's plausible that the US could have bombed the pipeline, either as part of the secret treaty with Germany (i.e. with Scholtz's knowledge), or the US might have looked the other way as one of the anti-Russian Eastern European countries did it (Poland, Ukraine, Baltics, or some combination thereof). If we ever get more convincing knowledge of who did the bombing, I personally doubt that the operation will look particularly close to what Hersh has described here.

You're selectively gathering statements that fit your preconceived notion of what you think happened, ignoring evidence to the contrary

What evidence to the contrary?

Well, "evidence" is probably the wrong word here as I said in my first post. It's referring to the vague statements and perceived motivations of the actors involved, like the stuff you posted 2 posts up.

What vague statements and perceived motivations am I "ignoring"?

What vague statements and perceived motivations am I "ignoring"?

What?

You told me:

You're selectively gathering statements that fit your preconceived notion of what you think happened, ignoring evidence to the contrary

Then changed evidence for "the vague statements and perceived motivations of the actors involved", so:

You're selectively gathering statements that fit your preconceived notion of what you think happened, ignoring evidence the vague statements and perceived motivations of the actors involved to the contrary

One of the few bits that could actually be falsified, doesn't support Hersh's claim.

Because the US, you know, the country that hacked control software of airgapped centrifuges and thus wrecked them wouldn't be able to, after months of preparation mess up badly secured data on a couple of websites in order to deflect attention ?

If the secrecy of the operation was so important as to hack flight-monitoring websites, why bother with a flight as the delivery mechanism at all?

Set aside that this is inventing new claims that the author didn't make, or that it turns a lack of evidence into evidence of the conspiracy- it still relies on the conspiracy taking a number of needless risks (tampering of websites not being detected, covering all websites, letting there be no observable discrepency to those with their own airspace monitoring) compared to... not using a plane in the first place.

The plane is unnecessary, and requires multiple additional steps not identified by the author, and still doesn't deliver a unique capability required to make the plot work.

Do you even need to hack any websites? Obviously transponders can be turned off, and if I were running a military and wanted to engage in covert ops using planes I'd think that the ability to spoof the transponder output might be a thing that I'd be interested in?

Do you even need to hack any websites? Obviously transponders can be turned off, and if I were running a military and wanted to engage in covert ops using planes I'd think that the ability to spoof the transponder output might be a thing that I'd be interested in?

If you're operating in 'how to run a conspiracy' mode, then any routine event that suddenly deviates from norms becomes an indicator of interest when looking back at specific periods of interest. For routine military flights that routinely have their transponders on, suddenly turning them off- or having verifiable mismatches between claimed trackers and other forms of observation- becomes an observable item of interest to anyone who's interested in looking in the data afterwards. To prevent such a discrepancy from occurring during what you know will be a time of interest- such as an alleged command-detonated mine explosion- you'd need to plan on how to affect the public record if you were committed to maintaining a relevant level of secrecy.

There is no evidence or even allegation of such an event occuring- suggesting either a hyper-capable cabal and surprisingly limited Russian attention, or that there wasn't such a manipulation at all- but then, if you were running a military covert operation, there's no reason to use a plane to deliver a sonar device in the first place. You could just use a boat, for a fraction of the cost and detection risk.

why bother with a flight as the delivery mechanism at all?

I'm not saying flight is even remotely the best option, just that depending on flight monitoring websites and assuming their contents are 100% reliable when governments with the ability to hack them are involved is just .. weird.

Nobody but conspiracy theorists would really care if a flight transponder service got hacked and for a day was giving wrong position for a whole bunch of aircraft.

No one except the Russians or the Chinese or any other interested polity or activist group, for whom hacking a transponder service would be an amazing amount of smoke that could support the claims that the Americans (or Brits, or whoever) blew up the pipeline. Especially since relevant parties might have their own regional air tracking picture- like, say, a anyone with an air defense network with over-the-horizon radars in the Baltic region- with which to identify the discrepancy.

The point here isn't that tracker sites are 100% accurate pictures of the sky. It's that air tracker sites offer ways to identify various attempts to circumvent air tracking, from turning off transponders during routine flights, comparing different transponder sites to identify discrepancies between sites, or comparing transponder sites with the nation's own air-defense networks to identify a discrepency, which could be noted in post-even analysis. The number of countries with overlapping interests in monitoring the baltic airspace includes NATO, non-NATO, and Russia itself.

