
Syria’s largest city just dropped off the Internet - hawkharris
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/08/30/syrias-largest-city-just-dropped-off-the-internet/
======
level09
Its not only the internet, All communication (mobile networks, landlines) are
cut off as well (I lost contact with many friends in that city)

fortunately, the US will soon be bombing Syria to bring back peace and
democracy to the country.

~~~
Amadou
It is like the US only has one option - shooting. If we had a medical-
industrial complex we could be air-dropping medical supplies and instead of
the marines we could send in the doctor corps. There is a ton of things we
could do to support the revolution without adding to the risk for civillians
or having to worry about what anti-american fighters would do with the
equipment afterwards.

~~~
anigbrowl
We are already giving humanitarian & medical aid and have been for some time.
The use of chemical weapons has been considered a particularly heinous war
crime since before WW2. Destroying chemical stockpiles is about as limited an
engagement as possible. We're not sending any marines in, or supplying rebels
with arms - at least not yet, and I hope not ever.

~~~
Amadou
I don't just mean humanitarian aid, which I think is dwarfed by the costs of
whatever attacks are being considered.

I'm talking about direct support to the revolutionaries - combat hospitals and
the like. We could do more than just medical support too without risking blow-
back, things like robust communications links and battlefield intelligence
from drones, vehicles, spare parts, mechanics to work on the vehicles, food,
and other supply-chain type stuff. Pretty much everything we do for american
troops except providing weapons. We just have this mindset that the support we
provide to the people doing the fighting must itself be directly offensive
which is itself a risk to us because of terrorism. Those blinders have caused
us to sit it out and let the conflict drag on.

And then there is the question of what comes after. By providing direct
support we would be building personal relationships with the revolutionaries
so that when it came time to put together a new government, they would be much
more receptive to our input on what it takes to make a stable and american-
friendly government.

~~~
sillysaurus2
The goal of a war is to win, and to win the opposing army must die. Napoleon
demonstrated that. Most warfare in the preceding centuries was focused on
winning battles rather than killing armies. But then Napoleon demonstrated how
frighteningly effective it was to win a battle and immediately chase down and
kill the opposition. Along with the invention of the standing army, warfare
changed forever. We've been mainly focused on killing people ever since,
because the people who wouldn't focus on that were swiftly debased.

If America chooses to support this conflict, I wish we would do it quickly and
efficiently, and then immediately leave. Setting aside the question of morals,
the primary reason Iraq and Afghanistan were such disasters is because we
stayed. Actually, I wish we would bow out of the Middle East entirely and
leave people alone, but that's unlikely to happen in the current political
climate.

It's important to always remember the goal of modern warfare. When you choose
to support war, you are choosing to kill other people, even if you're not
doing the killing directly. There are no half measures. Either your side wins,
and therefore the other army is dead, or yours is. So if you're going to
support the war and endanger your countrymen, you want to win. Otherwise
what's the point?

~~~
lotharbot
To win, the opposing side must _lose its capability to wage war_.

One way to accomplish that is to kill the opposing army, but that's _not the
only way_. Other ways include destroying warfighting equipment (say, aircraft
that are still on the ground), decimating the manufacturing base (thereby
denying the opposing army the ability to rebuild lost capability), denying the
opposing side critical resources such as fuel (why do you think the US has
such a large "strategic oil reserve"?), or destroying the morale of opposing
forces.

Granted, all of those methods generally involve killing people on the other
side... but the implications are different than your assertion, wherein
winning wars requires the slaughter of opposing forces. A careful study of
modern warfare would show that the majority of wars were not won because the
opposing army was mostly dead, but because of equipment and materiel and
logistics and morale.

~~~
sillysaurus2
Midway is probably the best example in support of your claim. Its outcome is
generally accepted as the reason Japan lost.

