Russia has previously and frequently conducted (GPS) jamming exercises in the northern area, which has resulted in the same thing for pilots there.
EDIT: These things are more likely to happen in times of military exercises or similar activities. Right now there's lots of activity in the Baltic region - which is likely why things are happening.
Whenever there's large NATO exercises in Northern Norway, these things start happening.
Please don't just drop a link but elaborate a bit what your trying to say by posting that link.
Was expecting something interesting GPS jamming related, but the article doesn't even contain the word "GPS". You likely posted it to tell there are currently NATO exercises going on in northern Norway. Your post could have benefited from adding this bit of info.
The clear suggestion is that it is Russia doing it.
Other than as an f-u, I don’t understand why they would though. If I have an effective weapon (GPS spoofer), surely I don’t want to alert the enemy to it, lest they develop defences. So eg say NATO were overreliant on GPS, incidents of spoofing like this will cause them to rethink and reduce that reliance, or harden the system.
Suggesting Russians are playing a rational game here? I think the cover has been pulled on the Russian "master strategy".. it's literally a hierarchy of terror and lies, where everyone will do whatever it takes to please the irrational autocrat.
I have been spamming this lecture everywhere since the war started and again I think anyone who's still questioning the Russian operative reality should watch it:
I watched that evaluation yesterday and I think it is spot on and I second your recommendation. Many western officials (as most people) seem to be unable to put themselves into this different environment and framework of values. Knowing a lot about a country helps, but judging them by the values you'd have doesn't help you a bit.
Edit: Take the below with a grain of salt, this is one personal experience which can/should not be extrapolated from. There are good/bad people in all nations.
When I was 16 we were on vacation and played waterball in a pool against a russian family. When they realized we were winning (all members of my family were playing handball for life, so this was no wonder) they started to do things like pulling pants and punching underneath the water surface, scratching with the fingernails etc. They still lost.
Back then I could not understand why anyone would deploy such methods in a game during their vacation. For me personally, it would be entirely unpleasant and unenjoyable to envolve myself that much in a non-serious game. But maybe the answer is contained in that video: Maybe it is just much more normal to deploy the whole arsenal of what you can do in russian culture. I guess if you don't try everything and then loose you are seen as an idiot or as a weak person. I grew up in a culture where the rules of society are taken comparedly serious, so for me playing unfair is a sign of weakness (proof you cannot win by the rules).
Wow. When I was a kid I was on holiday playing together with Russians, Brits, Belgians and other German kids.
While the Russian kids were playing by the rules (at least not significantly outside of that) especially the British kiddos did everything they could to win the medals we received in these games from the hotel.
So what does my anecdata tell us? Nothing. I have great experiences with Russian people while I was cheated by Brits. Should I deduce all Russians are great people? Or all Brits are cheaters? Probably would be a bad idea.
There clearly are different cultures. But talking about that as if this means people a a homogenized blob of that culture does not pay justice to the people who went to the streets in Russia to protest against the war for example. Or to the people that only know the propaganda side of this war on any side.
You are surely right there, but having played with a ton of kids from all nationalities as well (football, handball, whatever) this episode still stood out for me, because it was much more brutal than anything else I had experienced out of tournaments and "serious" games. The game in question here was not even a hotel tournament, it was just a "hey, wanna play a round"-kind of game.
However: as you rightly mentioned it is unwise to extrapolate from this one experience onto the character of a group of people (I added this in the post above). This was not my intention here, it was just a very memorable experience and I never quite understood why it escalated the way it did.
Should I judge all individuals by the country they come from? Within your own country, have you met people who are great and others who are not? Even within your own school or workplace?
Although governments that run countries would have you believe there is such a thing as a country - this is merely a fiction that is commonly believed. There are no countries, just beliefs. There are no collectives either - that too is a belief.
Yes ofcourse we are all the same, people. But we people have been brought up in different cultures and been fed different naratives so we act differently depending on what we have been brought up to. We can learn to be one way or other to a certain degree.
Going on a different tangent, I watched an interesting video [1] from The Behavior Panel podcast attempting to discern tactics from Putin's social cues in parallel to the trustworthiness of his messaging and, whether the historical context he provided were reliable or not.
I think I can reasonably conclude from watching their perspective that he's masterful in deception.
Always seeking to understand human behavior, when people say things to justify their otherwise contradictory actions. A simpler example would be reading HN from your own voice and not properly conveyed by others as human emotions are most often sterilized in text form.
> Should I judge all individuals by the country they come from?
Interesting question, but not one that my post circled about. As someone who grew up at the border between three nations/languages I can assure you that even within a 100 mile radius differing history and culture can change how a average person from that nation behaves. This is curious and one can spend a lot of time pondering about where these slight differences come from – and learn a lot about other cultures and maybe even your own on the way.
What one should – however – not do is extrapolating the character of individuals from their perceived nationality (something I never suggested would be a good idea).
> There are no countries, just beliefs.
Citation needed. I also believe that the idea of the nation is indeed a story we tell ourselves. But firstly stories we tell ourselves are incredibly powerful: They shape actual physical reality and individual actions, and secondly the difference in languages does shape our thinking and our actions and this also has been studied. Nation borders are often also language borders.
I've only lived in 3 countries and all I have learned is that some people are good/nice/polite and some people are bad/ugly/rude regardelss of their nationality, religion or culture.
Do we need some kind of -ism for jerks? Or maybe just the term "jerks" is enough.
I fucking hate jerks. But sometimes jerks move in and out being classified as jerks, probably myself included, probably you too, dear reader. But when they're being jerks I fucking hate jerks. But if I haven't met them yet, then I haven't defined them as a jerk because in my life's experience I've met jerks that cross any and all classification boundaries; tall and short, old and young, male and female, American, Chinese, Canadian, Australian, Vietnamese, German, white-skinned, dark-skinned, olive-skinned, blue eyed, hazel-eyed, blonde-haired, ginger-haired, bald, purple-mohawked (that's actually not true, I've never come a cross a purple-mohawked jerk, but I'm sure someone has).
Everyone should rally against jerks, but there's no way to recognise one quickly and easily without going through the unpleasant interaction that tars them with the jerk brush.
And that's why we should dislike them, because they disguise themselves so well, and that's a learned skill of the jerk, because it'd be too difficult to go around being a jerk if there was an easy way to tell them all apart from the majority of nice people that make the world worthwhile enough to put up with jerk-kind.
We have one.
narcissism, which is characterized by:
Lack of empathy.
Having an inflated sense of self-importance.
Entitlement.
Manipulative behavior.
Needs constant admiration.
Expects special treatment.
Exaggerates achievements and talents.
Reacts negatively to criticism, immediately will go on the offense.
Being preoccupied with fantasies about power, success, and beauty.
Secret anxiety due to feelings of inadequacy.
