[jmyeet]

So there are 3 ways the government could influence Big Tech:

1. Infiltration. An agent or asset could be in a position of power to enact desired policies and changes, provide a backdoor or whatever;

2. Jurisdiction. The platform falls under US jurisdiction so is subject to various forms of law enforcement, secret or otherwise. National Security Letters, FISA warrants, pen registers, that sort of thing; and

3. Propaganda. US companies reflect the cultural and political values of their founders, board and management as will as the will of stockholders. For some issues there is a political divide but for many issues there isn't, most notably when it comes to US foreign policy where Democrats and Republicans are basically indistinguishable.

The prevailing foreign policy view is that the US is good and a benign hegemony and a civilizing and democratizing force. The current foreign policy bent also favours interventionism and has since World War Two.

You see this at the huge backlash you get, even here among relatively educated and informed commenters, when you dare to suggest that the US bears some responsibility for Ukraine's predicament even though Russia is of course wholly responsible for an unjustifiable invasion.

It's a real lesson in the power of US propaganda and how ingrained the benign hegemony meme (and it is a meme) is.

My theory is the first 2 points I listed above don't matter. They're of almost no importance. What really matters is the ability of the US media (and I include social media companies in this umbrella) to project US propaganda and to normalize the US-centric view of the world.

[syrrim]

To say that the US is in any way responsible for Ukraine is to deny ukraine agency. They are caught between a lion and a bear. They could reject the aid of the lion, but that would throw them into the hands of the bear. They choose to accept US help in their defense, but that makes them vulnerable to US invasion. This is a choice they made, and they bare the consequences. The US in offering that help might have sought to anger russia, but they left it to the ukrainians to decide whether to follow through.

Fundamentally, russia had no interest in allowing ukraine to be an independent country. US aid forestalled an invasion, and made the ultimate invasion a fairer fight, but it wasn't the cause of it.

[jmyeet]

> To say that the US is in any way responsible for Ukraine is to deny ukraine agency

No, it doesn't. This war has highlighted just how simplistic people are in that someone has to be the bad guy and someone has to be the good guy (hint: the US is always the good guy). Any suggestion that more than one party can bear responsibility or blame invites histrionics about victim-blaming.

The US friend zoned Ukraine, basically. The US knew it was never going to happen. Sure, Ukraine should figure that out (which they didn't seem to) but there's enough blame to go around.

[thesuitonym]

>This war has highlighted just how simplistic people are in that someone has to be the bad guy and someone has to be the good guy

Everyone who has ever said this has gone on to say that the US is the bad guy. And you're always arguing against people who say "Yes, the US is a bully, but that's not important right now."

[jmyeet]

To be fair, the US is almost always the bad guy.

I don't say this flippantly. Look at the governments the US has overthrown, rebels supported, natural resources stolen, corrupt leaders supported and arms supplied to those committing genocide (eg Saudi Arabia in Yemen).

[AbrahamParangi]

If the US is the bad guy, who do you think is the good guy?

[BuckRogers]

There was blame to go around, until Russia invaded Ukraine today and in 2014. Now it's all on them. Otherwise you're saying the woman with the short skirt asked or deserved to be raped and murdered. Which is never true.

Mistakes were made, but none of them justify the genocide in Ukraine. Nothing even justified an invasion at all.

If you can't see true evil and who the bad guy is, you're definitely part of the problem. I hope no women in your family are raped by men with logic similar to your own, because you'll be blaming them.

[_dw1a]

This is a misleading and, frankly, rather disgusting analogy.

The sovereignty of an individual, especially over one’s own body, and the sovereignty of a nation are not even near equivalents.

And yes, I know that at this time the sovereignty of individual Ukrainians, men and women, is being horribly violated. But this did not need to happen even if the sovereignty of the nation itself was violated. It’s a separate matter for which Russians, especially individual soldiers and their commanders, bear direct blame for. They could have chosen another, less disgusting, far less inhumane means to gain control of Ukraine.

