China, north korea, and russia, all prolific cybercriminal nations with significant state backing of the same, are signatories. This means it's at best meaningless and at worst surrenders power to a regime with partial control by objectively bad actors. Staying out of this was the right move.
Plus it has too many implications for surveillance and security; poor idea in any case.
Yeah, the article is quite good at summarizing some of these issues.
> The convention has been heavily criticized by the tech industry, which has warned that it criminalizes cybersecurity research and exposes companies to legally thorny data requests.
> Human rights groups warned on Friday that it effectively forces member states to create a broad electronic surveillance dragnet that would include crimes that have nothing to do with technology.
> Many expressed concern that the convention will be abused by dictatorships and rogue governments who will deploy it against critics or protesters — even those outside of a regime’s jurisdiction.
> It also creates legal regimes to monitor, store and allow cross-border sharing of information without specific data protections. Access Now’s Raman Jit Singh Chima said the convention effectively justifies “cyber authoritarianism at home and transnational repression across borders.”
> Any countries ratifying the treaty, he added, risks “actively validating cyber authoritarianism and facilitating the global erosion of digital freedoms, choosing procedural consensus over substantive human rights protection.”
Disappointing that EU signed it. I guess they are trying to push chat control by all possible means.
> The U.K. and European Union joined China, Russia, Brazil, Nigeria and dozens of other nations in signing the convention, which lays out new mechanisms for governments to coordinate, build capacity and track those who use technology to commit crimes.
EU will coordinate with Russia on cybercrime?
The Wikipedia article having a whole section about human right objections also says a lot about this treaty.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Convention_agai...
> For example, the convention requires states to have laws that compel internet services to collect certain data, and does not require that requests for such data be transparent. There are limited cases when member states may deny a request for data, although there is a provision to do so if a state believes a request is due to "sex, race, language, religion, nationality, ethnic origin, or political opinions". The latter statement was weakened during negotiations, and challenged by Iran and Russia until the end of negotiations.
Ok, so it's basically a "five eyes" style agreement for sharing intel on citizens. Why would anyone want their government to support this?
Solid question. Related, but here is a list of governments that did support this: https://treaties.un.org/Pages/ViewDetails.aspx?src=TREATY&mt...
Interestingly, three members of Five Eyes aren't on that list.
They want to infringe on human rights themselves, but criticise others doing the same.
> Ok, so it's basically a "five eyes" style agreement for sharing intel on citizens. Why would anyone want their government to support this?
While I agree that it's not a good idea, I can answer that last question:
The idea would be that when an American enforcement body, presumably the FBI, determines that a bunch of cash or whatever was stolen by Russian hackers, the treaty compels the Russian government to keep records of the hackers' activity, and it "creates frameworks for collaboration, including mutual legal assistance and extradition". So instead of saying "hey, you stole all our money" and getting the response "wow, it must suck to be you", we could make them give the money back and extradite the criminals.
Oh yes indeed, Russia will definitely keep up their end of the deal. They wouldn’t piss on a treaty that they had signed for no reason.
Like, remember that time where they signed a treaty in 1994 that committed them to respecting and protecting Ukraine’s borders and then steadfastly stuck to it till present day?
You’ve convinced me. Entering this agreement with Russia, North Korea and China is a great idea.
[flagged]
Even Trump "mostly adheres to most of the treaties" the USA has signed. The USA has signed a lot of treaties, and violating most of them would take a concerted effort, and quite a lot of time.
Yes, he does. The sad and stupid and novel thing is how fucking capricious he is about that adherence, and how congress has fully kowtowed to him and his minions.
Thanks for the update, Pavel.
Surely, you could make... Whatever point you are making (if any)... Without a character attack against my person?
Kind of breaks down when the criminals are running the government..
Oh FFS, the USA won't even extradite a dangerous driver who killed a UK teen to the UK - their closest ally and fellow Five Eyes democracy.
Even after the woman plead guilty to e UK court (remotely).
Its not the great unwashed of the global south that have contempt for laws and decency.
https://www.foxnews.com/world/anne-sacoolas-wife-us-diplomat...
> Why would anyone want their government to support this?
Clearly not enough people oppose it, because five eyes has been a thing for decades, and isn't going anywhere.
Not that I'm any fan, but five eyes is a treaty amongst mostly liberal democracies that are allies of each other. This treaty is a bunch of autocracies and Europe, for some reason.
