
US and Israel created Stuxnet, lost control of it - fpp
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/06/confirmed-us-israel-created-stuxnet-lost-control-of-it/
======
strags
"[Obama] repeatedly expressed concerns that any American acknowledgment that
it was using cyberweapons—even under the most careful and limited
circumstances—could enable other countries, terrorists or hackers to justify
their own attacks. “We discussed the irony, more than once,” one of his aides
said."

"Irony" is the wrong word. It's "hypocrisy".

~~~
freshhawk
Not when you honestly believe in American Exceptionalism

~~~
MartinCron
Isn't exceptionalism just a code word for hypocrisy?

~~~
marshray
Perhaps, but it's still useful as a distinct term because it refers to the
body of argument used to justify it.

------
ck2
It's a new cold war. Eventually Iran will write viruses in return to attack US
power grid.

All fun and games until Homeland Security Theater is given new powers to raid
your home and shoot your dog if they think your computer is being used as part
of a botnet.

~~~
cynoclast
No, we are the aggressors here and I remain highly skeptical that Iran is even
trying to do develop nuclear weapons. All the news outlets that speak English
are biased as hell on this.

If you want real news instead of propaganda you have to watch RT or Al
Jazeera. Both of which condemn the US and Israel. Not Iran.

~~~
andylei
>> Both of which condemn the US and Israel. Not Iran.

you know, its possible that the US, Israel, AND Iran are all doing bad things.
just because Iran is not being condemned by a some media organizations does
not mean it has any meaningful high ground.

why are you skeptical that iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons? if they
weren't, why would they be developing secret enrichment facilities? why would
"The IAEA Board of Governors passed a resolution[186] by a vote of 32–2 that
expressed "deep and increasing concern" over the possible military dimensions
to Iran's nuclear program" (from wikipedia)?

and more importantly, israel and the us are clearly concerned about iranian
nuclear weapons development. it seems as if private intelligence lines up with
public intelligence. why are you so confident that everybody else is wrong and
you are right?

~~~
jpxxx
It is a stone cold, dead in the ground for a decade, crystalline clear FACT
that Iran has no nuclear weapon manufacturing program, and no plausible
capacity to engage in one in the near future. Period, full stop, end telegram.

Armed with this certainty, you can now begin to answer the rest of your
questions for yourself.

~~~
irishcoffee
So, I heard the world is flat.

~~~
jpxxx
And I heard there's an organization called the IAEA that's unaffiliated with
any particular nation-state that's been at the center of this extremely
contentious global issue that would agree with exactly what I said, because
that's exactly what they're saying, so uh, enjoy your limp sarcasm.

~~~
underdown
Not having sufficient evidence to prove something is happening is not quite
the same thing as proving it isn't happening.

~~~
jpxxx
Let me be clear: there is no evidence whatsoever that Iran has nuclear weapons
in its possession. There is no evidence whatsoever that Iran has had an
organized nuclear weapons development program for the last nine years. There
is some evidence that there was a nuclear weapons program prior to 2003.

This is where you start discussing things: with reality and facts. I am
insulted that these facts I am offering are being downvoted ten miles deep
when hundreds of millions of lives are affected by the outcome of this prove-
a-negative "debate".

~~~
jbooth
I don't know why I'm jumping in, but.

Iran is enriching uranium. A lot of it. This is not disputed.

Iran rattles their sabre a lot, and has large domestic oil production, both of
those are also undisputed.

... So you're saying you believe their story that they're enriching uranium
beyond where it needs to be for nuclear power, just so they can have nuclear
power? Even though they already have more oil than they can sell (with
sanctions in place)? Why would they do that?

If I were in their place, I'd be going for a nuclear weapon. All of the
available evidence points towards their going for a nuclear weapon. If this
was just about nuclear energy, why wouldn't they play ball with the
international community and save a shitload of money? Nobody costs themselves
billions in sanctions in order to lose more millions in energy production by
using nuclear instead of burning effectively-free oil.

You're not being downvoted because you're offering "facts", you're being
downvoted for offering an unsupported opinion that people don't agree with.

