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Pentagon Cyberweapons 'Disappointing' Against ISIS (nytimes.com)
An anonymous reader quotes the New York Times:
It has been more than a year since the Pentagon announced that it was opening a new line of combat against the Islamic State, directing Cyber Command, then six years old, to mount computer-network attacks... "In general, there was some sense of disappointment in the overall ability for cyberoperations to land a major blow against ISIS," or the Islamic State, said Joshua Geltzer, who was the senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council until March. "This is just much harder in practice than people think..."
Even one of the rare successes against the Islamic State belongs at least in part to Israel, which was America's partner in the attacks against Iran's nuclear facilities. Top Israeli cyberoperators penetrated a small cell of extremist bombmakers in Syria months ago, the officials said. That was how the United States learned that the terrorist group was working to make explosives that fooled airport X-ray machines and other screening by looking exactly like batteries for laptop computers... The information helped prompt a ban in March on large electronic devices in carry-on luggage on flights from 10 airports in eight Muslim-majority countries to the United States and Britain.
Citing military officials, the Times also reports that "locking Islamic State propaganda specialists out of their accounts -- or using the coordinates of their phones and computers to target them for a drone attack -- is now standard operating procedure."
Even one of the rare successes against the Islamic State belongs at least in part to Israel, which was America's partner in the attacks against Iran's nuclear facilities. Top Israeli cyberoperators penetrated a small cell of extremist bombmakers in Syria months ago, the officials said. That was how the United States learned that the terrorist group was working to make explosives that fooled airport X-ray machines and other screening by looking exactly like batteries for laptop computers... The information helped prompt a ban in March on large electronic devices in carry-on luggage on flights from 10 airports in eight Muslim-majority countries to the United States and Britain.
Citing military officials, the Times also reports that "locking Islamic State propaganda specialists out of their accounts -- or using the coordinates of their phones and computers to target them for a drone attack -- is now standard operating procedure."
That's the way the Middle East is. Any one group gets too much power and they usually become assholes. Meddlers, like the US, try to balance things out so each group keeps each other in check, but that usually fails for various reasons. It's like building Frankensteins to stop other Frankensteins, and then acting surprised when they run amuck.
When ISIS is diminished, some other jerky clan will step in to be the Asshole of the Month and Washington DC pointy fingers will have another blamefest, and the Military Industrial Complex will have another jizzfest, showing off shiny new war-ware that doesn't really work. Rinse, repeat, profit!
Table-ized A.I.
Oh, and partisan trolls please note: I blame *both* (R) & (D) equally!
None of this crap could have reached this disgusting Orwellian point without cooperation and collusion between both major US political parties.
There are no "good guys" here.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
But they're REALLY effective against themselves and the American people, when they leak.
Everybody has a major cow over civilian casualties, despite the fact that only one side - ours - is concerned about that. But the people of Raqqah are not innocent bystanders: they are Sunni opponents of the Assad regime and support ISIS for that reason.
No, the vast majority of the people of Raqqah are just ordinary people that want to live a decent life, just like most everyone else all over the planet.
Levelling the city would be a good solution, but unpalatable to our PCMC sensibilities.
What you're proposing is genocide. I have no idea what PCMC sensibilities are, but yes, I'm all in favour of having a major cow over that. And that's just based on ethics, there's also the point that levelling a city is a very effective way to create terrorists.
And your evidence for that is? Historically, that entire region has been about either Muslims persecuting non Muslims (Christians, Yazidis, et al), Arab Muslims persecuting non Arabs - Muslim or not - like Kurds, Sunnis persecuting Shia wherever they are in the majority (like Saudi Arabia), Shia persecuting Sunnis wherever they are in the majority (like Iraq, Iran) and so on. The people of Raqqah are no different. They threw their lot in w/ ISIS b'cos like most of their Sunni compatriots, they can't stand the idea of an Alewite regime in Damascus. Incidentally, the converse is true as well - the Alawites know that if the Sunnis came to power, the Alawites would be massacred
Do you honestly think that Ahmed the grocer and Alia the farmer's wife and the thousands of their colleagues leading simple lives have had any influence on these events? Do they really deserve to be `collateral damage' for being in the wrong place at the wrong time?
What you're proposing is genocide. I have no idea what PCMC sensibilities are, but yes, I'm all in favour of having a major cow over that. And that's just based on ethics, there's also the point that levelling a city is a very effective way to create terrorists.
It's called war. Genocide would be if a city w/ only civilians but no fighters were to be massacred - something like the recent Syrian chemical weapons attack. But if in a city you have a mix of terrorists & civilians, you level it, and the civilians are collateral damage. Throughout history, innocent civilians have died in wars, which is why one tries not to have them in the first place. But if they are fought, the consequences have to be recognized - that innocent civilians are going to die in the process. Once they make an example of any place by levelling it, ISIS will realize that using human shields is useless, and they'll resort to other tactics. Thereby, ironically, such massacres would minimize future hostage situations where Jihad terrorists try to blackmail those Geneva convention complaint armies into not attacking them.
My, what a neat little theory you have for your blood thirst. You may want to look into https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... for people that had theories like yours, and what happened to them. Yes, it is war. That's why genocide is called a warcrime.
"That's the way the Middle East is. Any one group gets too much power and they usually become assholes."
No that's not the way the Middle East is' anymore than that's the way anywhere else is.