Minor point but this doesn't only have to be russian/chinese spies but rather this can be anybody including say the UK/Israel or even countries which can be considered "allies"
I'd also be surprised if this code isn't already available with the US forces too and sometimes the enemy can be from within too.
One of the things I have wondered is why a country would not create an company or VC network from people (spy agents) who for all intents and purposes look like normal citizens of any other country (perhaps even in the enemy country itself) and then just have the Country siphon off some money into that VC to buy some companies.
The fact of the matter is that you can see an Israeli connection to VPN companies like express vpn, cyberghost vpn (the israeli billionaire who owns this has donated to IDF for context iirc)
This is what is happening in the front page. Why wouldn't a nation want to create a VC network which can buy large companies in security industry in neutral countries (germany,switzerland etc.)
People would be none the wiser if this actually happens and the head VC network considering that they can just buy security options and would be even able to sell them sometimes to even their enemy state themselves.
A part of me is worried talking about this idea might give states ideas. Another part of me believes is that this might already be happening.
For record, I am not against Venture capitalism for context, but the opportunity presented by it in the context of governments spending money secretly to buy security related companies in terms of a VC network to then have the same contract with foreign enemy company feels complicated but feels to me easy enough for a nation actor to pull.
This can also not be just a single VC but can be spread across many for example.
Are we certain that this might be what could've happened in this case, I suppose not but there might be a non zero chance.
And we are already discounting the fact that in the case of isreal, sometimes they don't even do this and have it be an israeli company itself. What if they might do it to present two options: say an israeli and a german option. But both options might be tampered (I am absolutely not saying this is the case but I am just presenting a mere hypothetical)
Given the absolute budget of governments for these things and the fact that Govt. hires people so much smarter than me. Surely they must have thought of this and if that's the case then if the plan is working as intended and its hidden and public doesn't know about it and if its hidden/public doesn't know about it, the plan is working as intended.
That being said, It wouldn't be wrong to say that this feels more like a conspiracy theory. I genuinely hope I am wrong tho but why would a govt. give up on such a massive thing
Once again, This is just a thought experiment and let's keep the discussion civil. I am not against Venture Capitalism.
I think the real benefit is mostly being realized by sovereign wealth funds in the UAE and Saudi Arabia. You buy up small shares in lots of different companies and you get vision and control.
But why would say Iran take security or software from a company which could be funded In-Q-Tel for example
I mean thanks for the share, but this proves my suspicion even more because if In-Q-Tel/CIA are able to have a public company which does it. And CIA isn't hesitant of having spies. The dangerous combination of two is definitely possible.
Obviously its still suspicion but still. Might I know what your thoughts are on it too?
So now that I think about it a much better match for what you’re talking about is the belt and road initiative. This does a lot of things all rolled into one, and it eliminates the main problem with clandestine funding of things, which is that they’re never really is enough money to do what you want to do. Most of the stories in the 20th century of countries bankrolling ventures in other countries for nefarious purposes were mostly done on a shoestring budget that could be hidden from Congress. There’s enough money to pay Jackson Pollock to paint, but not enough to displace an indigenous technology industry. China has fixed that by just making it a public endeavor. They get the benefit of regulatory capture, soft power, and technological lock in and all they really have to do is spend money. The reason why this works is because stuff is expensive and eventually national pride and sense crumble to whatever needs you have for technology.
> The reason why this works is because stuff is expensive and eventually national pride and sense crumble to whatever needs you have for technology
Yes China gets soft power within the region of Neutral / allies but it can never get soft power over an enemy nation.
> Most of the stories in the 20th century of countries bankrolling ventures in other countries for nefarious purposes were mostly done on a shoestring budget that could be hidden from Congress
It's essentially a matter of secrecy then? I can find some ways to think to find money to be hidden from congress
Find Billionaires/Millionaires who lobby you and your nation and give them better national contract deals if they can secretly use their own private money and drop into technically that nation's offshore's accounts and then have that money combined with spies transfer in such a way that nobody (not even journalists can trace routes), Have them take loans from banks of their stocks price or assets that you prefer and give them preferential lending. Plus points if the billionaire/millionaire can himself be a "spy"
Suppose that offshore account converts to crypto like monero or just somehow launders it in a hard to find way with one offshore account to another with monero in between and then have that second offshore account somehow transfer that money gradually into VC operated by spies.
Think about it, You spend billions trying to have neutral allies be on your side but in conflicts of war, yes they would be beneficial but how much more beneficial would be to have access to the enemy side of security as in the case we are discussing and with just a few loops its definitely possible to hide money and be have secrecy
The best part is that even if this adds malware into the enemy nation's country, when you try to find who ran the malware, its all done in anonymous way to the general public but chances of this being the case can be very high especially given that those were air-gapped systems.