In man's search for meaning the author draws the same conclusion, describing Jewish prisoners who would cheat their fellow inmates for a priveledged position, and Nazi soldiers, who were also a bit hungry, because food was scarce, sneaking food to give to prisoners of the labor camps.
"There are two races of men in this world - the decent man and the indecent man."
Are you then claiming that 70% of Russians are jerks? Because that's the current approval rate of Putin according to the latest post-war poll by Levada. [1]
My grandfather was an actual Nazi, so I kinda know what the wrong culture can make of people.
The common people are not "all the same". They can be made to hate and kill others, and under some leaders, in some eras and so on.
Yet — extrapolating from predominant culture in a country to everybody living in it is wrong as well.
I grew up in a 40% right wing environment and I got out of there as soon as I had the chance. Others either don't have the chance or can't so it because other things bind them to a place. The free spirits in such places suffer immensly. Yet you could argue that you are not helping them if you just tolerate their outrageous leaders.
I'm not sure if it's in the same vein, and I'm showing my youth here, but:
In primary/elementary school there were a couple of Russian students. One called Vova was in my class. One day he stole my Pokémon game. Fair(ish) enough, others had stolen other stuff at that school occasionally. But no, he wiped my save file and then went on a tirade of lies to the teachers that it had been his game all along.
It utterly baffled young me as to why you'd go to those lengths.
This reminds me of the way my troop used to play "greased watermelon" in boyscouts in America. Basically get a watermelon greased up with vaseline, throw it into the lake and let everybody battle royale over it. There were usually some black eyes by the end of it, but it was a lot of fun.
Well, it might be so but what's the point in Russia pissing off Finland while a good chunk of its forces is dedicated to the war in Ukraine? They're irrational but surely going "Let's start a war on TWO fronts!" is a step too far even for them?
There's no way Russia pissing Finland off to any conceivable degree would risk war or military retaliation from present-day Finland. None.
The same goes for any other Nordic (and Baltic) countries.
The current Russian regime likes to demonstrate its power now and then, though, and to try and project its influence through intimidation. They can do that with their significantly smaller neighbours with no risk of military retaliation.
There are risks, of course, but those would be in the form of deteriorating relationships and the associated economical costs, or from losing overall international rapport and respect. Those don't seem to matter much to the current regime in Russia, though.
Well they may push Finland to Nato, which is a major strategic fuckup on Russian part. Considering how Finns are generally portrayed in Russia I think its stupid to be a direct Russian neighbor and claim neutrality now... there is no such thing as neutrality in this case.
> Considering how Finns are generally portrayed in Russia I think its stupid to be a direct Russian neighbor and claim neutrality now...
I also think its stupid to be a direct Russian neighbour and claim neutrality, but I don't connect that to how Finns are generally portrayed in Russia. (I hold that opinion just on general strategic and historical grounds.) In fact, I didn't even know Finns are generally portrayed some particular way in Russia.
So, how are Finns generally portrayed in Russia in your experience, and/or how is that realated to the stupidity of being neighbours with Russia and claiming neutrality?
I’ve been sort of amazed by the line of reasoning as well: Russia can invade a democracy aligning with “the west”, but if “the west” were to, say, bomb the military in a country that is aligning with Russia (after ignoring election results and suppressing the opposition with violence), then we would be inviting nuclear war. Very asymmetric, but I guess that is the advantage of being an autocrat with a propensity for throwing threats around :/
Unfortunately the translation is not quite perfect. Hilarious bit, when he talks about the opera A life for the Czar:[1] "...for the Tsar to be saved from the gut..." No, from a swamp, I would think. (Unless it was the Biblical Czar Jonah?) Understandable, though: The Finnish for "swamp" is "suo"; for "gut", "suoli". Due to the agglutineration(?) Finnish grammar is based on, "a bit of gut, some entrails" becomes "suol-ta", while "from [a|the] swamp" becomes "suo-lta". Both of course spelled without the hyphen I put in here for illustrative purposes, and "suolta" pronounced identically in both cases. But still, which would a Czar need saving from -- a swamp, or someone's gut?!?
So, TL;DR: IMO the subtitles are somewhat weak on concluding the correct wording from context.
Oh, and I can't access your link at all. Locked/blocked/taken down? Perhaps there's a time limit on this ghostbin thingy?
[EDIT:] Changed my somewhat un-charitable "the translation is far from perfect" to "not quite": They got "Laiska Jaakko" ("Lazy Jacob"[2]) --> "Jacob de la Gardie" right[3], bravo! [/EDIT]
Russia generally acts rationally. It's just that the assumptions and axioms on top of which rationality is applied is different from the West and ― apparently ― not uncommonly delusional. This made it very hard for the West to believe what Russia was saying for years about Ukraine, for example.
Further, the explanations seem to differ whether they're addressed to Russians or to other countries. Russia's own population tends to get what they want to hear (which we often consider bizarre), and what the West gets doesn't matter much what (because the West has already proven they don't understand Russia even on the big things so why not lie about military training near Ukrainian border as well just to avoid any extra yet futile discourse?)
With delusions in the case of Ukraine I refer to the idea that Ukraine never was a real country and it has belonged to Russia all the time. This falls in line with the worldview of the ex-KGB grandpas from the Soviet era but there's a notable difference they don't seem to accept. Back in the Soviet times USSR had the (fire)power to keep their member states in line and practically own the local governments. There was nowhere to go and it wasn't until the USSR was disbanded that the small Eastern European countries could run away. And run away they did. But Ukraine and Belarus are so close to Russia that it can be easy to think of them as extensions of Russia if you assume you can retain control over the countries, both politically and ultimately militarily. But Russia is much weaker than USSR. Russia have Belarus because, to my understanding, their president basically sold his country to Russia to personally remain in "power" but Ukraine has been looking to West much more than to Mother Russia. And they overruled their Russian leaning president and replaced him with one who's much more open to the West. Here's where I think the delusion comes to play.
Russia somehow thought it would be a simple matter to put Ukraine back in line to avoid them drifting too far into West. Like a father who had no trouble beating his son when he was a kid, the son is now a young adult and the father is much older and weaker, and it's necessary to realize the change. So far, Russia seems to be stuck with the idea that they can maintain control in Ukraine, even after a war. But Russia doesn't seem to be in any position to boss their neighbours around like USSR could.
Even if I ultimately believe that what Russia wanted was Crimea with their old naval city and a land route over there I think they figured why not just go for the whole Ukraine while they're at it, and for once reset the country with a government that makes things easier for Russia in the future. The old USSR could've done that but Russia can't, yet Russia acts as if they're still operating like in the times of USSR. To achieve a "reset" like that you need citizens who agree with you or who are so oppressed that they won't revolt. Russia has neither.
Putin's approval rating in Russia has only increased since the war in Ukraine started. Also, Russian weaponry has only improved since the fall of the USSR. I'm not sure why you're arguing that Russia cannot do what they are currently doing.
