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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   738 thread views

Transnational Thursday for May 8, 2025

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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Sharp escalation in the India Pakistan conflict over the last hour. Ballistic missiles seem to have been fired, and confirmed reports of explosions in Islamabad and Rawalpindi.

UPDATE: Pakistan acknowledges that three military bases were attacked, preparing response

UDATE: the situation is deteriorating rapidly. I’m hearing absolutely wild rumors about the targets that are being hit. Supposedly a massive cyberattack has just taken out 70 percent of India’s power grid.

UPDATE: The Pakistani Prime Minister has convened a meeting of the National Command Authority. It’s probably just saber-rattling, but this is the group that would give authorization for the use of nuclear weapons.

Looks like I was clearly wrong with an earlier 'this will probably blow over' Thursday post.

Still, did a cyberattack really take down the grid? India says it's fake news while 'Mashriq news' says it did but wouldn't we be able to see it from space? My Brave AI bot says it was real but I don't think these browserbots are up for wars and the absolute explosion of fake news that comes with it. The beginning of the war in Ukraine was like this too, lots of fantasy.

For those who have twitter accounts, see the discourse on the Chinese PL-15 - it fell out of the sky, it shot down Rafales, it's too short to be a real PL-15, China gave Pakistan the real version not the shitty export version, no they didn't... and the chaos is automated too with convincing and effective Deepseek instances too, I spotted at least one batting for China with a non-trivial follower count.

https://x.com/search?q=PL-15&src=trend_click&vertical=trends

80 percent of the Indian flag posters on 4Chan seemed to suddenly disappear so I think it was legit.

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