So the public is intentionally hidden this stuff from. We can't go and say that we are giving money to buy security companies from a spy network we have in enemy country to trick them into thinking that they are more safe and have them be compromised.
It would be a general outrage because the consequences would be far and reaching.
But what you can say is that we have somehow had a malware added into their air-gapped systems through various methods and have people be speculating how.
Israel is telling that their camera feeds are compromised. I don't think Iran uses an israeli company for camera feed security purposes. Most likely they use either Irani company or Saudi Arabia company if possible.
If Israel is literally saying this on public news that their feeds are compromised and isn't telling how, this does seem to be a plausible explaination of trying to infiltrate their security networks one way or the other.
Also can't say about congress but Israel is known for very secretive operations from Mossad. Money shouldn't be problem for those guys most likely.
Also there is one point to be said that even if a country can be ally, then you can have something like the belt road initiative too or if your country has lots of money/power then maybe even setup a few of these things in your ally country as you never know how the waves can change of a country from ally to enemy and vice versa.
Of course, countries with plastic currency notes (like Australia) don't have to worry about this because their notes incorporate hard-to-counterfeit features like transparent windows.
I havent looked into the financials but the reasons I really like cloudflare is that its workers are free without card for 100k and even after that its ridiculously cheap and cloudflare tunnels and a lot of features are free and really appreciate it
I feel like people like to rub that one time cloudflare messed up when I mention it but it was a gambling website and I feel like cloudflare could've better communicated it but overall its got so much less drama than the other cloud providers and its genuinely being really nice imo
But imo, cloudflare is really dirt cheap for just starting out and at scale as well especially if using cf workers
I feel like cloudflare can make a bank in enterprice section but their pricing model also feels the most saner compared to the shady tactics used by google or others with our marketing and privacy
I know that the internet is getting centralized but I feel like there are some ways of de-centralizing it, (by example archiving web pages and then seeding them, helping on internet archive or something similar as well)
As an internet user, cf feels mid but sometimes as a guy who just wants to deploy shit or basic apis, I "vibe coded" a cloudflare worker api which I actively use so much for my own purposes setting up a custom redirector and everything without paying anything at all, I think I like it.
Honestly, nothing is as good or as bad as it seems except palantir's evaluation which makes me feel like 448 pe ratio or something similar drove me nuts the other day.
Edit: Although I still stand with what I say, this comment has also aged like fine milk with cloudflare taking down aws,chatgpt and x and sooo many others that cloudflare outage had more upvotes on HN (if I am correct, I can be wrong tho, nothing new about it as well ) and thus more impact...
Honestly now the only stable provider which doesn't have an outage is google cloud in sick twisted fate
I am wishing when google cloud has its outage so I can recommend everybody to use hetzner (yes I know its not an apples to orange comparisons but hetzner has some crazy good uptime)
I knew of this chrome bug which could allow netflix to be ripped. I had heard it in comments of some section of youtube and I might need to look further into it but its definitely possible.
I feel like in geo-politics. No country can be good.
Personally, I feel like america still has (had) hope with zohran mamdani but after the recent american shutdown, I would consider democratic party to be an extension of republican party or not doing anything radical except bernie,aoc, zohran and some other people.
I feel like America could have a hope to swing whereas china doesn't imo.
although, I feel like what is happening is that people made (short term?) decisions earlier generations earlier which lead us to where we are today where any country over-all needs a radical change as both europe and america and a lot of other countries need to radicalize what they are doing to give hope to the youngsters
Personally I feel like we shouldn't care much about US or chinese products but rather the ideologies of the product creators if we are worried about things and I think this is one of the reasons I love open source so much.
Hope to swing? The US has killed many more people in wars of conquest than China in the last 50 years. So i really see both as problematic but the US is still much more violent geopolitically. Ie worse in my eyes, Israels latest genocide being a creszendo on an already horrible track record.
I am a straight man and I feel like some communities just become scape-goats
We have this us vs them mentality which some people use to collect power and influence at the costs of them
Ultimately I think that it is a very foolish thing because I think that as long as nobody bothers on my freedom etc., I should be in literally nobody's business bothering their freedom
> It's 2025, almost 2026 and we're still doing this shit. I don't care if you think I'm icky, I think other people are icky sometimes but I don't try to stop them from existing for it. People are entitled to be who they are.
I agree 100% with this message.
