>So in what way does this help the American people?
Shutting down Mitre and the CVE is against American interests, both public and private. That said, you can make an argument, one that revolves around cost (was the CVE DB worth $50M a year, especially given its backlog?). The other part of that argument rests on assuming there will be a private or semi-private replacement for the service, that there may be many of them, and therefore they will improve. One might assert, as libertarians do, that every service that's not monopoly of force should be private.
These aren't great arguments. $50M does seem like a lot, and maybe it could be reduced. I'd love to see an actual analysis of their operations rather then just ending the program. The second argument is worse. NIST and NOAA are examples of agencies that punch above their weight in terms of cost/benefit (the CFPB as well), and it seems like for-profit NIST and NOAA doesn't make much sense. But yes its worth considering the pros and cons of publicly funded service versus the private versions, in general. Even a bad argument is better than no argument, and the current admin does not bother to make one.
You seem to be doing a cost/benefit analysis. The sense we have is that the people doing the dismantling either have not done such an analysis or are at the very least keeping it from the public.
They have absolutely done a cost/benefit analysis. It works like this: "If it does not benefit me personally, directly and financially, then it costs too much."
In my country such things are discussed in parliament during endless sessions about the yearly budget.
They are not decreed by a god emperor at a whim.
I find this hard to believe. Every country has various conditions and scenarios where the leader is granted god-like powers. ex: In Canada Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act for the first time ever during covid. My understanding is that it was intended for 9/11-type actions, not protesters who should have been arrested weeks earlier.
What country are you in?
This is not quite correct. The Emergencies Act was preceded by the War Measures Act which was used during WWI and WWII as well as during the "October Crisis"[1].
But yes, the intent is for events that threaten the nation, not protests.
> was the CVE DB worth $50M a year, especially given its backlog?
This is more or less a common rhetorical argument made by republicans after cutting budgets. The agency (organization, etc) is ineffective now, so we should terminate it, rather than fund it so it may be more effective.
It’s a very silly statement as well! Is having a single source of truth and the reference point for every publicly disclosed cybersecurity vulnerability worth $50M/year?
It is not even argument that it is ineffective. Large backlog can mean it is ineffective or it can mean that there is more work to do then resources allow. There is no way to distinguish these two without further info.
I almost edited my comment to anticipate this comment. It is not large compared to the budget. Nothing is. It's large in absolute terms. $50M is a lot of spend compared to most businesses with a similar scope. The product is a database of information other people report, naively it seems like a lot. It doesn't have any of the complexity of most businesses. This is not to minimize the work of fixing messy input, reproducing and properly cataloging vulnerabilities, etc. That budget is ~250 workers (assuming $100k/year with 100% overhead), ignoring infra. More than anything I'm curious how the money is being spent because without knowing that it's impossible to judge whether it's bloated or not.
>More than anything I'm curious how the money is being spent because without knowing that it's impossible to judge whether it's bloated or not.
Exactly. And it's totally fair for anyone to question the cost. However, the current administration is destroying things with the precision of a Jackson Pollack painting and no such reflection is happening.
Question the cost how? By saying "is this alot?" Then performing no further investigation to confirm that or make a comparison basically leaving the question open which causes random to assume it's "alot"
I can say "Gee whiz $335M per F-22 seems a bit much!" without being an expert in jets, military equipment, or going into the details of its production. I know a bit more about software so I can safely say something similar about MITRE. The fact that I don't want to spend my time doing (frankly, rather useless since I'm not a journo or in government or influential at all) investigative journalism into the specifics doesn't invalidate my opinion. Random people will read random things into whatever random content they consume; deep in an HN comment thread this is of little concern.
I don't support this decision, but it's not like the $50M here is the keystone for the entire budget. It's actually easier to cut the smaller components and looks like progress when you're not making much movement.
What does it cost to lose the control over it? I'm sure the an equivalent database could be maintained in another country for a lot cheaper, like in China or Russia.
$50 is about $7 per American. Could MITRE be more efficient? Yeah maybe. Probably, even. But cutting off funding entirely isn't the way to make it happen. This decision isn't about saving the American taxpayer money, it's about weaking the US, and it serves exactly one person.
