What Russian Officials Think of the Invasion of Ukraine
From Ilya Lozovsky:
In reality, the attitude toward the war within the corridors of power is ambiguous. I came to this conclusion after speaking with several members of parliament and officials at various levels. Many of them are discouraged, frightened, and are making apocalyptic forecasts. Andrei Kostin, [head of the largely state-owned VTB Bank], is “in mourning.” Some Duma members are thinking of giving up their seats. Two days before Putin announced the start of the “special operation,” one of my most ‘in-the-know’ friends thought that it wouldn’t come to war, because war wouldn’t benefit anybody. I see that officials, deputies, and even journalists at government outlets who have left their posts are relieved that they no longer have anything to do with this, and are speaking out against the war.
Even if that’s 100% true it won’t get change the course of any of this.Report
I wonder how many of them are “ambiguous” because they want to know which side to back.Report
For those interested in salty language round the world –
The original title of this piece was «Тщательно выговаривают слово п****ц» which was translated by Mr. Lozovky for an English version for Ms. Rustamova’s substack, as “They’re carefully enunciating the word clusterf*ck”.
The curse word in Russian is the second on this list
https://theculturetrip.com/europe/russia/articles/12-russian-swear-words-you-need-to-know/Report
We’re 12 days into the war. The gov of Ukraine still stands. Those are both facts independent of spin.
I wasn’t expecting this development. I’ve no clue whether it gets easier, if the flow of arms we’re sending them has any impact, if Russia will get a lot more competent, if this will be a meat grinder for Russia.
My wife is spun up, her parents live on that side of Poland. Far as I can tell Poland is welcoming the refugees. The mind kind of boggles at this happening on the border of a first world nation.Report
I think it both raises the terrible human toll over the short term but probably also raises the odds of an independent most likely smaller Ukraine over the (maybe much) longer term.Report
I do wonder if the West told Putin “you can have Crimea permanently” if he’d back down. He clearly wants a defanged puppet in Ukraine, and that’s clearly not happening without significant cost.Report
I know I’m a pessimist but I feel also like that would be a “if you give a mouse a cookie” type of situationReport
As tawdry as it would feel I think something like that very much needs to be on the table. The forcible defanging of Ukraine can’t possibly be going as well as Putin imagined but Russia is still more than capable of wreaking havoc. Maybe officially let Crimea go and have some kind of internationally recognized, de-militarized and highly autonomous Donbas. Still in Ukraine but off limits for weapons, including partisan militias. Now that he’s done this he can’t walk away without something to save face.Report
If it ain’t on the table now, wait until you see prices at the end of this week.Report
Much worse than saving face. The damage that has been done has been done, it’s a sunk cost.
If he walks out now he’s leaving Ukraine’s people hating him and fully allied with the West. The hatred would be fine if he had his people in charge.
The cost is going to be MUCH higher than he wanted, but from his point of view there’s a strong argument that he’s already gone all in, so he might as well stay all in.Report
My marker for the end is that they’ll consolidate in the southest (where the ginned-up “separatist” movement exists), claim that it’s part of Russia now, spend about a month shelling various Ukrainian cities until they’re depopulated, and then pack it in. The world will agree to change the Ukranian/Russian border and that’ll be it.Report
Hard to bet against that- seems most likely.Report
To the extent the Russians are acting rationally I don’t think the sunk cost thing works. It is not cost free for him to stay all in indefinitely and the longer he is all in the longer he risks the kind of unforeseen disasters war historically brings about.
Putin is also weakening his own military in this process and the threats he can plausibly make with conventional power. No one in Warsaw or Helsinki or even Tallinn or Vilnius is looking at this and thinking they have no shot at going toe to toe with Russian forces, at least for a short period. That in itself changes all of the calculations in ways that are not good for Russia.
That said, there is no getting them out of Ukraine in any kind of short term timeline without giving Russia the ability to declare they ‘won’ and are going home of their own free will.Report
Not just weakening, exposing.
I’ve seen a number of various experts pointing out that, for example, the tires on the trucks are blowing because they’re old and the trucks have not been driven for years and the basic maintenance just hasn’t been done.
I’m remembering the old saw about tactics and strategy but the thing that will prevent you from winning at all is logistics. And Russia is demonstrating crappy, crappy logistics.Report
On the other side of the ledger:
How long can the West remain united on sanctions? How much economic pain will Americans tolerate before it becomes politically untenable?
If Americans had to choose between $7/ gallon gasoline versus accepting an enslaved Ukraine, what would be the decision?Report
Sure. Everyone has an interest in resolving it which suggests it can probably be resolved. Can of course doesn’t guarantee will.Report
Ukraine would be in chains before 5 pm and we all know it. But elections aren’t for almost a year yet. How long can Putin keep his markets closed?Report
Midterms are happening right now, and gas prices are already a campaign issue working against the administration.Report
Yes, but the actual election isn’t until November. Putin can’t wait that long hoping the GOP wins big and right wing russiaphiles bail him out. They’ll also only have Congress and (at most) a non-filibuster breaking majority in the Senate. Foreign policy would be hard to steer from there even with a competent and united GOP which our current GOP assuredly isn’t.Report
I’m trying to imagine what bills even an overwhelming Republican House/Senate could pass.
“Legalize Fracking”?
“More Pipelines”?
I suppose that that could make for one hell of a game of Chicken with Biden in preparation for 2024… arguably the most important election of our lifetimes.Report
The administration is reacting now to that political calculus which is why they’re being so cautious.
The Republicans are trying to force Biden into a pincers between “He’s too weak to cut off Russian oil” and “Ermagerd lookit gas prices!”Report
“Ermagerd lookit gas prices!”
I think that gas prices are, themselves, a shiv. Like, you don’t need a second thing.
The fact that Biden is talking with Venezuela and Iran about trading for oil is one of those things that you could use in discussions about domestic oil policy.
The “too weak to cut off Russian oil” might be thrown around as an “AND ANOTHER THING!”, but it’s not an attack in and of itself.
“High gas prices” is an attack in and of itself.Report
This would be a great tie-in to the thread on climate change and how it interacts with global geopolitics.Report
Don’t forget representative democracy.
If “the people” vote for low gas prices despite being told about climate change, we are in a place where we have to come up with something to distract them.Report
Who is doing what now?Report
People. Voting for low gas prices.
Despite being told that doing so will end the world.Report
Who is doing what in response to that?Report
The people will be going to the election polls this November. It seems likely that they will vote with their gas tanks rather than with their environmental responsibility to our grandchildren.
Despite being told that they’re murdering poor people.Report
That stuff will bite over time. The more immediate strategic problem for Putin is that this was supposed to be a fait accompli. Now that it has not been I would think the most immediate pressure on him is the question of how much he can allow his military power to be degraded without creating problems with his own generals.Report
It’s pretty much moot, as long as the answer is “at least six months”. Honestly, that’s pessimistic. Three is probably enough.
After three months, Russia will cease to be a functional country.
China cannot snap it’s fingers and replace the entire world’s trade with Russia, nor can they spend the money to prop up Russia (not on terms Russia can agree to). Russia cannot, bluntly, survive off it’s own internal resources for long.
Domestic air travel is about to die in Russia, as they can’t get replacement parts. Their factories are already shutting down — they can’t get the semi-finished goods they need. They’re using dumb bombs because they can’t make more precision ones, their resource extraction economy is paralyzed as their buyers fled and companies outright divest (there’s a reason their stock market has been held closed). Cars will break next. Internal goods transport over the next two months — they’ll probably keep the trains mostly running (if there are any maintenance critical foreign components, that won’t be the case and that’s apocalyptic for Russia), but last mile trucking and transport will slowly grind to a halt.
Software, hardware, raw resources, semi-finished and finished goods for internal use and further manufacturing, parts for everything from cell phones to cars to airplanes — all yanked, and no other sources to get them from.
This at the end of COVID, where stockpiles were already low and the global supply chain strained — there’s no way China can pick up the slack even for the goods they HAVE workable substitutes for (and Russia would be paying 10 times the price anyways due to it’s foreign assets being frozen and it’s internal currency worthless) and Russia has clearly and blatantly shown it’s own internal stockpile exist more on paper than in reality.
World sanctions won’t ease until Russia retreats from Ukraine. Russia won’t do that unless Putin dies or until a few months after it’s economy does and that’s because it’s solders will be out of food and fuel and ammo and will be hiking back.
And all of that? A few months. And each day that passes while we wait for Russia to understand that, a part of the damage becomes permanent, to stay even when sanctions lift. Decisions being made that Russia is ‘unreliable’ — better to pay a slight premium to avoid the risk, investments that weren’t economical when Russia was part of the world but are NOW.
And it’s working — anyone watching social media can already see the Russian response — variants of the same thing: “The sanctions aren’t hurting Russia, they’re hurting the world. Russia will be just fine/Russia and China will together be even strong. You should end it, to save yourselves the pain, to prevent Russia and China from taking over the world with their powerful economic alliance that this will forge”.
It’s blatant and stupid and clearly false, and honestly they’d have been better off focusing on gasoline prices, but they don’t have a lot of moves. And I guess their psy-ops and PR people realize they’re being paid in useless pieces of paper.Report
“I do wonder if the West told Putin “you can have Crimea permanently” if he’d back down. ”
And maybe if we just gave the tiger a steak he’d stop eating us.Report
But in this case, the steak is lying between its paws.Report
On the one hand once you pay the Danegeld you’ll never get rid of the Dane. On the other hand the Dane in question kindof already has the Danegeld.Report
Thinking about this and knowing that my personal inclination is to have the crisis stop more or less immediately, I’m pretty sure that giving Putin Ukraine (or half of Ukraine or whatever) and saying “don’t do it again” and turning trade back on will not leave Putin in a position of strength.