~~~
jpxxx
This isn't battle-chat, jumping in is called a conversation. :)

I do not dispute anything you've said: enrichment is happening, Iran's
government is adept at aggressive rhetoric, and Iran would be far better off
militarily as a nuclear power. It would be rational for them to be one.

But nothing I have said is incorrect or an opinion. They do not have a nuke,
they don't have remotely enough infrastructure or capability to get there
anytime soon, and their enrichment activities are not resulting in weapons
quality product. That multiple nations and media interests are claiming
otherwise is unacceptable.

Their energy policy is not of any interest to me. I am interested in ending
this war for the sake of peace.

------
philiphodgen
The fact that the NYT published this piece is interesting. Assume all details
are true. Why did the dog bark rather than choose to be silent? And the
sources. Assume all of this is true? Why feed the info to the NYT?

When coupled with recent revelations that Mr. Obama personally approves every
killing of militants (for certain strained definitions of that term), the
upcoming election springs to mind as a motivation. There may be alternate and
contradictory reasons, all of which may be true. Many players, cross-purposes.

This could have remained hidden. Indeterminate. Who benefits from this
revelation?

~~~
ruttingchimpanz
Former election strategist here. This is part of the Obama-Is-Tough roll-out,
clearly done with current admin participation. Timed release to follow the
"kill list" story and maybe even pre-empt the terrible jobs report.

All the same, it's pretty stunning that the Obama administration would trade
its (public) plausible deniability on Stuxnet in order to "look tough" on
America's enemies. Playing fast and loose with foreign policy...great plan,
guys.

~~~
staunch
Iran already knew who did it. Everyone did. Why not take credit?

------
ars
arstechnica is taking the NY Times article and extrapolating too much.
Confirmed? No it's not. It was suspected before, and it still is.

And lost control would imply they could not control what it did to the target,
which is incorrect. It did escape to the wild, but that's not really loosing
control when it was designed to do nothing harmful on non target machines.

Better to read the original, and the discussion on it:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4052330>

~~~
abrahamsen
Unless David E. Sanger is a new Jayson Blair, I'd say the connection is
confirmed, not just suspected. There are no weasel words in the article,
meaning both the journalist, his editor, and NYT are putting their reputation
at stake. This is as strong as a newspaper story gets.

~~~
slurgfest
Is it really true that "someone published in a newspaper said so, therefore we
can rely on its being true"? I don't think so.

Hard data, credible sources are what make a strong newspaper story - not a
convenient message from someone who would be embarrassed if the story were
untrue (something which is at least as hard to disprove in this case as it is
to actually prove)

~~~
abrahamsen
Depends on who "someone" is, what the "newspaper" is, and what was said with
"said so".

In this case "someone" is a double Pulitzer Prize winner, and what was said
was something of a nature that means the editor in any reputable newspaper
will demand hard evidence, i.e. he will have the names of all the sources, and
confirmed with at least some of them. If the story is a fraud (possible, look
up Jayson Blair), the editor would have to be in on it, and it would be a
larger scandal than the story itself, which really just confirms what
everybody already suspected.

The story is as good as investigative journalism gets.

And yes, reputation matters a lot in journalism. Jayson Blair is a life coach
today.

------
ascendant
I'm going to take the contrarian view here. If Iran had gotten to the point of
enriching uranium to weapons-grade levels and Israel had done a pre-emptive
strike, that would have gotten messy real fast. More messy than this.
Disabling their centrifuges in a way where presumably no one died doesn't
sound so bad to me considering the alternative. Again, just the contrarian
viewpoint.

~~~
eli
I don't think that's contrarian.

If your choices are between allowing Israel to start a new war in the middle
east, or work with Israel on this risky new cyberweapon, I think most people
would pick the cyberweapon.

