
Operation Dark Winter - shalmanese
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Dark_Winter
======
sneak
It is disappointing that the US got all of the authoritarian surveillance that
China did but few/none of the safety/planning upsides it could be used to
bring. It’s the worst of all possible configurations.

I wish that extremely large government would use its vast resources to plan
for large risks other than “people with guns/bombs/tanks/missiles/planes want
to kill us”, and focus at least some of that on emergency preparedness. Why
isn’t there a strategic nationwide domestic reserve of supplies for
emergencies? I know this is what FEMA is supposed to be doing, but they are
_utterly_ terrible at it.

If we’re paying most of a trillion dollars each year for defense, why not
defend us at least a little bit against stuff that might well happen sooner or
later: giant fires, flooding, pandemics, big/long power outages, fuel
shortages, water or food shortages, ice storms, et c? It’s really
disappointing to see almost 100% of that money going to a system that is
focused more on war (which is, to varying degrees, mostly preventable) and
almost none to natural catastrophes (which are absolutely inevitable).

~~~
arminiusreturns
That wouldn't line the pockets of the oligarchs and the good ol boy network,
because it would require the money to actually go to resources and not just
overblown accounting entries to cover the pocketbook lining in the first
place. The DC elite say fluffy words in public but in private are almost to a
person "fuck you I got mine" people. They take oaths but don't mean them.

It's the sad truth that greed is the largest part of it, which enables the
oligarchs to buy the politicians in the first place. Then if some rare person
does resist, there are a whole slew of tools to use against them to force
compliance, usually in the realm of blackmail (this is what Epstein was).
These tools grow even more powerful as the surveillance engine is expanded
(and the truism to remember is that surveillance is about control, not
security). lookup Thomas Drake and William Binney to find out what happens to
people on the inside who actually care about security and not control.

Top down compromise of a centralized system makes the system increasingly
trivial to control as the compromise progresses.

~~~
easytiger
> That wouldn't line the pockets of the oligarchs and the good ol boy network

Step back for a minute and think about what you are writing and how you came
to such a childish view of the world

~~~
bitcharmer
I'd say his viewpoint is quite realistic and based on common knowledge. It's
comments like yours that are childish.

If you really believe the structure of US expenses isn't heavily impacted by
interests of a few rich, powerful men then I'd call your view of the world
very naive.

~~~
duxup
People don't vote for flood protection.

They do like military spending.

I think sometimes folks wrap up the political will of the people in
"oligarchy" simply because they don't like what those folks want or value.

~~~
TeMPOraL
People don't vote on things, they vote on other people. That's the first
problem of modern democracy.

Second problem: to the extent people vote on politicians over things they
promise, they vote based on what politicians _say they will do_ (and not in
absolute, but relative to competing politicians), not over what they actually
do or have done in the past. Since politicians are not accountable for their
promises, and the general population has a _really_ short memory, the main
impact of voting is as an indirect signal - politicians hoping for being
(re)elected have to say and do the things they hope will win them the next
elections.

(In other words: the control input to political decision making system isn't
what the populace wants, but the _prediction_ of what would make most people
vote favorably.)

Three: people vote based on what the media they read tells them is important,
which usually has zero relation to reality and relative relevance of things.
I'm far from believing media sources (including social media) are bought and
controlled by politicians - no, _it 's worse_. All sides _try_ to nudge and
control the narrative, and not just the government, but also the private
sector. No one wins that tug-of-war, but the end result is that modern media
is a form of complete DDoS attack on population's cognitive capabilities. It's
literally making the society stupid.

~~~
simonh
Voting for people means you can hold them accountable. They lay out their
policies, if you trust the person and like their policies you vote them in. If
they under-perform you vote them out. Along with a separation of powers to
limit abuses, it works very well.

Voting for specific policies directly is often disastrous. Look at the way
voter initiatives ring fence high levels of spending while also restricting
taxation. Look at how Brexit became such a dumpster fire because a government
and an elected parliament was compelled to try to implement a policy the
government and a majority of MPs disagreed with. Voting for things not people
inevitably creates a breakdown in responsibility, especially for complex
policies that could be implemented in many ways and involve difficult trade
offs.

I’m not against referendums in principle, they can work, but only if they are
seeking permission to implement a policy supported by the government that is
calling the referendum. In that situation the lines of responsibility are
clear, and for an important decision it can make sense to hold a referendum.

~~~
pdonis
_> Voting for people means you can hold them accountable._

Then how come the US Congress has extremely low approval ratings, but also
extremely high incumbent re-election rates?