It's thus notable that no one is alleging this sort of flight tracker tampering has occurred. Not the Russians- who have the most interest in supporting a claim against the US- but also not the author. The possiblity of website tampering has been raised to dismiss the noted time discrepancy which would undermine the story... but this is introducing a new level of unfalsifiable claims that put the onus on proving a negative (that the websites were not hacked, as opposed to that they were) on skeptics rather than apply occam's razor- that the author is just wrong, and the very flight they claimed supports their claims does not, in fact, support it, casting doubt on other parts of the story by consequence.

amazing amount of smoke that could support the claims that the Americans (or Brits) blew up the pipeline

Do you really think that Russians, even for a moment, doubt it was the Americans ? It's not a court of law. It was Americans, or some US puppet/satellite did it with american approval.

If some American LNG terminal or pipeline doesn't blow up due to Russian sabotage within the next five years, I'd be surprised.

Especially since relevant parties might have their own regional air tracking picture- like, say, a anyone with an air defense network with over-the-horizon radars in the Baltic region- with which to identify the discrepancy.

That's probably way beyond their competence and sophistication levels. E.g. wasn't NORAD recently caught with its pants down and spent next days flying expensive jets around and shooting down various small spy blimps ? Apparently, they tracked all these small blimps (there's even a NYT article now - the guy running the program also worked on Chinese stealth aircraft), but weren't paying attention to them because of overly aggressive filtering. Took a good look after civvies photographed the Montana balloon.

Kinda feels like that time Soviets had a Cessna land on the Red square..

But, I'm thinking this is the US - no one is going to resign or get canned. Nobody got canned for the OPM leak either, so..

Do you really think that Russians, even for a moment, doubt it was the Americans ? It's not a court of law. It was Americans, or some US puppet/satellite did it with american approval.

Evidence needed, particularly for the framing.

Whether the Russians believe it was an American puppet/satellite is irrelevant to whether it was an American puppet/satellite. This presupposes that the framing of puppet/satellite is accurate, which is a model that rejects or diminishes the autonomy of other actors to act without American approval or foreknowledge.

I am not the sort of cultural chauvenist that presumes the Americans are the most important factor in the decision-making of American allies.

That's probably way beyond their competence and sophistication levels. E.g. wasn't NORAD recently caught with its pants down and spent next days flying expensive jets around and shooting down various small spy blimps ?

If air-monitoring is way beyond competence and sophistication, then much more difficult categories to monitor- such as surface-vessel and submarines- are even further beyond, thus furthering the incentive to using them rather than methods where a lower-level of competence would allow detection.

This is trying to have it both ways- that the actors involved are simultaneously incredibly capable but also incompetent.

Apparently, they tracked all these small blimps (there's even a NYT article now - the guy running the program also worked on Chinese stealth aircraft), but weren't paying attention to them because of overly aggressive filtering. Took a good look after civvies photographed the Montana balloon.

This undermines the claim of the inability to track, as it shows that they were tracked, but not acted upon at the time, but upon revisiting the available data were able to identify the at-the-time overlooked data. As a model for the Baltic space, this would support the importance of not having aviation data available for re-looking if you were trying to do a secret operation.

This is the conspiratorial argument trying to have it both ways: the simultaneous claims of hypercompetence beyond realism but incompetence in in select areas as needed to sustain the conspiratorial claims.

This undermines the claim of the inability to track, as it shows that they were tracked, but not acted upon at the time,

So, the fact that US failed to act on what were likely spy blimps flying overhead for years undermines my claim that they'd be too incompetent to have a program that'd correlate flight radar data and actual radar data ?

Do I have it right ? The fact of demonstrated incompetence* undermines my claim of their incompetence?

*there's a statement by Mattis claiming they 'knew about the balloons' but didn't tell Trump because his reaction could've been 'too combative'. Honestly have no clue why airforce intercepting unmanned suspicious manmade objects would ever require presidential authorisation so it seems like bullshit.

Not like anyone's getting hurt, so why even ask ?

More comments

There's a response to this further in the Twitter thread.