It doesn't. It's a side-effect of the populist right's "human capital" problem. Lots of nefarious theories abound about how this will be used to clamp down on our rights, and that may ultimately happen, but that will merely be a reaction to the consequences of their blundering actions. Today, the conventional wisdom among the Trump administration is these cybersecurity programs are a waste of money and that magically the private sector will swoop in and save us.
We're now all going to experience the high cost of low human capital.
Those who cause the crisis will show up soon to sell the solution, in the form of private ventures that make them a lot of money.
This mirrors a lot the physical destruction of other countries only to come back for "reconstruction" which filled some pockets with unimaginable amounts of money.
My guess is that they were overtly trying to show Russia that we aren’t a direct threat to them anymore in the vain attempt to avoid fighting a two front war in the upcoming global war. Unfortunately, Putin is likely going to keep invading up to Germany’s Fulda Gap. If we’re still a part of NATO, we would have no choice but to declare war.
> Unfortunately, Putin is likely going to keep invading up to Germany’s Fulda Gap
Russia can barely handle a stalemate with Ukraine. They have zero chance offensively against Poland and the Baltics, let alone the full blown might of the EU+UK (which also have independent nuclear weapons in France and to an extent the UK). That doesn't mean that a Polish offensive can march into Moscow, but it doesn't have to for Putin to lose power. He's showing his strongman strong army bullshit to be little more than a paper tiger, and at some point even the nihilistic to death Russians will get tired of the meat grinder for literally no reason.
> Russia can barely handle a stalemate with Ukraine.
See, people look at the stalemate and often draw false conclusions. It's not that Russia was too weak militarily, it's that Ukraine put up one hell of a fight.
And all these economy size comparisons are mostly meaningless. Sure Russia may have a GDP of Italy but by the same logic Ukraine (which is a fraction of Russian GDP) should have lost long ago.
> They have zero chance against Poland and the Baltics
Russia's chances against the Baltics are pretty good, I would say 1 in 3. And for Putin it's a proposition with no downside: at worst he loses another few hundred thousand subjects.
> See, people look at the stalemate and often draw false conclusions. It's not that Russia was too weak militarily, it's that Ukraine put up one hell of a fight
While Ukraine unquestionably put up a hell of a fight, the fact that the numerically superior army with the better and more numerical equipment, backed by the multiple times bigger and richer country failed is a failure. Especially when you consider that Ukraine doesn't have a navy and barely had an air force and anti-air, yet Russia failed at establishing air or naval control, let alone dominance.
> Russia's chances against the Baltics are pretty good, I would say 1 in 3.
Russia has no chance of having a war against the Baltics only. Any aggression against them will be met with a swift reaction from Poland, which has a better equipped army than Ukraine. If Ukraine can destroy the best Russian units and hold to a stalemate the majority of the remainder for years, Poland will wipe the floor with the war criminals.
> While Ukraine unquestionably put up a hell of a fight, the fact that the numerically superior army with the better and more numerical equipment, backed by the multiple times bigger and richer country failed is a failure. Especially when you consider that Ukraine doesn't have a navy and barely had an air force and anti-air, yet Russia failed at establishing air or naval control, let alone dominance.
That's certainly true, but much of this failure can be ascribed to:
1. Lack of co-ordination (both inter-force and within each unit) and basic best-practices in terms of logistics. The Russian armed forces are still far from anything NATO has in this regard but are also a lot better than when the war began.
2. Poor mobilisation and insufficient initial forces. Most of this was based on the obviously misguided notion that Russian forces would be welcome as liberators (which, haha, no, 40+ years of Soviet or Soviet-backed regimes in Eastern Europe have ensured this would not happen for generations), and is unlikely to be repeated.
3. Considerable strategic depth, which further compounded #1 and #2, which the Baltics don't have.
4. Considerable development of expertise on the Ukrainian side, which has been fighting in Donetsk and Luhansk since the first Russian invasion in 2014, whereas neither Poland nor the Baltics armed forces have had much exposure to real-life war outside the GWOT.
5. A smaller mismatch in terms of equipment than media coverage makes it sound, certainly far smaller than that of the Baltics.
The odds varjag puts forward aren't at all outlandish, especially with NATO commitment so uncertain at this time.
While US commitment to NATO is uncertain, the rest of NATO still seems certain. Russia might be able to take the Baltic and/or Poland - but they won't be able to keep it. Soon as they cross the border (or more likely start building up) the rest of Europe will start building up their army to attack back.