As well, despite the clear propaganda behind it, Russia can at least claim that they felt threatened by Ukraine’s chummy relationship with the narcissistic and occasionally-aggressive Uncle Sam. This entirely breaks your analogy as rape is never a defensive maneuver no matter how one might twist it.

[pavlov]

Rape can be defensive in the rapist’s mind. “My wife smiled at someone else. I need to defend my property and teach her a lesson.”

And this is the same kind of twisted logic that drives the Russian invasion.

[_dw1a]

That seems more retributive than defensive. It’s only construed as defensive when the attacker is forced to justify themselves, to themselves and others, to avoid shame and guilt. Consider the cliche of “defending one’s honor”. This phrase assumes the rightfulness of the aggressor’s actions. It begs the question.

[BuckRogers]

Sovereignty of a nation is built on the sovereign individuals. Only a free man can build a free nation. It bubbles up, rather than comes from top down.

I'm an "actions, not words" type of guy. Putin claims many things in this world, they're threatened etc. We all know it's a lie. You must watch Russia's actions, not their words. How many times have we learned this? Watch what they've done, not what they say.

You're right, rape is never defensive. Instead what happened here is that Russia has raped Ukraine, and claimed she was going to attack him. That's the reality of it, and it's the only twisted logic on display.

She was also supposedly a Nazi. I'd bet good coin there's more actual Neo-Nazis in Russia than Ukraine though, just based on sheer population alone.

Not that Nazism actually gives Putin any pause.[0]

[0]https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/04/08/russia-sen...

[trinsic2]

Thank you for speaking what I was going to say. The idea that people are subject to government agenda's is wholly inaccurate. Governments are made up of people to protect the interests of individuals, not the other way around.

[_dw1a]

> Sovereignty of a nation is built on the sovereign individuals.

This is just wrong. Sovereignty is a term for having ultimate authority. This can be had by any kind of government as long as it is the ultimate authority over what it claims to govern. This can include a dictatorship even if it might not recognize the authority of the individual over their own body.

Whether or not other countries recognize another country’s sovereignty is another matter. As in the case at hand, Russia clearly does not recognize Ukraine’s and so it violates it. This qualifies as rape according to one of many definitions for the term. And that’s an accurate and appropriate labeling.

But, and this is my point, it doesn’t make your particular analogy accurate or fair. You are equating the rape of a nation with that of an individual. In particular, you are using the typical cliched scenario of the attacker being drawn in by the victim’s dress, which is usually used to suggest the perpetrator could not control themselves due to the supposed unspoken solicitation and temptation of the victim’s dress. This is not at all like Russia and Ukraine. This is not defensive, or even attempting to claim so. It’s just claiming powerlessness, a lack of agency. And Russia is doing nothing of that sort. It’s doing quite the opposite.

You even end your comment with:

> I hope no women in your family are raped by men with logic similar to your own, because you'll be blaming them.

You are suggesting that the two situations are so similar that the target of your comment wouldn’t be able to differentiate between them either.

Strange. A rape victim has a traumatic personal experience that the abstract entity we call a nation could never have, being that it doesn’t have a personal experience at all. The difference would undoubtably be quite apparent to loved ones.

And while the citizens of the nation would likely be wildly upset, unless their own individual sovereignty was also violated they would surely not have the same experience as that of a rape victim. This would be self evident just by asking any person whether they’d rather their own nation or their own sovereignty be violated. But we don’t need to ask, because we already know what the answer would be.

I’m going to bow out of the rest of this discussion though since I don’t even like talking about it. Fortunately I have never gone through either experience. And because of that, it doesn’t feel right for me to discuss the differences like I truly know the differences. Hopefully the same is true for you as well.

Edit, to preempt any misreading: I am not in anyway defending Russia. Their actions are despicable and Ukraine does not deserve any of it. Russia _is_ raping Ukraine, but that reality is very different from an individual’s despite the use of the same term.

[pessimizer]

> To say that the US is in any way responsible for Ukraine is to deny ukraine agency. They are caught between a lion and a bear.

But somehow you're excusing the lion.

