The guidelines discourage this kind of meta-commentary, and, more importantly, if you just mail hn@ycombinator.com, Dan can go look to see if there's a weird pattern of flags on the story.
If it's helpful: I flag most of these kinds of stories, no matter who the supposed protagonist is; I just think they're not a good fit for the site, and tend to generate truly awful threads. You can of course disagree! But I don't think anyone's going to accuse me of always seeing the US as the bad guy.
> It is our expectation that once the inspection has been completed by this group of people from the four countries, the ship will be able to sail towards its destination
Seems like a better deterrent for future sabotage is to ratchet up the consequences by seizing the ship until it is settled in the courts.
A fishing ship is cheap (he) for any developed nation state. Delaying one is not a meaningful deterrent. Forbidding Chinese ships in those waters would be, but no one is quite ready for that kind of commercial disruption.
A Chinese billionaire is losing money on a ship that isn't generating revenue. Either they made a deal directly with the tsar that is worth that cost or they were ordered by the emperor to take the hit.
Assuming this was orchestrated by a nation state I wonder what the goal is? Just causing mayhem and incurring cost? Is there some specific function of these cables? Is this a negotiating tactic?
Likely this is just for "practice". This incident shows how easy it is to break the cables, and what methods the authorities in the area use to pin the blame. It also shows what effect breaking the cables did or didn't have. I doubt China cares about losing one ship. Next time the ship they send won't slow down while near the cable, which caught the eye of the authorities. Next time they will do a lot of things differently, but I have no doubt the next time is coming, just because they can.
If you have a plan to sever every major fibre link into and out of some country then the only way to rest the effectiveness of your plan is to sever just a couple and see what happens.
The Cold War equivalent is to fly up to the border and see how the enemy fighters intercept your bombers.
Alternately it’s “making a concrete statement” in response to a thinly veiled threat.
E.g.: if a western government threatens to cut Russia off from the Internet they can cut a fibre to two to make a point that the west is just as vulnerable.
The problem with seeing it as a test of response is that the test changes future responses. Where previously it might have been possible to do a surprise attack on cables, govts will now (hopefully) be looking at ships maneuvering near by with more suspicion.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/swedish-police-go-board...