I was hoping to see a comment like this. These sorts of “global collaborations” seem to always end with the US carry all the water, and the goal from the other countries perspective is to throttle the US. Like the Paris Accords.
> and the goal from the other countries perspective is to throttle the US. Like the Paris Accords.
Which is not inherently a bad thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...
Interesting dataset.
It would be a lot fairer to display tons of CO2 per inhabitant I think.
And that's before taking into account imported CO2.
Climate change isn't driven by per-inhabitant CO2 emissions. It's driven by total CO2 emissions, of which the US outputs 12% per year.
Climate change isn't driven by human defined borders either. It's driven by total CO2 emissions. If a per-capita rate is non sensical then border based emissions are even more non sensical. Greenland only emits 0.001% of the total. Greenland is 12000x a better country than the US wow. This is exactly why per-capita is used.
Yeah and this is clearest when you consider federations. Imagine if you count the US as 50 separate countries, suddenly they are much more climate friendly! That's of course absurd.
Climate change isn’t driven by borders but energy policy is defined within them.
And no policy is gonna willingly reduce energy consumption which is directly co-related with QOL when other countries have much higher per-capita consumption. Politically humans need fairness.
We don’t need to reduce energy consumption. We need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
We know. There are many reasons why countries choose more polluting sources of energy. Part of which is costs. The world runs on incentives. Maybe rich countries like the US can subsidize clean energy for poorer countries like India. Because consumption is definitely not going to come down.
You say you know then directly contradict yourself by bringing up consumption again.
The United States already supports clean energy in India. India is not “poor”. It has a larger economy than the United Kingdom. 46.3% of India’s installed capacity is renewable and that mix is growing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_India
> You say you know then directly contradict yourself by bringing up consumption again.
It's not a contradiction. Increasing consumption today will mean increase of greenhouse emissions. Any increase of consumption today still involves some increase in fossil fuels for many reasons like grid stability.
> The United States already supports clean energy in India.
They work together on projects. AFAIK the US doesn't subsidise anything for India or other countries.
> India is not “poor”.
It is. Its per capita GDP is $2,878. The US is $85,809. Thats a 30x difference. It is an incredibly poor country.
> It has a larger economy than the United Kingdom.
Philippines and Norway have the same total GDP too. It's silly to consider them equally rich.
> 46.3% of India’s installed capacity is renewable and that mix is growing.
Hell yeah! Hopefully it keeps growing. It's kinda hilarious that India is one of the few countries who will meet the Paris accord commitments. The US is still stuck at 23% and isn't even close to meeting its commitments.
People in India are poor but that doesn’t mean the country is poor. The Indian government has resources to build out renewables as evidenced by them doing exactly that. The United States does not provide much direct funding but you are the only one suggesting that is necessary.
> People in India are poor but that doesn’t mean the country is poor.
Please stop. By your logic any country with a lot of people is rich. I already pointed out Norway vs Philippines for you. It is dirt poor by all numbers. Their extreme poverty rate just dropped recently. Their annual budget is 1/10th of the US with 5x more people. Energy needs per person will grow by over 10x in the next few decades to match the US. There is a long way to go.
> The Indian government has resources to build out renewables as evidenced by them doing exactly that.
I'm actually very impressed to see India sticking to the Paris accords. What exactly is the excuse of the worlds greatest superpower? Maybe a century of polluting the world isn't enough.
> The United States does not provide much direct funding but you are the only one suggesting that is necessary.
You're right. It needs to first fix itself lol. Maybe ask India for help :p Then again if you don't understand why the rich countries need to try and incentivise the world to move faster to renewables then you don't understand the urgency of the matter.
The notion of subsidizing a foreign country that literally has nuclear weapons is ludicrous. US voters would never stand for that.
No voter would. Humans would rather die from climate change than try and work together. Our innate tribalism is what makes solutions to this problem hard.
That seems to be a very American perspective. Several European countries have or had Green Parties being part of the government. A German Land (state in US terminology) has a had Green prime minister for 10 years. One could debate whether they have made sufficient impact, but it's certainly very far from "no voter".
Why the dig at Americans? This is nothing more than tock’s misinformed personal opinion. The United States does work with India to develop green energy.
California is famous for green initiatives and my state of Washington trades clean energy with Canada. I’d be shocked if we are unique in that.
These agreements have been in place for generations. It’s obvious they have voter approval.
