
How crazy am I to think I actually know where that Malaysia Airlines plane is? - danso
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/02/jeff-wise-mh370-theory.html
======
rdtsc
I think the main point of the story is not to convince us that he has a good
proof. But rather to document how we convince ourselves, and how we latch on
to small things and head down a path. Once we are on a path we become commited
to it and it becomes hard to turn back.

Notice how he talks about the "crazies" on the forum. How they would use
aliases, log back in and mention their stupid "lightning" theory, and he had
to kick them out.

However, he then carefully proceeds to discribe how he did pretty much the
same. Spent his own money and time building this complicated theory of super
smart and efficient russian spies hacking into a satcom of a flying aircraft,
also somehow, incapacitation everyone else on board, etc. In the meantime he
is dropping clues how his own wife doesn't even believe him.

I think many people here, judging by the comments, misunderstood the goal of
the article and took it too literaly.

But, there is a good lesson here. This stuff happens if you program and design
software. There are lot of moving parts and lot of imperfect knowledge --
market needs, tools, langauges, platforms, APIs, architectures desicions, etc
etc. Sometimes if you start to "just write code" too early. You end up
committed to a bad path and it becomes hard mentally to throw it away and
restart. Or, alternatively, you spend so much time picking the right
combination of tools or redesigning the system that it becomes too later to do
anything (someone else already built the system or there is no need for it
anymore somehow).

~~~
crimsonalucard
There is another side to this lesson. I cannot count the amount of times I've
read about scientists in the past getting ridiculed for some "crackpot" theory
only to be vindicated later. A perfect example is Ohm's law:

"Ohm's initial publication was met with ridicule and dismissal; called "a
tissue of naked fantasy." Approx. twenty years passed before scientists began
to recognize its great importance."

The site here has a whole list of these "maverick scientists":
[http://amasci.com/weird/vindac.html#j9](http://amasci.com/weird/vindac.html#j9)

I think the other lesson we need to consider is, just because an idea appears
to be crazy, doesn't mean it is...

The Author, by presenting his theory in a way that also illustrates his
awareness of the possibility that he himself is also crazy, was able to get it
published by the New Yorker as a symbolic piece on the dangers of getting
sucked into a conspiracy theory. If this was his plan, I think it's a good one
as there's too many technical summaries, pictures and diagrams for this not be
an article that is in part promoting a conspiracy theory.

~~~
tbabb
> I cannot count the amount of times I've read about scientists in the past
> getting ridiculed for some "crackpot" theory only to be vindicated later.

People love to point to underdog scientists who were later "vindicated" and
then compare their own pet theories to them. 1) That's incredibly arrogant. 2)
That disregards the 10^n other theories that are discredited correctly every
day. 3) The scientists who "nobody believed" were right because they did an
incredible amount of very careful, thorough research which bolstered their
case well past the point where it could be ignored. They weren't wild hunches.

> published by the New Yorker

New York Magazine. Big difference there.

~~~
crimsonalucard
Lets make it clear. I'm not vindicating his theory

I'm saying it's equally ignorant to not consider a theory because it just
seems improbable.

~~~
tbabb
A theory being improbable is probably the _best_ reason not to give it credit.

A theory should be accepted only when the null hypothesis is _more_
improbable.

~~~
crimsonalucard
keywords: "seems improbable" Just because something SEEMS improbable doesn't
actually mean it IS improbable.

~~~
gjem97
When the probability describes the likelihood of our data matching a
particular theory, there is only "seems improbable". E.g. it seems improbable
that there are other yet undetected Pluto-sized objects in the solar system.
Is it improbable? No, it's either true that there are such objects or not.

As opposed to events that have not occurred. E.g. it seems improbable that ten
flips of a fair coin will yield ten heads. Is it improbable? Yes by most
definitions of improbable, it is improbable.

------
johnloeber
The difficult thing with this sort of article is that while it generally
sounds plausible, the layperson reader doesn't know about the specifics. I
don't know anything about BFO spoofing or handshake rings. This means that all
I can really judge this article on is its presentation and logical reasoning,
and while both seem okay, there's no way for me to evaluate the premises and
finer points that the piece critically hinges upon.