How much has he spent already? How much has he lost? How much has he exposed?
Even if he walks away from the table having won the Danegeld, he’s not in a place where he’s got much else.
(It has the added benefit of avoiding WWIII.)Report
No arguing here. If Putin got Crimea and the eastern regions out of this but had to withdraw, pay out a bucket of cash to Ukraine and the war ended today I’d be delighted. Domestically that’d be the very best thing for Biden in the US- especially if Russia pumps extra oil to pay for all this mess.
I suspect, though, that the Ukrainians will need to suffer some more significant losses before they’ll be pushed to the point that they’ll agree to it.Report
This is circulating twitter… it seems a bit reductionist and I’m not confident that it’s complete (or even authentic)… but if it’s legit, there’s a way to work some wins for Ukraine.
UKR can put on the table reparations in the form of % gross from NS2 – reparations cannot be direct, and this would be an elegant tax on commerce designed to bypass UKR and since taxes are paid by consumers… then having the Germans pay a chunk of the reparations is fitting and meta.
UKR is going to cede territory; it already has. The upside of ceding the Russian dominated enclaves is that elections in UKR will be factionally just UKR. UKR can navigate a future gateway status that isn’t 100% west or east – which is what UKR has historically been.
But, unlike 2014, it can get something in return for Crimea, it can negotiate an EU/Russia enterprise Zone. Basically the EU has to grant UKR a special status which makes it a gateway for Russian and European trade – another form of reparations and a more formal EU relationship that stops short of NATO, but gives is economic benefits that will (and need to) benefit Russia indirectly.
Additional UKR counter: Russian Orthodox church recognizes UKR autocephaly granted by Constantinople in exchange for the ceded land which remains Russian Orthodox.
Finally, we sink both UKR and Russian Oligarch yachts. No reason, just because it would be popular on twitter and I need the clicks.
Report
This seems like a no-brainer to accept, if accurate.
Putin saves face, Ukraine survives, the killing and destruction stop.
Let Russia enjoy their Pyrrhic victory.
Putin is 70 years old and will not be in power forever. Ukraine can be properly armed in the interim while waiting for the despot’s ouster.Report
It’s the general shape of how the conflict will likely end. Are the Ukrainians ready to accept a deal along those parameter yet though?Report
What’s their alternative?Report
Well, we’re speculating here but let’s play Ukrainian Government for a moment. To grossly simplify the state of play shall we describe the way as mixed. Russian forces are advancing in Southern Ukraine moderately well but their status in central and northern Ukraine is basically bogged down at best to utter clusterfuck at worst. On the other ledger the entire international community has basically united behind Ukraine for non-military support; food and arms are pouring in and Russias metaphorical economic balls have been put in such a pincher that the Russian Government basically is afraid to let their markets open.
The risk of prolonging the war is ranges from Russia taking more territory up to Russia taking the government out. There’s the additional risk of Russia moving off their early idiotic stance of swift decapitation and more into the traditional Russian mode of “blow everything the fish up” which is how the Russians did business in Syria and Chechnia and arguably plays to their strengths. “Blow everything the fish up”, of course, would level Ukraine.
The benefits of prolonging the war are the possibility Russia continues to spin its wheels in Ukraine, loses more troops and suffers the domestic impacts of international sanctions that could result in a weaker Russian bargaining position for the ultimate settlement.
The weaker the Russian position the more likely Ukraine can derive some actual benefit from the future settlement. I would guess the Ukrainians have written off Crimea in their heads and the eastern separatist regions are pretty valueless on anything but an emotional level. Most of this is probably a question about how concretely the Ukrainians will have to tie their hands regarding foreign policy and how much, if any, money the Russians will have to pony up for the damage they’ve done and the territories they’ve taken.
So long as the Ukrainians think they can strengthen their position by bleeding the Russians and letting sanctions bite that would incent them to put off coming to the final settlement. If the Ukrainians think the Russians are going to start making immediate and significant military gains or unless mass destruction on Ukraine then I’d think they’d be in more of a hurry to get to the final deal.Report
Well, we’re speculating here but let’s play Ukrainian Government for a moment. To grossly simplify the state of play let’s describe the war situation as mixed. Russian forces are advancing in Southern Ukraine moderately well but their status in central and northern Ukraine is basically bogged down at best to utter clusterfish at worst. On the other ledger the entire international community has basically united behind Ukraine for non-military support; food and arms are pouring in and Russias metaphorical economic balls have been put in such a pincher that the Russian Government basically is afraid to let their markets open.
The risk of prolonging the war ranges from Russia taking more territory up to Russia taking the government out. There’s the additional risk of Russia moving off their early idiotic stance of swift decapitation and more into the traditional Russian mode of “blow everything the fish up” which is how the Russians did business in Syria and Chechnia and arguably plays to their strengths. “Blow everything the fish up”, of course, would level Ukraine.
The benefits of prolonging the war are the possibility Russia continues to spin its wheels in Ukraine, loses more troops and suffers the domestic impacts of international sanctions that could result in a weaker Russian bargaining position for the ultimate settlement.
The weaker the Russian position the more likely Ukraine can derive some actual benefit from the future settlement. I would guess the Ukrainians have written off Crimea in their heads and the eastern separatist regions are pretty valueless on anything but an emotional level. Most of this is probably a question about how concretely the Ukrainians will have to tie their hands regarding foreign policy and how much, if any, money the Russians will have to pony up for the damage they’ve done and the territories they’ve taken.
So long as the Ukrainians think they can strengthen their position by bleeding the Russians and letting sanctions bite that would incent them to put off coming to the final settlement. If the Ukrainians think the Russians are going to start making immediate and significant military gains or unless mass destruction on Ukraine then I’d think they’d be in more of a hurry to get to the final deal.Report
FWIW, it appears Ukraine might actually be up on tanks right now. They’ve definitely killed more Russian tanks than Russians have (they’re up even if you normalize for Russians having more tanks to blow up).
But they might have actually have a net gain in tanks so far, given they’ve been capturing a lot of them.Report
I’m glad! But let’s recognize that any tanks they capture probably aren’t strategic assets any more.Report
Why not? Most were captured intact after being abandoned, and quite a few just needed fuel and possibly munitions, and given where Ukraine got it’s military from originally, some of those tanks will fire Ukrainian rounds easily enough — and Ukrainians reservists are likely to be able to drive and fight them, as again — some are even the same basic models Ukraine has.
Ones that aren’t useful — either for parts or to actually put reservists in — are I’m sure blown up. Or driven to critical locations then disabled (60 tons of tank is hard to move).
But the other stuff — cargo trucks, fuel tucks, APCs, are definitely being pressed into service. Ukraine practices universal conscription, and while they don’t have the sort of reserve equipment depth the US does — they do have plenty of ex-military artillery, armor, and supply folks being reactivated that just need a vehicle to drive.Report
I was thinking more in terms of that a lot of those broken down vehicles did so due to poor historic maintenance. I’ll take any good news I can get, though, so long as it’s real.Report
I would have to think so. Part of the settlement of course would need to include anyone who wants to leave the breakaway regions can. Leaving would be the downside of self determination for those people but so it has been in Europe for almost 200 years.Report
“The future of Ukraine is for the Ukrainians to determine!
Well, them and a bunch of Americans who last week couldn’t find it on a map.”Report
Heh if you think we’re bad wait until you hear about the other people who have had their spoons in this cauldron.Report
“We are willing to fight Russia to the very last Ukrainian say Americans on the internet still mad about 2016.”Report
I don’t understand this comment.
Are there Americans who are forcing Ukrainians to fight?
Have the Ukrainians given an indication of their thoughts on the Russian terms?Report
Yes, I linked to Zelensky commenting.
I’m sure the Ukrainians will take a pragmatic approach to navigating the war and negotiations… It’s people making making weird moral judgements about other Nations who are pretty oblivious to the actual events.
edit: comment which appears to be in moderation.Report
Freed it.
If there’s a way to give Zelensky face from our side, we probably need to figure out what it is and then give him an additional 25% on top of that.Report
My guess is that what the Ukraine wants in the broadest sense is the ability to get rich from, and easily travel in and out of, the EU without the constant threat of exactly what’s happening.Report
“Most Favored Nation” status?
Could that be a play?
OF COURSE UKRAINE IS NOT A MEMBER OF THE EU! SHUT YOUR MOUTH! It’s just a country with whom we trade and don’t tariff.Report
It’s not so crazy. That’s basically what Norway and Switzerland have. I assume it is close to what the proponents of Brexit (probably delusionally) think the UK could eventually achieve, minus the stuff that infringes on their sovereignty in uncomfortable ways.
The Schengen zone does not require EU membership and the bloc can certainly negotiate mutually beneficial arrangements with other countries without any prospect of joining.Report
I’m not very well-versed in any of this but Ukraine agreeing to not join the EU/NATO as part of a settlement would seem to be agreeing to allow this same thing to happen again any time Russia feels like it.
The Russian terms seem to amount to, “We get what we want and you get nothing. And if we decide we want more, we’ll just do this again.”
In exchange for Crimea, why wouldn’t Ukraine insist on joining the EU and/or NATO?Report
Chip chafed at it above, but this is the point March is getting at below. Other third parties (i.e. the US/NATO/the EU) need to be at the table to make sure anything comes with a guarantee of security from Russia. I think it is also fair to assume that Western arms industries will be major beneficiaries of that as well.
Essentially Russia on the record says this is the final agreement on Ukranian territory and the US (and Germany, and Britain, and France, and Turkey, and whoever else) get to arm the shit out of Ukraine forever, probably to NATO or near NATO standards.Report
A couple points:
The fate of this war, like all wars, will be determined not just by what’s happening on the battlefield, but what’s happening on the political fronts within each of the participants.