> Especially when you consider that Ukraine doesn't have a navy and barely had an air force and anti-air, yet Russia failed at establishing air or naval control, let alone dominance.
Ukraine had dozens of airworthy fighter jets and well over a hundred air defense batteries at the start. Many of the latter were lost in the first weeks but Ukraine was fairly packed as far as smaller nations go.
> Russia has no chance of having a war against the Baltics only.
No, Russian chance of occupying significant part of Baltics with realistic level of NATO involvement is 1 in 3. It would be most certainly able to overrun the three states absent NATO support.
> Any aggression against them will be met with a swift reaction from Poland, which has a better equipped army than Ukraine. If Ukraine can destroy the best Russian units and hold to a stalemate the majority of the remainder for years, Poland will wipe the floor with the war criminals.
That's the spirit I was mentioning yeah, "Ukrainians are bit backwards unlike we noble NATO elves". Name one thing in Polish military that Ukrainian military today doesn't have though?
The coming war will be hell of a reality check for many.
Russia had how many hundreds? And how much time to prepare how to neutralise them?
> , Russian chance of occupying significant part of Baltics with realistic level of NATO involvement is 1 in 3. It would be most certainly able to overrun the three states absent NATO support
No. If Russia attacks the Baltics, it's guaranteed that Poland will join (with at least some NATO support).
> That's the spirit I was mentioning yeah, "Ukrainians are bit backwards unlike we noble NATO elves". Name one thing in Polish military that Ukrainian military today doesn't have though
Years of preparation and conscious arming with a real budget? Ukraine had to go from a small and under equipped (mostly with obsolete Soviet era stuff) army to a total war in mere days. The complete mobilisation meant that there was limited time to train and equip everyone properly. Poland has had years to prepare equipment, training, planning, coordination.
Again, Russia can't handle Ukraine and has no clear path to victory there. Why on earth do you think it could handle more fronts, especially against better equipped and prepared enemies? Nobody is saying Putin is rational, but even he has to know that.
>Russia's chances against the Baltics are pretty good, I would say 1 in 3. And for Putin it's a proposition with no downside: at worst he loses another few hundred thousand subjects.
Article 5 is still in effect, even if America won’t take its part. Attack of Baltics will trigger response from all neighbors including Finland, Sweden and Poland. Kaliningrad won’t last long, St.Petersburg will be within reach of artillery etc. It will be suicidal to do that.
One thing that Westerners do not understand is that people in small towns or rural areas of Russia may be expendable, but population of St.Petersburg and Moscow is a protected class. If they suffer, the regime may actually collapse before reaching military goals. For this reason Russian mobilization barely touched both capitals.
If I were Putin I'd attack some very minor NATO state to check if NATO will really send soldiers to defend it. Example: is really somebody willing to die for Estonia? (Sorry HNers from Estonia, but you are just in the worst possible place of all of NATO.) If not, NATO will crumble into pieces. If yes, let's see who's sending soldiers and who won't, and how they will react to the first week of casualties. Keep going or fold?
Maybe before getting there, if I end up controlling the next parliament of Ukraine I'd take over Moldova, and before that let's teach a lesson to Armenia. That's to keep the army busy and not let soldiers back home where they could cause troubles or, god forbids, create a pacifist movement like after the Afghan war (the Russian one.)
> If I were Putin I'd attack some very minor NATO state to check if NATO will really send soldiers to defend it. Example: is really somebody willing to die for Estonia
Even if nobody else, the other Baltic states and Poland will defend them. Very decent chance of Finland, Sweden, UK, France joining as well.
But you are not Putin and he is not you. Attacking Ukraine wasn’t a gamble for him, it was a presumably easy win, like Georgia in 2008. Attack on NATO on Baltic shore isn’t an easy win, it’s a gamble. And what is this test for? America has already learned the lesson and is withdrawing from Russian periphery. Europe has no interest in power games, UK is in irreversible decline. NATO is not going to expand anymore in foreseeable future, primary military goal achieved and Russian authoritarianism is secure. Why he would attack Baltics?
I would like to add that, yes, with a lot of money and weapons from the US and other countries, they would not have been able to do it without their help. Am I wrong about the aid's significance, or did it not happen?
