circuscritic

Those are both pretty through examples of indepth investigative reporting, by credentialed and experienced independent journalists and researchers. There's plenty of threads to pull on once you start reading into it.

It's also been covered by Ryan Grim, former DC Beauru Chief for The Intercept. I believe he has recorded interviews up with either researchers from those articles, or some other journalists specializing in covering scientific and medical fields, I forget which.

I've read the reporting, looked into the journalists and researchers behind it, and find them credible.

If you don't, it doesn't affect me any.

https://www.independentsciencenews.org/health/did-west-africas-ebola-outbreak-of-2014-have-a-lab-origin/

https://jacobin.com/2016/07/ebola-west-africa-sierra-leone-bah-zoonotic-health-corruption-imperialism/

I have no idea how this lab will operate, but these types of labs are often used by government agencies whose own countries have prohibited certain types of extremely dangerous and risky research.

There's actually a lot of good circumstantial evidence that the really big Ebola outbreak some years ago likely originated from a lab in neighboring country, that was being used by US government funded scientists, doing work that they were not legally allowed to do on US soil.

It's late and I'm tired so I am not going to dig up the reporting on that, but there has been some great coverage on the topic in the few years that it's worth reading up on.

Whether or not any of that has any relevance to this specific laboratory, or how they'll operate, I have no idea. Just pointing out that whatever upside can be gained by this type of research, is also accompanied by serious risks.

You put so much effort into that post, that I almost feel bad pointing out that you probably should have read the comment I was replying to... you know, the one above my comment.

But, if you're having a hard time locating it, I pasted the relevant quote that I was responding to:

"...opportunity for a movie-like secret mission with a bag full of consumer drones..."

But yeah, I guess if you completely ignore the actual text I was responding to, you might of had a fair point.

Did you ever stop and think that maybe the problem with Gen Z was their lack of coal mining experience before the age of 12?

If this is your first time thinking about it, let me save you the trouble and assure you that yes, that is the problem.

So, long story short, we need to elect legislators that will finally allow young children back to working full-time in the mining industries.

Except for OP, it seems like they already have all the health benefits that come from spending an entire childhood breathing in coal dust.

Sounds like it'll be family friendly game shows and Christian reality TV.

Honestly, that might actually be a profitable model they could make work, if they don't fuck the infrastructure up, or allow cousin Billy to expose himself to female contestants on 3 different reality shows they're producing.

Yes, and that's what Ukraine is doing at the moment. But they're doing it in the cities like Moscow that actually matter to Putin, and the Russian elites.

The comment I was responding to was talking about taking a lot small drones deeper into Russia, which are places that Putin couldn't give a shit about.

So, if they aren't useful for destroying critical infrastructure, and Putin and the Russian elite don't care about any psychological impact on those civilians, what is the point? Which is why I covered using them to target civilians, and why that would be a bad idea.

Saboteurs and Ukrainian assets inside of Russia are not an unlimited resource. Wouldn't it make more sense for them to use their time doing things that actually politically harm Putin, or impact the wider Russian war effort?

I know it's been done on the unit or tactical level, but I wasn't aware of another example of this level of it being operationalized at this scale before

If you have an example to reference, would you mind sharing? Not being sarcastic, I'd be interested in reading up more on how that is dealt with at scale.

That might be an unintended benefit, but no, the rationale is pretty sound.

Basically Ukraine identified the local IP ranges and mass scanned them for open webcams for intelligence gathering and scouting purposes.

It's pretty ingenious and I am left wondering if this is the first time this tactic has been deployed at scale during a conventional war.

Regardless, I expect this is one of those things that we will see moving forward in any future conventional wars, including governments requesting their civilians turn off their IP cameras, or otherwise forcing them to.

I didn't move any goal posts, I've been pretty clear about my views on the general ineffectiveness of using quadcopters to target infrastructure.

But like I said, maybe I'm wrong, and the Ukrainian MoD will have a "Eureka!" moment after reading your comments.

Again, I think you're vastly overestimating the capability of a quadcopter drone to inflict serious damage on hard infrastructure.

But hey, maybe I'm not only wrong, but so are all of the Ukrainian sabotage teams and they'll stumble across your advice here and realize what a great idea it is.