It's so weird how people online think (or want others to think i guess) that the existence of public transponder data somehow means that everything that happens in the air is 1:1 reflected by something like FlightAware.

Not to pick on you, but don't you think it's a lot more likely that prior to leaving on a super-secret mission that could start a chain of events leading to WWIII if discovered -- you might turn your damn transponder off?

Hersh says in the article it’s supposed be during BALTOPS during a routine NATO exercise, so not covert.

Tweet thread already addresses this: https://twitter.com/joey_galvin/status/1623755578773209088

The mines were said to be planted during BALTOPS, the sonobuoy deployed later. Both would have been covert in the sense that nobody was supposed to find out what was going on -- again I find it implausible that the navies of the world publicly distribute accurate locational data for all of their vessels at all times; perhaps even more implausible than air forces.

If an aircraft turns off its transponder, it becomes an object of interest for plane spotting types.

So, it's not exactly the greatest idea if you don't want to draw attention.

I would rather fly such a mission at night, certainly -- do you really think the military can't get a plane in the air without the internet noticing?

Europe is densely populated, and with current technology, it's probably prudent to assume every approach and exit path from a runway is being recorded at all times by cameras.

How many military airports in continental Europe have ~10+ km exclusion zones around their runways ?

I'd not even rule out stuff such as air traffic radar raw data being available somewhere.

Many problems with trying to be sneaky these days.

So populated, much dense

Are you for real? Even if the Russians have spys parked in some godforsaken fjord 24/7, what are they going to say? ASW plane takes off from ASW base, big news.

ASW plane takes off from ASW base, big news.

Unless the planes have been flying out without transponders all the time, a plane flying out without one or turning it off would be suspicious.

Especially if a plane did something this uncharacteristic around the time a pipeline blows up.

Especially as American ASW planes are capable of blowing up a pipeline by themselves.. although at present they probably have to fly low.

More comments

Why.. more ?

Americans spend way more on the military, have a giant military with lots of naval units and have never shied from wrecking infrastructure for political purposes, and doing hairy deep sea shenanigans. (see e.g. Ivy Bells).

I think this topic is sensitive to Americans, since it basically means they aren't the Good Guys that they were led to believe. People in general want to think the best of their country, and understandably so. So I am not surprised by the pushback. (We should also make a distinction between the US Govt and the American people. I have a high opinion of the latter but a low of the former).

The question that needs to be asked in these situations is always the same: cui bono? It clearly isn't Russia. Having Europe more dependent on its energy and not less is clearly in their interest. It isn't Germany either, which resisted pressure to end it for years before the invasion. Why would China or France blow it up? India? Doesn't have the capability. Obviously there's only one country big enough and powerful enough left standing to have done it and which has been voicing very loud denunciations and outrage over its existence for years. The US of A. Biden even blatantly threatened that NS2 would be "put to an end one way or another". You can't get more clear than that.

Instead of grappling with this issue from a structural basis, folks have been trying to personally smear Hersh. It's the old "shoot the messenger" tactic. Will it work? Maybe for some, but I suspect for most of the non-Americans, the US was already a prime suspect and so his reporting doesn't really shock anyone.

The US will continue to officially deny it and Americans will want to believe any story that absolves their country of blame (understandably) whereas much of the rest of the world will just go on, seeing America in a more cynical light than before.

Lapdogs don't call the shots.

What shots would be needed that Poland couldn't call?

Nah, I think there's a plenty-accessible frame in which someone believes that the US did it and believes that doing it was an affirmative good in the world. I mean, the entire concept of the US funneling arms/money to Ukraine could be viewed in the frame of, "Intervening in wars abroad is bad, so the US meddling in Ukraine is bad, which means America isn't the Good Guys," but there's also a frame of, "Actually, intervening in Ukraine is good for [reasons], so the US meddling in Ukraine means that America is the Good Guys."

Now, which set of these frames is actually right is more difficult, and I won't take a position at present. But there are far far far more obvious historical examples of the US very clearly not being the Good Guys that this particular action is highly unlikely to tip anyone's scales on that score.

I think this topic is sensitive to Americans, since it basically means they aren't the Good Guys that they were led to believe.

