Occasionally, I despair that the Russian General Staff will begin reading this Substack and start to run effective after-action reviews. That they'll begin to improvise and improve in a meaningful and threatening way.
Then I'm reminded of what you've just clearly argued: they're the Russian General Staff, working as part of an authoritarian regime. If they were capable of introspection and evidence-based, agile continuous improvement, they probably wouldn't be the sort of regime that wages an anachronistic war of aggression in the first place.
May the regime be doomed to find out.
In the meantime, my heart aches for every human that pays, in blood and suffering, the cost of this foolhardy lesson; one already taught and documented a thousand times.
Interesting you say that. My analytics show a massive flood of traffic from China "reading" all of my public articles lately. I think I have the settings to where free articles automatically get locked behind the paywall after a month, so they're going to have a hard time accessing the vault. Unless they become paying subscribers lol
They’ll try and scrape all the content off and steal it somehow :). Congratulations on getting the attention of the CCP mate, must be doing something right
I think Sugarpine Press explained why the Russians is incapable of really learning. But honestly I would expect them to read, even paid subscriptions several blogs. What they make of it is another question.
I’ve read that Ukraine is using the opportunity of Russia cut off from Starlink to eliminate or capture Russian teams in the grey zones which seems to me a strategy to preserve infantry while shoring up defenses. Meanwhile their strategic air campaign can continue to hit factories refineries, and supply lines.
That read tracks. If Russian units lose reliable comms, small teams in the grey zone get brittle fast. They can’t coordinate drones, call for fire, report positions, or deconflict friendlies. That creates windows where Ukrainian forces can isolate a team, force a surrender, or wipe it without committing a big infantry push. And it fits Ukraine’s current incentives. I think the ongoing peace talks have something to do with it also. Preserve manpower, tighten the line, let drones and artillery do the bleeding up close.
Although the claimed mid-January data breach of MAX was later denied, it's easy to believe that any item of software has exploitable bugs at any time, and for commercial software the cost of finding them before release usually militates against the level of testing a purpose-built app for the military might undergo.
Add to that an architecture designed to allow eavesdropping and a nation currently rife with corruption and mandating MAX is like recruiting a fifth column yourself to save your enemy the effort.
I've been noticing quite a few posts on Twitter about the Ubiquiti deployments in the Russian side. I have a hard time believing that they are effective because (in my long term memory as wireless network guy who has been retired for 8 years) that is uses the 2.4ghz spectrum probably using spread spectrum. This has pretty severe limitations on range and throughout, so I wonder if this is yet another workaround by the Russian troops to get any comms through. Also seems pretty easy to locate emitters and knock them out. I hope that Ubiquiti figures out how to limit sales to Russia and Iran to deny even that basic functionality.
Interesting. Of course they had not planned om StarLinks going down, but those who planned this probably didn’t use Telegram. As far as I understand Putin doesn’t use a computer himself. (Which at least means no social media comments from him.) But I foresee a quite and relatively quick withdrawal. Followed by more pressure to use Max of course. But this they have to roll back. But hoping they won’t!
Ukraine is bombing Russia as hardx& as often as they can. Its part time for its Allies, the US particularly to remove all weapon restrictions & stop worrying about Putins sabre rattling, he's an empty gourd surrounded by corrupt sycophants.
Wes, I wonder if this is hallmark of all authoritarian and statist structures or if it's just human? It seems that authoritarian mindsets see a danger and fail to evaluate it rationally against other threats and this results in cures being worse than the disease. If that authority has significant power then it overreacts for self preservation reasons. Is uncontrolled information being disseminated that is harmful to the state? Sure. Does the harm outweigh the usefulness to the state, probably not but we'll never know since we immediately start to repress in the easiest way possible: ban the medium. There seems to be a fixation on total elimination of all undesirable consequences at any cost. It probably applies across political sub-cultures as well. Do we have a gun violence problem? Yes, then ban all guns. Do we have a problem with illegal immigration? Yes, then eliminate it even at the costs of legal and constitutional norms. Does election fraud exist at some level? Well then, we need draconian measures even if fraud was microscopic in effect.
Yep Russian citizens are finding out what is really going on with the war and are not getting the tax money to fund projects Putin demands…lots of unrest
Personally I think they rely on Telegram ans Starlink. Not for everything, but for quite a lot. And now I sont base this on MSM. This is a discussion too detailed for MSM. But the reliance on Telegram has been discussed several times by several observers following the war. Feel free to checkout the Z bloggers as mentioned by Wes. The reliance on Telegram is old stuff, what is new here is the removal. And this is the only comment I will give on this issue. I will not go into further discussions on the possibility of the Russians not using Telegram because they do.
Occasionally, I despair that the Russian General Staff will begin reading this Substack and start to run effective after-action reviews. That they'll begin to improvise and improve in a meaningful and threatening way.