Gasoline prices in America are one aspect, natural gas prices in Europe another.
Another is the domestic situation in Russia. While there is a surprisingly strong anti-war, anti-Putin movement, there is also a surprisingly strong pro-war, pro-Putin movement.
Apparently the dream of a Russian Empire that comprises all of eastern Europe has a powerful constituency among the Russian people.
Even if Russia is forced into a negotiated peace, its entirely possible that Putin will emerge from this much stronger than before and that any humiliating armistice may be seen as the seed of a Dolchstosslegende mythology leading to a much worse war in a decade’s time.
Or conversely, a negotiated settlement that leaves Ukraine dissatisfied may lead to a decades long guerilla war.
The point being, that there is a lot about this that Americans really don’t know and don’t have a good grasp of.
We don’t really know much about the domestic politics of either Ukraine or Russia.
Not only is our vision of these nations cloudy and distorted, our motives are not detached from our own self-interest.Report
Of course it isn’t detached from self interest. Nothing in international affairs is. So it’s up to us to pursue those interests intelligently. I still think our failure to do so played a big role in creating the crisis.
That does not preclude us from playing a productive role in ending it. As the guarantor of security for more than half of the continent we probably have no choice but to do so. And as long as we can stay clear eyed about what we’re doing and why there’s no reason it can’t have a productive outcome for us as well.Report
And to be clear that’s just part of it. I would think in addition to making Ukraine strong the deal would include Russian access to various international trade and financial services being contingent on the continued honoring of whatever is agreed.Report
We agree to treat them like a normal state as long as they behave like a normal state.Report
There’s a clip of Zelensky saying that the Three Point Framework has a workable solution, but he’s not going to respond to an Ultimatum… which strikes me as a good response.
Obviously I don’t have Zelensky’s understanding of how the war is progressing or his defenses holding… but whatever his situation, he’s smart to insist that Russia engage third parties with their opening negotiation stance. It’s a pretty common ‘trick’ to put reasonable demands on the table only to bury them with ‘the rest’ of the demands.
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Zelensky has been playing his bad hand pretty well.Report
Yeah, he has an appreciation of what needs to be done in the moment. Plus, entertainment contracts are probably good preparation for negotiations with Putin.
But I’ll wait until the affair is over to consider final grades.Report
Sensible.Report
Twitter seems to have it right.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2022/03/07/ukraine-russia-invasion-live-updates/9404740002/Report
As war loomed, U.S. armed Ukraine to hit Russian aircraft, tanks and prep for urban combat, declassified shipment list shows https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/03/04/us-weapons-ukraine/
So we saw this coming before December and gave Ukraine a lot of weapons in prep for it.Report
Looks like effort and money well spent.Report
Agreed. And it keeps flowing – which is also good.Report
And now Biden has ordered sanctions on Russian oil. Seems to me the three point plan is either a farce the Americans see through, or there’s military and intelligence data suggesting more squeezing is necessary on Putin.
https://www.npr.org/2022/03/08/1085089048/biden-ban-imports-russia-oilReport
https://www.npr.org/2022/03/08/1085155440/cia-director-putin-is-angry-and-frustrated-likely-to-double-downReport
The good news, I guess, is that we’re doing what we can to keep our biodevelopment labs in Ukraine out of Russian hands.
That tweet is only from today, though.
Two weeks ago, the existence of US biolabs in Ukraine was fact-checked and found false.
So if that’s true, that’s good news too.
Good news either way.Report
Will the misinformation never end?Report
I’d be somewhat pleased that all of these institutions that are being untrustworthy are demonstrating their untrustworthiness but these institutions are kind of *MY* institutions.Report
Can’t watch the video (better half is asleep next to me) but poking around, seems both could be true:
Biolabs exist in Ukraine under the control and funding of Ukraine and US+others are concerned about then falling into Russian hands. Nothing I’m seeing here contradicts the “fact check”, which noted the existence of Ukrainian-controlled labs.
Did she say otherwise in the video here?Report
Okay… was able to listen. She never says anything that disputes the idea of whose labs they are (hint: Ukraine’s).
So… here’s what seems to have happened:
Social media claim: Russia is targeting US biolabs in Ukraine
Major news outlets: US doesn’t have biolabs in Ukraine but Ukraine does
CSPAN video: US official mentions Ukraine biolabs
Conspiracy theorists: SEE??? Media lies!!!Report
If the US funded the virology lab in Wuhan, does that make it a US lab?
Of course not. It’s just funded by the US. It was still 100% Chinese.
I imagine that similar is going on in Ukraine. Those labs were and are 100% Ukrainian.Report
If you have a source demonstrating they are funded by the US, please share it.Report
It’s probably more accurate to say that it got some funding from the NIH via a US-based intermediary organization.
https://www.bbc.com/news/57932699Report
I’m referring to the Ukraine labs.Report
That is how I’m reading the word “partnership“.
Is this going to turn into “partnership” doesn’t mean “fully funded”? (That link is from 2020, not 2022, for what it’s worth.)Report
So we went from…
US Biolabs are in Ukraine and the media and government are lying to us about it
TO
US Biolabs are in Ukraine and the media is lying to us about it and we know that because the government is talking about it
TO
The biolabs in the Ukraine are funded by the US
TO
The US partners with the Ukraine on running their biolabs, information which has been available on various governmental websites and which the media reported about.
Fun times!Report
It seems like the definition hinges on what “US” means.
Is the emphasis that they are not on American soil?
They are absolutely not on American soil.
Would it be safe to say that they’re merely Ukrainian biolabs that are similar to the virus biolab in Wuhan?
I have absolutely *ZERO* problems walking back to that point.
So the US is partnered with multiple biolabs in Ukraine and now we’re dealing with our partnered biolabs falling into Russian hands.
And the criticism seems to be “I can’t believe that people are calling these labs ‘US labs’! They are *NOT* US labs!”, did I get that right?Report
The issue is you linked to a Tweet alleging midconduct with the government and media with how these labs are identified.
I hope the Ukrainians can keep their labs out of Russian hands.Report
Kazzy, I believe that I linked to a tweet that had footage of a Senate hearing where these labs were discussed as well as to a fact check from two weeks prior explaining that there were no US biolabs in Ukraine. And the fact-check seems to hinge on the phrasing rather than on the existence of the partnered biolabs.Report
If only there was a way to share that video without attaching it to a Tweet full of falsehoods.
If only…Report
I’m being facetious. That said I think the media needs to retire this approach to journalism.Report
The fact check? Sure.
I also think well-intentioned people shouldn’t spread needlessly and erroneously inflammatory Tweets.Report
I’m all for inflammatory tweets to the extent they spur discussion. I am however a bit lost on the significance of the labs themselves.Report
Its not worth commenting on, because pretty soon one of the moderators will remove it, like they do with all the other bizarre conspiracy stuff.Report
I’m in this weird place where I keep seeing fact-checks that point out stuff like “There are no US biolabs in Ukraine!” that turn into “Our partnered biolabs in Ukraine might fall into Russian hands”.
Like the original fact-check puts emphasis on how the labs aren’t *US* labs.
And that eventually turns into “Don’t be naive. Of course we have partnerships with biolabs all over the globe. Would you rather those biolabs not exist? Of course we’re calling the shots there. Who would you rather be calling the shots? Of course we’re funding them. Who else has the money?”
And the original situation of the fact-check feels like misdirection.
And now we get to worry about whether our partners will fall into the hands of the Russians.Report
Well, yeah, fact-checking sites have a lot of garbage. That’s not news. But there’s also the problem of the narrative. When people say there are biolabs in Ukraine, presumably they mean that there’s a chance that Ukraine has been developing bioweaponry so that if a biological attack occurs on Ukrainian soil it could have been domestically developed. You can’t fact-check that easily, because it’s a narrative. My guess is that the term “biolab” covers everything from meat safety stations to The Maury Povich Show. It would be conceivable to turn one into a bioweapons lab, but I don’t know how, and I’d guess (hope!) that less than 1% of the people who tweet about it know how.
What we need is a “Fact Check: Moot” option.Report
If I may use Chernobyl as an example, one of the arguments is that Chernobyl was not merely a power station, it was actually a weapons site that was busy processing weapons-grade plutonium.
One of the side effects of making the really good stuff is energy, you see. Win-win.
Does it *MATTER* if Chernobyl was making weapons-grade stuff?
I mean, there are reports from the time that pointed out that the Russian military may have had a role at Chernobyl.
Well, why wouldn’t they? Who knows fission better than the military? If you had a nuclear power plant, wouldn’t you prefer to have as many experts on site as you could possibly have?
Well, we still don’t know whether Chernobyl was making stuff for weapons. But there was a particular set of moves used to defend against the accusations.
Which brings me to Wuhan. I remember the vague confusion over when some minor celebrity blamed the Covid on the Chinese people and everybody took a deep breath to start screaming and the original rant turned into a discussion of Veganism and how wet markets wouldn’t be allowed under a Vegan mindset and eating meat caused the global pandemic and everybody exhaled and started mumbling about the silliness of listening to celebrities anyway and then it sort of came out that maybe it wasn’t the wet market? Jon Stewart came out and said “maybe it was a lab leak?” And then it came out that maybe we were partnered with the lab that had the leak? And then that turned into discussions of whether it would be naive to suggest that this lab shouldn’t have been investigating gain of function research and of course we were partnered with them.
Which now brings me to 2022.
Huh. I’m pretty sure I recognize these dance moves.Report
Who knows fission better than the military?
