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Comment by spywaregorilla | Hacker News Reader

Putin has plenty of interest in sabotaging the pipelines. If the pipelines are destroyed, one cannot kill Putin, take over, and sell gas to europe again to be rich.

The US would suffer an incredible risk if it ever came out that they intentionally sabotaged European energy supplies to such a scale.

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There was zero blowback last time the US blew up Russian pipelines. It was the largest non-nuclear, man-made explosion / fire to date though -- all achieved in 1982 via a software supply chain attack:

https://www.algora.com/Algora_blog/2022/09/29/reagan-approve...

Interestingly, the three simultaneous ruptures of two pipelines look a lot like what happened 40 years ago.

It wouldn't surprise me if a shoden-wielding script kiddie was to blame this time, but I have no idea. I'm not trying to imply anyone was/wasn't involved.

That's questionable. From wiki [0]:

"A report in the Moscow Times quoted KGB veteran Vasily Pchelintsev as saying that there was a natural gas pipeline explosion in 1982, but it was near Tobolsk on a pipeline connecting the Urengoy gas field to the city of Chelyabinsk, and it was caused by poor construction rather than sabotage; according to Pchelintsev's account, no one was killed in the explosion and the damage was repaired within one day. Reed's account has also not been corroborated by intelligence agencies in the United States.

Another point of criticism of the sabotage allegations is that, according to Prof. V. D. Zakhmatov, an explosion safety expert who has overseen the safety measures on many of the Soviet oil and gas pipelines built in the 1980s, at the described timeframe Soviet Union simply didn't practice digital control of its pipeline system. Most of the control was manual, and whatever automation was used utilized the analog control systems, most of which worked through pneumatics."

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_the_Abyss

Also no blowback when the US blew up refineries and oil pipelines in Nicaragua in Puerto Sandino, in 1983[1] - as well as mined the ports of Nicaragua[2]. There is in general a 30 year statuary timeline for declassifying these types of ops, although the US is usually late[3], so we may have confirmation in 2060 or so.

[1] https://repository.law.miami.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article...

[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1984/04/07/c...

[3] https://fas.org/blogs/secrecy/2011/10/frus_leads_lags/

What risk? The US says jump and European politicians ask how high...

Wasn't Germany building Nordstream 2 against US advice? It doesn't seem like European politicians always do what the US government wants.

Does that suggest your model might be wrong or over-simplified?

>The US says jump and European politicians ask how high...

I mean, if that were true Julian Assange would be in a bodybag right now, wouldn't he?

The UK refused to allow Assange to be extradited to the US because the US still practices the death penalty. That's one of the few areas that the UK and the US disagree publicly on.

Instead he was merely kept isolated in a single building while his accusers simply refused to investigate the allegations they invented unless he turned himself over to them to be extradited to the USA.

So yeah, maybe they aks how high, but sometimes don't jump all the way, just most of it.

Good point! Where is he these days and how is his life going?

Better than it would be if the US had its way.

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