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PaperclipPerfector  17d ago (text post)   1991 thread views

Transnational Thursday for May 29, 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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In the last few hours there has been a massive drone attack on Russia’s strategic bomber fleet. Apparently drone swarms were smuggled into Russia in cargo trucks and released a short distance from the airfields. Some of the bases attacks are more than 4,500 kilometers away from the Ukrainian border. The Ukrainian MOD claims that 34 percent of Russias’s strategic air force has been destroyed. This is an unconfirmed number, but there are multiple videos of groups of 4-7 TU-95 bombers burning on their airfields.

There are reports (supposedly with some level of confirmation) that Russian AWACS were also hit.

Sadly, turns out these planes were among already nonfunctional ones, so Russia still has plural number of AWACS planes.

Great job for Ukrainians pioneering a completely new war tactics - and actually putting it on the radar of people that are supposed to think about such things. I mean there was a talk about this for a long time, but we all know talking theory and having a practical example differs a lot. Now I hope the US starts addressing the scenario of "50 Chinese container ships loaded with drones" as a real thing not as Sci-Fi scenario like "what if Martians attack D.C.". And of course, the less weapons Russia has, the better the world is, though this particular thing is of more symbolic than strategic meaning - God still sides with large battalions on the battlefield.

Now I hope the US starts addressing the scenario of "50 Chinese container ships loaded with drones" as a real thing not as Sci-Fi scenario like "what if Martians attack D.C."

Or "what if China sends unpowered high altitude floating platforms of indeterminate payload drifting over on the jetstream?" What kind of nutbar would worry about that?

Seems like the numbers were exaggerated with 2 of the attacks randomly detonating en route and another getting blocked by random civilians. Maybe 10 destroyed / damaged. Still pretty crazy though, not an attack that will change the outcome of the war but it could lead to countries tearing up / rethinking a lot of current nuke agreeements.

More and more the deep bombings are just drone swarms. With a record of over 400 lancets launched in one day last week and newer jet propelled variations using up more AA. The glidebombs doing most of the work on the front line are carried by smaller aircraft. It seems like this was purely (if it had been more successful) intended to try to provoke a nuclear response. Force Russia into a lose-lose situation where it either makes a major escalation, which they could use to try and get western boots on the ground. Or if Russia doesn't respond show the western powers that it's safe to greenlight deep strikes that slowly chip away at Russia's nuclear deterrence. As that is obviously the main reason the west won't get involved, everyone loses a nuclear war between NATO and Russia, but NATO wins a conventional war (unless China steps in).

I guess they've recognized they have no chance without European troops so they're going for crazier shit.

Pro-Russians have been shouting about the imminent nuclear war and crazy Ukrainians being on the brink of WW3 for three years now in a row every time that Ukrainians pull a successful operation of some kind (and also between the operations). Isn't it a bit tiresome when WW3 once again fails to happen?

It seems like this was purely (if it had been more successful) intended to try to provoke a nuclear response.

why you think that trying to disable weapons used to bomb Ukraine was in fact attempt to get bombed more?

It seems like this was purely (if it had been more successful) intended to try to provoke a nuclear response.

Isn’t there a more parsimonious explanation for ukraine’s behaviour? Something like: ‘Let’s do as much damage to russian military equipment as possible, because, we’re in a war, and that’s what you do’.

The russian supporters ever-renewed surprise and outrage at being attacked back never fails to entertain. Why would the ukrainians do that? They must have ulterior motives. Yesterday on twitter the hallucinated reason was to ‘torpedo the peace talks’, the peace talks that, until then, putin had shown zero interest in, and they duly decried as absurd.

Why would the ukrainians do that? They must have ulterior motives.

Indeed. What possible reason could the Ukrainians have to make the war more costly for Russia by striking against targets that Russia can't easily replace. It truly boggles the mind... /s

Assets that, if some reports are to be believed, were in some locations recently relocated and possibly preparing for an upcoming major strike that would coincide with the peace talks ongoing offensive.

Some destroyed Tu-95 had mounted Kh-101 cruise missiles under their wings, in preparation to attack Ukraine.

Geee, I wonder why Ukrainians may be trying to destroy them.

(disclaimer: I was unable to verify exact type of missile)

Not really, you want to do damage to conventional weapons, not nuclear fleet. You're in a conventional war, you won't win with random deep strikes on weapons that aren't being used in the war. You could just start suicide bombing tons of people in moscow or something if you just want to do damage to your enemy, but that will just backfire and weaken your position. The pro-russian people tend to think more strategically and the pro Ukr in emotional displays. So they are eternally confused by eachother. It reminds me of the battle of the sexes.