------
Fizzadar
This feels similar to the Megaupload case; America desperately throwing its
weight around outside it's borders, with a total disregard for the law. And,
just like the Megaupload case, they have fucked up big time.

Why does the American govt. feel it has the right to choose who can become a
nuclear power or not anyway?

~~~
joshmaker
Because Iran is a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treat
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Non-
Proliferation_Treat...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Non-
Proliferation_Treaty)) and their development of Nuclear weapons is thus in
violation of international law.

~~~
rooshdi
Violation of international law huh...as long as the law doesn't apply to
America or Israel I guess:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_law_and_Israeli_s...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_law_and_Israeli_settlements)

[http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/05/29/us-israel-
nuclear-...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/05/29/us-israel-nuclear-
treaty-idUSTRE64S1ZN20100529)

Oh, that and the fact that America and Israel can't trust anyone but
themselves:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5-9aAFvWXA>

~~~
slurgfest
No arguments on settlements, but would you point to hard evidence that the US
is in violation of NPT? I am getting tired of sourceless claims here.

~~~
slurgfest
Would you please respond in addition to (or instead of) just downvoting
something you disagree with in order to suppress it? Thank you

~~~
rooshdi
I didn't down vote you and I'll show you hard evidence when you show me hard
evidence Iran is in violation of the NPT. We don't want any sort of hypocrisy
going on around here, right? What the hell, here's some evidence just for
kicks:

[http://compliancecampaign.wordpress.com/2012/02/03/iran-
and-...](http://compliancecampaign.wordpress.com/2012/02/03/iran-and-the-usa-
who-really-violates-international-obligations/)

<http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2619>

~~~
slurgfest
You are changing the subject a little. The burden of proof for a strong and
controversial claim is still on the person making the claim.

I haven't made any claim about what the Iranian revolution is doing, so I
don't know why I would be obligated to show you evidence regarding what they
are doing. Nobody else really knows what they are doing, that is the nature of
intelligence secrets in Iran and everywhere else. If the general public knew,
they would not be intelligence secrets any more. That is not license for
inferring whatever you want to see.

I'm certainly not carrying water for the Bush administration's attempt to
legitimize 'tactical' nukes (which accounts for the entire substance of your
links, as far as I can tell). On the contrary, I strongly oppose that idea.
But saying stupid, obnoxious, unwise things doesn't amount to a material
violation of NPT. If it did, then there would definitely be plenty of hard
evidence against the Iranian regime, which routinely says things just as gob-
smackingly stupid and undiplomatic and ultimately harmful to Iranians as
Bush's best.

It seems that you have stereotyped me as holding a whole package of views that
I do not hold, and implied that I am engaging in some kind of hypocrisy,
simply because I asked for substantiation of a claim. But if I disagree with
you on one thing, it does not follow that I hold all the views of your
rhetorical enemies.

Cheers

~~~
rooshdi
Changing the subject? I provided everything you asked for and it shows America
blatantly disregards Article 6 of the NPT while expecting other countries to
follow it. Hypocrisy at its finest.

Cheers

~~~
slurgfest
From your article, 'Article VI of the NPT explicitly obliges signatories "to
pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation
of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a
treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective
international control."'

And your argument is that the US is in breach of NPT because Bush said stupid
things about tactical nukes?

Question: at which date is a signatory in violation? What is the deadline?

------
dpeck
It is anything but confirmed. Arstechnica writes an article about an article
in the NYT (a paper that doesn't have the best track record reporting about
cyber events and control system security issues to begin with) that cites no
credible sources.