Yes, but reality doesn't care about your feelings. If you follow anti-imperialists like Aron Mate and Max Blumenthal, it's obvious that USA has not been the good guys in the past few decades, and if you read Noam Chomsky you realize that has never been the case. Of course most people from USA are not aware of that.

How many Americans know they are occupying one third of Syria right now to get their oil? I bet not many.

We should also make a distinction between the US Govt and the American people.

Of course.

Instead of grappling with this issue from a structural basis, folks have been trying to personally smear Hersh.

It's always the same tactic. The Hunter Biden laptop story was a "conspiracy theory" and anyone who tried to investigate it like Glenn Greenwald was smeared. Max Blumenthal and The Grayzone wikipedia pages are completely vandalized. They tried to do the same with Seymour Hersh (somebody added that he was a conspiracy theorist), but it seems there was pushback because Hersh is more reknowned.

It will work, because even though Americans know the mainstream media lies, they for some reason believe that when it truly matters they'll tell the truth.

whereas much of the rest of the world will just go on

I don't think the citizens in Germany will just go on, they'll see it for what it is: a supposed ally engaged in clandestine energy sabotage without regards to what would happen to their economy, just to punish Russia for geopolitical reasons, and destroying their industry in the process.

I bet many Germans are realizing just now that USA is not their ally.

Ah yes the hundreds of US troops in eastern Syria occupation to get their oil….

The Kurds / SDF take all the oil revenues. Lol. The country that produces the most oil in the world does not need to steal Syria’s, and the Syrian oil production is inconsequential to the world oil prices markets.

I don't think the citizens in Germany will just go on

I suspect you vastly underestimate the meekness of the modern German these days. I'd love to be proved wrong, but I don't think I will, sadly.

I lived in Germany for a while, and I'm aware of the weakness of German bureaucrats, but things change. In Mexico from one administration to the next the government changed from being a USA lapdog to be anti-imperialist.

If there was any spark that would ignite change in Germany, I think learning that USA blew up their pipeline is among the most significant that could happen.

Well, this seems relevant to copy-paste.

https://www.themotte.org/post/349/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/63475?context=8#context

Overall, not impressed or compelled by the claims. People have already noted the singular anonymous source claiming, in an era where anonymous sourcing has been as disreputable as ever, but there are other elements that raise eyebrows.

-The claim it was done by the pure navy, as opposed to special forces, to avoid Congressional oversight really suggests someone who is not familiar with the other forms of oversight- and security vulnerabilities- of American military branches. There's a reason that the US black projects generally don't operate from the conventional forces, but in separate elements.

-The mind-reading/framing of motives is projection, or at least certainly not how the western military-security types would view items. I've yet to meet an American in a serious position of government responsibility who frames concerns over Nordstream in terms as abstract as 'threat to western dominance,' as opposed to the more concrete concerns of 'energy blackmail' or 'gas turnoffs.' This is arguing by connotation and pejorative rather than actual positions. If this is the author, that's on him, but if it's from the source, that's indicative.

-The discussion on the German political situation in May 21 is missing some rather significant context- such as the points that Merkel had just retired and there was a multi-month German political paralysis as the government formation negotiations were ongoing, the Russian military buildup adjacent to Ukraine had already started, the Belarusian migration crisis and Russian gas supply slowdown was already starting. The last three are generally now seen as pre-invasion shaping efforts by the Russian government before the invasion- which we know that the Biden administration was aware / observing in 2021. Instead of 'making a concession he knows will be invalidated', however, the author frames the motive as Biden's internal political floundering to war-criticisms.

-The 'planning' meeting that rests solely on the anonymous source is, ahem, silly. Just reverse the sentence order of the paragraph to see how so-

The CIA argued that whatever was done, it would have to be covert. Everyone involved understood the stakes. “This is not kiddie stuff,” the source said. If the attack were traceable to the United States, “It’s an act of war.” - The Navy proposed using a newly commissioned submarine to assault the pipeline directly. The Air Force discussed dropping bombs with delayed fuses that could be set off remotely.