Then I'm reminded of what you've just clearly argued: they're the Russian General Staff, working as part of an authoritarian regime. If they were capable of introspection and evidence-based, agile continuous improvement, they probably wouldn't be the sort of regime that wages an anachronistic war of aggression in the first place.
May the regime be doomed to find out.
In the meantime, my heart aches for every human that pays, in blood and suffering, the cost of this foolhardy lesson; one already taught and documented a thousand times.
Interesting you say that. My analytics show a massive flood of traffic from China "reading" all of my public articles lately. I think I have the settings to where free articles automatically get locked behind the paywall after a month, so they're going to have a hard time accessing the vault. Unless they become paying subscribers lol
They’ll try and scrape all the content off and steal it somehow :). Congratulations on getting the attention of the CCP mate, must be doing something right
The Russian bureaucracy will take ages to do anything even with the information.
I think Sugarpine Press explained why the Russians is incapable of really learning. But honestly I would expect them to read, even paid subscriptions several blogs. What they make of it is another question.
I’ve read that Ukraine is using the opportunity of Russia cut off from Starlink to eliminate or capture Russian teams in the grey zones which seems to me a strategy to preserve infantry while shoring up defenses. Meanwhile their strategic air campaign can continue to hit factories refineries, and supply lines.
Is that how you read the situation?
That read tracks. If Russian units lose reliable comms, small teams in the grey zone get brittle fast. They can’t coordinate drones, call for fire, report positions, or deconflict friendlies. That creates windows where Ukrainian forces can isolate a team, force a surrender, or wipe it without committing a big infantry push. And it fits Ukraine’s current incentives. I think the ongoing peace talks have something to do with it also. Preserve manpower, tighten the line, let drones and artillery do the bleeding up close.
so hard to believe that this schit is true
Although the claimed mid-January data breach of MAX was later denied, it's easy to believe that any item of software has exploitable bugs at any time, and for commercial software the cost of finding them before release usually militates against the level of testing a purpose-built app for the military might undergo.
Add to that an architecture designed to allow eavesdropping and a nation currently rife with corruption and mandating MAX is like recruiting a fifth column yourself to save your enemy the effort.
I've been noticing quite a few posts on Twitter about the Ubiquiti deployments in the Russian side. I have a hard time believing that they are effective because (in my long term memory as wireless network guy who has been retired for 8 years) that is uses the 2.4ghz spectrum probably using spread spectrum. This has pretty severe limitations on range and throughout, so I wonder if this is yet another workaround by the Russian troops to get any comms through. Also seems pretty easy to locate emitters and knock them out. I hope that Ubiquiti figures out how to limit sales to Russia and Iran to deny even that basic functionality.
Interesting. Of course they had not planned om StarLinks going down, but those who planned this probably didn’t use Telegram. As far as I understand Putin doesn’t use a computer himself. (Which at least means no social media comments from him.) But I foresee a quite and relatively quick withdrawal. Followed by more pressure to use Max of course. But this they have to roll back. But hoping they won’t!
It is time to bomb the russians Harder!
Ukraine is bombing Russia as hardx& as often as they can. Its part time for its Allies, the US particularly to remove all weapon restrictions & stop worrying about Putins sabre rattling, he's an empty gourd surrounded by corrupt sycophants.
Wes, I wonder if this is hallmark of all authoritarian and statist structures or if it's just human? It seems that authoritarian mindsets see a danger and fail to evaluate it rationally against other threats and this results in cures being worse than the disease. If that authority has significant power then it overreacts for self preservation reasons. Is uncontrolled information being disseminated that is harmful to the state? Sure. Does the harm outweigh the usefulness to the state, probably not but we'll never know since we immediately start to repress in the easiest way possible: ban the medium. There seems to be a fixation on total elimination of all undesirable consequences at any cost. It probably applies across political sub-cultures as well. Do we have a gun violence problem? Yes, then ban all guns. Do we have a problem with illegal immigration? Yes, then eliminate it even at the costs of legal and constitutional norms. Does election fraud exist at some level? Well then, we need draconian measures even if fraud was microscopic in effect.
Yep Russian citizens are finding out what is really going on with the war and are not getting the tax money to fund projects Putin demands…lots of unrest
Do you really think that Russia relies on Starlink and Telegram for battle communications? Based on the Kiev independent? You trust MSM ?
Personally I think they rely on Telegram ans Starlink. Not for everything, but for quite a lot. And now I sont base this on MSM. This is a discussion too detailed for MSM. But the reliance on Telegram has been discussed several times by several observers following the war. Feel free to checkout the Z bloggers as mentioned by Wes. The reliance on Telegram is old stuff, what is new here is the removal. And this is the only comment I will give on this issue. I will not go into further discussions on the possibility of the Russians not using Telegram because they do.