As a liberal person, I have an unpopular opinion, but I’m a national who’s country is at war.
These are adequate reactions and preparations before war.
The West should be done with its rosy glasses. There’s still almost religious rejection of the possibility of war in their territory.
We are on the brink of a fierce war with Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, and a few traitors you are not aware of. They have more resources (oil, gas), production capabilities, as well as intelligence, and what’s more important, counter-intelligence.
This move improves counter-intelligence. Essentially, it’s an attempt to prevent the looming war. It’s not an evil act; it’s a cowardly measure compared to the direct acts of aggression of NATO.
If you think this time America will save the entire West like in movies, you are wrong. With recent drone capabilities without going nuclear, no place is safe.
> These are adequate reactions and preparations before war.
> Essentially, it’s an attempt to prevent the looming war.
I don’t see how mass surveillance is going to be effective against Russian/Chinese/etc agents, let alone prevent war. Why do you assume that spies and saboteurs are going to use the surveilled systems? I think this is more about controlling citizens than it is about monitoring foreigners.
You don't have to scan my private messages to know that i will oppose any war propaganda.
If private classified negotiations between state actors would be done away with, and past such "private" communications published, most wars would be impossible.
They did publish all secret diplomacy after the tsarist regime collapsed and that stopped WWI and probably prevented other wars (see for instance https://www.jstor.org/stable/2189254)
If your country’s intelligence community can’t work in information-scarce environment such as privacy enabled online communications, I don’t know what to tell you.
No, adequate reactions and preparations before war are building up the industrial base, securing energy and primary production, stockpiling arms, planes, subs, drones, recruiting and training military, building fortifications to defend invasion routes, building up air defenses around critical infrastructure.
Spending 2% of GDP on the military and locking people up for hurting feelings on with facebook posts, while buying Russian gas and trying to sell China EUV chip technology, and groveling to sell their yachts and football clubs and mansions to Russian and other oligarchs is not preparation for war.
Russia and China are threats, and the European ruling class are not taking those threats seriously. Quite the opposite actually they had been enabling and appeasing them and selling out their countries to help their friends and themselves get rich. While also peddling their lies about how those threats require these draconian domestic policies.
If there was real serious concern for such threats and real action taken, it would have been foremost to try to prevent real or perceived need for strong alliances between Russia and China. Instead, all actions of the past 5-10 years have been to drive those two countries closer together, making the threat much bigger. The common people do not need to be spied on and monitored and censored, it's not that there is exactly zero threat that could be mitigated or intelligence that could be gathered from doing such things, it is that it is such a minuscule non-issue compared to the gargantuan one next to it of treasonous politicians, intelligence agencies, bureaucrats, corporate bosses - "the ruling class" when it comes to dealings with adversaries.
> adequate reactions and preparations before war are building up the industrial base, securing energy and primary production, stockpiling arms, planes, subs, drones, recruiting and training military, building fortifications to defend invasion routes, building up air defenses around critical infrastructure
Which most European states are doing and have been doing since 2014 (eg. Poland, Romania).
But counterespionage is equally critical.
> trying to sell China EUV chip technology
1. Said EUV technology is develoepd and manufactured by a US DoE JV which ASML only has nominal control over
2. It was recently alleged that ASML offered to sell EUV tech to China while trojaning offered tech to give western intel visibility [0]
> While also peddling their lies about how those threats require these draconian domestic policies.
A Kantian-esque rules based order only works when all players choose to operate under said rules. Weaponizing asylum seeking, exit visas, criminal networks, and wanton sabotage require a level of visibility that will be viewed as draconian.
And to be brutally honest, this "rules based" status quo is only came to fruition in the 2000s. Western European (and it's only soft Gen X and Millenial techie Western Europeans who are complaining) intelligence agencies were much more draconian until the late 2000s.
> would have been foremost to try to prevent real or perceived need for strong alliances between Russia and China. Instead, all actions of the past 5-10 years have been to drive those two countries closer together, making the threat much bigger
If forced to choose between the entirety of the EU (which is a loose confederation with individual nation states continuing to hold soverignity) or a nuclear armed neighbor with significant resources and technology exports, China would always choose the latter - even for the simple fact that it gives China a pressure point against Vietnam, North Korea, and India, all of whom try to leverage Russian ties against China to develop strategic autonomy.
> The common people do not need to be spied on and monitored and censored, it's not that there is exactly zero threat that could be mitigated or intelligence that could be gathered from doing such things, it is that it is such a minuscule non-issue compared to the gargantuan one next to it of treasonous politicians, intelligence agencies, bureaucrats, corporate bosses - "the ruling class" when it comes to dealings with adversaries.
Legally speaking in European countries, there is no difference between "common people" and "the ruling class". The only way to dragnet the "ruling class" is through such measures.
