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Comment by DanielHB | Hacker News Reader

I fear such civilian attacks are going to become more commonplace over time. It is well hypothesized that should China invade Taiwan, Taiwan would destroy the three gorges dam and completely annihilate a good chunk of China. It is just as much a deterrent as nuclear weapons, probably worse in this specific case.

This is why you can't go for the throat of a regime anymore, even if you have overwhelming force. Because if you do then, well, you are already going to jail for war crimes anyway.

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I don't know, I think that's always been a possibility. Hitting massive civilian infrastructure has always been kind of a MAD thing. And hard to spin as anything other than a war crime - floodplains covered in civilian bodies looks bad.

What seems scarier to me is the newer possibility of a huge number of very small remote attacks that utterly devastate the fabric of civilian systems, but none of them individually look like egregious war crimes. With the right PR, they can be defended as "limited" and "surgical" attacks denying "dual-use" infrastructure. Put all the blame for "looking suspicious" onto the locals with advance warning. Solar panels on the roof? Just like a command post. Radio antenna, looks like a communications relay. Fuel tanks? Vehicle pool. You can even give notice of all the strikes, you don't need to bomb them personally, they'll be out of mind without food, water, sewerage, healthcare or heating. For bonus points, then you can blame the defending government for failures of governance when they can't organise, say, waste treatment any more.

Warcrime becomes increasingly a previous century thing. This century war itself is a crime and to counter it all means are on the table again.

> if you do then, well, you are already going to jail for war crimes anyway.

realistically, only if you lose the war.

Or you're the USA

> destroy the three gorges dam

Through what non-nuclear means would they hypothetically destroy this massive concrete structure?

Cruise missile dives into water near dam base, creates a large bubble with slow explosives, and the subsequent collapse results in a water hammer against the structure.

No non-nuclear cruise missiles have the energy to pull this off.

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