It is doable, given sufficient political will, though it’d be militarily pointless to go that far. Russia would fold long before that, or try playing nuclear hardball or something.

https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2020/february/war-highest-defense-spending-measured

In 1943 and 1944, more than 40% of GDP was devoted to national defense.

US estimated GDP for 2024 is $28.781 trillion.

That’d be about $11.5 trillion/year for military spending, were things to reach WW2-comparable levels.

The EU estimated GDP is only up on WP for 2023, but that’s $17.818 trillion. Add that to the UK’s 2024 GDP of $3.495 trillion, Canada’s estimated 2024 GDP of $2.242 trillion, Japan’s estimated 2024 GDP of $4.110 trillion, Australia at $1.790 trillion, Turkey at $1.114 trillion, and Norway at $0.525 trillion, and you’ve got another $31.094 trillion in aggregate.

40% of that for military spending would be $12.438 trillion/year.

So at that kind of level, figure $24 trillion a year to work with as the aggregate of the US and all other listed countries.

I have already looked in XMPP, but it required SSL certs and I did not have the mood to configure them.

There are definitely XMPP clients that do end-to-end encryption that do not rely on TLS for key exchange, though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off_the_record_messaging

Off-the-record Messaging (OTR) is a cryptographic protocol that provides encryption for instant messaging conversations. OTR uses a combination of AES symmetric-key algorithm with 128 bits key length, the Diffie–Hellman key exchange with 1536 bits group size, and the SHA-1 hash function. In addition to authentication and encryption, OTR provides forward secrecy and malleable encryption.

The primary motivation behind the protocol was providing deniable authentication for the conversation participants while keeping conversations confidential, like a private conversation in real life, or off the record in journalism sourcing. This is in contrast with cryptography tools that produce output which can be later used as a verifiable record of the communication event and the identities of the participants. The initial introductory paper was named “Off-the-Record Communication, or, Why Not To Use PGP”.[1]

I’ve used Pidgin with the libOTR plugin that implements that protocol.

I mean, you can stick a light switch with a motion sensor on it that’ll flip on automatically.

https://www.amazon.com/motion-sensor-light-switches/s?k=motion+sensor+light+switches

Probably easier to make your machine do what you want than it is to make global human behavior be what you want.

That’s not to mention the optics.

https://www.quora.com/Where-does-the-M1-Abrams-have-the-optics-of-its-main-cannon-I-dont-know-anything-about-tanks

#4 is the optic for the RWS. This cannot be used to aim the main gun, but it can be used as an alternate form of CITV, especially since it’s so damned high off the ground, it may be able to see over obstacles. Not as good as CITV in the thermal range, though.

That being said, some civilian vehicles are gonna have their own camera systems too, so…

The soldiers brought two High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, with them.

I was reading about how the Marines were interested in HIMARS for that WRT China. Any conflict with China would likely be in large part maritime, but HIMARS is big enough that it can launch munitions with enough range that it can take out ships, act in an area-denial role.

kagis

Here’s someone mentioning that.

https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2020/11/black-sea-drill-again-validates-himars-as-an-anti-ship-weapon-system/

Black Sea Drill Again Validates HIMARS as an Anti-Ship Weapon System

This isn’t the first time that the U.S. Army and the U.S Air Force used this tactic as the HIMARS RO-RO concept dates back years with the idea of landing C-130s into the field, having the HiMARS drive off, park at a distance, set up, fire, and then drive and reload back into the cargo planes for immediate take-off without the need to reload or refuel.  The U.S. Marines operate in similar fashion with their HiMARS and U.S. Marine Corps KC-130Js.

The U.S. Marines do not have any tracked MLRSs in inventory) and the U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps’ (U.S.M.C.) HIMARS are seen as one of the pivotal key launchers for the current and future United States’ strategy and tactics for an Anti-Ship land-based weapon system that can counter peer nations’ shipping and breach Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2/AD) in the Pacific.

With future land-based Anti-Ship Precision Guided Weapons in development and available now, such as the Naval Strike Missile, the U.S. Army’s tracked MLRS, 6×6 HIMARS, and 8×8 Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Truck (HEMTT), and the U.S. Marines’ 8×8 Logistic Vehicle System Replacement (LVSR) and HIMARS, when modified and outfitted as Anti-Shipping rocket or missile launchers, are poised to become the “Go to” system for LBASM and LRPFs to prevent enemy ships and amphibious assaults on allied-protected islands and shores

good protection for the crew

It’s completely unarmored. Unless your concern is sunburn, inclement weather, or possibly indecent exposure, it isn’t gonna provide much by way of protection.