It is hard to measure approval in places like Russia, where people who say the wrong things publicly enough disappear from their homes. Most ordinary Russians hold two opinions: a public one and one for round the kitchen table. Which one are you referring to?
Russian weaponry didn't improve, in opposite. Don't look at the paper numbers, they have maybe 10% of the machinery fully operational, spread over very wide territory. The rest is there for spare parts at best.
You mean the russian tank (armata) that they found out they can't build en masse? Or those 40 or 50 years old tanks actually used in Ukraine, which were new during USSR but not so much anymore, and javelins make a quick work out of them. At least from those that don't break by themselves due to poor maintenance (which is due to theft and corruption and general russian approach).
I saw some pictures how the pockets of active armor were empty or stuffed with egg paper wrappings. Again. Same happened in Georgia. Some mighty army. Soldiers selling gas to belarus civilians just before the invasion. Then running out of it in the fields. This conflict showed how weak their army is in conventional conflict.
That being said they have some impressively horrifying thermobaric weapons like TOS-1 which they currently use on civilians. But it doesn't seem they have a lot of it and those alone don't win wars.
Like I mentioned elsewhere, this offensive holds no rational grounds even if you try hard to see it through a Russian lens - this is why they keep inventing new reasons of invasion on the fly (e.g. the biolab stuff, etc.)
So still clinging to the thought that Putin has some kind of grand plan behind him is wishful thinking at best
I've read about the Russians making up new reasons on the fly as well, however I don't know how much this is true. The western medias read so much like propaganda these days that I feel like I cannot take their work for it.
Do you read the news from russian medias directly? (I can't)
It looks very rational to me. I say that as someone who lives across the Black sea and have suffered under their rule and feels for the Ukrainians.
Placing weapons next door to any powerful entity is recipe for conflict. It sounds like you're repeating the same talking points over and over.
Russia felt threatened and attacked. What did the US do to Cuba when the Soviets put weapons there? Oh, that's right. Eternal embargo. No war because they couldn't risk it at the time.
Haven't been lifted because the same regime which justified the actions in the first place is still in power doing the same things. Foreign military weapons installations didn't have anything to do with it then, and doesn't have anything to do with it now.
If that is all you can say, I don't think we should interact ever again. Reads like standard US propaganda. Must be nice living in that one dimensional world
No, I don't. This narrative is so ridiculous and obvious Russian war justification propaganda I don't understand how people don't see through it. What the viewpoint is suggesting is that sovereign smaller countries (like Ukraine, Finland, Baltics etc.) shouldn't even allowed to think about making alliances to protect THEIR OWN INTERESTS (Not American, Russian on any other superpowers) lest they anger someone in the process.
This guy would rather see smaller independent states swallowed by Russia than provide any kind of resistance. Surely you understand that as a neighbouring country to Russia who has dealt with subtle threats from them for the past 80 years that there's absolutely no kind of sympathy for this viewpoint over here.
Kreml's human embodiment resembles a paranoid schizophrenic who thinks everyone is out to "get them" when in reality it's their irrational warmongering that countries want to shield themself from. Or do you really think NATO has some super secret agenda of assembling an offensive for conquering Moscow?
I haven't consumed any mainstream media for the past 5 years.
Believe it or not I sympathize with the generic Russian citizen's autonomy and interest for retaining their own identity and culture. It's a tremendous shame all this has happened. As a Finn, we could have a great country right next to our border with something completely culturally unique and different from your average European country, which more and more meld culturally into a generic Euro-American amalgamation, indistiguishable from each other.
Instead it's turned into a nightmare dictatorship which has now ruined everything above and more importantly has potential life-threatening consequences to me personally and my country.
There is nothing here but sorrow for everyone involved.
> Evaluation of Russia by Finnish Intelligence Colonel
I can't take this talk seriously. it's just a bunch of history bits used to explain and reinforce stereotypes about Russians. "Russians like strong leaders" because Russia was once invaded by mongols who also had strong leaders. Russians always think the leader is infallible because he gets his power from God. Then almost in the next sentence he says Russians hate Gorbachev because he ruined the Soviet Union. It's all just a bunch of shower thoughts. All it does it reinforces stereotypes and hate.
Reality shatters your point really quickly, it's even mentioned in the lecture (suggesting you didn't watch it): Russians have literally had 8 years of democracy in the past 600+ years, otherwise it's always been an autocracy.
The first years of the Kleptocracy were, at lest formally, politically more or less democratic. Also possibly a few years somewhere in there between the revolutions of 1905 and 1917; perhaps some of the last years of Czarist rule could be said to have been more of a contitutional monarchy than an absolute one.
But yeah, that's at most two decades out of the last thousand years or whatever. So on the whole as soon as the Russian people have got rid of one dictatorship, they seem to have been pretty damn eager to replace it with another one.
> Russians have literally had 8 years of democracy in the past 600+ years, otherwise it's always been an autocracy.
To pin this on the Russian people is ludicrous. I think Russia has been consistently dealt a bad hand when it comes to leadership. And interference from the "west" has also been a negative influence in modern times. Consider Lenin[1] and western economic advice that led to the looting of the Russian state after the fall of communism[2].
I think Russia has been consistently dealt a bad hand when it comes to leadership.
When you're dealt a bad hand, it's your responsibility as citizens to do something about it.
That's the part that Russians don't seem to get. As the video describes, it's as if they they enjoy suffering and oppression. Nothing wrong with that, I guess... whatever floats your boat, no kink-shaming here. But don't expect it to catch on elsewhere.
Governments tend to reflect and represent the worst out of given population. That's why Swiss won't in foreseeable future have any dictator like Putin, and that's why Russians will never have anybody who will bring Russia into real prosperity that will actually benefit common citizens.
The endless complaints about 'the others' completely mitigates the facts that its Russians who stole from Russia and made it into crap place it is now. You want a simple proof? Check nationalities of all the oligarchs, all the politicians at power.
Whom else should one pin it on, if not the people??? Constantly abetting and abiding dictatorship is ultimately the responsibility of those who abet and abide it.
No Space Aliens came down in their UFOs and bequeathed enlightenment and democracy on anyone else in the world either. It's up to each people themselves.
My point was the explanations in the video are shower thoughts. If you want to understand why Russia is how it is just read a real history work on Russia not this guy’s shower thoughts
Their entire recent comment history is contrarian “maybe the Ukrainians are Nazis, maybe they aren’t, how can anyone know”, “the Soviet Union mostly did good things”, etc.
This is either a victim of Russian propaganda, or an agent of Russian propaganda.