Also, you don't "lose control" of something like this, it was designed with
many ways to spread. If control was lost it was during the spec/coding phase,
not after deployment.

~~~
tptacek
When the New York Times prints:

 _“Should we shut this thing down?” Mr. Obama asked, according to members of
the president’s national security team who were in the room._

It is generally safe to assume, whether you admire the NYT (like me) or don't
(like 'patio11), that there's an actual source with a credible claim to have
been in the room with the President who did in fact tell David E. Sanger that
this happened. People have accused the NYT of bending the truth in lots of
ways, but misreporting a White House meeting is not one of those ways.

I'm annoyed to have to write this, because I'm one of the people who thought
the Stuxnet thing was marvelously overhyped and unlikely to be true. Friends
of mine who are much smarter than me thought the worm might have just been a
cover for direct sabotage. Nope; it seems like the government was exactly as
simultaneously savvy and idiotic as online pundits had claimed it was.

Depressing.

~~~
jbooth
Why's it depressing? It seems like it worked, and any failure would have been
much less spectacular than US operatives being caught breaking into Natanz.

~~~
tptacek
Sabotage: good.

Sabotage via infiltration of IT: good.

Sabotage via infiltration of IT via propagating malware: not so good.

------
gavinlynch
The one part of the article that sticks out to me is that they "lost control"
of the virus. I wonder if this is really true. Politically, it probably sounds
better to say, "oops, this was only meant for Iran. Somebody messed up" than
to have to field questions from reporters:

"Why does the United States think it is okay to infect hundreds of thousands
of computers with this virus?"

"Is it ethical to introduce security holes or exploit security holes of
everyday citizens of allies?"

"Do you take responsibility for the collateral damage? Have you committed an
act of aggression on nation-states you are not in conflict with? How does that
affect your relations with these nations?"

I wonder if this is their easy way to set themselves up to say, "This is
complicated technology, our primary goal is to stop a dangerous nation from
getting a dangerous weapon. We apologize for any collateral." even if that
statement was false.

Perhaps it was necessary for the virus to spread to ensure the success of the
mission and that cost was accepted, but they just don't want to admit it
publically because of what it would open themselves up to.

~~~
lawnchair_larry
This is a good point. Being somewhat familiar with the code, but not enough to
call this a provable lie, there is nothing I'm aware of that really fits this
statement. No "error" that caused it to "leak". I don't think they _wanted_ it
to leak, but the design of it could only constrain it so much. It was
intentionally designed to infect other computers in order to reach its target.

The other part that makes no sense to me is the bit about the "beacon" that
would deliver info back to them over an air gap network. This is rather
confusing and inconsistent with what has been seen from it, but it's not
impossible.

But of course these statements went through several non-technical people and
were written for a non-technical audience, so they might be based on something
accurate and just sound funny.

------
antonioevans
If Israel had physically bombed the Iranian plant would that not started
another major war in the Middle East? I am not saying this is an elegant
solution to cross border conflict but war was avoided.

Everyone in the hacker community knows this was coming. This is going to get
much worst before it gets better. Power outages in Brazil, China/Google event
last year, and stuxnet.

As the article says: "Stuxnet is old news by now. Even the newly discovered
"Flame" malware was developed some time ago. While details about these two
targeted attack packages are finally emerging, the next generation of attack
tools has no doubt been developed and likely deployed."

~~~
tzs
> If Israel had physically bombed the Iranian plant would that not started
> another major war in the Middle East?

Who would be the combatants? One of the few actually interesting things that
came out of the leaked diplomatic cables was that many of the major Middle
East countries want Iran's nuclear program stopped, with Saudi Arabia actually
repeatedly urging the US to attack.

In light of that, I'd expect that if Israel attacked it would be publicly
condemned by the rest of the Middle East countries, but most would secretly be
relieved.

~~~
antonioevans
Iran (and a few other countries we know) is historically known for fighting
war by proxy. Suicide bomber here, assassination there, dollars flowing to
multiple heavily armed anti-Israel groups.

Also on top of this what would be Russia + China's reaction be to a physical
attack on one of their allies. Heck what would be the price of oil? $150 a
barrel?

------
bobsy
Wasn't the US all up in arms about how China was increasingly using cyber-
warfare on both foreign government and corporate interests?

Then it turns out they are doing it themselves? Tut Tut. Though not really
surprising.