The proposed plans, as described, don't pass muster in the context of their own paragraph, let alone broader realism. For one, submarines don't "assault". That's the sort of language of someone larping military insight. Similarly, the airforce plan of 'bombs with delayed fuses' makes no sense. Aircraft are incredibly visible, so you'd be guaranteeing a record trail, and either the aircraft would have to bomb land-based targets- which is to say, where timed fuse bombs would be found by the Germans in Germany- or a sea target. Now, this may surprise, but dropping bombs from a bomber entails the bomb hitting with terminal velocity. When very small things hit very big bodies of water at very high speeds, they do not penetrate and then become precision submersibles, they go splat.

This is something deserving of /r/credibledefense, but not credibility inspiring.

-The argument about no longer being a covert option because of the Biden Administration's public statements on Nordstream are nonsense.

"According to the source, some of the senior officials of the CIA determined that blowing up the pipeline “no longer could be considered a covert option because the President just announced that we knew how to do it.”"

This is a red flag for credibility. Covert options aren't covert because you have a known capability, but rather the secrecy. When we read declassified / released examples of covert operations, they almost always involve known capabilities of the actors. It's the who/when/if they are actually doing it that's the secret item. This objection is just about the one part that wouldn't matter, precisely because the Navy diving programs are openly acknoweldged capabilities.

-The whole Norway angle is just comedic. The narrative flops between the need for operational and legal secrecy as needed, without actually explaining why informing the Norwegians is necessary to carry out the operation... except to tell the Americans, who have been reviewing the problem for months, where to hit the pipe. The operational simultaneously needs to be secret, but also incredibly expansive in people and organizations involved.

-The timeline is also all over the place. Biden is alleged to have committed to planning the attack on the pipeline as a result of domestic political pressure before the war, but with target selection only occuring in March after engagement with a foreign nation, with the exact timing being... one of the most observed military maneuverings in the region for the year. Except, now with an even later bomb-on-command requirement, late in the process... which indicates they didn't have a time intended to blow it up originally, even as they were engaging the Norwegians to place it.

And- despite all the effort in creating a command-detonated timing... no reason for the timing is apparent. The article tries to go with a citation to imply it had to be done eventually, but there's a roughly 3 month gap between the alleged emplacement and alleged trigger.

-The argument on Russian mine-detection technology is getting into the military spy-fiction, and not the good kind. Tom Clancy was at least good at not just hand-waving technology. You don't get to just allege that the Russians built an entire undersea surveillance network along the Nordstream pipeline to justify the Norwegians as the only people who can counteract it with their inherent anti-Russian traits.

-The regular appeals to the 1970s is less relevant and more argument by historical innuendo. This is a normal element of conspiracy building, to break down temporal relevance and start building connections between unconnected things while also obscuring temporal and contextual relevant information. This isn't the first part of the article to do this, but it's reocurring enough to note, especially since the 1970s Church hearings drove very significant changes in the American intelligence community... changes that are being implicitly covered over by the appeal to the 70s for narrative continuity.

-The air-dropped sonar bouy is yet another red flag. You could get a better engineer to discuss the dynamics of sound propagation through water, but the real item is the fixation on dropping it out of an aircraft.

There is literally no reason to use an aircraft to drop a sonar bouy if you're trying to have a secret signal. Aircraft are easily observable on a number of sensors or by regional naval traffic. Even if your broadcast device weren't detected by any/all systems in the broader area at the moment it signals- and remember the Norwegians are being involved on the basis of a Russian surveillance system for underwater threats, ie. sound-based detection- the aircraft flight for recote detoation would be easily observable...

...and unnecessary, because you could just sail a boat and drop it over the edge. Boats are far, far harder to monitor for unusual activity than aircraft.

I could go on, but that's kind of enough. There are a number of things in this story that are meant to sound vaguely informed and insightful, but with a pretty clear lack of understanding of the material or the alternatives. The way this is written, this is less written by someone who actually knows how governments work and reads far more like being written for the sort of people who don't.

Really, it's targeting ignorance with a hope of shaping your views without remembering how they were shaped. It hopes you don't remember that it's all based on a single anonymous source, that no motivation is provided for the source providing all this information, that you won't remember the argument by connotations in rhetorical lines not used by the people it claims to reflect the positions of, that you won't dwell on the communication role/purpose of the various time-skips in the narrative, or the omissions of 2021 and awkward time gaps, the mechanical alternative methods, and so on.