Reading this article sort of left me feeling the same way I imagine a child
might feel when reading Erich von Daniken or a book about Roswell or something
like that: a set of allegations that are (1) surprising, (2) seem to make
sense, and (3) that are totally beyond the reader's capacity for
counterargument.

I will deliver one counter-argument: I think the focus on Yubileyniy might be
unwarranted. The extrapolation of the flight-path is mere speculation, and
don't forget that there are _lots_ of places to land a plane, even a very
large one. Out of all the larger airfields on the eastern hemisphere of our
planet, I'm not surprised to see one that's large enough for this plane and
that had some apparently-unusual things going on within the last few months.
Statistically, I just regard such an event as probable to occur, independently
of any missing planes.

Anyway, it was an interesting read.

~~~
bhouston
I started reading this and then I thought of Occam's Razor. This theory is
appears way too complex to be true, something much simpler likely happened.

~~~
mikekchar
This is a common misinterpretation of Occam's Razor, IMHO. Simple explanations
are not more likely to be true. What Occam's Razor says is that if you have 2
theories that fit the same data, you should pick the simplest one. Why?
Because it is simpler, not because it is more likely to be true.

It is important to remember that when we are dealing with scientific theories,
we are not really all that concerned with truth. Are Newton's laws "true"?
Well, they work reliably given certain constraints and they are definitely
more simple than other theories, so it would be stupid not to use them.
However, there are data to show that Newton's laws don't hold in other
situations. Newton's laws are not "truth" \-- they are useful.

Another thing to keep in mind is that a scientific theory must make
predictions which are falsifiable. In other words, it must not only fit data
in the past, it must continue to fit data into the future. If your idea has no
predictions, then it isn't a scientific theory to begin with and Occam's Razor
doesn't apply.

In this case, the author has a theory which (presumably -- I haven't checked)
fits the data in the past. Even if we had a simpler theory that also fits the
data, we couldn't invoke Occam's Razor, because neither theory makes
predictions about the future. The event is already finished and will not
happen again. With Occam's Razor, I'm saying, "Well, we could imagine it to be
like X or like Y and no matter how you slice it, it's going to work the same.
I will pick X because it is simpler". But with this event, it makes a huge
difference which "theory" I pick, so I can't use Occam's Razor.

Even if I could pick two equivalent theories -- let's say I had a theory that
the plane crashed into a mountain and I had another theory that said the plane
did a loop-de-loop and then crashed into the mountain. Maybe both ideas fit
the data in the past and I could go and verify that the plane ended up
crashing into the mountain. Both theories fit the data in the past and fit
data in the future. I'll pick the simplest one because, hey, it really doesn't
matter if the plane did a loop-de-loop before it crashed.

Now, maybe some people really care about the loop-de-loop. If they can't find
any data that supports the loop-de-loop but doesn't support the straight-on-
crash, then we are still going to reject the loop-de-loop theory. Why
needlessly complicate things when there is no data to differentiate the two
theories? But this does _not_ mean that the plane did not do a loop-de-loop.
There is no justification for saying that at all. We don't have any data to
support one position or the other. We are just accepting the simple answer
because it makes our lives easy.

Where most people get this wrong is: \- They try to apply it to non-scientific
theories. \- They try to apply it to a single theory rather than a set of
equivalent theories. \- They try to apply it to a set of non-equivalent
theories. \- They believe that the result is "true".

That last one is pernicious because if you believe that something is true just
because it is the simplest explanation that fits your data, you have stepped
from science to religion.

~~~
Padding
> It is important to remember that when we are dealing with scientific
> theories, we are not really all that concerned with truth.

Isn't truth the _only_ thing science cares about?

Of course truth alone doesn't mean much and we usually conduct science not
just for the sake of it, but those are downstream concerns.

> Are Newton's laws "true"? Well, they work reliably given certain constraints
> and they are definitely more simple than other theories, so it would be
> stupid not to use them.

Science doesn't necessitate any "reliability" on the theories/premises it
uses. You set up your premise apply your theory to it and reach a conclusion.

It's up to others (i.e. engineers) to worry about how valid the premises are.

Deciding to use or not use some other theory as a premise isn't about being or
not being "stupid" but rather about being able to prove something that others
(be it scientists or engineers) will be interested in reading.