In any sane country civilians, and academics in particular.Report
“Sane”
Perhaps we’re all a little crazy. I know I am.Report
“If I may use Chernobyl as an example, one of the arguments is that Chernobyl was not merely a power station, it was actually a weapons site that was busy processing weapons-grade plutonium.”
One of the arguments *about what*? That isn’t an argument, it’s a statement that may be true or false. There are plenty of statements that may be true or false, and the ones that are made during a crisis are more likely to be false. False statements aren’t proof of malice. Broad statements that can be interpreted as true or false aren’t proof of anything.
“Does this situation fit the same template as a past case where a person has apparently been purposely deceptive?” is a bad question to ask. (No one would get married, for one thing.) It only tells that it’s possible for a scenario to play out where a person is apparently lying.
The end goal is the truth. Suspension of automatic acceptance is reasonable. It can also be paralyzing.Report
One of the arguments about whether Chernobyl was doing something that reasonable people would have said “this shouldn’t have been done”.
Like, I think that if Chernobyl was making plutonium, that would have been outside of the various SALT talks that were happening at the time.
There are plenty of statements that may be true or false, and the ones that are made during a crisis are more likely to be false. False statements aren’t proof of malice. Broad statements that can be interpreted as true or false aren’t proof of anything.
This is absolutely true. But the pivot to equivocation is usually a red flag even when it’s agreed that there’s no deliberate attempt to be as malicious as “malice” would indicate.
The end goal is the truth.
You confident that you’re going to know the truth anytime soon?
You confident that you have the truth now that you’ve read USA Today’s fact-check?Report
A question asked by a non-expert is going to sound both vague and assumption-ridden to an expert. Any answer carries the risk of sounding like a dodge. Either you’re not answering my exact question, or you’re answering my exact question but not what I really wanted to know. Expertise involves knowing the technicalities, and an expert’s good explanation can look to a novice like the expert is hiding behind technicalities.
I’ve never written the words “gain of function reserach” until now; in fact, I’m going to leave the typo to make my point. I’ve never debated it because I don’t know its exact definition. I’d bet that 1% of the people who’ve used the term recently know what it means, and I’d bet a whole paycheck that the USA Today fact-checker doesn’t. The use of the technical term by the expert doesn’t indicate equivocation.
I don’t think I’ll know the truth after reading USA Today. I’m not confident I’ll move toward the truth about Ukraine in the next months. No one can be confident about that if they’re not involved in it. But you’re not going to move toward expertise by declaring that you think someone’s equivocating. You’re only eliminating the chance of progress.Report
Yes, but here. Check out the New York Times when discussing “gain of function research”:
The problem isn’t the whole “we need to explore some deep questions about how scientists should study viruses and other pathogens”.
I mean, yeah. Those deep questions are probably worth asking and exploring.
But when the conversation shifts from “the N.I.H. has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute” to “well, ‘gain of function’ is a muddy category and it brings up questions about the very nature of research in the first place” is a shift that brings the whole denial into stark relief.
I mean, I would have preferred to start with “Don’t be naive. Of course we have partnerships with biolabs all over the globe. Would you rather those biolabs not exist? Of course we’re calling the shots there. Who would you rather be calling the shots? Of course we’re funding them. Who else has the money?”Report
How’s this: if you read anything that you can understand, assume that it uses muddy categories at best. Because you and I, we’re not trained in much of anything we talk about. Not law, not Clare Briggs, not the USPS, Scottish folk music or anything else on the main page. We might be experts in a couple of things, but not many and even those not deeply. The internet allows us to take shortcuts to be able to look like we know what we’re talking about. (I know quite a bit about Texas counties.) If we can follow something, it’s dumbed down. We have to put in the work to understand things.Report
Sure.
But I don’t have to put in a whole lot of work to recognize the shift from “Absolutely not!” to “What is Truth?”Report
Yeah, you do, depending on the subject. To repeat: A question asked by a non-expert is going to sound both vague and assumption-ridden to an expert. Any answer carries the risk of sounding like a dodge. Either you’re not answering my exact question, or you’re answering my exact question but not what I really wanted to know. Expertise involves knowing the technicalities, and an expert’s good explanation can look to a novice like the expert is hiding behind technicalities.Report
Beginning the conversation with “look, this is complicated, there’s going to be a lot of technical jargon and terms of art and some stuff is going to sound bad at first” is one thing.
Beginning it with “absolutely not” is another.Report
Did you think that biology and war aren’t complicated?Report
Not at all. They’re incredibly complicated.Report
Then I don’t understand. If you grant that, then you have to recognize that yes/no questions don’t allow for pages-long answers. The answerer has to find some balance between answering a question as asked and explaining things. And we’re a hyper-legalistic society that takes quotes out of context, which makes any approach risky. But you knew that; we all know that. So other than not feeling the groove, you don’t really have an issue here.Report
Yes/no questions don’t allow for pages-long answers.
But paragraph-long answers that open with “absolutely not” and then, weeks later, pivot to “there are a lot of subtle nuances here” are not problems with yes/no questions.
Heck, an answer of “you’re not asking the right question” is a better answer than “absolutely not” followed a few weeks later by “well, you need to understand how complicated everything is”.Report
I get what you’re saying about the mood of a Q&A experience, but I don’t think there’s ever been a question that was answered “absolutely not” then later answered “well, you need to understand…”. At least not by the same answerer. Am I wrong about that?Report
I don’t have an example by the same answerer at my fingertips, but I do have the example of Fauci and the New York Times given above.
If you want an explicit example of someone saying “well, that depends on what you mean by the verb you’re using”, I have no recent examples.Report
I don’t consider the NYT to be authoritative, even a little. As for Fauci, a lot depends on context, like saying something on CNN versus in front of the Senate, but I think you’re right, he went too far down the “science popularizer” path. I’d like to think that history will judge him harshly, but I don’t know if we’ll ever square the record with the reality.
In any situation, there are incredibly smart people (some of whom could be very wrong) communicating through stupid media to all of us. And the media aren’t simply stupid; they’re also packaging complicated things into consumable form. So they’re stupid people who are stupidizing the thoughts of intelligent people who could be very wrong. This includes the science popularizers and every expert hired by the media. But this has always been true. Jefferson and Madison did more heavy lifting than Poor Richard.
None of this is an indicator of whether the intelligent experts are more likely to be wrong on a particular issue.Report
The problem is with the assumption that “bio-lab” is the same thing as “bio-weapons-lab”.
In other words, is this a military target and something everyone can get all spun up over (Covid’s relatives) or is this more like studying how sheep grow?Report
Ukraine has indoor toilets, the internet, and universities, so of course it has laboratories that study biology. Some of them may contain stuff that can have nasty consequences if let loose. What else is new?Report
And almost certainly some of those labs conduct joint research with university programs in the US. Little specialty groups all over the world find each other.Report
That’s exactly the intended purpose of the original tweet.
Russia has launched a propaganda war via social media. Part of this war is to smear Ukraine and its allies by any means possible.
Lucasz Raczylo may not be a Russian bot but he is likely only a couple degrees away from one. He certainly didn’t invent the claim.
The original claim of Something Awful happening in Ukrainian biolabs was created by Russians as a means of casting a pall of suspicion over Ukraine and weakening and confusing its defenders.
And just as desired, the claim was picked up and disseminated by gullible and malevolent alike.
All of us are active players in this war. We don’t get to abstain. Every tweet or comment is a part of the information war so we should be cautious about just passing along information carelessly.Report
Would you say that dissent against the administration ought to be assumed to be siding with the opposition?Report
I would say that is a poor attempt at deflection.
You passed along a tweet that was both false and malicious in its implication and very likely a part of a propaganda effort during a mass slaughter of civilians.
There’s no shame in making an innocent mistake. I’ve done it, everyone here has passed along something that seemed to confirm our priors but turned out to be misinformation.
What you do next though, is up to you. I’d like to think you shrug and say yeah, I may have been overeager, and we can just move on.
I would not want to see you dig in and double down. This isn’t some stupid and petty argument over politics. This is serious.
Right now, even as I type, women and children are being brutally murdered in Ukraine. Sh!t like the tweet from Mr. Raczylo only helps the oppressor and makes himself look foolish and callow.
Lets just stop and move on to something else.Report
Its implication is that the biolabs in Ukraine are doing things that the government would want to deny are happening.
As for the truth value of that… Well, I’ll wait.
If this goes like Wuhan did, we’ll receive more and more clarifications about what the labs were in the days to come and hair-splitting when it comes to what the definition of “is” is.
Right now, even as I type, women and children are being brutally murdered in Ukraine. Sh!t like the tweet from Mr. Raczylo only helps the oppressor and makes himself look foolish and callow.
I heard the same about Abu Ghraib. “We shouldn’t have publicized this! It only gives the enemy reason to hate us!”
There are good reasons to argue that.
I don’t agree with them, of course. But I see how someone could make them and mean it.
Would you say that what you’re seeing now in Russia is coloring how you viewed Iraq at the time?
For what it’s worth, Iraq is coloring how I see this current crisis.
Did you see that there are bars that have renamed “White Russians” to “The Dude” or “White Ukranians”?Report
WAY more likely that trolls are making up stuff about legit bio-labs.
Bio-labs are extremely common. They have a ton of legit reasons to exist.
There’s one down the street from my sister in law. Make an accusation, it will take a while to figure out that it’s legit and by the time we’ve done so you can move on to a different accusation.Report
You’ve gone way out of your way to avoid educating yourself on this which again, is the most common trait of conspiracists.
The truth can be found in a few seconds of googling, but you’re deliberately avoiding it.
If we were talking about creationism or 9-11 truthers, this might be harmless or amusing, but you’re deliberately and actively joining in the pro-Russian propaganda effort here, and honestly I think that’s crappy.Report
So I should “do my own research”?