Someone else can validate that the last part was written before your post, and was not written with you in mind.

All told, I do not find it credible, and would lower my judgement of someone who found it compelling.

@felipec has given a counter-argument here

https://www.themotte.org/post/349/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/64225?context=8#context

Solid criticism, however, if you bend the terminology a little, 'bombing' the pipeline from a high flying plane would've been possible, although perhaps risky because who knows how good the resolution of air traffic and air defense radars in the area is.

US recently developed air-deployable versions of the mk 48 torpedo. These glide down to just above the surface and then launch a homing torpedo that could just get 'lost' and accidentaly spoon itself against a pipeline like that mine-clearing charge they found cosied up against Nord Stream in 2015 or so.

Solid criticism, however, if you bend the terminology a little, 'bombing' the pipeline from a high flying plane would've been possible,

This is what I meant by the writing being written for people who don't actually understand what's being discussed.

Bombing the pipeline is not possible from a high-flying plane, because when you drop an object out of a high-flying plane and it hits the water at terminal velocity, it crumples. This is flawed on a conceptual level, like proposing a small child 'aim for the water' when jumping out of a plane without a parachute because water is softer than land. At terminal velocities, hitting water is like hitting concrete.

This is the entire reason that the aviation aircraft for anti-submarine warfare are low and slow... and typically dropping things off with parachute, such as sonar pods. But the advantage of aircraft in these situation is their speed on getting to an area to drop items, not their precision. If you're not in a time-sensitive context, such as a pre-meditated emplacement, there's zero advantage to not just dropping something off the side of a boat.

although perhaps risky because who knows how good the resolution of air traffic and air defense radars in the area is.

Plenty of people. This is the primary naval / aerial conflict zone of a Russia-NATO baltic scenario. The presumption of air monitoring has itself been a regular argument by those who insisted the US must be responsible by virtue of anyone else would have been detected, and is a primary reason why a boat-based mission has been the most probable form of any deliberate sabotage.

US recently developed air-deployable versions of the mk 48 torpedo. These glide down to just above the surface and then launch a homing torpedo that could just get 'lost' and accidentaly spoon itself against a pipeline like that mine-clearing charge they found cosied up against Nord Stream in 2015 or so.

As a deliberate means of targetting the pipeline, with ironic quotes around 'lost'? No, because that's not how these things work on a technical level. This is in the 'making stuff up that sounds plausible to those who don't know better' territory.

Homing torpedoes do not home by magic, they home off of sound- specifically ship or submarine sound profiles- whereas the inactive nordstream wouldn't even had the sound of moving gas. The mk 48, according to wiki, does have wire-guidance capabilities, but this isn't usable with aircraft due to the line breaks. There is no GPS navigation like can be done to guide drones to specific grid coordinates because GPS does not work underwater. There are ways for sound-based navigation underwater... but the mk 48 isn't designed for that sort of navigation, and the thing about sound-based navigation underwater is that anyone can hear it, and yet no one has alleged it in this context. Even as parts of this conspiracy are based around the presence of russian underwater surveillance systems, ie acoustic sensors. Additionally, for a deliberately placed device to 'cosie' itself up to the pipeline, it needs underwater maneuver capabilities beyond forward guidance. Torpedoes are generally good at moving forward, and not very well known for moving sidewise and backwards.

And- to return to why it's really, really stupid- there's no need for the airforce to deliver a mk 48 by air. The mk 48 is a submarine-launched torpedo. Even if you invented all the technical solutions, if you were going to try and torpedo the nordstream, you could just send a submarine to deliver it instead. You could use wires for for guiding the torpedo, you could use the submarine's own navigation systems to get close to the target, you wouldn't need to risk any sort of air or surface-monitoring, and there would be no need to alert any foreign partner that you were doing an operation near the nordstream pipeline or bring in people to the conspiracy.

But that would make too much sense and would ruin the conspiracy... for the sort of people who understand why the proposal doesn't make sense. Hence the point of the article being written for people who wouldn't know when it was talking nonsense.