I do feel though that with the success that lolsec had last year very few
companies / governments are prepared against a concerted attempt to access
their data.

------
forgotusername
From the NYT article:

> American, European and Israeli officials involved in the program, as well as
> a range of outside experts. None would allow their names to be used because
> the effort remains highly classified, and parts of it continue to this day.

Convenient. Not only was the reporter able to secure one reliable, anonymous,
highly privileged source to confirm the story, but he found _multiple!_

~~~
eli
The NYT would almost certainly not have run the story with a single source
backing it up.

~~~
forgotusername
There is too much wishful thinking going on around Stuxnet, both on the part
of the security industry and the general public who'd rather believe their own
country originated it. If you were a world super power, wouldn't it be in your
interests to claim responsibility for a first of its kind, extremely high tech
attack? I believe any government wouldn't mind this kind of attribution.

I'll wait my 50 years or whatever for the relevant documents to be
declassified, in the meantime this is all just drama and guesswork, no matter
how many anonymous, totally reliable sources crawl out of the woodwork.

~~~
eli
Did you read the NYT article? I found it to be pretty convincing. Who do you
suggest as an alternate culprit?

------
guelo
If the UN security council was a fair body Stuxnet would be judged to be an
unprovoked act of war and the US and Israel would be sanctioned in some way.
But of course the US gets to have it's thumbs on the UNSC scales. But the
question is, if the US is going to blatantly abuse its privileged position
like this how long is it going to last? There has been a Western consensus on
a liberal framework for international law going back to WWII which was based
on the idea that we are the good guys, democratic, moral, law abiding, etc.
GWBush and Obama have been doing their best to destroy that because of
lobbying by our war mongering Israeli "friends".

~~~
gcb
Military power is a requirement for international politics.

Do you think counties summit to laws because of what? If no one can over power
then, they have to abide to no law. UNis just to cut costs for the dominating
military powers.

Want something done? It costs less to send some talker to tell about the power
you can mobilize than to mobilize that power at once.

~~~
guelo
That's a very cynical point of view that was the cause of much death before
the creation of the UN. There used to be this ideal about what the UN meant
including respect for international laws. How can we credibly complain that
Iran is violating a UN resolution at this point? If we're moving back to a
might-makes-right world we are doomed to a future of new world wars and untold
carnage.

~~~
gavinlynch
"If we're moving back to a might-makes-right world we are doomed to a future
of new world wars and untold carnage."

In my view, we never left a "might-makes-right world". It's the underlying
reality of human existence and human nature. And yes, that absolutely does
mean that our future holds new world wars and untold carnage. Is it a
particularly happy thought? No, not really. But it's part of the human
experience.

~~~
woodall
Philosophicalness: -5 Craziness: 982374982374082348912823

You guys need to get off the internet and into the real world a bit more.

------
derrida
Anonymous scooped everyone last year: [http://crowdleaks.org/hbgary-wanted-to-
suppress-stuxnet-rese...](http://crowdleaks.org/hbgary-wanted-to-suppress-
stuxnet-research/)

~~~
ewillbefull
You should actually read that link; the emails indicated HBGary were
interested in using Stuxnet (probably the framework or exploits it used), but
not that they had any idea who actually made Stuxnet.

So no, Anonymous didn't "scoop" anything.

~~~
derrida
Aaron Barr talks to Defence Intelligence Agency and DoD about StuxNet in 2010,
they had a copy given to them in 2009 that they claim was a US produced
binary. Keep in mind stuxnet was 'discovered' in 2010.

First reference to Stuxnet being U.S. government produced? You decide.