That might have led me to the conclusion that Covid-19 was a lab leak rather than related to wet markets and bat soup.
As it is, I’m willing to say that I don’t know what the labs are doing, I just recognize the pattern of the pivot from “absolutely not” to “well, you have to understand how complicated everything is” to “don’t be naive”.Report
Far as I can tell they’re not even close to the “unethical things were going on”.
It’s more like we have money sprayed out in a cannon across the entire bio-industry and if we use the “one drop” (one dollar) rule then we have some involvement.
Note that’s not even “we’re managing projects there”.
Add that to a fog of war (and a fog of large governments being asked about tiny projects and tiny involvement) and we have what we have.Report
You are absolutely correct, but you’re responding to a statement no one made.
Notice that no one has flatly asserted “Something Awful is happening there.”
Because they can’t- the statement is absurd.
And everyone here, Jaybird included, already knows the facts you just stated.
So conspiracists traffic in insinuations, innuendo, to create doubt and uncertainty.
They rely on the “fog of war” because they are creating the fog.
To which you respond in vain, because once you are in the fog of uncertainty, truth becomes unknowable.
A question is as good as a fact.
He pounds that theme again and again that “people’s stories have changed” because that deflects attention away from the premise of the conspiracy theory.
He will not ever, under any circumstance, state flatly that Something Awful is happening.
Which again is the dead giveaway.Report
“As it is, I’m willing to say that I don’t know what the labs are doing, I just recognize the pattern of the pivot from “absolutely not” to “well, you have to understand how complicated everything is” to “don’t be naive”.”
Confirmation bias. You ignore all the times that we never get past “Absolutely not.”
You’re drawing the target after seeing where the bullets hit.
You’re being a conspiracist and actively spreading wartime propaganda that is in favor of a country committing war crimes.
This is what we allow here nowadays?Report
You’re being a conspiracist and actively spreading wartime propaganda that is in favor of a country committing war crimes.
This is what we allow here nowadays?
I will repeat the question that I asked Chip: Would you say that dissent against the administration ought to be assumed to be siding with the opposition?Report
No.
I would say sharing a Tweet that has no sources and which spreads messaging consistent with Russian propaganda and which all available evidence shows is inaccurate is what I described.
Because that is what you did here.Report
The source was C-SPAN3, Kazzy.
That’s something that was being discussed on C-SPAN3. Biolabs that we are partnered with.Report
That’s a fine argument if we’re arguing logically. You’ve decided to go with impressions and hunches, and in that world your posting of a crackpot’s tweet is a mark against you. You might take that as a warning about the path you’re on.Report
Yes, and these impressions and hunches include memories of the last couple of years and the whole pivots from absolute certainty to explanations of the importance of making the best moves given the knowledge that one has at the time (without, of course, taking into account the knowledge of the last few times these arguments took place).
This feels like a re-run.Report
Sigh.
Did you read the Tweet?
“Once again – we’ve been told by #fakenews that there’s no US #biolabs in #ukraine. Those were called “Russian propaganda” and “conspiracy theory”. How come they suddenly exist and are discussed by house representatives, with hesitation yet openly?”
There are no US biolabs in Ukraine. There are labs we partner with. The media has reported on these partnerships.
There is no there there. Sure, you want to split hairs on definitions but that is what the original Tweeter did. The media has never denied the existence of biolabs in Ukraine nor has the media denied the partnership. What some media outlets have pushed back on is Russia propaganda that these are “exclusive” US labs that receive DOD funding. Because there is zero evidence to support either assertion.Report
I think it’s worth approaching our own wartime media in a more skeptical way than you’re suggesting. The Russians are firing out propaganda on all cylinders of course but it doesn’t mean there’s nothing to anything they say.
For example, it’s pretty well documented that there are Ukrainian far right militias operating in the Donbas against Russian-backed separatists and that they played some role in the Euromaiden situation in 2014. Putin’s citation of these people is of course a pretext but they absolutely exist.
A number of things Saddam said about Iraq’s wmd turned out to be true, notwithstanding the fact that they were self serving. Not every ethnic Albanian in Kosovo had clean hands when we went in on their behalf either. We can be clear eyed about that and still think a side is right at the same time.
This whole labs thing could be nonsense and really is kind of besides the point on the question of how this impacts the post WW2 security order in Europe. However as a tax payer I’d say we have a right to know about anything the US is doing over there and it would be nice to get a cool headed explanation from the media. That’s what they’re supposed to be there to do.Report
That’s all fair, InMD. But did you read the fact check that Jaybird himself linked to? It discussed in detail — with multiple sources from both the US and Ukraine — what those labs are and how they’re set up. It wasn’t as crappy as most fact checks are. And I share your chagrin at how much of them function, especially in recent years.
Being skeptical is one thing. But being willfully ignorant is another. Right now, all of the reporting disputes the assertions made in these social media posts. That doesn’t guarantee anything. But if you’re believing the social media posts — and sharing them — it seems fair to consider that conspiratorial thinking and spreading of propaganda.
Many of the sources go back to May 2020, before the escalation and war.
From HIS link:
“Based on our research, we rate FALSE the claim that there are U.S. biolabs in Ukraine funded by the U.S. government. The posts misrepresent a treaty between the United States and Ukraine aimed at preventing biological threats.
The labs are owned and funded by the Ukrainian government.The Security Service of Ukraine and the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine have said the claim is false. Reports indicate the claim is tied to a years-long Russian disinformation campaign aimed at discrediting the United States.
Department of State, Aug. 29, 2005, Agreement Between the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA and UKRAINE
Interfax-Ukraine, May 8, 2020, SBU: No US biological laboratories in Ukraine
U.S. Embassy in Ukraine, April 22, 2020, U.S.-Ukraine Partnership to Reduce Biological Threats
Coda, April 19, 2018, Does the US Have A Secret Germ Warfare Lab on Russia’s Doorstep?
The Daily Beast, April 9, 2021, Russia, China Team Up to Peddle Insane U.S. COVID Lab Theory
National Intelligence Council, Aug. 2021, Updated Assessment on COVID-19 Origins
PolitiFact, Feb. 25, There are no US-run biolabs in Ukraine, contrary to social media posts”
Sure… that could ALL be bullshit. Or propaganda from the US and Ukraine that all those outlets got snookered by. But does that seem even remotely likely? Is there any evidence to support assertions to the contrary?Report
Kazzy, my argument is *NOT* “these are obviously secret US biological weapons labs!”
My argument is more “I’m not sure as to the extent that I ought to believe what is being said”.
Like, above. One of the arguments was that the labs were not funded by the US DoD. That is completely different from saying that the labs have no US funding, right?
Well, above the quote is “The labs are owned and funded by the Ukrainian government.”
I have no doubt that the labs are owned and funded by the Ukrainian government. My suspicion is based on stuff like the phrasing. Like, does the US provide funding as well? If the US provides additional funding, that certainly doesn’t make “the labs are funded by the Ukrainian government” a false statement! It remains a true statement!
At this point, I’m waiting for it to come out that, well, of course we provided some additional funding but the funding was from the NIH and not the DoD and so it wasn’t a lie what the fact-check said.
Hell, I *HOPE* that these are labs that are doing nothing more than researching stuff that will result in the betterment of all mankind.
Is there any evidence to support assertions to the contrary?
Just the vague movement from proven trustworthiness to something closer to trust-but-verify on the part of the government.
No, It’s not proof. Not at all.Report
Did you read the treaty? It was linked in the fact check article YOU shared.
Did you read any of their other sources?
Or did you merely look at a mainstream outlet saying one thing and some “idiot” on Twitter saying another and concluded, “Well, how can we POSSIBLY know anything?”Report
No, I did not read the treaty.
I did read some of the other sources and said “okay” and moved on.
I merely looked at a mainstream outlet saying one thing and then the senate hearing where I saw something that seemed disjoint with the mainstream outlet.Report
Don’t you mean House hearing? Oh wait…
“Seemed” is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.
Maybe you should work on your reading comprehension. Or find a clip that is more than 1 minute long.
FWIW, I was able to find a 2-hour clip of her testimony. Maybe you should look beyond Twitter.Report
Don’t you mean House hearing?
Rubio is a Senator.
Maybe you should work on your reading comprehension. Or find a clip that is more than 1 minute long.
I will do better to find better sources in the future.Report
Oh, silly me. The Tweet referred to him as a House representative.
I should probably check my sources better.Report
The guy who made the tweet was an idiot.
I was interested in the footage from C-SPAN3.Report
Uh…. Sure… which is why you avoided any of the other, better videos of the hearing.
Again, you’re a liar and a bad one.Report
Kazzy, I wanted something easily copied/pasted into the combox and I did a search in twitter for Victoria Nuland and that was one of the tweets that popped up.
As for “other, better videos”, next time I’ll try to spend more time on it and embed something from youtube.Report
TLDR “No, it’s not proof. Not at all.” covers it all.Report
I think it’s fair to say there is no evidence we have to support the assertion, and certainly not anything right now that would merit changing any larger opinions on why the war is happening. Nothing Jaybird has posted about this subject has changed my mind anyway.
Where I think he has a point is something like ‘these people have been very wrong before and we should be willing to keep an open mind that months or years from now we may well find out they were again.’ To cop to my own priors I will say that I think most journalists are not very smart people (or at least are not subject matter experts in what they cover) and that there are a lot of really terrible business and cultural incentives pushing them away from truth and accuracy.
None of this is to say people should believe things that are unproven. They absolutely should not. However I also think we are best served by not believing too hard that the information we have gotten today is the final word on something like the war in Ukraine, and certainly not attaching any moral authority to a momentary consensus about a fast moving crisis.Report
Skepticism is not just fine, it is warranted and it is good.