~~~
barrkel
You can't get to the truth from science. You can only build a model of
reality.

The degree with which that model corresponds with reality is a measure of
truth, for some definitions of truth. But it's still always a map, a
projection from reality according to some set of rules. It never actually is
reality.

The thing that science cares about is building a better model of reality.
Better models mean better predictions and better storytelling. The former is
highly useful. The latter, I'm not so sure. Convincing storytelling can
elevate a model higher than it's worth. There's a lot of storytelling in
macroeconomics, and similarly in evolutionary biology's just-so stories.

I wonder if viewing science through the lens of "true" stories about reality,
rather than as a ratchet for generating more precise predictive models,
encourages overweighted stories too much.

------
bobmoretti
The scenario described in the article could only have gone down with the
support of a state level actor. In foreign affairs, states are mostly rational
and risk-averse. The risk involved in such an operation would have been
astronomical:

\- It stretches the imagination that in the Post-9/11 world, hijackers could
access a panel in the cabin without raising passenger and crew suspicion. So
the hijackers would have required some way to control the passengers.
Smuggling this past airport security is already a huge risk to the operation.

\- The northern route may be the optimal route for someone looking to avoid
detection, but there is still a massive risk that one of these countries might
notice the plane on military or other radar. This would be an unqualified
disaster to the sponsors of the operation.

\- The most probable final ping locations are so far out that the aircraft was
almost certainly at or on the verge of fuel exhaustion. How would the
hijackers have known the precise amount of fuel on board? How would they deal
with unexpectedly high head winds, or some other in-flight issue? Any crash
landing would be difficult to conceal.

The sophistication, danger, and lack of motivation for such an operation makes
this sound more like a movie plot than a credible theory.

~~~
raverbashing
" but there is still a massive risk that one of these countries might notice
the plane on military or other radar"

And radar coverage is much bigger in the northern arc.

China/Russia/India/Pakistan, etc

~~~
bobmoretti
Yep, and as someone else mentioned, flying right over one of the more heavily
militarized areas of the planet (Kashmir). Also, why would Russia choose to
hijack a plane full of Chinese citizens for this? The last thing they want
right now is to compromise their relationship with China. It just doesn't make
any sense.

~~~
frevd
Well, at that time the worlds media attention was on the Ukraine conflict,
involving Russia. What better way to get media attention away from your plans
than to create a mystery about which most of the western world happily cares
much more than about watching eversame news about war and invasion.

------
lovemenot
Whatever the merits of the argument about the actual location of MH370, it was
entirely inappropriate to dox those two Ukrainians with such circumstantial
evidence as to _their_ involvement. At one point he is saying just look at
their physique and imagine these guys taking over _your_ aircraft. Right.

Theorising on the internet is one thing, but real people don't deserve
terrorism accusations, except through due process of law. Boston bomb media
lynching is a case in point.

~~~
adaml_623
I would agree with you if it weren't for the fact that those people are dead.

Obviously accusations such as these are not very nice for the families of
those gentlemen but not really the same as doxing.