And yet it's interesting to note that the war was not won until their army was
effectively dead: they believed so fiercely in the war that they would not
yield until they believed imminent death was unavoidable. I'd like to paste an
interesting excerpt from 100 Decisive Battles:

"When Okinawa was finally declared secure, the cost had been horrific. Some
150,000 Okinawans died, approximately one-third the island’s population. An
additional 10,000 Koreans, used by the Japanese military as slave labor, died
as well. Of the 119,000 or so Japanese soldiers, as many as 112,000 were
killed in the battle or forever sealed inside a collapsed cave or bunker.
Aside from the human cost, most of the physical aspects of Okinawan culture
were razed. Few buildings survived the 3 months’ fighting. Collectively, the
defenders lost more dead than the Japanese suffered in the two atomic bombings
combined. The United States lost 13,000 dead: almost 8,000 on the island and
the remainder at sea; another 32,000 were wounded.

The loss of life on both sides, particularly among the Japanese civilians,
caused immense worry in Washington. New President Harry Truman was looking at
the plans for a proposed assault on the Japanese main islands, and the
casualty projections were unacceptable. Projections numbered the potential
casualties from 100,000 in the first 30 days to as many as 1 million
attackers, and the death count for the Japanese civilians would be impossible
to calculate. If they resisted as strongly as did the citizens of Okinawa—and
the inhabitants of the home islands would be even more dedicated to defending
their homeland—Japan would become a wasteland. It was already looking like one
in many areas. The U.S. bombing campaign, in place since the previous
September, was burning out huge areas of Japanese cities. How much longer the
Japanese could have held out in the face of the fire bombing is a matter of
much dispute; some project that, had the incendiary raids continued until
November, the Japanese would have been thrown back to an almost Stone Age
existence. The problem was this: no one in the west knew exactly what was
happening in Japan. The devastation could be estimated, but the resistance
could not.

Thus, with the casualties of the Okinawa battle fresh in his mind, when Truman
learned of the successful testing of an atomic bomb, he ordered its use. This
is a decision debated since 6 August 1945, the date of the bombing of
Hiroshima, and even before. Just what was known of Japanese decision-making
processes before that date is also argued to this day. Was the Japanese
government in the process of formulating a peace offer, in spite of the demand
for unconditional surrender the Allies had decided upon in February 1943? If
they were doing so, did anyone in the west know about it? Who knew what, when
they knew it, and what effect that knowledge had or may have had on Truman’s
decision making is a matter of much dispute. Whatever the political
ramifications of the atomic bomb on the immediate and postwar world, Truman’s
decision was certainly based in no small part on the nature of the fighting on
Okinawa. Truman wrote just after his decision, “We’ll end the war sooner now.
And think of the kids who won’t be killed.” Horrible as the effects of the two
atomic bombs were, the number of casualties in Hiroshima and Nagasaki as
compared with the potential number an invasion could have caused is small
indeed."

It's noteworthy that in order to win vs Germany we had to kill the vast
majority of their army. Right up until Hitler shot himself, their morale
remained high. A post on AskHistorians recently delved into that topic.

Vietnam would be a good example of losing without an army being mostly
destroyed. The war was effectively over right when mainland America lost the
will to keep fighting, even though we had just scored major military
victories. But most Americans weren't tied to the negative consequences of
losing, so their morale was perhaps a special case.

I can't think of any modern decisive conflicts that resulted in political
change that didn't also require destroying the majority of the opposing army
except Vietnam. And since Syrians will be quite invested in the negative
consequences of losing, their morale will probably remain high until one side
is mostly dead, if history is to be our guide.

~~~
EliRivers
_It 's noteworthy that in order to win vs Germany we had to kill the vast
majority of their army._

This appears to be untrue. I found lots of figures; here's one set:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties#Militar...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties#Military_casualties_by_branch_of_service)

 _I can 't think of any modern decisive conflicts that resulted in political
change that didn't also require destroying the majority of the opposing army
except Vietnam._

In WWI, the majority of the army of the defeated was alive after the war.
Likewise WWII. Spanish Civil War. Falklands War. On and on and on and on,
decisive conflict after decisive conflict in which the majority of the
defeated army is not dead.