Yes, but the initial stopping of the Russian advance happened before the vast majority of that help arrived. In a way, Russia lost the war the moment it didn't finish it in a few days - it ensured Ukraine could be supplied, and that the resistance will be remembered and kept on.
There's no kompromat, Trump and Putin just have the same goals. This whole idea that Putin has kompromat on Trump and that's the only reason he would be deferential to Putin rests on the idea that the American president is aligned morally, politically, and strategically with the long-term interests of America. Sadly, this is not true. The oath Trump took was empty.
Trump does not have a pro-America agenda; he has a pro-Trump agenda. His whims are not morally, politically, or strategically aligned with the goals and prospects of the American people, they're aligned with a global billionaire class, to which Putin belongs. That is why they get along. They are allies.
This is what I have said for a long time. Trump the individual cares about Trump, he operates like an animal. He may not overtly hate the country, but he has no feeling of obligation or patriotism. I don't think he knows what patriotism is.
If something he does helps America, it is because it helps him, or because it inflates his ego via people applauding him.
It saves money on the government budget... or so they think. I doubt that there's anything sinister going on. It's just numbers in a government spreadsheet, and the Trump administration sees money going to projects that benefit people outside the US, regardless of their internal value, and just assumes that it's the US money spend on other nations.
They are not smart enough, well informed enough, nor do they particularly care to educate themselves or listen to other smarter people, they just see a number in the budget which they don't understand, so it can go. I suppose the assumption is that if it's truly important enough, someone will turn it into a business.
I guess that after "In god we trust" on the bank notes, it's now "god helps those who help themselves" for the rest.
> The phrase is often mistaken as a scriptural quote, though it is not stated in the Bible. Some Christians consider the expression contrary to the biblical message of God's grace and help for the helpless, and its denunciation of greed and selfishness.
The phrase “he who does not work, does not eat” was never intended by its author to be applied to those who were physically incapable of working. You might say otherwise, but Saint Paul had been a very traditional adherent of the Jewish faith, which had required farmers to leave portions of their harvest for the poor and destitute. The idea that he thought those who were physically incapable of working should not eat is absurd. It is unlikely he had a change of heart on this matter after his conversion to Christianity given that he had viewed Christianity as the continuation of Judaism.
Anyway, I always thought the phrase “God helps those who help themselves” meant you had to do a bare minimum within your capability to take care of yourself if you want help. I think it is a corruption to claim the phrase “God helps those who help themselves” in any way implies that God does not help those who are incapable of helping themselves.
My mother has invoked it at various points in my life to try to motivate me to do the bare minimum to help myself when she did not think I was doing even that much (and was capable of doing it). I suppose that could have seemed like a cudgel to observers, but it was not.
As for prayers being unanswered, there are two tragedies in this world. One is not getting what you want. The other is getting it. Interestingly, the Mouse Utopia Experiment showed that giving everyone everything that they could ever want is ultimately bad for them. That is perhaps a major reason why various prayers are unanswered.
This is the first that I have heard of them. The apparent inspiration for the phrase had never meant to be interpreted to justify a lack of charity. Only those with poor understandings of Christianity’s history and teachings would think otherwise. I would think the “uncharitable interpretations” of the phrase “God helps those who help themselves” are by those with poor understandings as well.
Paul's teaching is plainly at odds with Jesus' teachings, and people do a lot of acrobatics to try to reconcile the two.
Jesus:
25 Therefore I say unto you, Be not anxious for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than the food, and the body than the raiment? 26 Behold the birds of the heaven, that they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; and your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are not ye of much more value than they? 27 And which of you by being anxious can add one cubit unto [a]the measure of his life? 28 And why are ye anxious concerning raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: 29 yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 30 But if God doth so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? 31 Be not therefore anxious, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? 32 For after all these things do the Gentiles seek; for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. 33 But seek ye first his kingdom, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. 34 Be not therefore anxious for the morrow: for the morrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
Paul: 10 For even when we were with you, this we commanded you: that if any would not work, neither should he eat.
11 For we hear that there are some among you who walk disorderly, working not at all, but are busybodies.
12 Now those who are such, we command and exhort by our Lord Jesus Christ that they work with quietness and eat their own bread.
