The Blind Spot Telegram community has turned from development talk to war talk.
It’s a valuable little group for keeping an eye on events. But info is flowing way too rapidly.
Since bandwidth is becoming a problem for me, which impacts my capacity to do HUMINT, I’ve made a call for volunteers to help me sum up the best of the OSINT stuff in the channel (which may or may not be moving to Discord soon).
Your service is appreciated!
So without further delay, here are the links which were posted with a short summary, since 8pm last night and excluding links to Bloomberg and Reuters. There were also a few forwarded images and videos, including a map of Russian controlled areas; bombing of railhead; a woman in car throwing molotovs at tanks.(Hat tip to JC for the compilation.)
Overview:
- The curious case of the Polish jets. What does “sending” mean – Polish jets for Ukraine or not?
- Perhaps an overreaction after this overclaim of Ukranian military action from Polish bases?
- No comment on the Polish jets.
- Mapping the front line:
The progress of the war in general:
- Might Putin destroy the world, and how could we stop him?
- Russia denies using mortars on civilian areas, as civilian areas mysteriously continue to explode all by themselves
- Russian propaganda targeting schoolchildren.
The intellectuals chip in:
- Duelling academics with competing levels of optimism:
But the counter view is now protected.
- Crypto Bros deleting their losses? Bitcoin Ambassador accepts Ukraine wasn’t a hoax after all:
- Is this a liberation? (insert butterfly meme).
- Russian Mission in Delhi has unsurprising views, would like Indians to share them.
- Emotive images are emotive.
- Putin probably won’t blow up the world, maybe
- Hard times for the hard left.
- Where’s the Russian air force?
- A little light reading. Five books on Ukraine and Russia.(And I say you also need to read Zbigniew Brzezinski’s Grand Chessboard).
This will be an occasional posting, or as and when the community rises to the challenge.
Also worth noting I ended up posting this little ruling to help contain the chat, so as to keep it useful.
The Blind Spot is about generating actionable intelligence. It is not about following the party line. It is about discerning white and black propaganda to try and understand the signal. Whenever anyone invokes the whataboutism claim they are basically admitting they don’t care about truth. Everything is now informed by emotional partisanship. People really need to differentiate analysis from loyalty. Because if you don’t you definitely won’t make any wise investments. On Feb 6 I wrote in my original newsletter that geopolitical risk wasn’t been priced in. The day I left the FT I noted I would be starting a WW3 watch. I was laughed at. So no, my policy on this chat is to discriminate against anyone who is simply cheerleading escalation for escalation and adrenalin’s sake. The Blind spot is not about fanning propaganda of either side. It’s a neutral zone for gathering quality intelligence. That doesn’t mean it represents my political leanings. You have to learn to differentiate between explaining what is going on in the info war – for that is what it is – to anything to do with loyalty. I am absolutely going to prohibit any broad dehumanization of any sides. We are all losers in war. If you want to be bellicose cheerleaders the blind spot is not for you. It shouldn’t be sacrilegious to consider every day “what if I’m wrong”.