As to the presented ideas in the talk - as someone who knows Russia well, speaks Russian, has Russian family, he’s spot on - but no Russian will ever agree, because that is part of their complex.
yeah that talk is designed to reinforce your bias by mixing a bit of history to make it look scientific. just watch a real history of Russia lecture. you’re basically watching a history lecture from a career spy instead of from a historian. and you think I am a victim of propaganda lol
Have you ever been outside of your oblast? I guarantee that I’ve seen far more of Russia than you - my views are based on far, far more than some video with which I happen to agree.
Not addressing the points raised and just repeating the same senseless blah over and over... how russian.
Luckily for me, I did actually spent 1 hour watching the video (more like 4 hours in between managing kids) and it made sense of many things I didn't understand before. As somebody coming from country brutally occupied by russian forces for 21 years on a 'friendly special mission', yes the part about mentality is spot on.
I don't think Putin is on some holy mission for slav unification, seeing how he immediately ordered 10,000 chechen killers on their closest slavic neighbor. He is just an ordinary smart thug, highly functioning sociopath, who got lucky being at the right time and place and having good KGB experience to get him to the top and sustain.
Also, its a great lecture on how to not even react and completely ignore the russian news full of 'pravda', intended to just divert attention from other nefarious activities purported by them. Don't play the games they lay for the west.
What are some sources you'd recommend? The thing that impressed me about the colonel's lecture is that it seems to have had some predictive power. Someone who watched that lecture a couple of years ago will be less surprised at Putin's actions today.
That's not really an argument. All you've done is label the Yeltsin administration a democracy, and the Putin administration an autocracy, and then told me a democracy is more democratic than an autocracy.
What I specifically want to hear from you - presumably someone knowledgeable about the political history of the Russian Federation - is how the Yeltsin administration was more democratic. Because my understanding is that the Yeltsin administration was extremely unstable (ie Yeltsin shelling the Russian white house after trying to unconstitutionally dissolve the parliament).
”The 1993 constitution declares Russia a democratic, federative, law-based state with a republican form of government. State power is divided among the legislative, executive, and judicial branches. ”
Yes, their attempt was a miserable failure in many ways, but it was a democracy, albeit a very shallow one.
And in what ways is the current administration not a very shallow democracy?
I feel like ever since the Ukraine invasion Russia has been down-graded from "flawed democracy' to 'autocratic dictatorship' - I mean it's not Switzerland but it's hardly North Korea..
Do you not keep up to date on current affairs? When criticizing the Russian war effort can land you in jail for 15 years, it's getting very close to NK - shortages and all included
Do you not keep up to date? I live in New Zealand, a western democratic country and if I possess or share "objectionable material" of a political nature, I could land in jail for up to 14 years.
And usually has a pretty light touch on this kind of stuff compared to Australia, Canada or the UK.
So no, that in itself is not enough to prove to me that Russia is an autocratic dictatorship, when parliamentary democracies all over the world have similar laws - they reserve the right to throw you in jail for content that expresses threats against the regime.
> Do you not keep up to date? I live in New Zealand, a western democratic country and if I possess or share "objectionable material" of a political nature, I could land in jail for up to 14 years.
What exactly? I could not find anything by Googling on material which would land you in jail for 14 years.
The relevant legislation is on the surface about CP, but if you read the fine print it includes anything that:
d) Promotes criminal acts or acts of terrorism; or
e) Represents any particular class of the public as inherently inferior as a result of a characteristic of members of that class being a characteristic that is a prohibited ground of discrimination specified in the Human Rights Act 1993.
No, AFAICT just pointing out that "You can be jailed for up to X years just for having stuff on your computer!" goes for Western[1] countries, too. Factually correct, of course (the best kind of correct), but employed here in the service of some pretty hefty whataboutism.
___
[1]: "Western"?!? NZ is about as far East as you can get, innit? Oh well, you know, "generally regarded as non-dictatorships".
Even though plan A (rapid victory) appears to have failed, there is still a rational plan B: carve out the eastern and southern portions Putin wants, leave the rest of the country a smouldering ruin which will cost the west $1tn in aid to rebuild.
A rational plan would've been to confine the conflict into Donbas & Krim. I would make the argument that barely any sanctions would've been put in place if Russia had occupied the areas it was already fighting in, since the west barely cared in 2014
I'm not so sure. If you look at the map, if you want to connect the Krim by land you need more than what was held by the Donbas. That nice wide river coming down from Kiew would make a great border though. And you need something to 'give' in negotiations so you have to take more. Plus Kiew is on that river which would not be great. Would you want Ukraine's capital to basically sit right on your border?
Also I bet you Putin wants these high yield parts, controlling not only Europe's oil and gas supply but also lots of their food supply can only be good for Putin. Look at how much Germany was trying not piss him off even while cruise missiles were destroying Ukraine:
So a little more on the coast too (Odessa). If he does leave some of Ukraine in the hands of Ukrainians to end the war and go back to selling Europe gas and oil then a land locked Ukraine would make much less of a threat later too.
And while we are at it why not try for the whole thing? There's a good plan B there. And if you're gonna threaten WWIII, do it for as much gain as you can.
A trillion dollars of Russian assets have already been frozen by the US alone. Across the whole world, there will be plenty of funds if only a fraction ends up getting confiscated.
I started to watch it and it was indeed interesting, till it reached the point where the presenter claimed that Khodorkovsky was jailed because he stole too much. That's just plain false, and kind'a casts doubt on how expert is this expert. He was jailed for his political stance, that he didn't want to bow down to Putin. It's true that his first sentence for various tax dodging schemes in the 90s (that many at the time were involved in). Those were likely legal, but definitely immoral.
Khodorkovsky was at one point the richest oligarch, which is basically one of the pinnacle states of kleptocracy. I think the lecturer understands the system much better than you
He stole so much he started to think he could challenge Putin. That’s why he got jailed. In Russia (then and now) you get charged with “tax dodging schemes” when you either challenge the mafia bosses or don’t pay them enough.
You start by "suggesting Russians are playing a rational game..." but literally the next sentence is condescending western rhetoric.
We don't know the strategy and the plan. We might, even maybe reasonably, deduce that Russian leadership thought that Ucrain would fall more quickly. And that some form of stable solution would be the result.
But most people don't only have one plan to reach a longer term strategic goal. So thinking of "the Russians" as rational players (and taking a lot of potentially missing information into account due to every body only hearing their own side's propaganda) we could at least ask ourselves, if the plan was to overthrow the Ucrain quickly, to probably secure the Donbas and also probably secure the water resources for the Crimean peninsula as a strategic necessity, what course of action remains for Putin now that at least the quickness of the action failed. While there are already people reporting that Russia secured most of the Donbas and the water resources for the Crimean. But how much is propaganda there, I don't know.
So Putin needs to appear as the winner in the end. At least internally. He needs to sell this to his power base and his own ego as well probably.
The west wants/needs to see the Ucrain at least as partial winner. And the sanctions to have worked (because that was sold as solution to the voters).