> Why the dig at Americans?
America deserves the dig. Pulling out of the Paris accords. 22% renewable usage compared to the 60% of Germany. And now climate change denial.
> The United States does work with India to develop green energy.
lmao.
> It’s obvious they have voter approval.
I mean they did just vote in the guy who calls climate change a hoax.
I forgot about the Green parties! Good to see them having such support!
Unfortunately support has not been growing for 10 years or so. Nowadays far right parties are making the headlines in most European countries.
And this is one of the reasons why the German economy has stagnated for years.
https://swiftpress.com/book/kaput/
Solar energy is currently the cheapest form of energy, cheaper than coal, cheaper than natural gas. You know the conspiracy theories about how the oil companies are keeping perpetual motion machines hidden? Solar panels are literally that. With the caveat that they only work in sunlight. So they're not great when you need energy at night. But even if you triple your costs to account for only working 8 hours a day, they're cheaper than anything else.
For a lot of industrial processes, being limited to running during sunny periods would cause costs to go up by a lot more than a factor of three. The grid scale storage necessary to make solar power work for heavy industry remains extremely expensive and capacity limited. Costs are starting to come down but it will take decades.
Solar + battery is now the cheapest. Except in the USA, where natural gas is heavily subsidized. Happily, deploying new gas plants is constrained by supply of turbines. So solar + battery wins by default.
Batteries (plus all the other associated equipment and maintenance) are hardly cheap in the quantities needed to keep heavy industry running 24×7. Battery storage holds promise for the future but so far it's only been used on relatively small demonstration projects. And some of those have been plagued by fires and outages.
> relatively small demonstration projects.
California has got really good at building giant batteries - At peak times they provide 30% of the state’s electricity (https://www.economist.com/united-states/2025/05/22/californi...) - The Economist.
California is the 4th largest economy in the world by the way. A bit larger than a “small demonstration”.
https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/solar-electricity-e...
https://www.volts.wtf/p/solarstorage-is-so-much-farther-alon...
What's your next objection?
I don't have any objection, I'm just stating a reality: it's going to take decades to build out enough battery storage to make renewable energy practical for the base load required for heavy industry. This stuff doesn't scale up quickly regardless of costs or incentives. The places where battery storage is used today generally have high electricity prices and low industrial capacity. If we want to have cheap stuff then we need to have cheap electricity (and cheap industrial heat) available to make that stuff 24×7.
> Solar energy is currently the cheapest form of energy, cheaper than coal, cheaper than natural gas.
Cheaper before the incentives?
Yes. Even if you count the fossil fuel subsidies.
Can you share the source? I’m very curious.
First search result: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/wind-and-solar-en...
For some reason, these savings never cascade down to the consumer. Solar energy is typically a surcharge, not a cost savings.
When I log into my utility account, I can opt into solar generated power for X $/kwh more, not less.
Solar is also the most democratic, as long as you can tolerate it not working at night. I encourage you to experiment with a small portable system. I did - a 30W panel, 9Ax12V SLA battery, off-the-shelf car inverter, packet of crimp connectors, spool of wire, crimp tool, the cheapest over-voltage shutoff controller I could find (just search for solar charge controller - although lead-acid chemistries are moderately tolerant to charging out of bounds, unlike lithium, which is why I suggest lead-acid).
I really think home battery power is going to be a standard feature in the near future. Like indoor plumbing and central HVAC.
My utility just adopted time of use billing and by my napkin math a battery system with one day of capacity will pay for itself in 5 years. And that’s without solar at all. The additional solar panel cost would pay off in under 3 years. And I have cheap electricity.
Yeah main issue is elasticity. But otherwise promising. China is adding insane solar capacity yearly so I guess they see it as promising too.
But the reason emissions happen is for per-inhabitant benefits. It's a very reasonable idea [0] to set a per-inhabitant goal and criticize countries exceeding that threshold (which the US would still fail at, but I'm arguing against the metric itself rather than US faults).
Take your position to something of an extreme -- the Vatican could open up 200 coal power plants for its holy Bitcoin operations and still be sufficiently less impactful to CO2 than the US that nobody would target them during climate talks. Rephrased from the other direction, each US citizen would blow their CO2 budget by buying a shirt per decade to get down to the Vatican's levels.
That's a common mental failure mode, analogous to the sorites paradox. Countries are made up of many small actors and decisions, and pretending otherwise is unlikely to help you achieve your goals.