But one thing I have problem with (on the straight side of things) is that I have seen occasionally some extremely feminist comments which do try to impeach or try to have this very fundamental skewed problem that man are ALL the problem and its all man's fault etc. and I have seen the same in masculinity cultures as well and I feel like both of them are just radicalizing people to seize power and influence or sell courses or feel better about themselves.
I think that we sometimes forget that people are people and we should treat others with the same courtesy and kindness that we expect to be treated with, I guess. maybe we sometimes don't treat them that way or didn't treat them that way and I guess we should just apologize or try not to do that ever again. Mistakes happen but as long as we still have a mindset similar to doing good, I feel like things would be hopeful.
Chinese people lives are getting better and they largely are on the same page. Meanwhile the US has DEI in the govt while the govt says DEI is bad. Minority authoritarian rule in the US with the Senate.
The US is a brutal dictatorship all the time.
China thankfully has a govt that is on the same page as the people.
Country with social credit, LLMs that have a seizure at "Tiananment square", Winnie the Pooh and Taiwan, Great firewall, cultural genocide of Uyghurs is a country where "lives are getting better" while US is a brutal dictatorship, my fucking sides.
Is that so? I have not surveyed the Chinese, but will not be surprised if the approval was higher than you'd imagine. If anything, the core ideas of communism have clear demand in the west and people are voting for them when they are shown with a lipstick on top.
> I have not surveyed the Chinese but will not be surprised if the approval was higher than you'd imagine. If anything, the core ideas have clear demand in the west and people are voting for them when they are shown with a lipstick on top.
Ask other dictatorships while you're at it. Systems so great one wonders why stupid democracies haven't adopted the model still.
You're weasling your way out of the core point. I'm in no way advocating for such ideas. Quite the opposite. I'm just saying unless you have data about this you shouldn't rely on your instincts. There are many nuances around this and economic prosperity can mask huge other issues.
> Ask other dictatorships while you're at it.
In fact, I have observed immigrants from certain failed states that you refer to as "dictatorships." In many cases they say they hate their government yet they vote for mostly the same policies when they are given the chance to do so in the West, so again, even surveying them directly with a lazy question "do you like the government in country X" won't get you to the spirit of the answer.
To wit, you also just fell for the common fallacy of assuming dictatorship is the opposite of democracy. They are much more alike than you'd think. Democracy isn't liberty.
Would they? Unlikely, given iPhone creates a lot of jobs there. But if iPhone becomes the de facto devices for Chinese citizens to access illegal content then the chance is none-zero.
(And of course they can make Linux illegal too. It's just harder to enforce than making iPhone illegal.)
Can you give me the source of where brazil made linux illegal? I am sorry but I tried to search and the only references I could find were of brazil banning twitter/X for some reason.
I am genuinely curious how someone can decide linux to be illegal. How would the ban even work out?
Brazil has what is known as the Felca law, which requires providers of app stores and "terminal operating systems" to do age verification and to provide secure auditable APIs that meet government standards for doing the same. Presumably, specific distros like Red Hat can go through a government approval process in order to be legal to distribute in Brazil, but without such certification and without providing such system-level APIs, a random distro like Debian will be illegal to distribute in Brazil.
I didn't know that tim cook was gay and here is one message from wikipedia I want to quote
> In June 2014, Cook attended San Francisco's gay pride parade along with a delegation of Apple staff.[85] On October 30, Cook publicly came out as gay in an editorial for Bloomberg Business, saying, "I'm proud to be gay, and I consider being gay among the greatest gifts God has given me."[86] While it had been reported in early 2011 that Cook was gay,[87][88] at the time, Cook tried to keep his personal life private
I feel like Tim Cook should be a man of his words and try to actually help the community he is proud to be in but I am sure that investors might not be happy but that just goes on to show that maybe even some CEO's could be puppets of shareholders and can be forced to do things solely for profit where their heart might not lie.
I think that another point is that shareholders can also be puppets of CEO's in the case of Elon musk 1 Trillion $ deal shows that imo
I feel like we live in the times where morality can be side-lined for profit and be celebrated. The whole idea why even people can be puppets of each other could be because they get profits and power and influence because of it (basically money most of the times)
But what power do those CEO's have if they can't stand for what they think is right or educate themselves on these matters.
"No" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. The things he could do would be very painful, maybe a Pyrrhic victory. Maybe they're worth it if the alternative is aiding an abetting authoritarian regime. I'm not casting judgment, just presenting the options. Which do actually exist.
I'd also be surprised if this code isn't already available with the US forces too and sometimes the enemy can be from within too.