Can there be a way to end the killing, save thousands of lives and reach these goals? I don't know. But I would be at least hesitant to call Putin irrational. Maybe that is valid if one defines the criteria of evaluation up front. What defines 'rational'. Because I suggest that within Putin's worldview these actions make some forms of sense to him and. As said. From the outside perspective it might be reasonable to call it irrational. But that might not help the world in finding a way out. For that one needs to understand why it makes sense to Putin to act the way he does right now.
Wars are one of many ways to organize the world. To pretend they are any one thing is naieve, just look at the Opium Wars and try to explain it in the context of todays players. It surely involved aggression, it surely affected change in much of the world, but was there mass scale violence? How does that violence compare to the war in Iraq, which clearly was a war of aggression to the indidviduals who conceived of it, even if they misled the vast majority of those they represent? I am incredibly concerned by the number of people speaking about what is and isnt right now as if they have any idea of what the facts are or who is making decisions on either side right now. Please keep in mind the stakes are nuclear war;
I try to neither delude myself nor others. I try to understand what makes people tick. And act the way they do.
Unilaterally declaring other insane or crazy or anything like that, while making ourselves feel good and superior, doesn't help in understanding why people act like they do.
And understanding might help in finding better ways to act and reach common goals like reducing the number of people suffering in the Ucraine right now.
Take the Nuremberg trials for example. As a German emotionally I think more people should have been trialed. More punished by hanging. Especially the SS troops managing the concentration camps. And while it would probably have felt like righteous punishment of these crazy evil German Nazi Bastards it probably would not have helped in building a stable western democracy in at least one part of Germany.
That is the reason I tey to think in understanding the motives and thought processes of people involved. Not to delude myself or argue for the deeds of Putin to be less than the despicable acts of war they are.
Putin should clearly be tried as the war criminal he is. Together with the ruling elite. But that doesn't make my need to understand go away.
> Unilaterally declaring other insane or crazy or anything like that, while making ourselves feel good and superior, doesn't help in understanding why people act like they do.
Why not? If they in fact are insane, then how would not realising that be useful?
On the contrary, I'd say if they are and we realise that they are, we have a much better chance at understanding why they act like they do than if we pretend they aren't.
This must be how the allies felt in 1939 wondering what Germany’s master plan could possibly have been. Of course, they couldn’t have foreseen Hitler being a bumbling buffoon all along.
Yeah, but Hitler had the Wehrmacht and all the competence there. Putin only has… whoever is responsible for that megaconvoy stalled for a week, in uncontrolled airspace.
Putin has what he designed and built. The incompetence and low status of the army at this scale mostly exists because Putin is afraid of the army, that’s why he appoints mostly “security guys” for the top spots and now has his own private army.
Putin’s Russia is a police state pretending to be a military state.
I think the crucial thing to understand is that current Russia isn’t just some “failed state” - it’s a crime syndicate that, due to historical mistake in 1990, was allowed to get its own country. See this thread for explanations: https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1502673952572854278?s...
Mach's principle is true but the sun dominates our lives i.e. culture and history are important to understand but are rarely models for future policy IMO (in particular cultural arguments about society are often peddled by those who judge too easily or those who are scared)
> You're being very generous with that thousand. Current Russia isn't a descendant of Kyivan Rus
I'm beginning to form a hypothesis about why Putin's "Russians and Ukrainians are one people" rhetoric is such a big and important part of the background to this invasion: This whole concept of Russia growing out of Kievan Rus has, as I understand it, long been part of the Russian self-image. In reality, though, at least as far as the actual Russian state is concerned, that's not true at all -- Russia is the descendant of Muscovy[1], not Kiev (=Kyiv). But, as that contrasting-pictures-of-cathedrals-vs-forest meme that did the rounds last week so brilliantly illustrates, Muscovy has pretty much no early history at all -- AFAICR it really rose to prominence only after the Mongol invasions, so it's late-medieval. Kiev, OTOH, goes back to at least the Vikings and Byzantines, so pre- or early-medieval.
So I'm beginning to think this whole conflation of Russia's history with Ukraine's is just Russia looking to shore up its histirical legitimacy. Rulers, particularly autocratic and authoritarian ones, have always wanted to make their country look ancient and venerable: The Swedish Vasa kings consigned a Historia from Olaus Rudbeck that purported to show how Sweden was actually Atlantis reincarnated; Czar Ivan The Terrible, from the original to the current incarnation, tried to usurp Ukraine's history as that of Muscovy.
(No idea how original this is; probably not at all. I mean, it's hard to believe that real historians would have missed it all these years... But not having studied anywhere near enough history, I hadn't seen it before I came up with it on my own.)
___
[1]: And, OK, I suppose to some extent of Novgorod.
> He choses some (very cherry picking) facts and anecdotes from Russian history, cites them with factual mistakes, but he choses and interpretes them so they meet his theory. This is not scientific approach at all.
Examples my friend, we need concrete examples. Otherwise this is like all other pro-Kreml astroturfing accounts which cry about Russia being misrepresented except they can never show any example exactly how they are being misrepresented.
Simply arguing semantics of pravda and istina and then calling the lecture false doesn’t mean anything.
And as it happens I read the Rob Lee article February 21st or 22nd in anticipation of the attack.
Question to you is - how does it provide anything of a conflicting point to the lecture? Zelensky tries to distance Ukraine from Russian political interference, so its OK to raze the country to the ground because…???
Here Putin was saying that Germany energy strategy was nuts and he was right. How stupid some leader could be to make her country dependent on outside countries for something as strategic as energy?
I would never make the mistake of thinking him stupid, but the power structure underneath him pervades his visibility and makes him do irrational things. Seriously, watch the lecture I linked.
It's not exactly the same, but similar enough. This is because institutions warp incentives. Holding institutions accountable is the primary way you combat that.
GPS jamming is not a secret technology, it’s something that you can expect in a war zone and it’s a technology you can buy on aliexpress.
GPS is actually a couple of different signals, and the general public gets the shitty one. The military has some additional protections and better receivers.
Feel this is somewhat an understatement, it's cryptographically signed and encrypted, as far as protection goes it's wandering onto an active battlefield naked vs being in a modern tank.
The newer satellites, of which 5 are in orbit, also have a directional antenna with which they will be able to boost the signal strength 20 dB (100 * power), using a new military M-code that no longer needs the other signals to lock on. The signal is sent both over the wide area and the spot beam antenna. Older satellites will only sent it over a wide area antenna. As far as I understand, this is not operational yet, but is planned for this year.
It is, but the US basically can't use that mode anymore - the widespread use of GPS guided munitions which do not have the military grade receivers means the US basically doesn't enable the signal degradation mode ever - it harms their own force more then helping any counter-force.
It's also something air defense teams would use to try to redirect missles (make them miss their mark because they have to rely on less effective navigation matters)
On the other hand, radio transmission is relatively easy to locate, and ham radio operators do it for fun ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmitter_hunting ) ... so it should't be that hard to find a source.