The pro-russian people tend to think more strategically and the pro Ukr in emotional displays. So they are eternally confused by eachother. It reminds me of the battle of the sexes.

This has got to be one of the worst claims put out on this forum in a long time.

The pro-Russians tend to outwardly go for a more "rational" style of discourse and pro-Ukrainians for more "emotional", but these are just chosen styles of discourse, they don't actually indicate that one side is more rational and the other more emotional. I still remember how the "rational" pro-Russian warbloggers and -tweeters spent weeks declaring that there's not a slightest chance the Ukrainians would get the city of H'erson back or push Russians out of the Kharkiv oblast and then dropped the whole topic like a hot potato when that happened without any indication of why they were wrong.

on weapons that aren't being used in the war

These bombers are being used in the war.

The pro-russian people tend to think more strategically and the pro Ukr in emotional displays.

The pro-Russian people tend to affect ruthlessness, however I'm not prepared to call this strategic thinking since it often seems to boil down to a gloss on "never do anything to upset Russia, since they might decide to nuke everyone in a fit of pique."

If you could, why would you not spend a few million to inflict hundreds of millions in damage to the enemy?

I suppose the smart, the russian-soviet way to spend money and lives, is to use AA missiles to shoot down cheap drones, or to kill one of their guys in exchange for one of Ukraine's, so that russia can brute-force its way to victory and its population to extinction. Much more sporting.

You could just start suicide bombing tons of people in moscow or something if you just want to do damage to your enemy, but that will just backfire and weaken your position.

Well yeah, your plan is ugly and weakens ukraine's position, as you note. This plan was beautiful and gave russia a black eye. Apples and Oranges.

weapons that aren't being used in the war

Russia was in fact using exactly this bombers to attack Ukraine. It is one of their methods to launch cruise missiles. It is used by Russia as Ukraine cannot target planes in flight and it gives missiles far greater range than launching them from ground.

Maybe photo is not from invasion of Ukraine, but here you have Kh-101 missiles under the wings of a Tupolev Tu-95: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tu95MSM_%22Super_Modern%22_(24912829706).jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:%D0%9F%D1%83%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8_%D0%BA%D1%80%D1%8B%D0%BB%D0%B0%D1%82%D1%8B%D1%85_%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%BA%D0%B5%D1%82_%D0%BF%D0%BE_%D0%BE%D0%B1%D1%8A%D0%B5%D0%BA%D1%82%D0%B0%D0%BC_%D1%82%D0%B5%D1%80%D1%80%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%B8%D1%81%D1%82%D0%BE%D0%B2_%D0%B2_%D0%A1%D0%B8%D1%80%D0%B8%D0%B8_%D1%81_%D0%B1%D0%BE%D1%80%D1%82%D0%B0_%D0%A2%D1%83-160.ogv has missile launch in Syria.

Not bothered to find official video of doing this as part of bombing Ukraine, but AFAIK noone is denying this.

The pro-russian people tend to think more strategically and the pro Ukr in emotional displays

Yes, invasion of Ukraine was a masterful stroke of genius strategy and was famously considered as masterfully prepared. Unlike emotional Ukrainian defense that had no strategic thought whatsoever.

In other words you generalization is just false.

And that is leaving aside fact that morale tends to be fairly important in war, so it is rational to take care of also that.

What a great advertisement for better border control. At this point, you basically have to be doing some kind of search on every single container coming in, right? But then, how do you find trustworthy un-bribe-able people at scale to inspect them all? As the story goes, if you don't think terrorists could get a nuclear bomb into the country, figure they could always hide it in a shipment of drugs.

Word on the street (who knows if true) is that the drone containers were assembled inside Russia by Ukrainian sleeper agents. There's a photo circulating claiming to depict the interior of the same warehouse in Chelyabinsk (I think) that was in the Ukrainian propaganda release depicting the assembly process.

At this point, you basically have to be doing some kind of search on every single container coming in, right?

Or alternatively just store your combat aircraft in reinforced hangars, as they all should be in the first place.

You can not reinforce all soft targets. You can reinforce a few military installations, but if your enemy is OK with terrorizing civilians, this is a perfect weapon of terror. Blowing up a truck can destroy a building, maybe a block if it's really big. But releasing a truckload of explosive drones can paralyze a whole multi-million city.

