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Comment by patmcc | Hacker News Reader

I think a lot about how terrorists don't act and I guess I don't understand their motives. Electric grids, fiber optic lines, train tracks, bridges, water mains, sewage treatment, all of these can be pretty easily disrupted with equipment that isn't hard to get and doesn't require extensive training. And the disruption could be extreme.

I mean, I'm glad they're not doing any of this, but I'm puzzled.

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I suppose most of it is that terrorism and just any ideological violence is more about sending a message than being effective. This isn't total war. The point isn't really to outage a random town/county from power or internet. You want to be flashy and obvious. It's why suicide missions are the common method. Being a martyr is more ideologically powerful than causing massive damage.

If you're subtle but effective, you look evil, and you're so clean and effective that for the most part people aren't scare of you. You don't even really want people to be scared of you.

I mean you have the Russians waging total war on Ukraine with much better than improvised weapons and they can only keep the power off sometimes. That sends a very clear signal to me.

And Ukraine is doing a lot more to defend than some random US local police department is doing against an unexpected attack.

That's the point. These sort of oppression attacks are mostly effective if you can keep them up. Power out for a day or two is annoying, but power out for half of the week every week for months is effective oppression. People tend to bond over trouble and oppression.

By comparison, suicide attacks on some significant or vulnerable place sends the sort of message that resonates for years. Oppression only is really effective if you can keep it up until you fully control the situation and develop some hegemony.

Is total war one of those watered-down phrases that carries an implied “within reason” along with it? Because it doesn’t really look like Russia is putting everything they have into the war effort. Maybe everything they have, within reason.

Total war short of nuclear weapons is I believe a fair characterization of the conflict.

No? Total war just means you consider attacking non military targets as ok and you're essentially willing to sacrifice your domestic economy and civilian life to win. That definitely seems to mostly fit what Russia is doing, even if you don't feel like they're doing it effectively. Thusfar the only thing it seems they haven't been willing to use is nuclear weapons, and there's a reasonable argument that they're not doing that because they don't think it would help their position.

Total war doesn't mean you're required to use everything and sacrifice everything, just that you're internally willing to, which is obviously hard to determine in the moment as an external observer. It does seem like we're close enough to use the term in the moment.

Maybe intelligent people aren't treated in a way that triggers a terroristic response against society?

Or intelligent people have a level of self-preservation that doesn't allow for the execution of ideas. The ideas of what and how to cause mass disorder are fairly easy if you have enough knowledge, the desire to execute is whats usually missing.

They could do that, but for what current gain? In reaction to their attacks, we'd beef up our security—so if at some point in the future, they had an explicit goal, it would be much harder. Much better to not attack, let us keep our infrastructure vulnerable, so that when they need to attack, they can.

I have in my head several horrifying and achievable terrorist plans – plans that I will never tell anyone in case someone else gets a wrong idea.

I too have wondered why terrorists don't do these simple things, but I have concluded they are simply technologically ignorant and not very bright.

Just guessing (hoping?) here but perhaps attempts on these are being made and just caught early enough that we can all remain happily oblivious.

Terrorism is a stupid strategy. Its track record is terrible. The folks who engage in it, fortunately, are not the most capable.

Terrorism is a very plastic term, that in the modern era is only applied to non-state actors who act against Western interests. Many, many, many allies of the West would be considered terroristic if they didn't align with Western goals. The Northern Alliance in Afghanistan would be considered terrorist, as well as many of the Syrian and Libyan allies during the Arab Spring. In those instances, they aren't labeled terrorist, but are instead called freedom fighters.

To conflate the main activities of an occupying army with that of a tactical cell or rebel/insurgent and claiming they're the same in nature, really makes me wonder why we would have intelligence agencies or counterterrorist rapid response units. The army would suffice.

This is not a "we're the good guys, and they're the bad guys" propaganda thing. It just defines a very different mode of combat. Nice try, but a terrorist is a subversion of a secret agent, not a soldier.

I'm not claiming they are the same in nature, I'm saying that a group gets the "terrorist" designation based only on it being unaligned with the West, and as a non-state actor.

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