31 Comments

What should be done about that guy who repeatedly attacked and undermined Our Democracy with lies and disinformation and then gathered an insurrection to assault our Capitol to try and stop the peaceful transfer of power?

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Biden even though he’s as sharp as he’s ever been isn’t running anymore so we’re good.

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Convicting someone of something that’s not a crime is straight out of putins’ playbook. And celebrating it like it’s a victory for democracy is as Russian as it gets.

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Sharp as ever? Please reassess your thinking.

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Russian 🤖’s are everywhere. Just say the opposite of any facts stated and victory will be yours Comrade!

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You mean Joe Biden? Nancy Pelosi.

You don't even have a truly Democratic primary---this is the third straight primary that saw high level "manipulation." Let's get something very clear: Democrats undermine Democracy.

You should read up on what really happened around Jan 6th. Newsflash: If you wanted to create a similar incident with the protesters around the DNC right now by putting in agent provocateurs and dialling back security, you could. 500 capital police for 200,000 protestors is less security than you have at a Taylor Swift concert. Compare that to the ratio right now at the DNC. Anything below 1 officer to 100 is considered asking for trouble. Get your facts straight. Read for yourself.

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Travis- Biden is too old and senile to prosecute says his (Un)justice Department

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By this logic, are the state sponsored cyber attack centers in Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and elsewhere valid targets?

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yep

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The reaction of your interviewer was gold. For a long time now I have thought cyber attacks, state sponsored theft of classified material for blackmail or disruption reasons should be met more robustly. When Russian bot farms punch out 600,000 posts on social media a week then you should realise the stakes and attack is real. Thanks mate!

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I’m leaning this way too. These authoritarian dictators have shut down any social media except for their own propagandist messages. So the west is unable to retaliate in kind. We have no access to the people to, for instance, sew political discord as they do to us. Just another example of how our freedoms are exploited by our enemies.

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Thank you for educating people about the reality of war. So many people don't realize that they are like bullets in someone's gun by spreading and acting on disinformation. And the scary part is that they are proud of it! The US has the US Space Force. We need the US Cyber Force...if it doesn't already exists.

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Ryan's thought is more philosophical (right now) than actual,. Underlying all politics is it's belief system. and Ryan's "you're kinda right and kinda a psychopath" is clearly the opposite of his (and some of the commentators). This is important, because he's heard, from an invited guest, something VERY different than the usual anti-Western postmodernism we are used to hearing. In physics, this pause and then reversal is described as a "tangential component of gravity which acts as the restoring force." Hard to say if this is just Ryan or the beginning of a wider political and philosophical change., but I hope it is.

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What if the disinformation actor is a candidate for president with millions of believers?

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Similarly, if some Joe in his mom's basement starts parroting Russian propaganda, is that free speech or treason? Does the calculation change if Joe is a Russian national on US soil?

Practically speaking, if you start targeting propaganda spreaders kinetically, what are the legal ramifications of that decision? How should targets be selected? Could Russia use the kinetic kills of bots to further their own propaganda by calling the US the aggressor?

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Targets are disinformation factories, not Joe. If he gets paid by the Russians for actions taken in the US that's called espionage and we already know how to deal with that.

The point of kinetic retaliation is that, unless a large amount of Joe's suddenly starts watching Russian state TV they would not be exposed to the propaganda in the first place.

It's not going to fix stuff overnight, but long term it is likely better than the alternative.

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“Opposite Day” for the Russian 🤖’s?

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It is the surest sign of a liar that they accuse others of what they are guilty of.

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Like Biden, obviously

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Once again, RM is speaking truth and fact - cyber warfare is tangible and thus worthy of an appropriate response to any/all that are supporters/agents thereof…. Words, behaviors and actions bring w/ them consequences… it’s about time they learn those real life lesson…

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This is very close to advocacy for total war. It is a slippery slope. The Kremlin could just as easily use this to justify killing CNN hosts, who in their view push American propaganda.

If someone applied your logic to other things that indirectly support the war effort, like farming, you would never accept it.

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Try not to overextrapolate. It makes a mockery of a serious issue.

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My response is a principled one that extrapolates an immediate consequence of hitting "disinformation actors"---the attack on our own information providers. Also, you don't seem to understand the point of a reductio ad absurdum: Making a mockery of your and Ryan's position is the point. The whole point of mentioning that your same logic could be applied to farmers was to show YOU ARE A JOKE. Your position is absurd. It is like you never took a basic logic class.

Your response just shows that you refuse to think in terms of first principles. Everything you are saying amounts to "don't think too much." Your remarks don't even rise to the level of an argument.

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I like the idea of not overextrapolating. If you removed overextrapolation, you'd be able to hear a pin drop in some corners of social media (<-- this itself is probably an overextrapolation. I just wish I knew by how much)

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Elisheva is just using fancy language to tell you not to think in philosophical terms. You should not like that idea at all. It is profoundly anti-intellectual.

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Could president Biden, in his official capacity, order an insurrectionist rabble rouser killed?

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No. he'd let Harris off the hook

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You give your talk and the Russians take you up on the deal. We all know the Russians killed David Knowles. Good work in making journalists into combatants.

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I thought the host was going to choke when McBeth suggested putting a hell fire missile in the window of an office building being used for information warfare.🤣

it’s no different than if you rolled up in a crowd of Hari Krishna’s and used a pistol to shoot servicemen at the airport. I know some of the men returning from Vietnam felt awful when they were protested when they returned home, they weren’t expecting that type of reception.

I guess if we follow the logic then every journalist who made up stories about Vietnam or Vietnam veterans should be aware that they may be targeted.

I’m sure some people who don’t understand warfare won’t understand it.

McBeth is using inanimate objects such as a bridge or a ship, or protesting about how the war is being prosecuted.

I for one agree with the concept of targeting individual’s and groups that sow misinformation to achieve a goal.

The NSA got some splaining to do!

I don’t think they are going to get granular on actors working out of their mothers basement or rig C4 bombs in their computers or send wet teams in to snuff them out. This is meant for a plan to get ready to label the information warriors as enemy combatants.

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Justification? We don't need no stinkin' justification"

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Seriously, Ryan, has it ever occurred to you that in the Russian and Chinese governments' opinions, you are a disinformation actor? You are literally calling for those governments to start thinking of you as a combatant. You need to think a little more before taking these positions.

Let me see how long it takes for some ridiculous human being to say I am "overextrapolating" or whatever the latest online rubric for winning an argument without thinking is.

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