Bombing the pipeline is not possible from a high-flying plane,

You are surely aware of glide bombs and such? There's nothing preventing attaching such to a torpedo to allow high deployment. There were likely parachute systems for torpedo deployment.

the mk 48 is a submarine-launched torpedo. Even if you invented all the technical solutions, if you were going to try and torpedo the nordstream, you could just send a submarine to deliver it instead

I was impressed with your criticism, but are you really saying using a submarine, in a very shallow sea the Russians are reportedly monitoring very closely is such a good idea ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltic_Sea#/media/File:Baltic_drainage_basins_(catchment_area).svg

Baltic Sea is very, very shallow. It's really not a place where large submarines, such as those that have torpedoes can be sneaky.

Torpedoes are generally good at moving forward, and not very well known for moving sidewise and backwards.

A pipeline is a line. Parking a torpedo next to a pipeline isn't as hard as getting it to a precise destination. Align with the pipeline side, slowly descend, sink ..

with ironic quotes around 'lost'?

That's the official explanation of why a explosive single use mine clearing ROV ended up lodged under a Nord Stream pipeline.

It got lost during a baltic training exercise and just, through sheer coincidence, ended up under a piece of infrastructure Americans just hate.

You are surely aware of glide bombs and such? There's nothing preventing attaching such to a torpedo to allow high deployment. There were likely parachute systems for torpedo deployment.

This is not only conflating flight profiles, but the navigation implications. The thing about parachute systems is that they're subject to wind drift- which means you're now dropping a torpedo, which can't GPS navigate, to an unknowable GPS grid coordinate, which means that even if you added on blind-navigation systems like gyroscopes that track progression from known points, they wouldn't work because you wouldn't know where you start.

Whereas this problem would be lesser if you flew from a low and slow altitude- to minimize coordinate drift- or just did a non-flight mechanism, like using a boat.

This is really basic capability mismatch that shouldn't be suggested by a senior airforce adviser to the White House.

I was impressed with your criticism, but are you really saying using a submarine, in a very shallow sea the Russians are reportedly monitoring very closely is such a good idea ?

Compared to using an aircraft? Yes. An aircraft is infinitely easier to monitor and track.

Setting aside the the Russian monitoring capability at that part of the baltic is an allegation unsupported by other parts of the narrative (such as the use of a sonar device as a command detonator- this is exactly the sort of signal underwater detection systems would detect), the reason submarines have difficulty in shallower waters is the vulnerability to active sound systems (ie. sonar).

Baltic Sea is very, very shallow. It's really not a place where large submarines, such as those that have torpedoes can be sneaky.

Who on earth told you that, but not the Russians and the NATO countries that have invested in submarine capabilities for the region for decades?

A pipeline is a line. Parking a torpedo next to a pipeline isn't as hard as getting it to a precise destination. Align with the pipeline side, slowly descend, sink ..

Again, this isn't how offensive torpedoes work on a technical level. There is no control system to do this, or the mechanical means to know when it is 'aligned' and 'slowly descend.'

This comes back to not knowing the technical capabilities of what's being involved.

with ironic quotes around 'lost'?

That's the official explanation of why a explosive single use mine clearing ROV ended up lodged under a Nord Stream pipeline.

It got lost during a baltic training exercise and just, through sheer coincidence, ended up under a piece of infrastructure Americans just hate.

If you accept that drift occurred without intent, then it wasn't deliberately placed for the purpose of ending up there, and relying on drift is not credible because there was no plan. Chance events do happen and things that sink do go about the the sea floor until they get stuck. If you reject the premise that it resulted there without deliberate intent, there's no reason to believe it drifted there as opposed to deliberately being placed.

So which is it? You can't have it both ways, that it both drifted and it was deliberate for it to drift exactly there.

Again, this isn't how offensive torpedoes work on a technical level. There is no control system to do this, or the mechanical means to know when it is 'aligned' and 'slowly descend.'

You're telling me torpedos have no internal navigation or sense of direction, at all ? That they don't have a depth sensor ?

They likely can't control their buoyancy, but they can descend or ascend at will while moving forward.

The thing about parachute systems is that they're subject to wind drift- which means you're now dropping a torpedo, which can't GPS navigate, to an unknowable GPS grid coordinat

Torpedos can probably tolerate significant g-forces, so late deployment of parachutes would mean its eventual position would be in a very small area, well within its possible range.

