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Comment by thatguy0900 | Hacker News Reader

I think it's interesting Russia isn't doing more things like this in protest of Ukraine support, whether this was them or not. Realistically, two teams of 5 guys with good opsec training could probably take out any infrastructure they wanted, and do it repeatedly

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The problem with this approach for Russia would be that even if the risk of detection was low, the consequences of being caught would be incredibly bad for them. Russian escalation to direct attacks on non-combatant countries would be all the justification necessary for an equivalent retaliatory response from countries with superior military capability. And Russian military presence in Ukraine provides the perfect opportunity for such a response that would be a disaster for Russia without involving the kind of attack on Russian territory itself that might further escalate things.

Basically, the only reason Russia is able to continue their military adventure in Ukraine at all is because the US and NATO currently view directly destroying the Russian military forces there as an escalation that could eventually lead to a nuclear war. If instead Russia takes the first step and directly attacks a NATO country, it would considered a response rather than an escalation if the US/NATO then attacked Russian forces invading Ukraine. Russia knows they have zero chance of prevailing in this scenario, and presumably are smart enough not to invite it.

I’d also question how low the odds of detection really are: I’m sure they could field a team but they’d need money, communications, etc. and it’d need rotation on a regular basis to avoid leaving the kind of data trail which the U.S. is good at following. Toss in the non-zero chance that they have someone or something compromised and that seems relatively unlikely to yield enough benefit before something inevitably goes wrong, especially since the stress of being in the field for that long is going to affect even elite agents. Imagine how well you’d do your job going to sleep each night wondering whether it’s the one where you’ll find out if the U.S. really stopped water-boarding prisoners, not to mention the nagging question of what happens to you and your family if the mission goes sour.

This seems like the kind of thing you could maybe do once, right as you invade, but not on an ongoing basis.

Also, if the US really did start having to deal with the absurd horseshit Russia has been inflicting on Ukraine via missiles, we'd probably be much more sympathetic to Ukraine.

As far as I know, this is one of the first major armed conflicts where the power grid has been sucha focused target. It's beyond my imagining to think how Ukraine has been coping with this. The article points out how slow & plodding the supply chain is for this kind kf equipment. That's an awful fact of today's economy. America in particular I'd expect to be extra plodding in response.

I'm guessing that even if the odds are minuscule, if they were caught, the consequences would be too disastrous for everybody, to make it worth it.

Russia has enough problems closer to home to worry about over non-consequential attacks in the US.

I agree Russia has enough problems at home, but calling these attacks non consequential seems optimistic. It seems they just hit the wrong station here, you could bring down the states grid if you did your homework and could hit two or three at once. And this isn't a hard job, just shoot a thing with a rifle and drive away

Sure, you could. And then the US would mobilize, and put resources towards fixing those major issues right away.

Major hurricanes slam the south east regularly and damages power infrastructure, regularly. If it became a real problem, the government would be quite real in their response, and so would most of the people

There's been a lot of mysterious explosions in Russia since the Ukraine war started, so they'd have a reason to believe they were striking back and not striking first, I guess.

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