... Huh?

How does that solve the problem of drones hurled at Dodgers games or Morgan Wallen concerts? Or power substations or the George Washington bridge at rush hour? Or, hell, just in the general direction of downtown Dallas?

It doesn't solve any of that, of course.

I've heard the claim that US and Russian strategic bombers are currently required to be stored in a way accessible to satellite recon, as part of the verification sections of our arms control treaties.

Skimming through summaries of New START (and the long-expired START I, in case this was an outdated claim), though, I can't seem to find any such requirements, so it's possible this was just a misunderstanding or a fabrication. I do see requirements for allowing frequent on-site inspections, though, which you'd hope would be sufficient alone. If I missed something about bomber storage and there is some need to change the verification requirements, now would be a great time to do it - the latest extension of New START expires next February.

Edit: ... and apparently nobody cares when New START expires, because Putin suspended Russia's participation in it in 2023.

I've heard the claim that US and Russian strategic bombers are currently required to be stored in a way accessible to satellite recon, as part of the verification sections of our arms control treaties.

Yes, they need to be made visible to satellites of the other party during and after the process of being eliminated in accordance with the treaty.

Well, that would certainly be easier to square with the need to protect the remaining non-eliminated bombers.

Thanks. Do you have a citation for that?

I've seen it mentioned by X channels that follow the war. But even if it's untrue, and why would it be, the Russian government having suspended participation in the treaty in 2023, which I wasn't aware of, renders the whole issue moot anyway. There's no good reason to leave heavy bombers out in the open.

The drones were autonomous, their machine vision trained on the museum airplanes Ukraine had. A sufficiently motivated non-state actor could pull off an attack like this on any air force base, like Whiteman, for example.

If i were a US rival i'd be buying up lots of farmland around US military bases and industry. They seemed to be using cellular networks though, not ai.

If i were a US rival i'd be buying up lots of farmland around US military bases and industry

China has indeed been doing that.

Fuck. Forget LLMs, if this develops further (and I see little reason why it shouldn't), there is a very real risk war and terror becomes generally commodified and ubiquitous.

From last October's AAQC: "What many posters in this forum think AI may imply in the medium to long term in terms of major upheaval and disruption, I view drones implying in the short and medium term."

I've seen videos of the boston dynamics dog walking the streets and dropping N-bombs. That's just a short hop away from strapping a gun and a raspi on that thing. Running a very rudimentary NN scanning for skin color.

Speaking of terror (since we're on every list already), power substations are great targets. Fragile, usually protected by nothing more than a chain-link fence, prone to cascading failures. You don't even need a big explosion to damage them.

This interview with a Russian drone designer is from a few weeks ago, but really interesting from a perspective of how drone warfare has been evolving on the front lines.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=RmfNUM2CbbM

I apologize for this poor source, but the only other one coming up is the WaPo which I would rather not link to directly because it annoys me.

RFK Jr's MAHA report seems to have at least 7 non-existent sources suggesting he (or someone involved) made use of an LLM and it hallucinated. This does not engender confidence.

Some headlines for discussion:

4 Palestinians die after the storming of a UN food warehouse in Gaza. A distribution center from a group that agreed to work with Israeli restrictions meant to prevent aid being diverted or controlled by Hamas was also overrun. The head of this later group also resigned

Iran may pause enrichment for a year and ship off its highly enriched uranium in exchange for the US to recognize its right to enrich uranium for its civilian energy program and unfreeze funds.

Israel receives new U.S.-backed Gaza truce proposal: state media-Xinhua

Malta announces plan to officially recognize Palestine

Cholera outbreak in Sudan kills 172 in one week

Amnesty says over 10,000 killed in two years in Nigeria

Trump used offers of trade access to broker India-Pakistan ceasefire, claims U.S. Commerce Secretary

Eric Schmidt warns against China bombing US datacenters

UK announces $1B investment in cyber warfare

Ethiopia reports first mpox case

Trump admin cancels $766M in funding for moderna.

Trump admin cancels $766M in funding for moderna.

God damn these idiots. Most vaccine candidates against bird flu are reliant on fucking eggs for production. It's kind of a good idea to use mrna.

Moderna profits from COVID vaccines alone is estimated to be over $20-30 Billion. If their research is as promising as they claim it to be, why they need governmental funding? They have more than enough cash to fund, and I am sure there would be a lot of banks willing to extend them a loan. Why everything in the world must be financed by the US taxpayers?