[0] Mostly -- transitive effects like one country generating all the goods another country uses are harder to account for. Assuming we could measure perfectly though...
In context of the United States, there are a small number of actors that stand to lose billions to renewables.
I live in the Northeast. Solar reduced my grid demand by 40%. That translates to a full recoup of the investment in 60-65 months with subsidy, 100-110 without. The unsubsidized payback period is 1/3 of the projected useful life of the panels.
You know it’s a good idea because opponents big argument is safety of rooftop installers and future workers disposing of solar panels, topics that these folks DNGAF about in the least.
12% is quite low considering that the US is responsible for >20% of global industrial output.
Not really, by that metric Europe still comes out ahead.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co2-intensity
Of course, Europe has relatively little carbon intensive industry. The US is the world's largest producer of oil, beef, and other things with an intrinsically high carbon footprint. The carbon intensity of industry is a byproduct of geography and geology.
Europe has a relatively high carbon footprint per unit of output for things like animal husbandry compared to the US, they just don't do enough of it for it to add up.
>Of course, Europe has relatively little carbon intensive industry. The US is the world's largest producer of oil, beef, and other things with an intrinsically high carbon footprint. The carbon intensity of industry is a byproduct of geography and geology.
This also works in reverse, eg. US importing goods from china and therefore not being on the hook for emissions generated by those goods. ourworldindata has another page that compares the difference between consumption based emissions and territorial emissions[1]. Looking at that page, consumption based emissions are 11% higher for the US vs 27% for the EU. That makes the US look better, but it's not enough to cancel out the fact that the US is 63% more carbon intensive than the EU.
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/consumption-based-co2
You're kinda contradicting yourself. You're right that it's about absolute numbers. But then you use a percentage.
perhaps 12% for 5% of the global population is too high. But you dont want to relate it to population. Relating to number of countries is rather non-sensical. Some are big (by productivity, area, population, etc.), some are tiny.
Making it relative to countries is useful because that is the delination along which policy is made.
Making it relative to people, IMO, only serves to obscure the fact that the US/China/etc are by far the biggest producers of emissions.
Writing climate policy with them in mind makes more sense than pushing for somewhere like Monaco to reduce emissions, even if their emissions per person are high.
Something like this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...
How is that fair when a lot of industrial production was shifted to one region of the globe specifically? It would be impossible without a lot of guessing and estimations, producing questionable data, but you would have to include CO2 attributable to exports and imports.
Which is just too hard, and too open to change assumptions to fit a desired result.
Because in reality, much of the globe's economy is waaayyyyy too interconnected, and the arrows don't just point one way. Feedback loops without end.
That whole "this/that country..." just does not work, except to fill comment sections. The systems are global.
>It would be impossible without a lot of guessing and estimations, producing questionable data, but you would have to include CO2 attributable to exports and imports.
>Which is just too hard, and too open to change assumptions to fit a desired result.
See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45762344
No, it's pretty straightforward. Count where a given good is consumed rather then where it's produced. It has to be estimated, but that's also the case for territorial emissions or other economic figures like GDP, but we don't throw our hands up and say "well it's too hard and too prone to fudging so we might as well not bother".
>Because in reality, much of the globe's economy is waaayyyyy too interconnected, and the arrows don't just point one way. Feedback loops without end.
What "feedback loops" are you talking about?
>That whole "this/that country..." just does not work, except to fill comment sections. The systems are global.
Ok but surely you must recognize that the US, where the average person drives a pickup/SUV to work is emitting more carbon than something like India where the average person gets around by walking or using motorbikes? That's the concept that conversations like "US emits more carbon per capita" are trying to capture. "The systems are global" sounds like an excuse to continue driving a F-150 to work because of some spurious arguments about how hard it's do to do carbon accounting 100% accurately.
>And that's before taking into account imported CO2.
It doesn't really make much of a difference. For US specifically there's about a 10% difference.
https://ourworldindata.org/consumption-based-co2
I believe the concept you are looking for is scope 3 emissions.
A good thing from whose perspective? From the perspective of US it would always be a bad thing. Why would you ever want to concede something and limit yourself without proportional concessions.
To grow “soft power”. Especially by agreeing to things you probably would have done anyway.
Soft power isn't a thing. As people have recently pointed out with the USAID situation: helping someone and then stopping the help is far worse than not helping at all. Therefore, soft power isn't power, it's actually more like soft debt. Every time you do charity, you add on to your moral obligations. The less charity you do, the fewer the requirements on you.