~~~
Loughla
I'm willing to bet there is a study about the effects of letting people who
are elected be involved in the process of re-drawing the districts they are
elected from.

~~~
simonh
I'm in the UK and frankly the level of gerrymandering in the US is appalling.
I mean it's your system, I hesitate to judge generally speaking, but OMG is
your system of redistricting screwed up.

------
pure-awesome
I was confused what they meant by "simulation". But they basically mean like a
role-playing game. Like, they acted out how they would respond in that
particular situation.

This site has more info:

[http://www.upmc-
biosecurity.org/website/events/2001_darkwint...](http://www.upmc-
biosecurity.org/website/events/2001_darkwinter/index.html)

[http://www.upmc-
biosecurity.org/website/events/2001_darkwint...](http://www.upmc-
biosecurity.org/website/events/2001_darkwinter/summary.html#players)

~~~
Sharlin
Yes. Like a war game. A standard way to prepare for contingency scenarios. Not
all simulations are _computer_ simulations ;)

~~~
pure-awesome
I wasn't only thinking of computer simulations. The word "simulation" is very
vague.

It could potentially mean one of:

\- Computer Simulation

\- Pen & Paper Mathematical models

\- Pen & Paper narrative modelling (i.e., writing a paper about different
situations and the possible contingency plans - though granted this is not
usually referred to as "simulation")

\- Role-playing a situation via speech

\- Acting out a situation with props and physical movement / simulated limited
communication

\- Sending out simulated broadcasts ("this is only a test")

\- Sending out false but believable broadcasts

\- Infecting the public with a (hopefully less harmful) disease in order to
gauge response.

------
jnmandal
Those hoping to draw lessons from this should be aware that folks who contract
smallpox had a relatively large chance of dying, ranging from 30% to as high
of 75% for certain strains. It is assumed weaponized form of smallpox would be
highly lethal. Meanwhile COVID-19 seems to have a lethality ranging from 1-3%.

~~~
RobertRoberts
I made comments about being logical about corona virus and I got down voted
into oblivion.

This disease has never been about lethality, but about panic.

I am not sure if it's just good for the mass media to have a panic to discuss,
or if it was a concerted effort by some to make it a panic.

~~~
jesseryoung
A fatality rate of 1-3% is actually quite high. This is significantly higher
than the seasonal flu[1]. Sure, it's not as deadly as other pandemics, but
still - if the numbers are correct, if you contract COVID-19 you are more
likely to die to it than you are to get in a car accident sometime in your
life and die from that[2].

[1] [https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-compared-to-
flu-...](https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-compared-to-flu-
mortality-rates-2020-3)

[2] [https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/all-injuries/preventable-
death-o...](https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/all-injuries/preventable-death-
overview/odds-of-dying/)

~~~
RobertRoberts
Sure, but Ebola is way, way worse, and it was all over Africa for awhile a few
years back (IRC) and it even got to the US, and hardly a peep of panic about
it.

I think we are going to find out in the next year that half the people that
were infected were false positives just like many other scares produce. (like
HIV)

------
duxup
>In Dark Winter, some members advised the imposition of geographic quarantines
around affected areas, but the implications of these measures (e.g.,
interruption of the normal flow of medicines, food and energy supplies, and
other critical needs) were not clearly understood at first.[5] In the end, it
is not clear whether such draconian measures would have led to a more
effective interruption of disease spread.

That's one of the more interesting questions. Is it possible to have an
effective quarantine in this day and age?

~~~
_rrnv
The answer to your question is: Wuhan.

~~~
duxup
These days it is difficult to know what people are saying on the internet.

Do you mean it is or isn't possible, or something else?

~~~
verbify
I presume they mean it isn't possible, as there was an attempted quarantine
around Wuhan, and yet coronavirus still spread.

~~~
_rrnv
It’s like with 42. You see what you want to see. Who knows if Wuhan is a
success or not. There is no benchmark. If Seattle, Mediolan etc have 1M cases
but Wuhan stays around 100K then their containment will be hailed a monumental
success. But if everyone else contains this below 10K and Wuhan stays like
today, it will be a failure. But it’s still the answer to OPs question, as
Wuhan is the baseline.

------
dijit
This was the fundamental inspiration behind a game I helped to make:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fgvo-9pJ1EU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fgvo-9pJ1EU)

------
pradn
See the Millennium Challenge 2002 for another interesting "war game", this one
a simulated war between the US and Iran:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002)

~~~
cbHXBY1D
Which essentially showed the US would not only be unsuccessful attacking Iran
but also lose in a humiliating fashion, making Gulf War 1/2 and Afghanistan
look like child's play.

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2OEH8eoCRo0
This wikipedia page makes a noise. I hear a buzz for only this tab and only
this wikipedia page. Strange.

------
stevefan1999
Well, to quote Tyson, "everybody has a plan, until they got punched in the
face".

~~~
MrZongle2
I feel as if the US government really _didn 't_ have much of a plan, and we're
still getting punched in the face.

