How lies destroy armies - Lies, coverups, and Russian failures in Ukraine
Why Hacker News recommends it
Cited for the concept of vranyo and as an explanation of how corruption and cultures of lying cause failures.
What it is
Perun's hour-long analysis of how institutional lying, cover-ups and corruption ("vranyo") undermined the Russian military in Ukraine. It examines how false reporting up the chain degrades readiness and decision-making.
Recommended by 0 HN commenters across 0 different months, 2022 to 2025.
What Hacker News said
Cites aurizon · 2022-11 · on “For Western Weapons, the Ukraine War Is a Beta Test”
The US Mil-Spec design/procurement/production is larded with pork at all levels. The good aspect is greater reliability - we have seen how badly some Russian stuff is made. The Mil-spec process had it's start with discrete components back in the day. I can recall cases where 1K 1/4W film resistors were tested one at a time, and each one x-rayed. Each one had a cost of over $10. Production and quality have advanced greatly so that now you can buy them for a cent each at Radio Shack types of shops with a reliability on the order of one failure in 10 million. At the same time we have progressed to sub-miniature IC's and surface mount tech so that when coupled with automatic testers with use of
Cites aurizon · 2023-09 · on “Safety Inspector Fired for Finding Too Many Defects Could Cost Railroad Millions”
As the level of corruption grows, the organisation starts to stumble and eventually gets sued to dust. An interesting youtube on Russian corruption grew to such huge levels thatover 80% of the budget was diverted. Soldiers stole engines/tires/optics/fuel and so on and the invasion of Kiev failed. [this video] [LINK]
Cites brokenmachine · 2024-06 · on “What You Get After Running an SSH Honeypot for 30 Days”
They've won then. Nobody can do anything and Russia is lost and has become North Korea. I don't believe that. How do you think change happens? Someone does something, while you continue to "wait it out". Look into the Arab spring and many other examples of people changing things in ways that probably seemed impossible just the week before. Nothing was 100% safe, and yet it happened. I hope that somewhere out there is a Russian that doesn't think it's "just better to wait it out", and isn't just impotently waiting for a fantasy 100% safe solution to be provided without any sacrifice. I do understand that it's scary, but from the perspective of an interested outsider looking in... Just like th
Cites Jetrel · 2025-02 · on “Plane crashes, overturns during landing at Toronto airport”
They've fired a bunch of government employees who work in e.g. air traffic control, inspections, etc. This is likely not a case of some hand-wringing villain at the airline declaring "haha, we're finally free of that pesky regulation, now we can skip all the safety checks!" Rather, we're seeing "the people in charge of all the procedures" (Govt employees, not airline employees) being grossly understaffed. It's a bit like "inbox zero"; you have a list of SOPs you want to observe, and you want absolute inbox-zero for completely every single procedure, to the letter, for something like flight control, spaceflight, etc. If you cut staff, and still demand the same throughput, then the simple real