Also, nothing like having to check whether the post I’m reading is from !Ukraine@sopuli.xyz, !NonCredibleDefense@lemmy.world, or !NotTheOnion@lemmy.world. 2024, man.

If we send rocket(s) up and can fiddle with its velocity enough, we could keep it.

I feel like if you capture a new moon, you should also get to name it.

If McDonalds will sponsor it, we could have Luna and 98 Big Macs.

A YouTube representative confirmed that the practice will now become commonplace “as we’ve seen…strong viewer response.”

I have often lamented about those boring times when I have to suffer through a plain old paused screen, with nary an ad to be found.

Russia, Iran, North Korea

Ehhh.

I mean, North Korea doesn’t have the resources to do much most of the time. Yeah, they’re well-positioned for this conflict, because they’ve spent a relatively-high chunk of resources they do have on artillery and maintained that over time, built a stockpile. Artillery is a bottleneck on Russia in Ukraine. So they’re potentially a factor in Russia’s invasion in Ukraine.

But they just don’t have the ability to change much in the world, most of the time.

Not that Iran or Russia are exactly in prime condition either, but they aren’t at the kind of level where feeding the population is regularly a problem.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korea

Per capita GDP: $640

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran

Per capita GDP: $5,310

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia

Per capita GDP: $14,391

Big difference between those.

Any resources they want to spend on fighting with other countries needs to come out of that, and they have some basic costs like feeding their population that they have to cover before the option to do other things with remaining resources comes up.

I recently commented on NCD with a twelve-year-old, humorous-given-present-context review I found of that radio on eham, when apparently counterfeit IC-V82 radios were a serious problem:

https://www.eham.net/reviews/view-product?id=5046

Watch out for fake v82’s! Only buy from authorized retailers or someone who did.

Words of wisdom there, eham.net.

https://jpost.com/breaking-news/article-820808

The walkie-talkies linked to explosions targeting the Hezbollah terrorist group that killed 20 people in Lebanon and injured hundreds of others could not have made the exploding devices, the Japanese company said on Thursday.

“There’s no way a bomb could have been integrated into one of our devices during manufacturing. The process is highly automated and fast-paced, so there’s no time for such things,” Yoshiki Enomoto, a director at ICOM, told Reuters outside the company’s headquarters in Osaka, Japan, on Thursday.

ICOM has said it halted production of the radio models identified in the attack a decade ago and that most of those still on sale were counterfeit.

“If it turns out to be counterfeit, then we’ll have to investigate how someone created a bomb that looks like our product. If it’s genuine, we’ll have to trace its distribution to figure out how it ended up there,” Enomoto said.

There’s no one single model doing projections.

Five Thirty Eight’s, which is one prominent one, has favored Harris somewhat for a while.

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2024-election-forecast/

Harris wins 64 times out of 100

in our simulations of the 2024 presidential election.

Trump wins 36 times out of 100.

There is a less than 1-in-100 chance of no Electoral College winner.

Nate Silver – who started Five Thirty Eight and is now off doing his own thing and runs a fork of the model that Five Thirty Eight used to run – had them, last I looked, had Harris and Trump at about about even chances.

Both Silver’s model and Five Thirty Eight’s model agreed that the debate improved Harris’s chances.

deleted by creator

Or even a dead one.

From what I’ve read in the past, Iranian state actors – influence campaigns and breaking into computers and such – have opposed another Trump presidency.

Trump greenlighted the hit on Soleimani, and is more-supportive of Israel.

Russian state actors, on the other hand, have been supportive of another Trump presidency.

I imagine that that’s something that Tehran and Moscow probably need to work out.

EDIT:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/04/business/media/iran-disinformation-us-presidential-race.html

Iran Emerges as a Top Disinformation Threat in U.S. Presidential Race

With a flurry of hacks and fake websites, Iran has intensified its efforts to discredit American democracy and possibly tip the race against former President Donald Trump.

EDIT2: I was just (critically) discussing Microsoft’s naming scheme for hostile groups the other day. Russian ones are named “something Blizzard” and Iranian ones “something Sandstorm”.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/defender-xdr/microsoft-threat-actor-naming

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/us-says-iranian-hackers-sent-trump-information-to-biden-camp/ar-AA1qNFnn

A hacker group with suspected ties to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps called Mint Sandstorm is suspected of successfully infiltrating the campaign of Trump, a US law enforcement official said at the time.