What's more interesting is the deployment of certain radio jammers at airports [1] to dissuade drone operators from flying their toy into restricted airspace.
> GPS spoofer), surely I don’t want to alert the enemy to it, lest they develop defences
What normally happens is the GPS stops working and then you lose your satnav, so you dont know where you are going until you reset the satnav and even then it might not work. This is why Streetview logged all the wifi it could find and uses wifi to roughly place a phone in an area to make the gps locating algorithms faster.
Now it could be a way to get a jet to fly over enemy territory, but it could also be an excuse to false flag. Russia's Satnav is better around the north and south pole, the US is better around the equator from what I understand.
With the fog of war, its impossible for most people to know who is telling the truth, in much the same way its impossible to tell if a multivitamin contains what is claimed on the bottle, or some cheese has been aged for several years and not several months.
Society is constructed in such a way to be dependent on others and have to trust others which means you can be manipulated by more knowledgeable persons.
> Society is constructed in such a way to be dependent on others and have to trust others which means you can be manipulated by more knowledgeable persons.
I would describe it as co-dependence in order to be able to have a combined knowledge base greater than any single person could contain. You make it sound like a weakness rather than a strength!
I cannot explain how floating points work, but I can explain how linear regression works. This scales up millions of times as people rely on expertise differentials and not first principals.
It's largely because Finland has never felt a need to be in NATO.
During the cold war Finland was firmly Soviet aligned despite all the claims of neutrality, the Finnish president, Urho Kekkonen, was de facto a dictator who stayed in power through Kremlin's support (although he wasn't really bad for Finland) and Finland had a defence guarantee from the Soviet Union in the form of the YYK-agreement.
After the Cold War Russia was expected to become a western liberal democracy and as such not a threat, and even after it became clear that it wouldn't become one people still understood it as a "known threat" and a bully which would act tough and try to intimidate but who would never actually hit you.
The largest reason for why joining NATO got a surge in polls is that most people weren't expecting the Invasion of Ukraine (I myself believed that they would've limited themselves to just Donbass and Luhansk).
I expect, although I may be wrong, that once people calm down support for joining NATO will fall, although the FUD spread by NATO supporters about how we would need to fight Russia alone if were not in NATO despite being covered by EU's article 42.7 may keep it high.
> It's largely because Finland has never felt a need to be in NATO.
Well, at least Finland never said it felt a need to be in NATO... But there are more reasons not to say you feel something than not actually feeling it.
> During the cold war Finland was firmly Soviet aligned despite all the claims of neutrality,
At least it certainly behaved like it was "firmly Soviet aligned"... But there are more reasons to behave some particular way than one's own volition or conviction.
> the Finnish president, Urho Kekkonen, was de facto a dictator
Whoa! Yeah, sure, that's one way of putting it... But certainly the most drastic possible one. There are other equally valid and significantly less drastic words for him.
> who stayed in power through Kremlin's support
Well, or through the Finnish people's and politicians' trust that he was the best suited, through personal connections and enjoying the Kremlin's trust in him personally, at navigating the tricky relationship with the big neighbour. OK, that's kind of "through [the][1] Kremlin's support", but only indirectly and mainly as modulated through the Finns' own confidence in him. Above all, when the time came to retire him, they did (although given the slight farce of those last few years, yes, it could have come some years earlier).
> (although he wasn't really bad for Finland)
> and Finland had a defence guarantee from the Soviet Union in the form of the YYK-agreement.
Well, it's hard to claim that was much of a useful "guarantee", given who the only plausible aggressor one could have had to defend against was... It's not like Sweden or Norway were ever very likely to attack, and Estonia didn't exist as an independent nation a the time. The only nation that had ever attacked Finland was the Soviet Union. So that was pretty much a null clause of the agreement.
> After the Cold War Russia was expected to become a western liberal democracy and as such not a threat, and even after it became clear that it wouldn't become one people still understood it as a "known threat" and a bully which would act tough and try to intimidate but who would never actually hit you.
Hmmnyeah, OK, that was pretty much the consensus -- at least as far as what was possible to gather from public political debate, so the official "consensus" -- but there certainly were also other currents among the population at large, from at least as early as the fall of the Soviet Union.
> The largest reason for why joining NATO got a surge in polls is that most people weren't expecting the Invasion of Ukraine (I myself believed that they would've limited themselves to just Donbass and Luhansk).
The largest reason for it surging now, definitely. But...
> I expect, although I may be wrong, that once people calm down support for joining NATO will fall,
...but that doesn't necessarily mean it'll fall back to earlier levels once this war fades from the front pages and the top of the TV evening news: It may have raised the ground level permanently, by convincing at least some of the erstwhile NATO-naysayers that they had been too optimistic about Russia.[2] As you say you were. Would you now say the invasion of Ukraine has changed your personal assessment of risk from Russia permanently, or will you in the future think it's only as dangerous as you thought before?
> although the FUD spread by NATO supporters about how we would need to fight Russia alone if were not in NATO despite being covered by EU's article 42.7 may keep it high.
Sigh... It's not "FUD"; it's the folks yelling "EU 42.7 is just as good as NATO 5!" who are spreading a falsehood. Dunno if they actually believe it or are consciously spreading deceitful anti-NATO propaganda; probably some of this, some of that, and possibly even some in the middle who aren't even sure themselves.
___
[1]: Ootsä suomalainen? Teilläkin on slaavien kanssa tuo article-ongelma yhteistä. No juu, muu tekstisi alla ainakin viittaa melko vahvasti siihen suuntaan että olisit. Mutta olitko elossa Kekkosen aikana? (Itse olin, mutten Suomessa.)
[2]: It's hard to tell, since I personally never was. I can't think of any old dateable writings to prove it, but I've been expecting the other shoe to drop on Ukraine since at least the invasion of Crimea.
Finland's policy has always been to have a strong military to deter, and non-alignment to avoid provocation. It seems the value of non-alignment has been questioned now.
A long time ago, Finland adopted a policy to not upset Russia. Note that Finland had a lot of trade with Russia and a complex relationship with Sweden.
If I were a NATO commander, I'd love to make sure the troops know how to do their basic shit even without GPS. It is entirely plausible that (in a major conflict) the GPS would be either jammed or destroyed, and I wouldn't like to be caught with my pants down.
However, if I were a NATO commander, I'd have trouble using GPS jammers near my training grounds, as it would cause interference to the civilians, who would loudly complain.
I think if I were a NATO commander, I'd pay Russians to jam the GPS for me.
> If I have an effective weapon (GPS spoofer), surely I don’t want to alert the enemy to it, lest they develop defences.
Russia has done this for the past 10 or so years. They invaded EU airspace. They executed many cyber attacks. This is strategy. They test to see if their competence works, they test to see what the reaction is, and they sharpen their knives, get better at it.