Who on earth told you that, but not the Russians and the NATO countries that have invested in submarine capabilities for the region for decades?

What 'submarine' capabilities ? Russians build some submarines in Petrograd, but they barely have a naval base there.

They're certainly not going to fool around with submarines there a year after Americans openly declared they can detect submerged subs by their wake even if they're ~200m down. Baltic is barely 60m deep mostly, it's as unsafe place for submarines as you can imagine.

It was obvious to anyone paying attention, but now it's pretty much confirmed.

From the rules:

Don't attempt to build consensus or enforce ideological conformity.

"As everyone knows . . ."

"I'm sure you all agree that . . ."

We visit this site specifically because we don't all agree, and regardless of how universal you believe knowledge is, I guarantee someone doesn't know it yet. Humans are bad at disagreeing with each other, and starting out from an assumption of agreement is a great way to quash disagreement. It's a nice rhetorical trick in some situations, but it's against what we're trying to accomplish here.

Avoid this kind of thing in the future, please.

I was not trying to build consensus: "anyone paying attention" is not "everyone", it could very well be less than 1% of the people, that's not consensus in the least. And very well could accommodate 99% of the people that as you say "doesn't know it yet".

Yeah but the issue is how it is read - you might not have meant for it to, but it strongly suggests to the reader that they should agree with you if they consider themself someone who pays attention, which most people generally do.

If you are going to moderate on the basis of how some people might interpret something, then nobody is going be able to say anything controversial. Policing language stifles freedom of expression.

A basic principle of fruitful conversations is to be charitable with what the writer might have meant.

We moderate heavily on interpretation and tone, and this is very unlikely to change.

This is much worse than consensus building, because instead of moderately annoying some people who disagree with you, you are physically keeping out a lot people don't speak like you.

Ironically what you are doing is negating the effects of that rule. If 80% of the people that disagree with you speak differently than you, then you are using the consensus building rule to defend the remaining 20% of people who do speak like you like, but keeping out 80% of the people who don't.

In other words: you are keeping out most of the disagreeable people.

If your objective is to keep controversial topics out of the discussion, that's precisely the way to do it.

I disagree, sorry. The point of the community is to "be a working discussion ground for people who may hold dramatically different beliefs", not to accept the largest possible percentage of people, and in my experience, people being rude about their beliefs tends to drive out people who oppose those beliefs. I haven't seen a counterexample to this.

yeah already discussed, another criticism is here

Saw this linked by MR. Hadn't read the original, but started skimming this, and saw:

Early in Hersh’s article, he states that the secrecy of mission to destroy the pipelines was the top priority of the Biden Administration. This he states is the reason why diver graduates from the United States Navy Experimental Diving Unit were chosen instead of SEALs or other SOCOM units. Doing this Hersh states would bypass reporting of the operation to members of Congress or the “Gang of Eight”. In Hersh’s initial story, it appears that every precaution is being taken to avoid any leaks or bringing any unnecessary actors in on the mission.

Checked Hersh, and this portrayal checks out. Color me skeptical. My first reaction was, "Even if the try to push it through under Title 10 rather than Title 50, there's no way they could avoid a notification requirement." Doublechecked. h-Yup. Very skeptical. They'd almost certainly have to report.

his recent factually incorrect takes on the Syria gas attacks

OK. Starts of poisoning the well by claiming something is false without evidence. This might work on people with no critical thinking skills, but not me.

Especially because I know the attacks have been thoroughly debunked by Aron Mate.

Not going to waste my time.

Hersh is 85 years old and did go a bit into conspiracy theories:

https://www.vox.com/2015/5/11/8584473/seymour-hersh-osama-bin-laden

The problem with his sources is not anonymity, but that it is singular: He only has one source. Rumors need at least to be double-sourced before they are print worthy.

I don't trust Vox one bit. All I've seen from them is lies. They only push the official narrative. Always.

Those reports have had little proof

See, I know in the case of Syria that's not true. So yet another lie to add to the list.

Anonymous sources and a lack of corroboration. I think it's plausible, but this article shouldn't shift your belief much.

Also, previously discussed here.

It didn't shift my belief much. But it's clear who was the one who benefited the most, and who has being against it, sanctioned, and threatened to shut it down over and over.

I've put more information here.

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