Jesus: 17 As Jesus was starting out on his way to Jerusalem, a man came running up to him, knelt down, and asked, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
18 “Why do you call me good?” Jesus asked. “Only God is truly good. 19 But to answer your question, you know the commandments: ‘You must not murder. You must not commit adultery. You must not steal. You must not testify falsely. You must not cheat anyone. Honor your father and mother.’[a]”
20 “Teacher,” the man replied, “I’ve obeyed all these commandments since I was young.”
21 Looking at the man, Jesus felt genuine love for him. “There is still one thing you haven’t done,” he told him. “Go and sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”
22 At this the man’s face fell, and he went away sad, for he had many possessions.
23 Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the Kingdom of God!” 24 This amazed them. But Jesus said again, “Dear children, it is very hard[b] to enter the Kingdom of God. 25 In fact, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God!”
Jesus: 17 “Think not that I am come to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill.
18 For verily I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass away, not one jot or one tittle shall in any wise pass from the law till all be fulfilled.
19 Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the Kingdom of Heaven; but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the Kingdom of Heaven.
Paul: By calling this covenant “new,” he has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and outdated will soon disappear.
Paul: Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: "Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree." [6]
14
He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit.
15
Jesus: * And, behold, a woman of Canaan came out of the same coasts, and cried unto him, saying, Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou son of David; my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil.
23 But he answered her not a word. And his disciples came and besought him, saying, Send her away; for she crieth after us.
24 But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
25 Then came she and worshipped him, saying, Lord, help me.
26 But he answered and said, It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs.
27 And she said, Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters' table.
28 Then Jesus answered and said unto her, O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt. And her daughter was made whole from that very hour.*
Peter was supposed to be the "disciple to the Gentiles". But Paul became one.
But he claimed he saw Jesus on the road to Damascus, in the wilderness, and then in the inner rooms of the jail cell.
Jesus: “So if anyone tells you, ‘There he is, out in the wilderness,’ do not go out; or, ‘Here he is, in the inner rooms,’ do not believe it.
Paul himself admits he didn't actually study with any of Jesus' own students, but went to Arabia for 3 years and taught from his own visions. Like Mohammad did centuries later. And then later
Paul: 15But when God, who set me apart from my mother’s womb and called me by his grace, was pleased 16to reveal his Son in me so that I might preach him among the Gentiles, my immediate response was not to consult any human being. 17I did not go up to Jerusalem to see those who were apostles before I was, but I went into Arabia. Later I returned to Damascus.
18Then after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to get acquainted with Cephas b and stayed with him fifteen days. 19I saw none of the other apostles—only James, the Lord’s brother. 20I assure you before God that what I am writing you is no lie.
21Then I went to Syria and Cilicia. 22I was personally unknown to the churches of Judea that are in Christ. 23They only heard the report: “The man who formerly persecuted us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy.” 24And they praised God because of me.
In Acts 15: Paul finally visits Jerusalem he argues with Peter.
Paul: When Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned... When I saw that they were not acting in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas in front of them all, “You are a Jew, yet you live like a Gentile and not like a Jew. How is it, then, that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs?
But his historian Luke says the opposite about this incident -- that he was rebuked* and told to publicly show everyone he isn't teaching Jews not to follow the law, by paying for some nazarene's purification rites to shave their heads. And so he did! Publicly!
Acts 21: 20 When they heard this, they praised God. Then they said to Paul: “You see, brother, how many thousands of Jews have believed, and all of them are zealous for the law. 21 They have been informed that you teach all the Jews who live among the Gentiles to turn away from Moses, telling them not to circumcise their children or live according to our customs. 22 What shall we do? They will certainly hear that you have come, 23 so do what we tell you. There are four men with us who have made a vow. 24 Take these men, join in their purification rites and pay their expenses, so that they can have their heads shaved. Then everyone will know there is no truth in these reports about you, but that you yourself are living in obedience to the law. 25 As for the Gentile believers, we have written to them our decision that they should abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality.”