------
jasonm23
This is all you ever need to remember when considering the validity of the
majority of news sources:

> I soon realized the germ of every TV-news segment is: “Officials say X.” The
> validity of the story derives from the authority of the source. The expert,
> such as myself, is on hand to add dimension or clarity. Truth flowed one
> way: from the official source, through the anchor, past the expert, and
> onward into the great sea of viewerdom.

~~~
arh68
Yeah. What I got from the article was:

1) As an _expert_ , I appear on TV to repeat the Official News Updates

2) I'm there all week, so I'm a regular

3) The experts don't agree at all

4) The experts don't like conspiracy theorists (lightning?)

5) The experts can be conspiracy theorists, too! (Putin!?)

Even his book summary lays out the same trope: _CNN Aviation Analyst Jeff Wise
sweeps aside the conspiracy theories and misconceptions_ , then just down
below, once they've made the appeal to authority, _a radical new hypothesis
ought to be considered_. Bizarre. A very entertaining read.

------
defen
I don't understand why an entity with "state level resources" would need to go
through this elaborate procedure to acquire a jet (which they presumably want
to use for nefarious purposes).

1) What nefarious purpose could they possibly use it for? e.g. let's say they
want to turn it into a flying bomb - do they really think the rest of the
world won't figure out where it came from / who did it, simply because they're
using a stolen plane?

2) Why go through all this trouble with a mission that could go
catastrophically wrong, when you could just buy it through your regular black-
budget process?

~~~
damian2000
The theory has a lot of holes, but in the absence of the plane and much other
hard evidence, it becomes really attractive to believe in it. What were the
Russians doing in Malaysia? In fact Russians make up an increasing number of
tourists in south east asia. I ran into many when I was in Phuket a couple of
years back.

~~~
jonah
Maybe it was some passengers/cargo they were interested in. </tinfoil>

~~~
Throwaway90283
Surely it would be easier to kidnap a passenger at their hotel, or to hijack
their taxi, then to steal an entire airplane, take control of hundreds of
passengers, make it disappear from radar, spoof the location, fly it across
national borders, land it in Kazakhstan, and hide it underground.

It's completely absurd. If the president of the United States was on that
flight, I'd give it more credibility. However, which passenger on that flight
was so valuable, and surrounded by so much security, that hijacking the flight
made sense?

The same goes for cargo, it must be easier to make friends in the right
places, or pay people off to have that cargo "misplaced".

~~~
jonah
Oh, I'm with you, it's completely absurd.

------
Steko
rdtsc's point above is taken but this guy's idea in particular is really
bonkers.

He tries to pass off the idea that you can avoid radar by flying along borders
with nothing more than the word of an anonymous military navigator. Maybe he
should rent a plane in Kashmir and try flying along the Chinese-India border
for a few hours and see if that actually works.

~~~
nandemo
Agreed.

Also, am I the only one disturbed by OP's implicating the 3 Russian
passengers? It's not backed by any investigation, just speculation. And more
likely than not those 3 Russians were simply victims.

------
Gustomaximus
This articles first paragraph says: "There had been no bad weather, no
distress call, no wreckage, no eyewitness accounts of a fireball in the sky"

Someone did claim to see a fireball.
[http://www.thewire.com/global/2014/03/oil-rig-worker-says-
he...](http://www.thewire.com/global/2014/03/oil-rig-worker-says-he-saw-
malaysia-air-flight-370-go-down/359093/)

~~~
damian2000
Also the british woman on a yacht ...
[http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/mh370-search-
br...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/mh370-search-british-
sailor-may-be-last-to-see-lost-jet-after-reporting-burning-plane-with-trail-
of-black-smoke-over-indian-ocean-9477827.html)

Incidentally, the kiwi oil rig worker who claimed he saw MH370 come down in a
fireball was sacked for saying that, and hasn't worked since.

[http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&obje...](http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=11404392)

~~~
junto
My gut feeling is that the plane was accidentally shot down as part of the
continuing tensions in the South China Sea. This article and the included map
illustrate the problems quite well:

[http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-
pacific-13748349](http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-pacific-13748349)

There were a large number of different nations involved in various "war
games", "search and rescue practices", and general provocative actions at the
time. [http://tass.ru/en/world/725908](http://tass.ru/en/world/725908)

~~~
orbifold
Why would you shoot with live ammunition during a war game?

------
DavidPlumpton
So if any of this was true it would all just be an amazing coincidence that
the pilot was in a courtroom seeing a political figure he strongly supported
for years getting a hefty sentence on trumped up charges for challenging the
national leader. And then after being observed to be highly upset and
emotional have a night to consider it all and then go fly the plane the next
day.