~~~
sillysaurus2
Those statistics say that there were 11,568,000 German casualties out of
18,200,000 total. And while blowing off a leg isn't quite the same thing as
killing them, it has the same effect for the purposes of war. The stats show
about 1 in 3 Germans killed and 1 in 4 Japanese killed vs 1 in 50 Americans
killed and 1 in 25 British killed. The focus of modern war is causing physical
harm to the enemy troops, not merely destroying their capability for making
war.

~~~
EliRivers
_The focus of modern war is causing physical harm to the enemy troops_

That's just so untrue. The focus of modern war is removing the enemy's will
and ability to fight. One way, amongst many, to do that is to cause physical
harm to people; it's an inefficient and difficult way that is massively
dwarfed by far more competent and effective ways to wage a modern war.

 _The focus of modern war is causing physical harm to the enemy troops, not
merely destroying their capability for making war._

You've got that the wrong way round. The focus of modern war is destroying
their capability (and will) to fight.

------
jlgaddis
Renesys' usually tracks and reports on events like this on their blog and,
indeed, they posted an article yesterday about this:

[http://www.renesys.com/2013/08/whats-next-for-syrias-
interne...](http://www.renesys.com/2013/08/whats-next-for-syrias-internet/)

A few examples from previous events of a similar nature:

[http://www.renesys.com/2011/01/egypt-leaves-the-
internet/](http://www.renesys.com/2011/01/egypt-leaves-the-internet/)

[http://www.renesys.com/2011/06/syrian-internet-
shutdown/](http://www.renesys.com/2011/06/syrian-internet-shutdown/)

[http://www.renesys.com/2012/11/syria-off-the-
air/](http://www.renesys.com/2012/11/syria-off-the-air/)

------
dil8
Communication needs to be decentralised...

~~~
agumonkey
One thing at a time

------
adamnemecek
Did they try holding the router reset button for 30 seconds?

~~~
dhughes
The button was blasted 2km away from the router.

------
ZirconCode
So what can we do? I honestly ask.

I'm sick of hearing such news, and as a community of "hackers", at least we
should be able to have a minuscule influence. Yet I can't think of something
better than running a TOR node.

~~~
marcosdumay
TOR won't help, they can't reach a node.

Long distance mesh networks will help, but not completely solve the problem.
We need to decentralize the connectivity resources, we need things like wifi
drones with long distance repeaters, and we need them to be cheap enough so
that they become a public resource and ownerless.

But until we can make something like that, yeah, long distance mesh networks
will help.

~~~
kmf
Something like Loon?

[http://www.google.com/loon/](http://www.google.com/loon/)

Though arguably something like that isn't safe in a war zone? I have no
expertise in this section, but it is an interesting dilemma to figure out how
to restore basic connection to a area in turmoil.

~~~
saraid216
Some of the HN discussion when Loon was announced focused on the vulnerability
of the balloons. The approximate conclusion was that the balloons were usually
far too high up for any kind of effective attack by firearms.

On the other hand, I'm pretty sure Assad has the military capability to take
them down.

------
Raphmedia
You know, that's one of the scariest thing I have read in a long while. I
can't imagine how it would be to have all communication cut.

It's crazy. We live in a crazy world these days.

~~~
jonknee
Most days never had communication in the first place, so it's really not
_that_ crazy.

~~~
BlackDeath3
And people in those days didn't _rely_ on that communication like many people
do today. What wasn't a big deal hundreds of years, or even decades ago
(perhaps even less than that) is a big deal today.

------
rurban
So Turkey is helping preparing the first strike tomorrow morning. The UN
inspectors are out finally, the chemical theatre took place again, and finally
they strike can begin. Reportedly Saturday until Wednesday.

