Commentary By Jai Krishna Ponnappan

Westerners Have Been Texting Russians About the Ukraine War Using a New Cyber Tool.

Individuals from across the globe are using a new website to bypass the Kremlin’s propaganda machine by delivering personal messages on the Ukraine war to random Russians.

The website was created by a group of Polish programmers who collected over 20 million cellphone numbers and close to 140 million email addresses belonging to Russian citizens and businesses.

The site creates random phone numbers and addresses from those records and enables anybody in the globe to contact them, with the option of sending a pre-written message in Russian urging people to circumvent President Vladimir Putin’s media restrictions.

Since its March 6 launch, the site has been used by thousands of people worldwide, including many in the United States, to send millions of messages in Russian, war footage, and images of Western media coverage documenting Russia’s assault on civilians, according to Squad303, the group that created the tool.

The endeavor is one of many attempts, mostly by Western media organizations and governments, to circumvent Mr.

Putin’s government’s strict limitations on reporting about the conflict, which Russian media are prohibited from referring to as a war.

The website 1920.in, which was created by a group of Polish programmers known as Squad303, enables anyone from all over the globe to message the cellphone numbers and email addresses of random Russian persons and businesses.

Jan Zumbach, left, with fellow Royal Air Force fighter pilot Eugeniusz Horbaczewski, in 1942.

Squad303 was named after a squad of pilots who were renowned for their commitment to the struggle against Nazi Germany.

Since Russian armies invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, the Kremlin has shut down or restricted all independent media outlets in Russia.

Access to Western social media platforms such as Twitter has been restricted as well.

Authorities threatened this week to shut down Facebook and Instagram, owned by Meta Platforms Inc., and a new legislation mandates that anybody who publishes “false news” regarding Russia’s war in Ukraine faces up to 15 years in jail.

“Our goal was to breach Putin’s digital censorship wall and ensure that the Russian people are not completely blocked off from the rest of the world and the truth of Russia’s actions in Ukraine,” a Squad303 spokeswoman stated.

The representative, a programmer who requested anonymity, compared the endeavor to Cold War-era initiatives such as the US-funded Radio Free Europe, which broadcast radio programs in many languages over the Iron Curtain.

Since the website’s launch a week ago, about seven million text messages and two million emails had been exchanged, he claimed.

The group’s name is derived from a British air force unit comprised of Polish pilots renowned for their commitment to the fight against Nazi Germany during World War II.

Their website, 1920.in, is a reference to the 1920 Soviet-Polish conflict, in which outnumbered Polish troops fended off an attack by the Soviet Union.

The Journal analyzed the authors’ disclosed code for the websites and attempted various numbers provided by the database, which were found to be operational.

It was not possible to verify if the full database is comprised of existing phone numbers and email addresses.

Titan Crawford, a Portland, Oregon, truck dealer, is one of hundreds of individuals who have used the app to contact with Russians and published their discussions on social media.

Mr. Crawford, 38, said that he messaged 2,000 Russian cell phone numbers.

The majority of individuals remained silent, while some replied with expletives, he claimed.

However, 15 people participated in discourse.

Mr. Crawford said that in order to demonstrate that he is a regular American, he emailed a Russian engineer images from his Hawaii trip.

The guy answered with photographs of his family vacation in Estonia, which is located on the Baltic Sea.

Mr. Crawford then shared photographs of big American news organizations such as CNN covering Ukraine.

His stated goal was to earn the confidence of the Russian people with whom he talks in order for them to come to him for unvarnished information regarding Mr.

Putin’s actions in Ukraine.

“The whole purpose is to educate the Russian people about what is happening in order for them to rise up and prevent their government from invading other nations,” Mr. Crawford said.

“Having lived in the United States my whole life, I am just now beginning to grasp the notion of lack of freedom of expression.