~~~
n1c
Could you elaborate on this? Did that really happen?

~~~
DavidPlumpton
It's widely reported. For example
[http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2...](http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2014/03/pilot_zaharie_ahmad_shah_supported_anwar_ibrahim_was_he_a_terrorist.html)

------
cshimmin
Say what you will about the article or his theory, but I thought this passage
was really well written and concisely summed up an important observation:

    
    
        “‘That’s right’ is a feeling you get so that you can move on,” Burton told me.
        It’s a kind of subconscious laziness.
        Just as it’s harder to go for a run than to plop onto the sofa,
        it’s harder to reexamine one’s assumptions than it is to embrace certainty.
        At one end of the spectrum of skeptics are scientists, who by disposition or training resist the easy path;
        at the other end are conspiracy theorists, who’ll leap effortlessly into the sweet bosom of certainty.

------
tjradcliffe
The answer to the headline question is: "very".

Speculation on the location of MH370 is evidence of innumeracy, at best.
Insanity, at worst:
[http://www.tjradcliffe.com/?p=1364](http://www.tjradcliffe.com/?p=1364)

tl;dr: because air disasters are incredibly improbable, the range for
speculation is almost completely unbounded, and therefore the probability that
any particular speculation is correct is vanishingly small.

------
8ig8
If anything, it was a good read.

It was one of those rare stories where I was looking at my scroll position
hoping I wasn't near the end. Usually it is the other way around.

------
melling
One of CNN's most embarrassing moments:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpVd7k1Uw6A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpVd7k1Uw6A)

Can anyone fix American news?

~~~
austenallred
24-hour cable news? Probably not. The fact that they have to be saying
_something_ for 24 hours a day, without repeating themselves too frequently,
is virtually impossible. There's simply not that much news. Not to mention the
fact that young people don't watch the news (the State of the Media report in
2014 said that the average age of the evening news watcher was 53) [1].
Honestly it's painful to watch when I'm at the airport.

You could get all of the news that matters in thirty seconds if someone went
through the work to organize it that way.

Print news will die even sooner.

Internet/app news (or print resurrected in Internet form) is also in serious
trouble. It's a money problem at the end of the day. News agencies are
literally making pennies when they used to make dollars [2]. Turns out if
you're making 1/10 of what you used to make it's hard to keep people on staff.
Those people on staff were the writers and fact-checkers, so now instead of
being able to spend a long time thoughtfully reporting there's a lot of "I
need three stories on my desk by the end of the day" going on. Combine that
with the fact that now your local newspaper competes with every other
newspaper, and most of the industry is pretty much screwed.

Yet, I say that as someone who is starting a news company
([https://grasswire.com](https://grasswire.com)). I think at the end of the
day citizen journalism and fact-checking (allowing more participation from
non-paid parties) can not only produce higher quality journalism, but can
actually save the news from its monetization woes. (In other words, our thesis
is that instead of trying to squeeze more out of the monetization end as a
result of increase in supply, we should just let that increase in supply
decrease the value of each printed word). Basically we're trying to create an
open Wikipedia-like newsroom where anyone can curate and fact-check in real-
time. It has been working beautifully in private beta, so we'll see.

[1] [http://www.stateofthemedia.org/2012/network-news-the-pace-
of...](http://www.stateofthemedia.org/2012/network-news-the-pace-of-change-
accelerates/network-by-the-numbers/)

[2] [http://www.stateofthemedia.org/2012/newspapers-building-
digi...](http://www.stateofthemedia.org/2012/newspapers-building-digital-
revenues-proves-painfully-slow/)

~~~
dingaling
> There's simply not that much news.

Of course there is, this is a planet of six billion people.

I'm sure from your endeavours you are familiar with BBC Monitoring which
summarises news from thousands of global media sources. 50%+ of those stories
never reach the western mainstream news.

And that's just one possible source.