And this refers to the OFFICIAL LETTER OF THE CHURCH THAT JESUS HIMSELF SET UP, led by his brother James and by Peter ("the Rock") who invoked the authority of the Holy Spirit to say to all gentile believers to essentially follow Noahide laws:
Paul agreed to go to his churches and send this message. But he said instead:
Galatians 2:
As for those who were held in high esteem—whatever they were makes no difference to me; God does not show favoritism—they added nothing to my message. 7On the contrary, they recognized that I had been entrusted with the task of preaching the gospel to the uncircumcised, a just as Peter had been to the circumcised. b 8For God, who was at work in Peter as an apostle to the circumcised, was also at work in me as an apostle to the Gentiles. 9James, Cephas c and John, those esteemed as pillars, gave me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship when they recognized the grace given to me. They agreed that we should go to the Gentiles, and they to the circumcised. 10All they asked was that we should continue to remember the poor, the very thing I had been eager to do all along.
Seems to contradict what he was told to send to them.
I could go on. The point is this ... Paul and Luke wrote the majority of the New Testament. But their authority is circular. Jesus never taught Paul. Jesus' teachings were for Jews and he told them to follow the law. Paul said seemingly the opposite. Paul got his religion from his own visions. Paul argued with the very people Jesus did set up to run the Church. And from his letters, he doesn't seem to have related what they explicitly said, invoking all their authority. Luke somehow records that.
Today, after the Council of Niceae by Constantine 3 centuries after the events, nearly all Christian denominations follow Pauline doctrine. But where is his authority from? How is he any different from, say, Mohammad?
From all the Christian apologists I have talked to, they point to one verse and one verse only: Second Peter
15 And account that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation, even as our beloved brother Paul also, according to the wisdom given unto him, hath written unto you,
16 as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things. Therein are some things hard to understand, which those who are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other Scriptures, unto their own destruction.
But most scholars consider Second Peter not to have been even written by Peter
Harris says, “virtually none believe that 2 Peter was written by Jesus’ chief disciple.”2 And Brevard S. Childs, an excellent rhetorical critic, shows his assumption when he says, “even among scholars who recognize the non-Petrine authorship there remains the sharpest possible disagreement on a theological assessment.”3
So what are we left with? One dubious link to Paul, from Jesus and his followers, in the entire Bible. And yet most people follow Paul.
Thomas Jefferson: I separate therefore the gold from the dross; restore to him the former, & leave the latter to the stupidity of some, and roguery of others of his disciples. of this band of dupes and impostors, Paul was the great Coryphaeus, and first corrupter of the doctrines of Jesus.
Anyway... that's my conclusion after studying the matter in as much depth as I could find, and talking to Christian apologists.
> Today, after the Council of Niceae by Constantine 3 centuries after the events, nearly all Christian denominations follow Pauline doctrine. But where is his authority from? How is he any different from, say, Mohammad?
All religions based on books have discrepancies within themselves that allow people to pick whatever they want and adapt it to their personal wants and actions.
Some flavours want people to interpret the scriptures themselves, while other flavours only allow some specific scholars to interpret it and you must follow blindly.
By design, religions have a de facto tendency to control people's behaviours and beliefs and fill the gaps wherever they are.
Cultural contexts shifts can't be addressed quickly as their traditions are rooted in centuries of small interpretations that can't be undone.
I guess that's why so many people have a tendency to leave religion, just by seeing how much of the past can they carry before it starts weighing them down more than it lifts them up.
For the bible, the simple definition of righteous needs interpretation :
James 2:24 : You see that a person is considered righteous by what they do and not by faith alone.
Ephesians 2:8-9 : For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast.
Everything surrounding Paul could be described as the first interpretation and it's often easier to follow an existing idea than make your own.
I feel like, despite the apochrycality of it, there’s a theologically-valid interpretation of the quote: namely, the same principle behind putting on your own breath mask first on a plane in an emergency.
The Bible-compatible spin on this might be something like: if you don’t “help yourself” in the absolute strictest sense — feeding yourself, say — but only set out to help others, then you will fail to help others, as your body will fail you before you’ve done a single useful thing. It is not sainthood, not martyrdom, to refuse to do the small work required to accept the “gifts of God” (like a breath mask that keeps you alive long enough to do the work required to save your own children.)
I'm not endorsing it, but it's roughly consistent with Trump's underlying philosophy that the international systems that USG manages are a subsidy from the US taxpayer to the rest of the world, and one which goes unappreciated. Under this premise, the USG would save money at little cost if they were replaced by industry consortiums or other countries' state initiatives. If my extrapolation is correct, even GPS might eventually be in the line of fire.