But we aren’t seeing skepticism here from Jaybird. He’s doing something very, very different. And we shouldn’t mistake the two.
I jumped into this fray by responding to your initial comment, where you said, “Will the misinformation never end?”
At that moment, did you take the Tweet Jaybird shared at face value, that it showed an obvious case of mainstream media outlets promoting misinformation? Or were you referring to the Tweet itself as misinformation? Or all of it as misinformation?Report
Truthfully I was just making a joke without having looked at any of the substance. Maybe also a little bit ironically lamenting the challenges in determining what is and isn’t misinformation. Like sometimes todays truth is tomorrow’s misinformation and today’s misinformation turned out to not be so far off after all. But then sometimes (often?) it really is just some kind of nonsense.Report
All well and good. Going back to the exchange, I should have noticed at that time that when Jaybird jumped in to respond to my response to you, he used the word “imagine”.
I should have just ignored him and left him in that la la land.Report
Go back and read all of Jaybirds comments, starting with the original tweet.
There is not one single assertion made, other than “some people said one thing and now another.”
That’s it! That’s the sum total of his assertions.
Everything else has been a repeat of this point, combined with “isn’t it strange” allusions and innuendo, and of course now he’s connected it somehow to Wuhan because well that’s the game of conspiracists.
The idea is just to create a Gish Gallop of innuendo and inference without ever needing to state or defend a statement of fact.
He isn’t trying to prove anything.
The goal here is to introduce just enough doubt that someone is less willing to defend Ukraine and see the situation as hopelessly confusing.Report
“This is what we allow here nowadays?”
Clearly, as he’s a front-page poster and has been doing it for years.
And at this point, he’s personally at least 10% of the comments on any thread.Report
“he’s personally at least 10% of the comments on any thread.”
(looks at comment after comment after comment of Kazzy and Phil H and Chip screaming at Jaybird instead of taking their meds)Report
“You’ve gone way out of your way to avoid educating yourself on this which again, is the most common trait of conspiracists.”
aren’t you the dude who keeps saying that you refuse to read articles posted as sources because you don’t consider yourself competent to judge themReport
Yes, I don’t read scholarly articles written for the benefit of academics, for that very reason.
In this case, a cursory glance at any newspaper or cable show will provide all the information about the research labs, in articles written for laypeople like us.Report
I’m hours behind on this one, but I’ve got to slap this statement around:
“Its implication is that the biolabs in Ukraine are doing things that the government would want to deny are happening.”
You don’t know if there are biolabs in Ukraine, what they do, what they could be converted to do, how many funding sources they have, or who those funding sources are. You don’t know if the first person who posted about them of Facebook was right; you don’t know if the first fact-checker who called them false was wrong. You don’t know how common it is to have biolabs, or how common it is to have funding sources which include governments. That’s the first layer of things you don’t know. The others are deeper. Nothing gives you reason to make any assumption about this story. In the literal sense, your comment is unreasonable, illogical, ungrounded. Your theory could be right but you have no reason to think so. You have suspicions about motives.Report
Pinky, that’s absolutely right.
And I’m basing a lot of that on what recently happened with Wuhan.Report
What most recently happened with Wuhan is two studies backing the animal market rather than the lab leak theory. Is that the last word? No, just the latest. That’s how the world works.Report
Oooh, I hadn’t seen this (from two weeks ago)
From NPR.
And there’s a Voxsplainer from yesterday.Report
Here’s the part from the Voxsplainer that appears to have the damning evidence:
The three paragraphs that precede that paragraph give a lot of reasons to not reach a conclusion just yet, but that paragraph is pretty hard-hitting.Report
Normally the problem is the assumptions aren’t correct.Report
Agreed, but even them not being explicit makes things complicated. To Jaybird’s point, an answerer can hide things when he recognizes that the assumptions aren’t right…but that doesn’t mean that every answer is made with the intention of hiding things.Report
This is a perfect example of the conspiracist mindset.
The starting premise is that Something Awful Is Happening.
Evidence for this, is that some people somewhere made statements which were inaccurate about the Awful Things.
The strategy is to create a cloud of suspicion and doubt which doesn’t need actual evidence of Awful Things.
In this case, notice how there is no direct statement of why a biolab in Ukraine is Awful Thing, regardless of who funds or directs it.
Notice how the attention shifts, away from biolabs to the errors of statements and contradictions about what people are saying about the biolabs.
We are no longer encouraged to speak about the biolabs because we are just supposed to convinced by now that biolabs are nefarious and there is Something Awful going on.
Instead the point will just continue to be hammered again and again- “People said one thing, then later said another! People contradicted themselves!! Clouds of suspicion!”Report
I hate to keep picking on you, but you just posted the best example of conspiracy thinking I’ve seen in a while:
“Any of these dry wonkish essays about elections has to fail, unless it acknowledges that the Republican Party has engaged in a full scale battle to reduce access to voting.”Report
My starting mindset is that something is happening.
And then the reports come out “NOTHING IS HAPPENING!”
“Wait, I think something is happening.”
“Why do you think something is happening? Nothing is happening.”
(reports come out)
“I think that something was, in fact, happening.”
“Of course something was happening but it wasn’t as bad as you were implying. It was good actually.”Report
No one said “Nothing is happening.”
Some folks said “What’s happening is different than what some folks are saying is happening.”
If you can’t understand nuance, that’s on you.Report
The fact check addressed a specific Facebook post that made a specific accusation:
“A post shared to Facebook on Thursday shows a map of Ukraine pinpointing what the poster asserts are “exclusive U.S. biolabs in Ukraine” that are funded by the U.S. Department of Defense.”
The fact check showed that while biolabs exist in Ukraine in conjunction with US partnership, they are no exclusive US biolabs and they are not funded by the DoD.
Now, if the real issue is whether biolabs exist (no one is denying they do) and whether they are at risk of falling into Russian hands (the linked video seems to show this is a real concern being openly discussed by US officials), sure, let’s dig into that.
But you chose a Tweet that stated:
“Once again – we’ve been told by #fakenews that there’s no US #biolabs in #ukraine. Those were called “Russian propaganda” and “conspiracy theory”. How come they suddenly exist and are discussed by house representatives, with hesitation yet openly?”
Most of that is either an outright lie or demonstrates woeful ignorance on the part of the Tweeter. And none of that shows an interest in discussing the labs themselves and the threat posed to them by Russian forces.
You made the media and fact checking the topic here. Don’t act surprised when that is discussed. And don’t double down when you’re narrative is proven wrong.Report
And as I said to Pinky below:
You point out:
The fact check showed that while biolabs exist in Ukraine in conjunction with US partnership, they are no exclusive US biolabs and they are not funded by the DoD.
If this gets walked back with more clarifying information in the coming weeks, will it be fallacious to see another instance in what appears to be a pattern?Report
So you linked to an idiot for what reason?
Did you want to discuss the threat posed to the labs?
Or the conversation surrounding them?
Remember, the starting point here was a FB post about exclusive US labs funding by the DoD. That’s where we started.Report
So you linked to an idiot for what reason?
Because his tweet was the one that I found that had the embedded footage that I cared about.
Did you want to discuss the threat posed to the labs?
To? Sure. By? Might come up. The whole “fact-check” done a couple of weeks prior weighed in my mind as well.
Or the conversation surrounding them?
Yeah, that’d probably be good too.
Remember, the starting point here was a FB post about exclusive US labs funding by the DoD. That’s where we started.
Sure.
And if we hammer down that the labs are not *EXCLUSIVE* US labs then I’m not sure that my fears are assuaged. If it turns out that the funding comes from a different part of USG than the DoD, then I’m not sure my fears are assuaged either.
“You used the wrong adjectives when talking about the nouns!” is an argument about the adjectives rather than about the nouns.Report
You keep doing exactly what I predicted, of hammering on inconsistencies of what people say while refusing to address the underlying implication.
Is there Something Awful happening?
You refuse to say, which is telling.
Instead we just get treated to endless variations of “But he said this and later said that!!”
I predict that we are about 2 comments away from “But it’s really about ethics in wartime journalism.”
ETA:The reference to Wuhan is the other giveaway.Report
Chip, there are inconsistencies that consist of differences of degree.
Getting all het up about differences of degree can easily be painted as nit-picking.
There are also differences of kind.
I submit: “Absolutely not” to “well, this is actually pretty nuanced” is not a difference of degree but a difference in kind.Report
I agree it’s a bad, and really badly motivated, way to do journalism. After reading both the article and listening to the rep- er Senator I’m still pretty unclear on what these things even are.Report
I know that my immediate intuition is to suspect that they are similar to the lab in Wuhan, researching things that are similarly difficult to explain the importance of to laypeople.Report
When “things are difficult to explain”, it usually means they were set up originally to be that way for deniability. No one wants to explain it clearly because a lot of people would be 1) shocked, 2) pissed off, 3) motivated to take some action. Other States my start Foreign Policy actions those involved don’t want to be taken, etc.Report
I immediately trust this guy who thinks that Rubio is a “house representative”.Report
I wasn’t paying attention to what the guy said. He’s an idiot.
I was paying attention to C-SPAN3.Report
“I was paying attention to C-SPAN3.”