Please.
Do you really honestly believe that the USAID spent $5M a year telling Sri Lankan journalists how to use non-gendered language?
That was a front for US-lead initiatives in a moderately opposing country. It was to funnel funds to destabilize what the USA didnt like.
And to be fair, good. The USA rested on its laurels for too long. Bout time they have to face the democracy they 'spread' is just fascism.
Certainly, and in fact no soft power operation can be distinguished from something like this (because a front would deliberately be disguised as a soft-power operation) which renders soft-power operations useless to develop soft-power. And when it is removed, one can either reasonably conclude that the underlying operation is no longer necessary or one could react with how it's worse that they took away something they promised.
In no case will anyone ever say "Well, I am not happy it is gone but I am grateful for all the work they put in to help out of a desire to be good guys" so soft power isn't a thing.
To be clear, I have no quarrel with you on the belief that they're fronts. I only mean that they do not develop power of any sort.
But think about it from the perspective of a US that wants to reduce carbon emissions. Why not simply throttle carbon emissions directly?
The US has been?
- U.S. greenhouse gas emissions peaked around 2007, then declined by roughly 18% from that peak.
- 1990–2022: Emissions fell about 3% compared to 1990 levels, despite population and GDP growth.
- 2005 Benchmark: Emissions in 2022 were 17% below 2005 levels, largely due to cleaner electricity generation and efficiency improvements.
- Transportation: Consistently the largest source, accounting for ~30–35% of CO₂ emissions.
- Electric Power: Significant reductions—down 41% since 2005—due to coal-to-natural-gas shift and renewables growth.
- 2024: Energy-related CO₂ emissions totaled 4,772 million metric tons, down from 4,940 MMt in 2022.
- 2022: Total U.S. GHG emissions were 6,343 million metric tons CO₂e, or 5,489 MMt after land-sector sequestration
Because it doesn't work. We (all) need to cut fossil fuel extraction. Once it gets extracted, there is absolutely no way it will not be burned.
Super weird that they don't factor in productivity at all. Don't take me the wrong way I hate the fact that the United States thinks the only way to do anything is to burn fossil fuels, but that doesn't change the fact that our output per capita has got to be 10x the countries we are being compared against in this article.
In what sense? Does an American bolt factory produce 10x as much bots per worker, or is the American bolt just 10x more expensive?
I think in the sense that if you look at the ratio of say GDP (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...) to CO2 emission, you could get _a_ metric of efficiency. The product produced vs the emissions produced.
There's a chart that does this directly: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co2-intensity
That perspective also helps to understand the position that any call for radical climate action must be a weaponization of competing economies to weaken the leader of the pack. So it is very bad framing. Do the work cheaper, better, and at scale. By doing it more efficiently you win. Oh, and of course you'll be more innovative too.
In some cases, I’d argue it might ironically be a worse metric. Case in point, a large AI adjacent firm like NVIDIA - or even OpenAI - that is both “creating gdp”, but also worsening stuff. I’d say a farmer farming in a sustainable way might have a near 0 gdp compared to Sama, but environmentally is much better.
Agree that not all gdp is equal or beneficial. However, I think most people would be remiss to the idea of giving up on science and technology and a return to the agricultural era.
Agree, to clarify, I’m specifically skeptical of the US GDP as much of it seems of a very bubble-like and speculative nature. Tesla (stock) pre NVIDIA was probably the poster boy for the longest of times.
GDP doesn't differentiate between good and bad things and for climate change it would be border line circular because natural disasters like floods and hurricanes are "good" for the GDP (reconstruction effort is a net positive, destruction itself is not subtracted).
> I was hoping to see a comment like this. These sorts of “global collaborations” seem to always end with the US carry all the water, and the goal from the other countries perspective is to throttle the US. Like the Paris Accords.
I agree 100%.
I don't see the benefits here.
Do you have even a slightest proof for your claim?
> Is food a human right
https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/3951462?ln=en
> Amount of food sent
https://www.gao.gov/international-food-assistance
This is an example of US not carrying "all the water." The second link shows that the EU+UK (countries + institutions) sent more food aid than the US. The UK has roughly 1/5 the population of the US and sent more than 1/5 as much as the US. Or, the UK has roughly 1/8 the GDP of the US and sent far more than 1/8 as much as the US.