~~~
iopq
And your viewership doesn't care about most of them. There's only so much news
that the general public cares about.

~~~
prawn
I'd suggest that the viewership will generally care about whatever the media
companies want them to care about. They don't care about far away lands
because it's easier and cheaper to rile people up over local non-issues.

Typical 24 hour news has its market. Younger markets will always have some
equivalent format.

------
peteretep
He wrote his whole theory up as a book:
[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00TP07B0I/](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00TP07B0I/)

------
k4renio
This theory would have had way more impact without quoting any names or making
any direct accusations. It would also have had the benefit to spare his
reputation.

------
yongjik
On top of everything others said, what kind of nation hijacks a plane with 152
Chinese nationals, unless they want a war with China? (And if they _do_ want a
war with China, why bother with such a complicated plot?)

If Russia did it, and if China finds out, does anybody think China will say,
"Well, it's Russia, we'll protest at UN and demand economic sanction"? Moscow
and Beijing will be in rubbles when the dusts clear.

~~~
prawn
Russia took down another Malaysian Airlines plane and virtually nothing has
come of that.

~~~
jpatokal
Full of Dutch nationals, not Chinese. Also, it's unlikely that "Russia" took
it down, they merely supplied the weaponry to a bunch of incompetent hotheads
who accidentally shot it down.

~~~
jakub-
According to a report by the Berlin-based Correctiv & Der Spiegel [0], it was
Russia's 53rd Air Defence Brigade that was directly operating the missile
launcher.

[0] [https://mh17.correctiv.org/english/](https://mh17.correctiv.org/english/)

~~~
mrottenkolber
Never trust Der Spiegel. Worst magazine ever.

------
S_A_P
I just don't understand why if this was a hijacking that there was no media
outlet alerted stating demands or claiming responsibility, etc.

If that were the case I can only imagine that something went wrong and they
were unable to announce the takeover or there is some sort of cover up that is
being implemented to prevent any groups from getting credit for hijacking a
plane. Nothing really seems to make a lot of sense to me. I do think it's
interesting that the author doesn't really seem to sure himself and thinks
that he may be crazy to think he has the answer. It seems that a lot of events
when thrown into a strange context can seem to both explain something yet
sound/be completely crazy(the work to hide the airplane in Kazakhstan in the
middle of winter) It could have just been some government project that just so
happened to wrap up around that time. I wonder if this plane will be found...

------
Kiro
> One was sure the plane had been hit by lightning and then floated in the
> South China Sea, transmitting to the satellite on battery power. When I
> kicked him out, he came back under aliases. I wound up banning anyone who
> used the word “lightning.”

That's some seriously messed up moderation. Who is this guy and what forum is
he talking about?

~~~
slouch
his personal blog...

------
baddox
> The MH370 obsessives continued attacking the problem. Since I was the
> proprietor of the major web forum, it fell on me to protect the fragile
> cocoon of civility that nurtured the conversation. A single troll could
> easily derail everything. The worst offenders were the ones who seemed
> intelligent but soon revealed themselves as Believers. They’d seized on a
> few pieces of faulty data and convinced themselves that they’d discovered
> the truth. One was sure the plane had been hit by lightning and then floated
> in the South China Sea, transmitting to the satellite on battery power. When
> I kicked him out, he came back under aliases. I wound up banning anyone who
> used the word “lightning.”

I have no experience moderating a large online community, but this feels like
a particularly bad way to do so.

------
brfox
Australian journalist does not agree with this story:
[http://blogs.crikey.com.au/planetalking/2015/02/24/was-
mh370...](http://blogs.crikey.com.au/planetalking/2015/02/24/was-
mh370s-flight-south-spoofed-as-it-really-flew-north/)

------
jkot
Well that story with lightning sounds more likely.

------
kawa
I would dismiss it as some crude conspiration-theory, but the fact that only 4
month later a plane of the same company has been shoot down under unclear
circumstances over the Ukraine is really quite odd.

------
smegel
Far fetched, but I would sure like to know what was going on at Baikonur.