If I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard that…Report
You’d have all of JB’s nickels.Report
Since this is the most recent Ukraine war post, I guess I’ll share this awful story here, because it hit me like a brick:
There’s something about sitting there doomscrolling and learning that your family has been murdered by Tweet that gets at me in a way a lot of other horrifying stories coming out of this war haven’t. Maybe it’s just because it’s so easy to see myself in Mr Perebyinis’ shoes.Report
It seems Republican politicians like to do things the way Jaybird does:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/03/09/biden-gas-prices-republicans-ukraine/?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_most&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F3648291%2F622a2ea79d2fda34e7c7ae02%2F59738e7cade4e21a848fe4b9%2F54%2F72%2F622a2ea79d2fda34e7c7ae02Report
So there are two defenses it seems to me:
1) Yes, my policies are causing gas prices to go up. I know that a lot of you are hurting because of this. This is part of the cost of opposing evil in the world and opposing Putin. I call upon employers to allow more working from home where possible to reduce the need for driving and to car pool, use public transportation, or do without where we can. In a time of war, we all need to make sacrifices. This *IS* painful. I am sorry. This is, however, an opportunity. We can move toward a future where we are not dependent on fossil fuels! I am going to offer tax breaks for solar panels on houses! (Or whatever. Have someone who knows something about green energy write that part.)
2) Man, those Republicans are jerks. I just did what they said! By pushing me to do this, they’re effectively helping Putin!Report
I’d like to lower the temperature in here a bit, if we can. Especially given that this has been a thread with a lot of great conversation in it.
As far as what we allow, as far as I am concerned the relevant institutions do not have the degree of credibility for me to declare the subject outside the realm of conversation. (Whether one chooses to address the conversation, on the other hand…). While I do find the explanations given to be convincing at this point, I would not go out on a limb to defend it as true so long as there is no evidence to the contrary. And I’m inclined to allow speculation here, even if without support and even if it would theoretically (except not really, see below) help the wrong side.
Having said all that, it is honestly incredible to me how easily the subject got turned to this in so many venues, as though of all of the things going on in Ukraine right now *this* is the most relevant. Would these accusations, if true, justify Putin’s invasion? Would it at least move it into a “who can judge?” gray area? Is that where these revelations re supposed to lead? So far I am not seeing that much at all, except from people who have from the beginning argued that Putin Has A Point. And most of *that* argument ultimately relies on other angles (specifically NATO expansion and what conversations did and didn’t happen between NATO and Ukraine). Is the allegation that if they’re lying about this maybe they’re lying about having had a secret plan to use bioterror on Putin unprovoked? Does that allegation sound credible?
To me is has mostly been a wildly successful adventure in “Let’s all talk about something other than Putin rambling on and on about putting the Soviet Union back together”… and the idea that if you can find them in a lie – in any lie – everything unravels. (In matters of statecraft, there are *always* lies. Which feeds into my views expressed in the first paragraph.) And to, for whatever reason – there are many ranging from benign to nefarious – inject moral ambiguity into one of the least morally ambiguous geopolitical military crises of our time.Report
I agree to an extent. But like a married couple who won’t talk to each other after a laundry dispute, we’re responding to a small problem that’s reflective of an underlying bigger problem. I think Jaybird is fully and rightly aware of the implications of his distrust. I think the rest of us are equally aware of the precedent that this distrust can set in matters of policy. We’re all butting heads with that devil that lurks in the details.Report
I hear you, and understand what you’re saying about what the distrust can set in terms of policy. Some of my views here are platform-specific in that if I were in charge of CNN – or an outlet where people went for hard news instead of an opinion site with a conversational tone I would have a higher threshold of proof before bringing it to air. While I don’t think that all viewpoints should be represented here at Ordinary Times, I am more reluctant to set parameters when I don’t have to.Report
From a Polish point of view, NATO’s purpose is prevent Russia from invading. That’s also (I assume) true of most everyone in Nato and outside of it (including Russia and Ukraine).
It’s also what Putin is upset about. He’s said as much during the peace talks before the war, i.e. that Nato must roll back it’s membership to right before Poland.
Everything else is just noise and Putin trying to “prove” Russia is the victim of our aggression. Stories that uplift that worldview without serious evidence should be deeply suspect.
We’re in “Trump claiming he’s found evidence the election was fixed” territory. Imperfect refutations of his evidence aren’t even close to support that his narrative is correct much less that he was justified in his actions.Report
Yea, but it also sort of supports his point that the purpose of NATO is to hem Russia in and he’s definitely right that the United States has no moral authority on the issue of pre-textual and self-interested invasions of other countries. We’ve been setting the stage for something like this for decades.
Joining NATO of course made sense for Poland, the question is whether it ever made sense for us to promise to defend them. It’s a done deal now but many of these countries that we’ve made part of the alliance, Poland very much included, aren’t exactly the Netherlands. The most recent members are among the least liberal and with the most historic axes to grind.Report
What does that mean, to “hem” someone in to their national boundaries?
Is Japan being “hemmed in” from annexing Korea? America “hemmed in” from invading Mexico?
You make it seem as if requiring Russia to stay within its boundaries is some sort of affront.Report
I’ve long been pretty ambivalent to NATO expansion into former Soviet Republics but honestly the view that we need NATO there to prevent Russia from getting all empire seems to have been thoroughly vindicated to my thinking.
If Russia was prompted by a feeling of “Now or never” that indicates that “never” was perhaps not on the table.
That’s not a decisive argument – we could simply let them have Ukraine, make a puppet state out of it, let them have their 20 year war against insurgent nationalists – but the “look at what you made Putin do” argument looks really weak to me right now. My previous ambivalence to Ukranian membership is “Are we really going to go to war to save them?”… watching eastern Europe’s response, from Finland on down, leads me to believe that to some extent we may not have much of a choice with or without NATO.
(I am, in general, pretty loathe to chime in on foreign policy where my knowledge isn’t all that strong and my insticts are not very good. And even here I am not taking a strong argument for what we should do in Ukraine and what NATO should do membership wise. I am mostly saying that I understand the argument a lot better.)Report
You get to the exact issue in your last sentence. Attempting to make a powerful enough country do something or not do something through threat of force is provocative and by its very nature risks a reaction. Sometimes that’s worth the risk and sometimes it isn’t but it has always been the case.
On the issue of boundaries there are disputes over them all over the planet. The history of modern Europe is one of figuring out the organization of peoples into states, often in very bloody ways, and Putin is hardly the first to have a problem with the where the cards fell in 1990. This isn’t to say that no settlements are worth defending even with the spectre of nuclear war, only that we should be discerning about those that are and those that aren’t. I would hope someone as invested in the moral issues as yourself would see the benefit in not killing off all of humanity over any and every such conflict.Report
Russia already picked up Crimea.
This time Russia had to go with “Na.zis” as justification because they don’t have any border disputes.Report
Poland is an ethno-state and doesn’t pretend to be anything else. They’ve also been a pretty solid member of the EU and I can (now) call them a first world nation without flinching. They probably bring less drama to the EU than France. They’re willing to live within the rules for everything except ceasing to be an ethno-state.
None of their neighbors live in fear that they’re going to be invaded by Poland.
If the definition of “hem in” means “prevent them from invading countries and openly engaging in outlawed behavior” then yes, it clearly is.
And your point is what? Europe would be better off if Russia was allowed to invade countries and so on?
Russia has serious issues with rule of law and a bunch of other behavior that most countries don’t attempt.
Everyone would be thrilled if Russia wanted to be a normal country and that would render Nato pretty meaningless. What it wants is it’s empire back and the ability to engage in behavior that liberal democracies simply don’t allow. Like giving radioactive poisons to dissidents in other countries.
This doesn’t pass the “so what” argument. Nor does it suggest that Europe should be cool with what Putin is doing.
Also we’ve gotten called out on it and our various adventures were a lot closer to grey lines than this one is. “Jewish Na.zis”? That’s the justification for invasion?Report
Dark, can’t you see the inherent contradictions in what you’re saying here? In one breath you paint the US as the defender of the international rules based order and all countries that play by it. In the very next you hand wave away all of the numerous and ongoing military actions of the US that undermine that very order and sew chaos. This kind of sentiment in a nutshell is exactly why US foreign policy is a totally schizophrenic and destabilizing force.Report
That’s an issue.
However it’s not really an issue here.
No matter where you want to draw the line, Putin is really far over it.
You’re not even attempting to defend “Jewish Na.zis” for obvious reasons. If the only defense is “other countries have done bad things in the past”, then even that’s not much of a defense.Report
Why would I feel compelled to defend that? I’m rooting for Ukraine to somehow beat the odds.
My issue is one of interests. What is happening right now is not in our interest (or for that matter the Ukrainians’ interest) and by getting so high on our own supply since the fall of the Berlin wall we’ve made it much more likely.Report
The US has an interest in a free Europe, WW2 kind of proved that.
We have an interest in the International Order, that’s why you can point to things we’ve done and point out that it may not have been in our interests.
So… what is the claim here? That if we didn’t expand Nato, Poland would be perfectly fine facing the occasional invasion from Russia and not do something toxic like get nukes?
That Russia would be fine with being a normal country if only it could put it’s empire back together?
I can’t tell what you want to do (or wanted to do) in terms of defined actions.Report
Sorry for the delayed response I missed this. I agree with you that we have an interest in a peaceful Europe. Every time it gets unpeaceful we end up dragged in. IMO the question therefore is what is the best path towards a peaceful Europe.
NATO exists not to expand freedom, but for mutual defense of the members. Believing otherwise is where people get all screwed up. It can be a force for peace but its ability to do so is directly tied to the perception that it poses a credible threat. The further east we have moved NATO, the more we have created a credibility question. The old would we really order a nuclear first strike on Moscow over a fait accompli in the Baltics, even if it meant a nuclear counter-strike on NYC?
Furthering the problem is that Russia naturally looks at eastern Europe in similar ways to how we view Central and South America. Rightly or wrongly, we would overthrow a government in Mexico for joining an alliance we perceive as hostile faster than you can say adios amigo. He feels the same way about Russia’s former vassals. It doesn’t matter if it’s morally right or wrong, it just is and we have to deal with it.