[spaced-out]

Because, in this instance, the lion is not the one that launched an invasion. Particularly egregious, launching a pre-emptive war based on a flimsy premise of what Ukraine might do in the future.

[curuinor]

surely america's the eagle, and the brits are lions? heraldry is ancient and the US has got some, surprisingly enough

[jimmygrapes]

I think Russia has more claim to the eagle for heraldry purposes, although maybe two-headed eagles don't count as the same species.

[car_analogy]

> The prevailing foreign policy view is that the US is good and a benign hegemony and a civilizing and democratizing force.

No, that's just how it's sold to the public. E.g. I guarantee nobody had civilizing and democratizing in mind when the US occupying force in Iraq issued order 81:

the people in Iraq are now prohibited from saving newly designed seeds (not the traditional ones) and may only plant seeds for their food from licensed, authorized U.S. distributors. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100_Orders

[Mikeb85]

> You see this at the huge backlash you get, even here among relatively educated and informed commenters, when you dare to suggest that the US bears some responsibility for Ukraine's predicament even though Russia is of course wholly responsible for an unjustifiable invasion.

Only 1 country is killing Ukrainians: Russia. There's no US troops massacring and raping Ukrainians... The only thing the US is responsible for is that they could have maybe threatened Russia enough to not invade.

Anyhow, I've been sceptical of US hegemony at times however one thing is clear: the world is far better with the US as the dominant power than it would be if Russia or China were dominant. At least the US allows its citizens and those of its 'protectorates' (or whatever you want to call US allies/countries it protects) a large degree of personal freedom.

[BuckRogers]

The lines are clearer than ever for the 21st century. This century has been kicked off with the world struggle between democracy and totalitarianism.

People have a choice. Choose the US/Europe/Japan/South Korea/Taiwan, or, the mideast/Russia/China. Many people voted with their feet, migrating to the former nations. Those people have no room to speak as they already voted.

I'm missing some players of course, but generally speaking we in the Free World are definitely at a disadvantage and outnumbered by the hordes of people who desire strongmen and dictators. Most of the world actually does not want or trust themselves with self-determination through representative government. Russia is one of the few examples in Europe where the people want freedom, but don't really know what it is and are scared of the idea that they'll have to become active players in a non-farcical representative democracy.

The middle east similarly never asked for democracy. They largely see no use for it. Most of Asia is the same. The typical Chinese person prefers the greatness of China as a nationalistic power, rather than the greatness of their institutions progressing the freedom of mankind. Which is how most of us in Europe and North America view our true strengths as.

Of course, overt nationalism will lead to servitude, especially for Russia. They'll be losing Chechnya soon, and become a vassal state to China. Far lower than their previous state in the world. This is a nation that once slammed their foreheads on the ground in honor of their Turkish masters, now they are taking off their shoes for the Chinese. Their alternative choice was to ditch Putin, and join with the American, European and Asian democracies. Contrary to popular belief, we welcomed them. But Putin looks at old maps of the Russian Empire and honestly thought it was possible again. Being a farce democracy, there was no institutional resistance to stop him. He's only destroying Russia.

The Russian people are also ultimately responsible here. They chose to cower to Putin. I'm sympathetic to them to a degree, these are a people that haven't and don't dare to speak their views outside of their kitchen table. Yet inaction is an action. They can still stop this. But they have to storm the Kremlin and take him out ASAP. It won't happen. We have a newly confirmed genocidal state in the world to contend with.

[kcatskcolbdi]

> The Russian people are also ultimately responsible here.

I would be interested to learn about what steps you've taken to curb the abuses of your government. Surely your own government is not without fault, and through your logic you are responsible for all their transgressions.

[BuckRogers]

That's a Soviet response right there. Everything must be examined objectively. It doesn't matter if someone else committed a crime or has a fault, that doesn't justify crimes of our own.

I'm happy to put myself on the defensive though. Self-examination is a path to enlightenment. I am guilty of many things in life. Some of which I have been punished and others which I never will be. In the portions of the Americas, Asia, and Europe that are healthy democracies, simple political engagement can suffice. Many things others would characterize as "abuses" were actually proxy wars against totalitarian regimes. If the entire world were healthy democracies, it would be a far more peaceful place due to having checks and balances on power. As opposed to dictators.

