Slovakia finds Russian backdoor in traffic speed cameras

Given the level of incompetence that Russia has demonstrated on both the political and military front, I highly doubt it could've turned anything around in Ukraine even if knew everything about 2014.

The majority of school teachers grew up under the Soviet side of cold war propaganda.

And in history education in particular, we are told that the has always country looked towards Russia as a role model, to fight Hungarian attempts to integrate it (since the country was just part of Hungary for most of its history).

Being pro-russia is being anti-Slovakian though. You get zero upside for teaming with terrorist state and all the downsides.

How are any of those false flag? They're state sponsored, by different state actors.

I don't think you understand how bad globalization fucked up these countries, people live with their parents until they're 30+, young people can't find decent jobs, etc.

Everyone knows who the attacker is - just some people root for Russia for their own reasons. Usually tied to the internal politics of their countries - like hating for unrelated reasons the political actors from their states that happen to support Ukraine.

That's why they're doomed to repeat it. Again and again.

Sometimes those people are a plurality that organically endorses that decision and votes some representative in. Sometimes those people are a plurality that has been brainwashed by compromised media to do it. Sometimes those people are just a small ruling elite that get voted in by people who didn't think very hard about those particular geopolitical decisions and just want, I don't know, their political and cultural enemies brutalized and $1.99 gas.

As far as Hungary goes, I asked my friend who studied Hungarian history. He explained to me that while the Soviet invasion was very traumatic, the subsequent Kádár "goulash socialism" was a lot more lenient on the people than all the other Soviet Bloc regimes, and that the Hungarians made an incorrectly confident conclusion that losing a small war to the Russians is not catastrophic.

Of course, this is NOT the experience of basically anyone else who happened to be in a similar situation. A potential puppet regime of Russia in Ukraine wouldn't look like Kádárs by any means, it would rather look like the Kadyrovian microstate in Chechnya, minus the Islam of course.

Also in these countries there's a lot of old people who have never been able to adapt to living in a free, capitalist society, so for them, there's some nostalgia for communism.

That's exactly the sort of thing that James Bond would do.

But maybe rapidly switching residential solar on and off in a coordinated way can also do funny things to grid equipment

same issue with large loads like boilers, this stuff should never be connected to the internet, but it is

if you can control enough load on the grid you can do real damage

Hopefully mutually assured annoyance keeps everyone at bay.

In the end it's all about trust. Right now I don't see why China would like to burn down their market.

If that goal sounds stupid to you, that's because it is. I would expect some countries that are not China to act with such a capricious lack of foresight.