~~~
slurgfest
"You decide" a convenient way to avoid providing evidence of strong claims
while still making them? You decide.

~~~
derrida
Yes. Exactly, sorry, it's a lazy cliche, but I do think the evidence is there
in the HB Gary emails that enables one to conclude beyond some reasonable
level of doubt it was U.S. produced. However, the NY Times piece does provide
evidence from the mouth of the source, and has far more detail.

------
domwood
The fact that one of the most powerful nations in the world not only created
one of the most notorious viruses in the world but _lost control of it_ is
madness. Its original purpose was to cause hardware to physically destroy
itself. Imagine if, by sheer coincidence, the commands for that were the same
as the commands for something like a nuclear reactor's cooling turbines? It's
incredibly improbable but not impossible. That makes this a hugely dangerous
and downright stupid occurrence. America shouts at Pakistan for losing control
of its nukes and then develops, with a country that has some reputation for
overkill (Israeli invasion of Gaza being a prime example), a dangerous weapon
in software form, then doesn't pay attention to what the thing actually does?
Where's the review process? How does something like the software being
modified so it can infect and spread on common consumer systems so rapidly
(I'm assuming that the modifications were to the way it spread, not sure) get
missed? It's crass carelessness.

International espionage is half offence and half tact. It's not espionage if
everyone finds out about it.

------
azernik
Security lesson from the article: "It turns out there is always an idiot
around who doesn’t think much about the thumb drive in their hand."

~~~
bitwize
Was true before thumb drives. Fun fact: President Carter once sent his suit to
the dry cleaner's -- with the nuclear launch codes in the pocket.

~~~
jackpirate
More fun fact: nuclear launch codes meant nothing in Carter's time. There was
literally a group of Admirals/Generals who were physically capable of pressing
the button at any time without presidential authorization.

------
elorant
So let me get this straight, they lost control of it and it ended up inside an
Iranian power plant? You can't lose control of something so specifically
tailored. The possible targets of this thing could be a few hundred
installations around the globe so the motivation of stealing it, if it's even
remotely possible to steal something like that, should be very low.

------
nicholassmith
You know what's most surprising about this? That the developers, knowing fine
well it was for a single target and the damage it could do in the wild, didn't
implement a kill switch.

Quite frankly cowboy coding like that is why we'll end up with Skynet becoming
self-aware.

~~~
46Bit
How do you put a kill switch in? The entire point was for it to be on an
offline system, and the traffic for it checking for Internet to in turn check
for an order like that might have given the game away.

It sounds like they had something to check it wasn't outside and someone just
screwed up.

~~~
wpietri
I think the obvious thing would be to look for Internet activity on the
machine. E.g., recent files for popular sites in a browser cache directory. Or
live network traffic for public netblocks.

~~~
Symmetry
But it has to start out on machines connected to the public internet before
spreading to the secret facility via USB drive. If it didn't spread when
connected to the Internet, it wouldn't work. And it already doesn't blow up
centrifuges when it's not on the target network.

~~~
MartinCron
_it already doesn't blow up centrifuges when it's not on the target network_

I can verify that. None of my centrifuges have been blown up.

------
dantheman
How is this not an act of war? Doesn't congress need approve military actions
of this sort?

~~~
Symmetry
No, the president would need Congressional approval to have military units in
Iran for more than 90 days. In practice presidents almost always ask Congress
for advance approval, since having to pull out in the middle of an invasion
would be rather embarrassing. The only exception that comes to mind is
Reagan's invasion of Grenada, where the US military was in and out easily
under the time limit.

~~~
lazugod
So how does that limitation interact with non-personnel warfare, such as
viruses and drones and spying?

------
discordance
wow... the turn around on confirmation of conspiracy theories these days is a
year, rather than the decades of past.

------
lstroud
The truth is, if you love the Internet you had better start fighting to stop
these escalations. Otherwise, it will cease to exist. The first time a massive
attack causes real fear in western civilization, people will start questioning
how much they really need it in their lives.

The lack of plausible deniability will lead to escalation. Once it does,
national security (from the perspective of each country) will govern it's
growth, not freedom.

------
alan_cx
People, it is said, do "stupid" things on the internet in the belief that they
will remain anonymous. Have the US and Israeli governments made the same
mistake?