I need to be clear that I do not endorse this view. The role of the United States in facilitating global cybersecurity, not to mention navigation, trade among much else, almost surely pays dividends far beyond what it costs us. The amount of international goodwill that the United States enjoys is remarkable particularly in light of our various foreign policy "mistakes", and I think we have these systems to thank.
I didn't endorse anything. In fact, I presented arguments opposing the administration's view. I think it's unreasonable to argue that trying to understand people's actions is tantamount to endorsing them. We should never be reluctant to understand others' perspectives.
id agree with cybersecurity, but maybe not navigation? Even accounting for secondary effects, Currently supporting free navigation, especially in the Indian ocean and red sea mostly benefits other country, as the us is ~energy independent.
US oil and gas is not constrained to being sold solely within the US, nor is it publicly owned by the government.
It has never mattered that the US is technically energy independent, because it's not independent of a number of other resources, and it cannot sustain the sort of cost increases which reductions in global oil and gas supply would lead to: because again, threesome resources aren't publicly owned - the higher revenues flow to the oil companies, not the tax payer.
That’s not how economics works. Local energy price surges will also drive global prices up. The US is part of the global energy market. I guess you could ban export of energy and institute price controls, though.
To play devils advocate here, a thought comes to mind...
Should the US be the one to handle the CVE database globally? The current administration wants to see other parts of the world help carry the load. A little scare could be the push needed to make this either distributed or handled by a coalition. This could be a positive for the US (who doesn't want to be the sole funder) and for those who don't want the US to have sole control.
As with many other cuts and activities by the administration, it’s not that some programs don’t deserve scrutiny, but that the cuts are careless and shortsighted.
Well, and also irrelevant. The budgetary numbers this is being claimed to be in service too will not be reached even if you dismantled every single program like this and all the related ones.
It's the equivalent of taking a day off work to haggle over the price of a bus ticket.
Your premise is flawed. Reframe the question like this: Should the US be the sole arbiter of software vulnerabilities? Absolutely not! But that doesn't mean the US should cut off the spigot. Other countries should start their own version of CVE, so they can check each other's work, and disclose vulnerabilities that certain governments may desire to keep secret.
They get to collaborate with the rest of the world on security instead of relying on their government protecting them. This will push companies that are exposed to lawsuits to up their game and re-organize. And given their exposure to lawsuits, I doubt they'll drop the ball. They can't afford to. This is one area where the private sector should not need a lot of help.
I have a European perspective to this. This isn't as bad as it looks. The rest of the world should in any case not rely on the US federal government for their security. So, there was always going to be some duplication of effort needed here. And given the whole tariff situation, there is of course quite a bit of interest in non US based alternatives to your favorite US based trillion $ companies and their services and lots of companies giving the evil eye to any US based service providers. I've been seeing a lot of that lately with our German customers; especially in the public sector.
Short term mildly disruptive for some companies but not something to panic over.
It helps the American people because they will need to rely on foreign countries for their cyber security?
Heck, those nuclear subs and aircraft carriers are only making the American people less likely the collaborate with the rest of the world on security too.
> And given their exposure to lawsuits, I doubt they'll drop the ball. They can't afford to.
Color me skeptical. How many companies have lost sensitive due to extreme carelessness, time and again? The cost of taking security seriously is greater than the cost of settling after the fact.
I feel like even the biggest data breaches result in little more than victims being offered free credit monitoring.
Shutting down Mitre and the CVE is against American interests, both public and private. That said, you can make an argument, one that revolves around cost (was the CVE DB worth $50M a year, especially given its backlog?). The other part of that argument rests on assuming there will be a private or semi-private replacement for the service, that there may be many of them, and therefore they will improve. One might assert, as libertarians do, that every service that's not monopoly of force should be private.
These aren't great arguments. $50M does seem like a lot, and maybe it could be reduced. I'd love to see an actual analysis of their operations rather then just ending the program. The second argument is worse. NIST and NOAA are examples of agencies that punch above their weight in terms of cost/benefit (the CFPB as well), and it seems like for-profit NIST and NOAA doesn't make much sense. But yes its worth considering the pros and cons of publicly funded service versus the private versions, in general. Even a bad argument is better than no argument, and the current admin does not bother to make one.