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posted by janrinok on Thursday August 25 2016, @12:51AM   Printer-friendly
from the it-will-end-in-tears dept.

North Korea (DPRK — Democratic People's Republic of Korea) has launched an SLBM (Submarine-Launched Ballistic Missile) from a submarine in the Sea of Japan, according to a Reuters story. The missile travelled about 300 miles (500 km). A similar launch last month seemed to fail.

Having the ability to fire a missile from a submarine could help North Korea evade a new anti-missile system planned for South Korea and pose a threat even if nuclear-armed North Korea's land-based arsenal was destroyed, experts said.

The ballistic missile was fired at around 5:30 a.m. (2030 GMT) from near the coastal city of Sinpo, where a submarine base is located, officials at South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Defence Ministry told Reuters.

The projectile reached Japan's air defence identification zone (ADIZ) for the first time, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a briefing, referring to an area of control designated by countries to help maintain air security.


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  • (Score: 2) by jelizondo on Thursday August 25 2016, @05:40AM

    by jelizondo (653) Subscriber Badge on Thursday August 25 2016, @05:40AM (#392886) Journal

    Good point but not the whole thing. Consider also that the US has been very aggressive in courting other nations (Philippines, Vietnam, etc.) to take a stand against China in parallel with expanding NATO against Russia. China has no option but to keep the DPRK close to its bosom.

    Consider also the recent rash of "hacking" by Russian agents. Say what you will about Putin and his government, but grant me that he is not stupid enough to leave fingerprints all over his work to overtake the U.S. via Trump or by hacking the NYT. Propaganda in preparation for war?

    Being ignorant of how the high echelons manage things (An nescis, mi fili, quantilla sapientia regitur mundus?, Julius III) I would suspect that they are driving China and Russia closer together to bring Armageddon in our lifetimes.

    After all, most of the hawks are fundamentalist Christians…

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  • (Score: 2) by JNCF on Thursday August 25 2016, @06:45AM

    by JNCF (4317) on Thursday August 25 2016, @06:45AM (#392892) Journal

    Good point but not the whole thing. Consider also that the US has been very aggressive in courting other nations (Philippines, Vietnam, etc.) to take a stand against China in parallel with expanding NATO against Russia. China has no option but to keep the DPRK close to its bosom.

    If part of this paragraph is supposed to disagree with me, I'm legitimately unsure what part. I don't necessarily disagree with it. I was giving shitty armchair analysis of the sorts of things the US would have consider were it going to become aggressive, but I wasn't saying that I actually expect the US to crank up aggression towards North Korea at the moment. I think the situation discourages it. Hacking with sabotage maybe (I'm sure there's surveillance hacking already), but not bombing.

    Consider also the recent rash of "hacking" by Russian agents. Say what you will about Putin and his government, but grant me that he is not stupid enough to leave fingerprints all over his work to overtake the U.S. via Trump or by hacking the NYT. Propaganda in preparation for war?

    I really don't know how to model that one. I don't think it's unreasonable that the US could catch Russia in the act of hacking, or vice versa. A recent string of tweets by Snowden seemed to suggest that the auction of NSA hacking tools could be response to the DNC hack. And I'm still not even sure if we can trust Snowden (he contracted for the CIA before the NSA, and could be an attack from one agency on another -- though I don't think he is). Here's what Snowden had to say (emphasis original):

    The hack of an NSA malware staging server is not unprecedented, but the publication of the take is. Here's what you need to know: (1/x)
    1) NSA traces and targets malware C2 servers in a practice called Counter Computer Network Exploitation, or CCNE. So do our rivals.
    2) NSA is often lurking undetected for years on the C2 and ORBs (proxy hops) of state hackers. This is how we follow their operations.
    3) This is how we steal their rivals' hacking tools and reverse-engineer them to create "fingerprints" to help us detect them in the future.
    4) Here's where it gets interesting: the NSA is not made of magic. Our rivals do the same thing to us -- and occasionally succeed.
    5) Knowing this, NSA's hackers (TAO) are told not to leave their hack tools ("binaries") on the server after an op. But people get lazy.
    6) What's new? NSA malware staging servers getting hacked by a rival is not new. A rival publicly demonstrating they have done so is.
    7) Why did they do it? No one knows, but I suspect this is more diplomacy than intelligence, related to the escalation around the DNC hack.
    8) Circumstantial evidence and conventional wisdom indicates Russian responsibility. Here's why that is significant:
    9) This leak is likely a warning that someone can prove US responsibility for any attacks that originated from this malware server.
    10) That could have significant foreign policy consequences. Particularly if any of those operations targeted US allies.
    11) Particularly if any of those operations targeted elections.
    12) Accordingly, this may be an effort to influence the calculus of decision-makers wondering how sharply to respond to the DNC hacks.
    13) TL;DR: This leak looks like a somebody sending a message that an escalation in the attribution game could get messy fast.

    Possible explanations of the DNC hack I've considered, in no particular order:

    • Putin thinks he might be able to cut a beneficial deal during a Trump presidency that he couldn't under a Clinton presidency, and got caught hacking.
    • Putin has a puppet named Trump, and got caught hacking.
    • Putin has some interest in Hillary getting elected, and purposefully got caught hacking so that the American people will think he's pro-Trump.
    • Some element of the US government is very opposed to Trump winning the election, and framed Putin for hacking to make it seem like he's pro-Trump.
    • Some other state actor (China?) has an interest in Trump getting elected, and covered their tracks in the DNC hack by masquerading as Russia for the sole purpose of not getting blamed if they got caught.
    • Some other state actor (China?) has an interest in Hillary getting elected, and framed Putin for the DNC hack to make it seem like he's pro-Trump.
    • ?????
    • Profit!

    As should be obvious, I'm not even sure which US political party the (apparently Russian) DNC hack was a net positive for.

    Being ignorant of how the high echelons manage things (An nescis, mi fili, quantilla sapientia regitur mundus?, Julius III) I would suspect that they are driving China and Russia closer together to bring Armageddon in our lifetimes.
    After all, most of the hawks are fundamentalist Christians…

    If the US wanted armageddon, the US could make it happen. Though there are parts of the US that want that, I can't model it as being the overarching goal of US policy. If it were, we'd be there already.

    • (Score: 2) by jelizondo on Thursday August 25 2016, @02:18PM

      by jelizondo (653) Subscriber Badge on Thursday August 25 2016, @02:18PM (#393007) Journal

      I’m sorry if it was not clear that I do agree with your comments. My observation was that the context is much larger than simply US-China-DPRK, as it involves other countries in the region, possibly including Russia.

      And if Russia is involved, automatically NATO is dragged in as well.

      Now, your thoughts on the DNC, I found them interesting. I suspect it was an inside job (i.e. NSA or some black ops) to discredit Trump and get HRC an easy victory. I never considered the possibility of China or another State actor being in the game…

      And you are right, my comment about Armageddon was flippant but I can’t help thinking that things are escalating too close to disaster and the powers that be should be less sanguine about another world war.

      Cheers

      • (Score: 2) by JNCF on Thursday August 25 2016, @03:23PM

        by JNCF (4317) on Thursday August 25 2016, @03:23PM (#393056) Journal

        I’m sorry if it was not clear that I do agree with your comments.

        I took the following line from your original reply to be a lead-in to partial disagreement, which led to my confusion when it didn't seem to (emphasis added):

        Good point but not the whole thing.

        In hindsight, it seems obvious that you were getting ready to expand on my statements rather than contradict them. I was pretty tired when I first read it.

        Cheers

        Indeed, have a nice day!