Are you sure it wasn't 20-30bn revenue?

Look at their financials. They don't have that much cash. Market cap is only 10bn, btw.

No, the revenue was higher - around $40bn. Moderna also got a lot of public money for vaccine project. I am not sure what cash has to do with it. Profit and cash are completely different things - you can make a profit on X and then invest it in Y and have no cash at all or negative cash flow. In fact, a lot of R&D-heavy companies operate in exactly that manner. Or you could just distribute all the profits as dividends and have no cash on hand at all. I am not saying these things aren't related at all - if you have a lot of profits, you'd usually have some cash, but there's no direct relation between how much the company makes in profits on specific project and how much it has on hand in cash at any given moment.

As for market cap, it used to have 180bn market cap in 2021 at its peak. I'm sure there were some events happening in 2021 that are much less happening now that could explain that, but I am having hard time remembering what could it be...

I admit some of these figures may be inaccurate, there aren't official number of how much profit they made specifically from COVID, so I had to assemble the information from pieces lying around, and make some assumptions (like about what exactly generated their profits in 2020-2021 and doesn't in 2025 anymore) but I am pretty sure even if I was wrong it's not by an order of magnitude. So the original point still stands - they have enough money to do what they want to do. Of course, if they can get money of my pocket for free (with the taxman serving as the delivery boy) and then pocket all the profit, it's much more lucrative. But I don't see how comes I owe them that.

Most vaccine candidates against bird flu are reliant on fucking eggs for production. It's kind of a good idea to use mrna.

Oh noe.

What?

Israel receives new U.S.-backed Gaza truce proposal: state media-Xinhua

Offers from Hamas to give up the hostages remind me of Zeno's paradox. Right now they're offering ten living hostages, of the twenty suspected alive. Presumably at the end of the 60 day truce they'll offer five of the remaining ten. Then two of the remaining five. If living hostages could be divided up I'm sure they'd try that.

If living hostages could be divided up I'm sure they'd try that.

It's like the biblical test of Solomon (or was it David) to find out who the baby' mother is, except Hamas wouldn't even wait for him to finish speaking before pulling out the saw.

"What do you mean? I'm not wise, I just like dismembering babies!"

If living hostages could be divided up I'm sure they'd try that.

A 25% chance of giving back a hostage as decided by two fair coin throws by the Patriarch of Moscow

On May 21st, a woman in Galway commenced a hunger strike in protest over a) food not being let into Gaza (?) and b) the Irish government's failure to pass the Occupied Territories Bill, which would "ban trade with and economic suport for illegal settlements in territories deemed occupied under international law". In other words, it's a Boycott, Divest and Sanction bill, which would criminalise economic actors from doing business with Israeli companies. Last I checked she was on day 6 of her strike - she should now be on day 9, assuming she hasn't given up or been hospitalised yet.

Now, obviously a hunger strike isn't quite as dramatic as setting yourself on fire, but same ballpark. And I have to ask - what is it about this issue that seems to attract so many histrionic, mentally ill people? If you take them at their word, the Free Palestine people believe that, if left to their own devices, Israel will exterminate the entire population of Palestine (~5.5 million people), while the Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion think that, unless we acquiesce to their demands, literally everyone on the planet will die in a matter of decades. Given the respective stakes, you would logically expect the latter group to engage in more dramatic forms of protest than the former - 1,470 times as dramatic, to be precise. But instead it's the reverse: it's the Free Palestine people who are going on hunger strike and setting themselves alight, while the worst the Extinction Rebellion people can muster is hurling soup at paintings and gluing their palms to tarmac.

a woman in Galway commenced a hunger strike

Am I the only one who's so through with hunger striking as a concept I'd rather see people who think this is such a big move to actually go through with it to the end.

Pretty much my reaction when I heard she stopped.

If you take them at their word, the Free Palestine people believe that, if left to their own devices, Israel will exterminate the entire population of Palestine (~5.5 million people)

I think the motte is that Israel will continue to salami slice into Palestine, occupying any fertile or defensible land and forcing the Palestinians into dense urban ghettoes in the badlands where they will have to either rely on humanitarian aid from other countries, commute to Israel to work as day laborers or emigrate. They will be given some autonomy so that the IDF doesn't have to police inter-Palestinian disputes, but anything more substantial, like protesting against the status quo or disagreeing with an Israeli, will be punished with overwhelming force.

AI people are similarly nonviolent...

