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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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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 ?

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 ?

Yes. It's the difference between ability and willingness. The argument that no one would notice is based on inability, even as the pipeline provides a willingness.

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

Since you claimed a different sort of incomptence not implied by the first, yes.

*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.

If you have no clue it would probably not make sense, sure.

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

Allegedly, a risk of hurting people from falling debris was the basis for shooting down the balloon over the east coast, and not over the mid-west.

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.

How do random witnesses know whether the transponder's on or not, is the point? If you seriously think that the military can't get a plane in the air without people knowing, I don't know what to tell you.

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

Oh come on now -- this won't work on things like pipelines (see Dean's posts on this, which are also an example of actually useful counterarguments to the Hersh scenario) and in any case wouldn't provide the desired delay in the explosion.

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