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Frankly, this is a return to the pre-2010s norms around national security within most European states. And techies on HN and Reddit do not matter. Most of you Western Europeans would desert your home countries the moment s### got real, just like a significant portion of Ukrainian and Russian techies.
Techies who earn significantly more than most other citizens of their countries acting as if they are not part of the "capital class" is just class fetishization.
> No they haven't. It's just not what the build up to to war looks like. At all
Depends European state to state. For example in 2018 [0][1], most Eastern states were spending close enough to what was needed.
The biggest laggard remained Germany due to constitutional issues, but even they along with other Western European nations have gotten back on track following the 2022 escalation by Russia [2]
> Broadly spying on your own citizens is not "counterespionage"
Dragnets absolutely are. Every piece of intelligence matters.
> Spying on your own citizens without any real military or economic preparation for war is proof that the former was not motivated by threat of war
Yet the dramatic rise in defense expenditures across Europe after 2022 and my own personal experience working with people in this space has shown a mixture of both.
I am a major critic of Western Europe's failure of preparation, but the changes that have happened in the past 3 years are massive. And every major and regional power is in the midst of a massive rearmament.
A major conventional war will happen in the next 5 years, and everyone is in the midst of preparation for that.
No it doesn't because the claim was that most of them have prepared for war. Most have not.
> Dragnets absolutely are. Every piece of intelligence matters.
This isn't, and it's not even marketed as such because that would be too patently ridiculous. It's sold on the lie of keeping children safe.
> Yet the dramatic rise in defense expenditures across Europe after 2022 and my own personal experience working with people in this space has shown a mixture of both.
There is no dramatic expenditure rise which indicates a build up for war across most of Europe. It's gone up a few points across the EU over many years and has just now barely breached the global average.
The claim was that this is justified because it is an adequate preparation for war, and preparations are being made for war, and therefore it is being done to prepare for war and is good.
None of those things are true. At best they're wild conjecture which are at odds with other facts. They are not an adequate preparation for war. Preparations for war are not being made. And they are not being done to prepare for a war.
> A major conventional war will happen in the next 5 years, and everyone is in the midst of preparation for that.
Almost no countries in Europe are preparing for invasion. If anything they are slightly upping deterrence factor, but they are not behaving though they fear being invaded, nor do they have any serious capability to participate in a major conventional war outside their borders, which is likely to involve China and be centered in the Pacific.
Yeah no. That's not what any of this is about. This is exactly what they claim it is: more power for domestic law enforcement.
Your apocalyptic vision is very, very far from certain, but also...
> This move improves counter-intelligence
Evading any kind of mass surveillance is basic tradecraft for spies. You're not going to get a lot of counterintelligence out of it. Especially because it's all structured to filter the information through mostly-non-spooky operators of communication services before your counterintelligence people get to see it.
What it does improve is good old fashioned non-counter intelligence for the other side. A lot of intelligence targets don't have the kind of OPSEC that spies have. And with adversaries at that level, you can't assume you control who has access to your back doors.
Most HNers won't listen to you, but frankly they truly do not matter. There's a reason legislation like the Espionage Act, the G10 Act, and Official Secrets/NSA Act 2023 exist, and why personal heroes of mine like Abe Lincoln enabled their administrations to prosecute sedition during states of war and near states of war severely.
Much of Europe has been seeing near weekly grey scale warfare [0] that in most other cases can be treated as an act of war.
I had friends in Ukraine who acted the same until their family had to leave Donetsk due to shelling during the 14-16 period, and others who voted for Zelensky's olive tree which the Putin admin unceremoniously rejected in 2022 (at least Zelensky decided to stay in Kyiv and own up to his admin's mistaken policies in their beginning). Being well paid techies, they all paid bribes and left for Vietnam, the US, Germany, Czechia, and other countries while those who couldn't afford to leave were paying for those techies votes.
So will other HNers (and Redditors) who act high and mighty until the shoe is on the other foot - they would all leave the moment war started with nary a sense of loyalty nor the wherewithal to support policies that can act as a deterrent. The kind of people on HN will keep their heads in the sand until they are personally affected, because people who base their life on ideals and ideology don't understand how messy the world actually is.
Hell, most of them probably never heard of the 2010-12 purge China's MSS did against CIA informants - a number of whom were summarily executed in public in a government office courtyard [1]. Counterespionage is dirty work.
These are adequate reactions and preparations before war.
The West should be done with its rosy glasses. There’s still almost religious rejection of the possibility of war in their territory.
We are on the brink of a fierce war with Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, and a few traitors you are not aware of. They have more resources (oil, gas), production capabilities, as well as intelligence, and what’s more important, counter-intelligence.
This move improves counter-intelligence. Essentially, it’s an attempt to prevent the looming war. It’s not an evil act; it’s a cowardly measure compared to the direct acts of aggression of NATO.
If you think this time America will save the entire West like in movies, you are wrong. With recent drone capabilities without going nuclear, no place is safe.