GPS spoofing has been used for years. It's no secret that Russia (and other countries) have that capability. The system is being hardened with M-code, although that technology isn't widely deployed yet.
https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-21-145
If your adversary does not have mitigation or retaliation readily available to them it doesn’t seem that unusual. It’s a pretty normal show of force then right?
Obviously there are time asymmetries between discovering a problem, developing a fix and deploying the fix.
Depending on the details it may require significant hardware upgrades.
In the real world outside of software everything is not solvable through a simple patch.
Last if you believe NATO is prepared for a real conflict I suggest you compare with how much of the world including institutions meant to keep us safe responded to Covid: denial, lies, misinformation, and hysteria.
In all honesty, we don't know anything about anything. Did the jamming really happen, did Russia do it, etc?
There are in fact reasons why anti-Russian countries would undertake this themselves, or even just make up the story. The reasons being that it drums up support for their cause, draws lines that people have to be on one side or another, etc.
Ultimately, this is an epistemological question - what do we know? And the only things one can say one knows, is stuff you have personally verified. After that, you are believing and trusting - the news, the footage, your governments, etc.
Is trusting those sources really an acceptable basis for any autonomous individual to proceed?
> Is trusting those sources really an acceptable basis for any autonomous individual to proceed?
You yourself are awefully fond of basing elaborate narratives on dubious sources, which is fine, but why then stoop to high-school debate club level gaslighting like "Ultimately, this is an epistemological question - what do we know? And the only things one can say one knows, is stuff you have personally verified.", unless this is satire?
I'm sorry? What elaborate narrative am I based on? What dubious sources?
If you think my point about how you know something is satire, you are mistaken - I am serious.
The problem is that most people are unable to discern what they know from what think they know (aka belief). Because they saw it on a screen or other people say so this. This is NOT knowing. Watching something on a screen only means that you know you saw something on a screen, not that what you saw was faithfully portrayed! You didn't believe Independence Day was real, but you do believe the news, etc is.
Ham radio operators find RF sources for fun [0], so every time i hear something like this, I get skeptical when governments act as if they can't find out who did or atleast where from (is it coming from a drone in the air, from russia, or from a nearby parking lot [1]
Not sure if you're just being a contrarian or you actually don't know, but it's quite clear why.
Is Western media biased? For sure. Do Western journalists go to jail / get disappeared for writing things the government doesn't want them to write? No. (But I'm sure you'll find counter-examples as well if you look really hard for proof of what you want to believe)
> GPS spoofing is hard to stop because the signal the satellites emit from low-Earth orbit to potentially add encryption and certificates cannot be changed.
Why ? I thought the military GPS signals were encrypted. They could make a new GPS version on a new frequency with at least crypto signed messages.
We can’t have such a flaw on the protocol forever.
> I thought the military GPS signals were encrypted
I'm sure this is true in the sense that general publications use "encrypted" to mean, "There was some sort of cryptographic stuff involved and it went over my head" rather than actually encrypted. Like they do when they tell you that the passwords stolen in a breach were "encrypted with bcrypt" for example.
The key thing to pay attention to here is that unlike say, TLS, this is not a conversation. A GPS receiver is just that, a receiver passively observing the signals. You would usually "bend" GPS by relaying signals from somewhere or somewhen else, and the passive receiver concludes that it must be where the signals it is receiving seem to suggest it is.
Take an easy scenario, imagine I'm in a warehouse that has been designed as a Faraday cage. You've fit a handful of transmitters to the warehouse, and you play back a recording of GPS signals received three weeks ago in the desert outside Las Vegas.
How does my GPS receiver know (using some hypothetical "encrypted military signal") that it isn't in fact near Las Vegas three weeks ago? That's what the signals seem to suggest and there is literally no contradictory data available.
It sounds like you are referring to a replay attack.
Mental model tweak: The signals aren't for a specific location, they are world-wide. So the "for Las Vegas" part doesn't work.
Replay attacks are just a kind of denial of service. In that case, you may as well just use jamming. Spoofing attacks are far more dangerous, and cryptographic signing defeats them effectively.
> The signals aren't for a specific location, they are world-wide. So the "for Las Vegas" part doesn't work.
The whole point of GPS is that the differential in signal timing between the signals from the transmitters on different satellites tells you how far you are from those satellites, and thus if you know where the satellites are supposed to be, that tells you where you must be.
As a result, recording the signals in a desert outside Las Vegas three weeks ago is by far the easiest way to get... drum roll... the signals which when received by your GPS receiver right now will convince it that right now it's three weeks ago and it is just outside Las Vegas.
> Replay attacks are just a kind of denial of service
Nope, as explained they're actually a very common and effective spoofing tactic. The receiver doesn't say "No service" it will tell you that you're outside Las Vegas three weeks ago.
> Spoofing attacks are far more dangerous, and cryptographic signing defeats them effectively.
Spoofing attacks use the same principle (although of course they'll tell your receiver it's a few milli-seconds ago and it is somewhere nearby, not outside Las Vegas three weeks ago).
Signatures make no major difference, this data is authentic it's just second hand. Everything checks out, that's why they do it.
Which is why the GP mentioned encoding the timestamp and mentioned data packages (ergo package based one-directional communication). If by same signal you mean looking similar, but not containing the same data, then the problem is already solved. If you mean containing the same data, then there is no problem.
This requires a precise internal clock that is always correct. If that clock drifts or is reset because the battery dies, GPS receiver would stop working.
Wouldn't it suffice to have a rather imprecise time + counter in the GPS message? So if multiple messages arrives the one with the largest count is kept.
I wonder if the problem lies in a different aspect of needing to authenticate messages quickly enough and thus requiring more processing power.
This is not a packet switched network and you are not receiving nice neat little messages to decode, you've got a radio receiver, the real transmissions are from a satellite in space, while unfortunately your adversary is transmitting from radio towers or even a portable transmitter, much closer and able to be supplied with energy easily so more powerful, but on the same frequencies.
Also, be careful with assuming that late = imposter. The whole point of GPS is that signals take time to travel over distance, so, maybe the signal is late because you're further from that satellite instead, which is what you were trying to measure when you got distracted trying to prevent spoofing.
I agree that there is an issue with overwhelming the satellite transmission frequencies. However, the signal can never be delivered earlier by adversary as signal travelling in air is about the physical limit. Perhaps only a stalking satellite could intercept and deliver the message faster, but that seems like a sci-fi.
> got distracted trying to prevent spoofing
Indeed overwhelming the processing power with junk seems the important issue if crypto is added.
I do know the basics of GPS but not much further than this.
Wouldn't it be possible to embed a clock in a GPS receiver that gets used when decrypting the packets it receives? So instead of just receiving a encrypted packet and trusting it, it'll decrypt it and check when the message was from and if the slew is more than ~1 minute or whatever, then it is probably forged.