People are hard-coded to care more about concrete issues of killing, status and land as opposed to abstract matters like environment or AI.

Also I bet the more abstract you are inherently, the less violent and dramatic you are. The most violent people are stupid and thus swing towards simpler causes. Bolshevism wasn't built by 'blah blah blah theory' people but 'see landlord, kill him' peasantry and resentful would-be elites running on 'see power, take it'. The West did not see any successful violent Bolshevik revolutions despite an excess of theoreticians and abstractionists.

Apparently now ended.

citing health concerns

I'm glad she didn't starve herself to death. And yet, is it terrible that I read this and immediately think to myself "do a flip faggot"?

There's something so contemptibly safetyist about voluntarily signing up for a task which is dangerous by nature - then refusing to do it, because of how dangerous it is. It induces the same feeling of disgust in me as those photos of Secret Service agents cowering behind Trump while he was being shot at. What the hell did you think being a Secret Service agent entailed? Vibes? Papers? Essays?

Vibes? Papers? Essays?

Diversity, inclusion and equity, of course. That's what they were promised when they signed up, and they reasonably expected nothing more is going to be demanded from them.

What the hell did you think being a Secret Service agent entailed? Vibes? Papers? Essays?

It's the "how do you like being a firefighter" joke all over again.

Babes at the beach, possibly.

Out of all suicidal actions in furtherance of Hamas cause, this is one of the least harmful I think. Should be encouraged.

I was thinking about hunger strikes recently. And I figured out there are two things to be done - either force feeding them, or locking them in a room to make sure they won't cheat for at least 60 days.

Hunger strikes are a stupid strategy outside of prison. When the hunger striker is in prison, the authorities have to pick one of the two terrible optics choices of either force feeding them or letting them starve to death. Margaret Thatcher had to make that choice once regarding an imprisoned Member of Parliament, chose wrong, and the ensuing hullabaloo singlehandedly reignited the Troubles for another next fifteen years. If some rando civilian who’s loose and free and on the street decides to give themselves an eating disorder, and no one really has a responsibility to do anything about it, that doesn’t really reflect badly on anyone but the person themselves.

the authorities have to pick one of the two terrible optics choices of either force feeding them or letting them starve to death

We should pass a law that prohibits the authorities from force feeding people.

two terrible optics choices of either force feeding them or letting them starve to death

This only works if the prison guards are the good guys or at least try very hard to pretend to be ones. Otherwise neither of those options are a big problem for them. Case in point: Putin murdered Navalny in prison (not by hunger but same point stands) and what happened? Absolutely nothing.

The Israel/Palestine conflict is concrete and producing real deaths, whereas environmental issues are speculative and we’ve had them around for a while now.

Even for really serious environmentalists, the world has demonstrably failed to end for a while now. Whereas tens of thousands of Gazans really have died and more are being starved. It’s no wonder it inspires people to greater efforts.

(Of course, other concrete horrors happen all the time but people hear much more about Israel/Palestine for path dependency / antisemitism / whatever reasons.)

the world has demonstrably failed to end for a while now

Experience shows this doesn't work on cultists. They just move the world end date further in the future without updating anything else. Can be done unlimited number of times. Also the public has very limited memory - all the failed world end predictions over the last 50 or so years are available, and make absolutely zero impression and present zero problem for anybody predicting world to end again. Same btw about hundreds of thousands of Gazans starving - no matter how many times those things turn out to be lies, every next time it is claimed people believe it instantly and uncritically.

Experience shows this doesn't work on cultists. They just move the world end date further in the future without updating anything else.

My favorite instance of this is the Church of the SubGenius prophesizing that the X-Day was July 5, 1998. When the day arrived but without aliens, they did a facepalm and said they had it upside down! X-Day is actually in the year 8661.

They really put every other cult to shame.

The church of the subgenius was, to be fair, actual satire.

"satire" is what the Conspiracy calls truth when it’s afraid people might believe it!

Gaza activists believe that Palestinian lives, lots of time, are on the line right now, which is indeed at any given moment true to some degree (tens? hundreds? thousands? tens of thousands?). They also believe that the West has, within it hands, power to stop Israel on its tracks right now, though typically this doesn't go all the way to promote a direct military intervention. Climate activists, even the most fervent ones, tend to believe in longer timescales - even if they believe that climate effects are killing people now, they acknowledge that any law that might be passed due to their actions will only have an effect within a longer period, and that effect will be at most something that blunts the effect, not stop it completely.

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