Also, the data is 2014-2018 when US food aid was managed by USAID. What is the US percentage now that USAID has been eliminated?
The us share of world gdp was between 22-27% and it was contributing 36%.
Secondly, this is only external aid, internally the US far outspend most countries with 100B towards SNAP. Most euro nations don't even have food stamp like programs.
So we’ve gone from “the U.S. carrying all of the water” to “the U.S. carrying 10 points more, in a way which heavily subsidized a key political group”? That seems like a pretty big shift in goalposts.
OP asked for the slightest proof and I presented proof that the US is over contributing in food aid by 50% and now I'm goalpost shifting? lol...
And just so we are clear, that meager 10 points that I'm goal post shifting for is probably life or death for millions.
They asked for proof. You supplied evidence contradicting rather than proving the point. Now you’re trying to claim success by picking a statistical misrepresentation.
Try to support the original claim if you want credit for meeting the original goal.
If you're trying to convince someone (other countries the US) the burden of proof is on you.
Stop normalizing lies.
Proof for his claim that this is how it seems to him? Isn't the proof self evident - he said it seems that way. Obviously this doesn't immediately make it true but asking for "proof" mischaracterizes the nature of his statement.
You know what the fun fact that everyone I hear complain about the US spending more than is fair on international projects ignores or appears ignorant of?
When you’re the one carrying the water, you get to decide where the water goes.
I actually prefer regimes like NATO where everyone is happy to leave the US in charge and doesn’t arm themselves. For all the projection of “strength” the current admin gives off, they are on their way towards reigning over a kingdom formed from the ashes of the republic's empire
I prefer multilateralism, but I do think there are challenges when every country that isn't the biggest smashes the 'defect' button as many times as they can.
OK so can everyone else please pay?
Most US foreign aid is delivered as bombs, and/or directly funding the terrorists.
And if not directly funding the terrorists, creating a situation so stupid that it will lead to a fresh batch for next years war.
Neither the people paying for it, nor the people receiving it want it to be done that way.
And don't forget the tertiary effects as we displace millions with those bombs, only to take in a large number of "asylum seekers" from the countries we "aided".
IMO this is all by design, and there are a non-zero number of NGO operatives on this very site who are frustrated that anything is impeding that plan.
What about non-proliferation treaties which have prevented the vast majority of countries from bankrupting themselves in an existential sprint to nuclear weapons?
Don't worry, China is willingly replacing the US in these global collaborations.
Say what you want about this treaty but China is running circles around you regarding Paris.
What point are you trying to make? I'm honestly not sure. Is it that China is polluting a lot? Or a little? That they are making environmental progress? Or none?
They they are exceeding their initial commitment. Talking about pollution in your tone is also a bit rich coming from the biggest net polluter in all of history.
What percent difference in reduction do you see if they didn't sign the treaty?
Doesn't matter they committed to a target and exceed it. We see two countries with stagnation (changes below 1%) and regressions... one is the us.
I think it does matter. My questions is, was their progress in any way related to the treaty, or would it have happened anyways?
Nobody can know and that's why it's interesting to you... arguing in bad faith. Take your unfalsifiable counterfactual challenge and go back to debate club.
Or, we can look at their communicated plans before the Paris agreement...
Yes like the Ottawa Treaty banning Land Mines, in which 166 inconsiderate countries failed to consider the needs of big-time land-mine manufacturers like the US.
/s
Like throttling the US from committing war crimes?
Poor US always being bullied by everyone else. What kind of world have you been living in where the reality is not the exact opposite??
Eh, there are a bunch of these kinds of treaties the US won't sign because for most of the signatories they're inconsequential but they're a huge lever for other countries to take sovereignty from the US.
According to World Cybercrime Index, Russia, Ukraine, China and the US are in top 4. North Korea is #7. Just to add some perspective to it.
Three of these countries are technology leaders, so that makes sense. Then we have Ukraine.
Ukraine is also former-USSR, just like Russia.
Russia is number 1, Ukraine is number 2. This is my proudest moment as a Ukranian.
That's right. If this is happening in the wrong nation - it's totalitarism and evil. If this happens in the correct nations, which are on the bright side - then it's democracy.
This but non-ironically.
(Unfortunately the current United States administration makes the nation much closer to one of the Bad Nations, though, so it's kind of moot anyway.)