That would at least prevent the scenario that you're describing, but since I don't know enough about GPS, it probably introduces other problems.
Sure it's possible but GPS is all about time. Faking the time by a fraction of a second will break the whole protocol. 1min is enough to transport the signed packets across the world.
Sky basically if your only authentication scheme is time, and the protocol is all about getting the time, it is very hard to detect proxing from other locations because the bound of accepted times basically needs to be big enough that you can be spoofed a meaningful amount.
GPS receiver does not know exact time. It has a built-in clock, but that clock is not very precise and is only used to speed up signal acquisition. The exact time is determined from the received signals.
GPS receiver can determine its own position (and get exact time in the process) even after internal clock battery dies, or when internal clock drifts too much. Such cold start takes longer, but is possible.
Receivers and transmitters are synchronized in time, before they are used.
So if the timestamp of the signal deviates of GPS's internal clock, GPS receiver knows it.
Now for commercial receivers, they assume their internal clock is wrong, and set their own time to new GSP time.
Not sure what military GPS receivers do, but I imagine, they kind of thought about this, and just ignore signals that have timestamps that differ too much.
This probably means that they need pretty accurate internal clock.
Another way to encrypt a signal is to just have an encrypted sequence going on.
If you get a sequence you have already seen something is wrong. Think of it as hash+salt or something similar.
My Casio watch normally syncs six times a day from the DCF77 transmitter in Frankfurt. In freak weather it may occasionally skip a sync or two, but otherwise it has been rock steady through more than two years of operation. Until about five days ago. Every attempt has failed since then.
Meanwhile, two wallclocks have been sitting with flashing sync-icon for a couple of days, but now seem to be online again. Presumably, they have much larger antennae than my Casio.
Someone knowledgeable, please explain to me: Is the signal potentially being tinkered with, or is this just a strange coincidence?
Bought any cheap electronics recently?
Your neighbors new phone carger from aliexpress is a more likely reason than jamming or other intentional interference on 77.5kHz.
Take a look at Adalm Pluto or USRP B200/ B210 boards to generate GPS signal. If you want to use Pluto, you need a better clock crystal (lower ppm) for GPS usage.
You will need current almanac data and the spoofing generator software on rPI.
Also, if you want more fun and learn about GPS signals, you can use gnss-sdr open source software GPS/GNSS signal decoder.
This article focuses on US military GPS tests in US and airline safety mainly, but does mention similar tests happening in Europe and China. Regarding these latter it does not name who is doing the jamming.
It would be annoying but far from chaos for a few reasons
- Its pretty easy to detect. Similar problems come up occasionally, often due to drivers jamming their companies’ remote monitoring.
- The time services in any well operated network will operate well within tolerance for very extended periods without this signal (some bigger ones don’t use GPS time at all for reasons like this) Time labs offer their own signals.
United States has the capability to degrade or deny GPS based on location.
Russia has also demonstrated the ability to spoof GPS signals.
Either is a likely cause here.
The United States do not have the ability to degrade or deny a gps signal based on location unless that particular location has a physical GPS jammer. I don't see what the US would gain from disrupting civilian airtraffic navigation. Just stop with your "either is a likely cause here"-spiel.
> The United States do not have the ability to degrade or deny a gps signal based on location
This was a feature designed into GPS from the beginning. They just stop transmitting the C/A code from satellites visible to the battlespace and a device can't bootstrap or maintain a location fix. Approved devices entering the battlespace (say a ballistic missile fired from a ship over the horizon) can continue to maintain high precision location using the P code.
Block III sattelites have also started transmitting M code, which is a second generation of military only GPS that claims to be unjammable and unspoofable.
In a major departure from previous GPS designs, the M-code is intended to be broadcast from a high-gain directional antenna, in addition to a wide angle (full Earth) antenna. The directional antenna's signal, termed a spot beam, is intended to be aimed at a specific region (i.e., several hundred kilometers in diameter) and increase the local signal strength by 20 dB (10× voltage field strength, 100× power). A side effect of having two antennas is that, for receivers inside the spot beam, the GPS satellite will appear as two GPS signals occupying the same position.
That's an ability to improve service for users of M-code receivers, which AFAIK are only available to the military (and it's new technology, so I'd expect it to be unsupported even by most military receivers currently in use).
The M-code is transmitted in the same L1 and L2 frequencies already in use
Nothing says that they have to transmit M-codes from the spot beam antenna.
In fact, since the M-codes are hardly used, it's pretty certain they're using that antenna for something else. How very convenient that those antennae are designed to transmit on the same frequency as the "ordinary" antenna.
Today I took the time to have a closer look. Turns out, the directional antenna for M-code is only present on Block III GPS satellites, and only four of those are currently in service:
So this is definitely not the correct explanation.
Besides, even if there were enough Block III satellites in orbit to provide constant cover of the affected area, it would still make little sense to tie up their most advanced capabilities to jam their own legacy signal, when you could just turn off the legacy signal when transiting the target area and provide your own military with continued service using the directional antenna.
And of course, Russia has its own satellite navigation system
> The M-code is transmitted in the same L1 and L2 frequencies already in use
Let's quote the whole thing, shall we?
The M-code is transmitted in the same L1 and L2 frequencies already in use by the previous military code, the P(Y) code. The new signal is shaped to place most of its energy at the edges (away from the existing P(Y) and C/A carriers).
In 2000, Bill Clinton has banned the use of Selective Availability. Newer satellites, decided in 2007, first launched in 2018 don't even have the capability anymore.
This is different than selective availability, which kept the signals on at regular power but rounded off numbers/degraded them them. Starting with GPS 3 (or maybe even Block II-F?), the satellites have multiple antennas so they can just turn themselves on and off for specific regions. No cap. They can also adjust the SNR more granularly for the individual signals.
It's possible that GLONASS isn't working well for them for some reason. They've been using relatively few precision munitions. And of those few, many of them them seem to be missing by quite a lot. Some of the ballistic missiles they threw at runways look like they were probably under inertial guidance, judging by how badly they missed.
Uhm... Finland is several countries north of Ukraine. This is about the eastern Baltic region. I guess you are referring to the rejected NATO-maintained no-fly zone over Ukraine? Or do you mean a no-fly zone imposed by Russia for its Baltic region neighbors??
> According to reports, the interference isn't limited to Finland but also affects Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and the broader Baltic region.
Also, a jammed GPS has little impact on flying, especially not on Russian military flying. They have their own system GLONASS (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GLONASS).
Yes the fakest of news of things that are literally happening. I wish they would ready block all Russian traffic from the Internet, you guys are getting out of hand.
EDIT: These things are more likely to happen in times of military exercises or similar activities. Right now there's lots of activity in the Baltic region - which is likely why things are happening.
Whenever there's large NATO exercises in Northern Norway, these things start happening.