So in sum, we simultaneously created a credibility gap, and we poked the bear. Rather than backing off some, we have been building the pressure since 2008. None of this has been good for increasing the chances of peace and it has finally exploded into war.
As for what we should have been doing, it’s negotiating directly with Russia and the EU over the post cold war security situation in former Warsaw Pact countries and Soviets. Obviously our position is always pro-EU integration, pro security guarantees, pro capitalism, German cars and French cosmetics for everyone.
Now, maybe Russia would eventually lash out anyway. No one knows that for sure. But the goal should always have been to lower tension. Instead we consistently took action to raise tension at every opportunity. Now we have a war, gas prices going through the roof, and yet another delay on the long promosed pivot to the Pacific to show for it. This is not a good outcome, plain and simple.Report
Do we have military bases in the Baltics? Does a “fait accompli” come with dead American troops?
The real problem is the West’s culture. We offer money, prosperity, and freedom for all. They offer Soviet empire and none of those things. The more democratic a society gets the less Putin is able to play god.
If Poland gets a say in what happens then they want to go West because the Russians taught everyone to be scared of them.
Yes, I get that the seriously corrupt Russian government which wants their empire back feels threatened by East Europe’s new prosperity and so on.
That is unfortunate. However big picture we try to encourage democracy.
We’d very much like Russia to become a democracy. If they want to go the evil dictator path then there’s not much we can do, but tossing the evil dictator people from other countries to make him feel better doesn’t seem like a good idea.Report
I think you’re too bogged down in right and wrong and not in the practicalities of securing peace. The question is not whether Russia is good or bad the question is whether we account for their interests in their backyard to avoid war. Contra what you’re saying that does not mean just turning over eastern Europe to domination. Finland is a great example of what those countries could have aspired to- democratic, prosperous, and carefully non-aligned. Yes it also involves creating their own, non-US backed military deterrent but the world is just like that.
We’ve taken the good guys and bad guys approach and the result has been a small war in Georgia and now a major one in Ukraine. This is a massive failure not a success.Report
You’re assuming that “Finland” is an acceptable outcome for a guy trying to put the USSR back together.
The Ukraine becoming Finland was pretty much what was offered and rejected. For that matter Ukraine isn’t a member of Nato and wasn’t going to be within anyone’s lifespan.
I don’t think this is happening because we poked the bear because to make that argument you need to think Ukraine not wanting to be part of an empire is a provocation.
For all the talk about border disputes, all the disputes have already been handled by Russia winning, and that’s still not enough.
This was always going to happen because what Russia wants is so ugly and unattractive that it’s former vassals won’t willingly take it.Report
That’s factually incorrect. At the 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest Bush announced our intention to make Ukraine and Georgia part of the alliance. This was done despite opposition from France and Germany, which again, gets into the credibility gap we’ve been creating but whatever.
At that time and ever since Russia reiterated that adding those countries was a red line for them. Our reaction was to arm them and in the case of Ukraine help overthrow a pro-Russian president then conduct joint military exercises with the government we helped install. Now there are wars in both. All of this stuff has happened very much on the record. While Putin is certainly an a-hole, there’s no need to get into armchair internet psychoanalysis to understand the trajectory of events.Report
Russias entire argument rests on the idea that NATO is “hostile”.
Is this credible? Do the Russian people believe that NATO is hostile?
Or is that just a transparent pretext by a dictator to justify aggression?Report
Does it matter?
We’re as close to direct conflict with a nuclear power as we’ve been in 60 years right now. That is not some small thing.Report
Yes it matters because the whole point of “recognizing” the Ukrainian government means that we acknowledge as truth, that they are a sovereign nation with the full freedom to seek out their own alliances.
NATO has never been used in an aggressive or hostile manner and Russia has no valid claim otherwise.
Its important that nations and alliance set boundaries of what they will or won’t accept and Russia has to be shown that naked unprovoked aggression won’t be accepted by the alliance.Report
So do you think we should send NATO forces into Ukraine to fight Russia, regardless of the consequences?Report
No, because Ukraine is not yet a member of the alliance.Report
But what about Ukraine’s right to self-determination?Report
Do the Russian people believe that NATO is hostile?
I suspect that a much larger percentage of them believe that the US is hostile, and the rest of NATO is just a tool, than you think.
Consider it from the outside. We sit in our splendid North American isolation, spending vastly more on our military than anyone else, a substantial majority of it on offensive weapons, and every few years we go out and break some other country. (And I’m sure outsiders take note that we seldom fix what we have broken.) Whenever another country joins NATO, US military personnel get deployed there.Report
While we should be careful about drawing too many conclusions about Russian popular opinion I think any claim that we in the West understand it better than Putin does should be treated very skeptically.Report
True.
Putin dismantled any hint of a free press and has used the media to (attempt to?) create Russian popular opinion.Report
Good point, but we could also say that what they believe doesn’t change our security needs or alliance commitments and doesn’t make a false claim true.Report
Their actual peace offer in the lead up to the war was to roll back not only those offers but all of East Europe, Poland on up.
We’ve been crossing red lines for a long time.
Arguably Putin has been doing the whole “cold war” and “the empire must be restored” thing for as long as he’s been in politics.Report
And while we’re at it, supposedly we got a copy of his next phase plans for the Ukraine and it’s widespread Uyghur style labor camps.
If the plan/desire from the start was to bring back the USSR, that includes all of the really nasty aspects to it for all the countries controlled by it.
No democracy. No elections. The State will control the press and tell everyone what to believe. State repression whenever and where ever the leaders feel it’s needed.
This is a path that at some point crosses our red lines and we end up where we are.
Our system of life and government is hostile to their system. That says a lot more about their system than it does about ours.Report
His ends are bad and very bad for the people of Ukraine. Which is why I keep saying it would have been better to approach the situation differently than we did. I get the sense that you think this outcome was inevitable. I don’t.Report
I think we have a lot less influence over other countries than we like to think.
With Putin setting up a totalitarian state in Russia, the amount of freedom he’s going to accept from his puppets goes down. At some point the people of the Ukraine make the “wrong” decision from his point of view and he insists the gov correct it.
Why is Ukraine tolerating Western Media, why are there elections, why are they having rule of law even when it’s in my way?
Is the West supposed to insist democracy has serious limits for former vassals of the USSR? Poland being free would hurt Russia’s feelings so they can’t be part of the EU?
Putin’s desired outcomes are heinous. Ergo he was always going to cross lines that are heinous.
From a 19th century great powers point of view his actions make a certain amount of sense. However, in modern terms he’s an evil dictator of a totalitarian state. That’s a really nasty package.
This specific outcome wasn’t inevitable (no specific outcome is) but our politicians don’t get elected on promising to appease evil dictators.
Some type of conflict was going to happen, and it’s only in hindsight that this was looks obvious.Report
It’s worth noting that when the US gets involved, it’s usually to make a country more world-friendly rather than to gain possessions. I’m sure our military efforts have lowered the domestic price of bananas, from time to time. But maintaining the modern free-market democratic peace is different than being expansionist or mercantilist. You can make a blowback argument that the US shouldn’t get involved so often, but you can’t equate our policy with Russia’s belief in their right to dominate Slavs.Report
There have certainly been some happy stories like Germany and Japan. But do you really think that’s true of most places we involve ourselves? I mean, is Libya on the up and up? What about the mess in Central America left over from our Cold War interventions?Report
Oh, hey, it’s Happy Hour, and I should give this question a better answer than this, but in one sentence: I think the Pax Americana has more benefits than we can measure.Report
I do too! And I think our own foreign policy craziness is the biggest threat to it!
But anyway I’m right there with you on happy hour. Emjoy!Report
Would these accusations, if true, justify Putin’s invasion?
For what it’s worth, I don’t see these accusations, even if true, as justifying a dang thing on Putin’s part.
I was more thinking about the last two years of Covid lockdown and thinking “Jeez louise, how many of these freakin’ things do we freakin’ have in freakin’ precarious places where one of those freakin’ test tubes is going to end up freakin’ breakin’ on the freakin’ floor?!?!?”Report
I applied for a job at my sister-in-laws bio-lab. Did/got a deep dive on what they do. Made it pretty far through the process.
They do animal testing. Give a rat a drug and see what happens. Ditto other animals.
They have SERIOUS security. Fences, walls, locks, badging a co-worker through the gate is a firing offense… because they have to worry about animal rights activists/terrorists.
“Bio” doesn’t mean “microbes”. Smallest thing they work with still has eyes and a tail.Report
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7435492/
Serial Passage means eyes and a tail. Black-footed ferrets in Wuhan. Mice for Omicron.Report
Pulling Pinky’s comment out as something I think is true, at least post-Cold War[1]:
On a closely related note, while it probably surprises no one that I’m Leftish in my foreign policy views, the common Leftward insistence[2] that US FP is motivated by “imperialism” is a dynamo powering an endless array of terrible takes.
[1] I don’t think “taking stuff” was the pre-Cold War motive either, but the focus was on making countries US-friendly (or USSR-hostile) rather than “world friendly”. The post-Cold War era of US hyperpower makes it both easy and defensible to conflate “US-friendly” and “world friendly”
[2] I’m not attributing this view to anyone present, which is part of why I pulled Pinky’s comment out of context.Report
Thanks. I’ve been trying to think of historical parallels. I think the Spanish expansions were always about increasing Spanish wealth, although there was a religious motivation as well. The English at times accepted the “white man’s burden” but also somehow ended up with some really nice diamonds. I think there’s some similarity between the early approach to the Monroe Doctrine and Russia’s Slavic domination, but I don’t see big differences between any of the modern foreign policies of, say, the US, Brazil. France, and South Korea toward each other.Report
I think we legitimately believe we are doing right by them. However good intentions, pathway to hell, etc.Report