Those Iranian guys are APT42, aka “Mint Sandstorm”.

https://www.wired.com/story/russia-fancy-bear-us-hacking-campaign-government-energy/

referring to the Hillary Clinton campaign director whose emails were stolen and leaked by APT28 ahead of the 2016 election.

https://www.logpoint.com/en/blog/emerging-threats/forest-blizzard/

The Cyber espionage group Forest Blizzard is attributed to the GRU (Russia’s military intelligence agency).

Forest Blizzard is also known by its numerous aliases: APT 28, Fancy Bear, Pawn Storm, Sednit Gang, Sofacy Group, BlueDelta, and STRONTIUM.

And Russian guys, APT28, aka “Forest Blizzard”.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/u-s-accuses-russia-election-interference/

Russian public relations companies to promote disinformation and state-sponsored narratives as part of efforts to influence the upcoming presidential election. He said an internal planning document created by the Kremlin stated one of the campaign’s goals is “securing Russia’s preferred outcome in the election.”

The campaigns involved using “cybersquatted” domains, which are intended to mimic another entity’s domain name and trick visitors into believing they are visiting the legitimate website. These sites, Garland said, were designed to look like major U.S.-based news outlets such as the Washington Post or Fox News, by using the same layout and design, but were fake sites spreading Russian propaganda created by the Kremlin.

Among the goals of the campaigns are to “reduce international support for Ukraine, bolster pro-Russian policies and interests, and influence voters in the U.S. and foreign elections” while concealing the Russian government and its agents as the source of the content, according to the court filings.

The Justice Department accused Doppelganger of using “influencers” worldwide, paid social media advertisements and fake social media profiles purporting to be U.S. citizens to drive viewership to the domains, “all of which attempted to trick viewers into believing they were being directed to a legitimate news media outlet’s website.”

Projects directed at the U.S. include the “Good Old USA Project,” “Guerilla Media Campaign,” and “U.S. Social Media Influencers Network Project,” according to court filings.

The Justice Department obtained notes, project proposals, planning documents and other records during its investigation, some of which detail objectives, target audiences and campaign topics. The department redacted the names of the political parties and presidential candidates, labeling them only as U.S. Political Party A or B, or Candidate A or B, but the documents include information that makes them identifiable.

Objectives of the “Good Old USA” project include boosting the percentage of Americans who believe the U.S. is “doing way too much to support Ukraine,” and lowering President Biden’s confidence rating down to at least 29% in the lead-up to the November election, according to documents submitted by the Justice Department. The document appears to have been prepared in late 2023, when Mr. Biden was still seeking reelection.

EDIT3: Both the Russian and Iranian camps have been reported to be trying to increase political division and decrease trust in the American political system, so I guess they’re aligned on that much, at any rate.

Endoscope profile pics are the future.

I believe it’s ICOM, not Baofeng.

https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/article-820735

What are the ICOM IC-V82 radios exploding in Lebanon?

On that note, one review on eham.net from twelve years back for this radio is amusing:

https://www.eham.net/reviews/view-product?id=5046

Watch out for fake v82’s! Only buy from authorized retailers or someone who did.

The ~/.ssh/known_hosts file only contains public keys. I mean, maybe someone doesn’t want to hand out the list of hosts that they talk to, but exposing it doesn’t expose the private keys, which are what you really need to keep secret.

Those are in ~/.ssh/id_rsa or the like, depending upon key type.

And while in war, there are prohibitions on targeting non-combatants, they don’t require that there be no collateral damage. Israel’s pretty clearly targeting Hezbollah here, not random Lebanese.

I do wonder if Hezbollah can maybe agree to stay out of part of Lebanon. I don’t think that that’d need to compromise either Israel’s or Hezbollah’s war plans, so maybe it’d be possible to come to some sort of agreement like that; you’d need buy-in from both parties. Then that area could be used as a safe area for Lebanese non-combatants.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-launches-crackdown-on-mobile-phones-in-schools

Mobile phones are set to be prohibited in schools across England as part of the government’s plan to minimise disruption and improve behaviour in classrooms.

New mobile phones in schools guidance issued today (19 February 2024) backs headteachers in prohibiting the use of mobile phones throughout the school day, including at break times.

Many schools around the country are already prohibiting mobile phone use with great results. This guidance will ensure there is a consistent approach across all schools.

I suppose if enough countries do that sort of thing, pagers might start doing a comeback.

EDIT: Though looking at the wording, I’m not actually sure if this is a “we’re banning cell phones” or a “we’re talking about policies that make it look like we’re banning cell phones to keep the anti-cell-phone crowd happy”.