But that has no relevance here, when there's an active genocide occurring in Ukraine. I'm not part or parcel to that. Others are though.

[hni]

> The middle east similarly never asked for democracy.

Oh boy... a blanket statement if ever I saw one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta...

[BuckRogers]

The middle east similarly never asked for democracy. They largely see no use for it.

Full quote helps.. I realize the Iranian people are far more into neoliberalism than their leaders are, and that not everyone in that part of the world desires Sharia Law over neoliberalism. I certainly did not intend to insult those that do desire freedom / representative government in the region. But I do believe they're in the minority.

[Mikeb85]

> I'm missing some players of course, but generally speaking we in the Free World are definitely at a disadvantage and outnumbered by the hordes of people who desire strongmen and dictators.

Dunno if I agree with this particular line (but I do agree with most of your post). India is a democracy, there's many quite populous democracies and many who live under dictatorships do desire personal freedom on several levels even if there's not necessarily democratic institutions in their countries at present.

[BuckRogers]

There are those that desire their nation to be a part of the Free World, within nations that aren't currently. Of course. I didn't mean they're all doomed. Freedom fighters for democracy exist everywhere. There's many Russians like Navalny that desire this. He's an example of a Russian patriot, rather than just a nationalist. Had the Russians stood with him in a real way all of these years, tens of thousands of Russian lives and Ukrainian lives would've been saved.

We can't help them. They're a nuclear power. External help with Russian liberation is not possible. It's on them, and I understand how difficult it is. Freedom fighting is not in most Russian's DNA. But they're human, and even after 70 years of Soviet repression, it's still there. I want to have faith.

India is worth keeping an eye on. They are a member of the Pacific equivalent of NATO, the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, but it will be interesting to see how devoted they are to a transparent and healthy democracy as opposed to just looking to counter China as a rival.

[tomcam]

They don’t cower to Putin. He’s quite popular. Russians have loved tsars for centuries. There was an infection point in the 80s and 90s where they could’ve stepped lately into a modern democratic form of government and did not. It does not seem to be the Russian way.

[tomcam]

* inflection lol

[rufusroflpunch]

This viewpoint is simplistic to the point of absurdity.

[geranim0]

Sometimes I wonder if these types of comments are state sponsored

[loudmax]

I don't know how active the IRA is on HN, but there absolutely are state sponsored comments like those on the internet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Research_Agency

[mardifoufs]

Are we back to blaming the JDF too? Why not, right? Everyone I disagree with is a state agent

[Mikeb85]

And your comment is useless and adds nothing.

[Supermancho]

I assume you are refrring to the laughable statement:

> The only thing the US is responsible for is that they could have maybe threatened Russia enough to not invade.

as if that wasnt a factor (by proxy via NATO) initiating Russian aggression.

[Mikeb85]

> as if that wasnt a factor (by proxy via NATO) initiating Russian aggression.

This is basically the "she wore a short dress" defense...

The only country that initiated Russian aggression is Russia.

[Supermancho]

> This is basically the "she wore a short dress" defense...

I'm not sure why you characterize the assertion as a "defense". It's a reason.

People do things for reasons. Everyone makes choices based on how they perceive the world and predict the future from there. To flatly ignore circumstance is not constructive.

[Mikeb85]

It's a shit reason.

Just like wearing a short dress is a "reason" rapists claim to rape.

Russia is raping and killing for reasons. But those reasons are shit and Ukraine doesn't deserve what's happening to them.

[mikevm]

> You see this at the huge backlash you get, even here among relatively educated and informed commenters, when you dare to suggest that the US bears some responsibility for Ukraine's predicament even though Russia is of course wholly responsible for an unjustifiable invasion.