------
AnonJ
It certainly is crazy. I appreciate that the author left hints and certain
introspection about how it could be a self-irony. However the author seems
mostly still believes in it being true. Looking at the "evidences" he put
together they're mostly frail and nonsensical, especially the motive part.
Rational people would certainly avoid failing prey to such obviously
irrational rut. Good for being sane enough at times to remind readers about
that, though.

------
cyanbane
I think the first few paragraphs about the inner workings of being knighted
and paid as "experts" is surreal and as interesting as his theory on the
flight.

------
ck2
It's amazing how some people think governments can be so precise.

This is like "9/11 inside job" level of thinking.

We can't even get special forces to do their jobs without publishing books
about it, what makes you think more than a handful of people can keep a secret
about anything?

~~~
trhway
>It's amazing how some people think governments can be so precise.

>This is like "9/11 inside job" level of thinking.

precise may be not. Opportunistic - definitely. While i have no doubts about
WTC, when i first time saw the released security cam video with Pentagon hit i
was surprised how it looks like a hit by a cruise missile not by a huge plane
- speed, approach angle and height, explosion style, etc... That immediately
prompted me to really look at the damage photos and i just wasn't able to make
myself to see a huge plane hit damage, instead i see a damage from a cruise
missile.

------
slantedview
I can't say how much merit the Russian theory is, but history has shown it is
certainly plausible. The Russian apartment bombing (and failed bombing
attempt) come to mind...

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znowi
tl;dr

Russia hijacked the plain, spoofed the satellite data, landed it in Baikonur
and then buried under the ground.

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slaction
The real lesson learned here is that people stopped talking about what made
this guy famous, and in an attempt to kick the fires and get the flames going
again, he's doing whatever it takes to bring the story back into the public
eye so that we will once again call on him for his expertise.

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tiler
"The world divides into facts. Each fact can be the case or not the case,
while everything else remains the same."

-Ludwig Wittgenstein

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platz
The old man the boat.

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codecamper
who has time for these articles??

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ausjke
wow an eye-opener, maybe there is 5% chance it makes sense?

Is Australia still actively looking for it? who is paying for all these
efforts?

~~~
damian2000
Yes - [http://www.atsb.gov.au/mh370.aspx](http://www.atsb.gov.au/mh370.aspx)

Its being shared between Malaysia, Australia & China, but what % each I don't
know. I think Australia has spent the most so far.

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xnull6guest
Lack of debris and communication aside, the sheer frequency of Asian airliner
disasters and disappearances this past year has been especially provocative
and unusual. The Ex-Prime Minister of Malaysia has resisted implications that
the plane had crashed, insisting that MH370 was a CIA operation. The loss of
the plane over the Ukraine, too, stirred up rumors of a hacked plane being
used as a missile and also rumors that it was taken down by US Air Force to as
a reputation tarnishing campaign and pretense for military action (plus
countless others).

There's just not enough real information to gain certainty, and the number of
plausible sounding theories create a cacaphony.

But one thing seems certain. The series of unusual, '(in)convenient' (a plane
full of AIDs reseachers!) and mysterious circumstances have triggered enough
minds to where is not controversial to conclude that something unusual and
extraordinary _is_ going on. I wonder if we'll ever know.

~~~
throwaway8843
I have followed Asian civil aviation for several years.

The problems they face are:

1\. underfunded startup airlines (Indonesia, India) 2\. energetic and not
well-understood equatorial Pacific storms 3\. uneven quality of candidates and
training 4\. Asian cultural issues in the cockpit, esp. S. Korea 5\. demanding
weather (monsoons) and terrain (low-viz)

The NTSB did a lot (well, everything) for the current safety of American
airlines, but there's no comparable safety body in Asia.

So Asian airline safety should really be compared with Africa, not the West.

~~~
jpatokal
Re: "Asian cultural issues" and the tired old Malcolm Gladwell line about
South Korean culture being unsuited to the cockpit, this post demolishes that
pretty thoroughly.

[http://askakorean.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/culturalism-
gladwe...](http://askakorean.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/culturalism-gladwell-and-
airplane.html)