~~~
gavinlynch
Considering that Iran is very well aware the US and Israel have a vested
interest in dismantling their nuclear programs and that both countries are
using cyber warfare to achieve their goals... Why would the US care if they
remain anonymous? Do you considering setting back the Iranian nuclear program
a "stupid thing someone did on the internet"?

------
shriphani
Possibly relevant : Bruce Dang on stuxnet
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOwMW6agpTI>

------
jgrahamc
It's amusing that they 'lost control' of it because a simple bit of code along
the lines of "if www.google.com resolves then shutdown" would be effective at
detecting whether it was on the Internet or not.

~~~
zxcvb
What if google.com isn't resolvable from the host? The quality of person on HN
has gone down hill.

~~~
forza
You might want to have a look at your own comment history...

------
voodoochilo
if this info is correct then it's an outrage. control lost or not.

------
mtgx
This doesn't seem to be a very good day for the US Government:

[http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/01/us-china-usa-
espio...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/01/us-china-usa-espionage-
idUSBRE8500IH20120601)

------
mthreat
They should have read about the Internet Worm of 1988 -
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_worm>

Those who don't know history are bound to repeat it?

------
Morg
HIV (just to be clear, I have no clue wether HIV was assisted by some military
programmes, but I can safely say such "mistakes" have been made in the past by
the same army, like when they used to test nukes for example)

Luckily this time it's a simple pc virus we can easily disassemble and counter
- I think cyber war's still miles better than the alternatives.

~~~
dpark
No, you can't "safely" say that. You've no evidence that the US military has
ever been involved in creating a wide-scale biological pandemic. This is just
conspiracy theory bunk.

I'm not sure how you can reasonably compare testing nuclear weapons to the
supposed propagation of HIV, either. These two things have nothing in common.

~~~
Morg
Alright, you want details ? During the testing of nuclear weapons, the US had
no problem testing the secondary effects of nukes through radiation far beyond
the blast zone, by putting boats with soldiers to watch the thing.

It was widely known at that time that radiation was bad for you mkay, and that
nuclear fission bombs were nuclear fission bombs, i.e. accelerated nuclear
degradation bombs and drained all their explosive power from radiations, that
kill mkay.

In the past, biological, chemical, explosive weapons were tested on rocks,
plants, prisoners, personnel, unsuspecting local populations, etc. by the nazi
regime, the US govt, the USSR and France - that are widely confirmed.

I wouldn't put it past THOSE people to do such a thing, would you ?

So really, if you want to say it's IMPOSSIBLE or UNLIKELY that they would've
done that too, without knowing the consequences - I suppose you must be right.

~~~
Symmetry
Yes, the US has done bad things, and AIDS is a bad thing, but it doesn't
follow that the US caused AIDS. After all, nature has had no trouble creating
pandemics without any deliberate human help over the centuries.

~~~
Morg
(just to be clear, I have no clue wether HIV was assisted by some military
programmes, but I can safely say such "mistakes" have been made in the past by
the same army, like when they used to test nukes for example)

That means I just used the HIV word to connect to the concept of bio weapon
testing gone wrong - weapon testing gone wrong.

The reason why is that one of the most popular theories on HIV is that the US
military had a part in its development.

I don't know and I don't care, those people have such a bad karma even AIDS
wouldn't make much difference - just read the disclaimer next time ;)

~~~
dpark
> _That means I just used the HIV word to connect to the concept of bio weapon
> testing gone wrong - weapon testing gone wrong._

This means you just randomly connected unrelated things.

The connection doesn't even make sense at a basic level. If the US knowingly
put sailors in boats near nuclear blasts to test for radiation effects, it
wasn't a mistake. It was an intentional act. It makes no sense to say that
this implies that super-HIV could have been accidentally released in the wild
by the US government.

> _The reason why is that one of the most popular theories on HIV is that the
> US military had a part in its development._

Popular among conspiracy theorists, perhaps, not among the general population
or among experts in the field.