Here's the thing, the people who keep saying that US bears responsibility for Ukraine's predicament are wrong. I'm Russian so I follow various sources (both Russian and Ukrainian) in the original languages. Putin has had his eyes on Ukraine at least since he came into power 20 years ago. In 2014 Igor Girkin (among others) was sent clandestinely to take over Crimea and start the war in the Donbas. Girkin is a monarchist and believes in "the Greater Russia". He believes that Russians and Ukrainians are the same people (an opinion Putin shares and has publicly proclaimed before the war).

The FSB has a whole department (the 5th service) devoted to subversion of Ukraine, including payment/bribes of billions of dollars to various gov't and media officials (one of whom, Viktor Medvedchuk, was captured by the SBU recently while attempting to flee house arrest).

Blaming this conflict on NATO and the US is part of Kremlin propaganda, including their "de-nazification" claims. If anything, this conflict has shown just how important NATO is in keeping people like Putin in check, as he would've gladly continued to the Baltic states and maybe others if his Ukrainian campaign succeeded (in fact, some Russian politicians have publicly stated this on national Russian TV recently).

[jmyeet]

We can agree the whole "denazification" argument is complete BS. That's propaganda for domestic consumption.

As for Putin having eyes on Ukraine, let me argue it this way: NATO was never going to allow Ukraine to join. Germany, in particular, was always going to veto it. So even if you think that Putin had his eyes on Ukraine, NATO was never going to be a solution.

So what do you do? You get Ukraine to adopt a policy of neutrality similar to Finland, Sweden or Switzerland. You build your entire military around being a defensive army to make the cost of invasion so high as to dissuade anyone from trying. To be fair, Ukraine's military has exceeded all expectations here but the invasion was (IMHO) always doomed (at least for the entire country). It's simply too big and too populated. Russia simply can't maintain control of it.

Russia may well have invaded anyway but then we're in exactly the same situation we are now so what have we lost?

[mikevm]

> So what do you do? You get Ukraine to adopt a policy of neutrality similar to Finland, Sweden or Switzerland.

This is all dandy, but how can you do that when Putin breaks previous obligations by invading Crimea and the Donbas?

See https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-parliament-abandons-neutrali...

Putin wants Ukraine either to be part of Russia, or as a vassal/subservient state. You don't even realize how compromised Ukraine was by the FSB. Politicians, media figures, etc... all on the bankroll of the FSB to the tune of billions of dollars. In a way, this war has allowed these rats to be exposed and has unified the Ukrainians even more so as a people. Neutrality would've just prolonged the suffering and allowed Putin to destabilize Ukraine even further.

There's also some interesting discussion here: https://www.russiamatters.org/analysis/nato-or-bust-why-do-u...

> However, the motives behind Russia’s actions toward Ukraine could extend far beyond traditional security interests. Unlike Ukraine, neither Austria nor Finland was viewed by Moscow as part of “the same historical and spiritual place” as Russia, as part of “a single whole.” Hence, it was easier for the Kremlin to accept their statehood, including their right to integrate with Europe politically and economically. It is unlikely that Moscow would ever acquiesce to the same latitude in Ukraine’s foreign policy. As Russian President Vladimir Putin has stressed, “true sovereignty of Ukraine is possible only in partnership with Russia.” Without a common understanding of what neutrality means, Russia would then be even more likely to interfere in Ukraine as long as it interprets any of its foreign policy actions as hostile. Furthermore, in the absence of outside security guarantees or military cooperation with the West, Ukraine could be perceived as sufficiently weak to be coerced to Russia’s liking.

[ARandomerDude]

4. Coercion and Corruption. The government tells Big Tech "You're going to do $GOVERNMENT_THING, as well as fund our next campaigns. Cooperate and we'll make you even more wealthy and powerful; refuse and we'll bury you." This is a nefarious combination of all 3 of your points, and I suspect the most common.

[throwaway412112]

What about the opposite direction of influence?

Its much more interesting i think because in the end, its a game of who remains in power, the public domain (government, theoretically) or the private domain (large Corp). The Chinese CP decived to crack down on to-big-to-fail, where as we in the west ...

[giraffe_lady]

This friend speaks my mind.