It's also crucially important that the person deciding "right" and "wrong" here is an Atlantic Council fellow, otherwise that would also be Bad.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't. If they hadn't signed the treaty, people here would be saying it's proof those countries support cybercriminals.
Aren't treaties with the US meaningless by default, unless ratified by 3/4th of Congress?
No. Like many countries, the US requires legislative ratification of treaties, but by 2/3 of the Senate, not 3/4 of the Congress. The US has the same obligations as any non-ratifying signatory with regard to treaties it has signed but not ratified.
Contrast this to the EU where all treaties are automatically law across all members.
That's not how the EU works. As an example take the Mercosur treaty: it has 4 parts. The first post is straight up trade rules, an area that the Eau member states delegated to the EU. This part was directly valid once signed.
The other three parts all concern areas not delegated to the EU. To become law, all three parts have to be approved by the EU parliament and the EU council (which consists of the heads of the executives of the member states) and the local parliaments of the member states. Depending on local law, even regional parliaments have to approve it (Belgium is such a state). The final implementation of Mercosur is not expected before 2028.
Everything needs to pass local parliaments in EU as well.
Two-thirds of the Senate, I believe, not three-quarters of Congress.
It must be China or North Korea that forced TikTok to sell.
Right. Its not like recent statistics showed that the US was the place where most of the cyberattacks originate. And its not like both the US and UK are openly saying that they are maximizing cyberwarfare against everyone as if it was something to be proud of. The country that is facilitating a livestreamed genocide in Gaza, is the 'good guys' to be trusted in cyberwarfare, for 'some' reason.
But, then again, in the Angloamerican culture, its always 'others' who are evil. Never itself.
In 2024 there was a study with regards to cyber crime per country [1]. The US comes in 4th place which is still a lot, but doesn't qualify for most. The UK is 8th.
Live streaming Gaza: I could not find a reliable source. As of today there are several webcam etc. claiming to live stream. I don't have the time to watch to verify this. However, there was a news block I place until recently and except for the occasional TikTok nothing on video, let alone 'live'.
[0] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
> I could not find a reliable source
Thousands of videos livestreamed on twitter, some by even the actual victims who die at the end of the video. If you havent been able to find any of them until now after 1.5 years of genocide, you will never find them. And not because you could not.
Out of curiosity, can you give me an example of a presently extant culture that does view itself as evil?
The UK maybe?? The always had a little self loathing tendencies and since they decided their past Empire was actually quite evil, that seems to have become worse.
They’re the “Anglo” in “Angloamerican culture” that the parent is talking about.
> Right. It’s not like recent statistics showed that the US was the place where most of the cyberattacks originate.
Link?
> And it’s not like both the US and UK are openly saying that they are maximizing cyberwarfare against everyone as if it was something to be proud of.
Link?
> The country that is facilitating a livestreamed genocide in Gaza
Which country is that? And where’s the livestream streaming?
Wait, what data are you seeing where most cyber attacks are originating from the US? I work in security at a place with some of the best threat intelligence globally, and there are indeed attacks from the US, even the government, but the idea that MOST cyberattacks originate from the US would be completely shocking to me. Is there some qualifier you're not including or maybe you misremembered "most targeted" as originated?
I'm not really trying to get into the political part of it fwiw.
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Also, America has traditionally refused to sign these types of accords.
Just because known bad actors are signatories to a community promise does not ispo facto make it meaningless to everyone else.
I mean, what are you going to do? Instigate a rule that only nice people can be signatories? You've not played nice in various ways in the past, so you cannot sign this promise?
(Not to say that I agree with the treaty. See concerns by human rights groups mentioned in article and all.)
Surely signing it would signal willingness to get along? What would be the downside?
> surrenders power to a regime with partial control by objectively bad actors
...do you think we are a regime with good actors? Why? What signals of morality or competency do you look for?
Screw game theory, I have the bigger stick. This is how everyone goes "defect" and you enter an arms race. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma
Never mind, we already crossed that line: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gzq2p0yk4o
Almost no rebuttals on the internet are intellectually honest these days. Take the same exact action by a President of the alternative party, and it's considered "decisive", "shows our enemies we mean business". But since it's not coming from your political party, it's "oh no, what is this guy doing. He's going to get us all unalived."
> Never mind, we already crossed that line: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gzq2p0yk4o
This was a very proportional response to Putin[1] the other day, so it's still technically game theory.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/china/putin-says-russia-tested...