My heart goes out to the Ukrainians, but I’ve developed some pity for the Russians as well, due to their brainwashing.” Dey Correa, a 33-year-old Panamanian mother, said she wrote 100 emails to random Russians in response to the bombing of a maternity facility in Mariupol, Ukraine.

“This scenario is appalling; I’m heartbroken and wishing I could do something.” … “I have a seven-month-old kid and couldn’t stop sobbing when I watched so many infants fleeing bombs,” Ms. Correa, a civil engineer by training, said.

In Russia, media coverage of Russian forces entering Ukraine unfolds differently than in the United States.

Numerous television shows shape public opinion via the use of maps and deception to support Moscow’s choice to invade its neighbor.

Sharon Shi composite photograph According to Ms. Correa, she got twenty responses.

Most were belligerent—one sender, mistaking her for a US citizen, threatened to destroy America with a nuclear bomb—but others were more engaged.

One proprietor of a beauty shop said that she was Russian but was not a Putin fan.

Receiving such mails may pose concerns to certain Russian people.

Following a number of anti-war rallies in recent days, Russian police were caught inspecting people’s mobile phones and reading their communications.

A Russian mother of three from the southern city of Saratov who was supplied information on the Ukrainian war by a Dutch guy using the Squad303 technology expressed her anguish at learning about what was happening.

The lady, 36, said that she had received photographs of horrific damage and innocent fatalities.

“Seeing this upsets me, and it’s quite difficult to cope with everything that’s going…

"I am quite concerned,” she replied to a message from The Wall Street Journal.

A law student from Moscow, age 25, who also spoke with a Western individual to express her opposition to Mr.

Putin’s attack on Ukraine, told The Wall Street Journal that she was hesitant to speak out publicly against the conflict for fear of retaliation.

“Am I gonna jeopardize my schooling, my future?” she inquired.

“I am aware that Putin is murdering people in Ukraine, but it is not my responsibility; I am not a murderer, and I am not a supporter of war,” she said.

Thomas Kent, a former president of Radio Free Europe who now teaches at Columbia University, said the West now has a moral obligation to evade the Kremlin’s assault on the free flow of information by using technologies like Squad303.

The application enabled him to communicate with concerned Russians who were eager to hear information, he said.

“If the Russian authorities did not believe that regular citizens might undermine their authority, they would not control the media as heavily as they do,” Mr. Kent said.

Karlis Gedrovics, the chief executive of an advertising business called Inspired in Latvia, claimed he used the Polish coders’ technology to send 100 messages to phones in Russia.

“This is the moment for everyone to participate; it is not enough to just display the Ukrainian flag on social media,” Mr. Gedrovics, 43, who is proficient in Russian, said.

“Putin has hired troll armies and a big propaganda machine, but we should counter with a civic movement in our democracies.” Mr. Gedrovics is proficient in Russian and has communicated with a number of Russians, the majority of whom have answered with insults or repetitions of official propaganda.

“It would be naive to expect them to soon alter their opinions or acknowledge to having done so…

The state has meddled so much in their private lives that they are unable to voice views counter to the propaganda,” he said.

~ Jai Krishna Ponnappan

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Can Digital Resources Assist in the Wake of Russia’s Energy Ban?

Cutting off Russia’s oil, gas, and coal supplies may be disruptive, but infrastructure efficiency and digital solutions in the US may assist in the long term.

With Russian oil, gas, and coal imports off the table, gas prices are rising throughout the nation, and the local energy business seems to have digital tools to assist manage any output shifts.

President Joe Biden’s restriction on Russian energy imports is intended to persuade President Vladimir Putin to end the conflict in Ukraine.

While policymakers debate how to respond to this new development, local providers of such energy resources may be able to raise output more effectively in response.

Digital resources from businesses like Cognizant and Rackspace, as well as digital transformation support from professional services firms like Accenture and PricewaterhouseCoopers, are available to the oil and gas sectors to help them modernize and operate more effectively (PwC).

• Rackspace, for example, provides cloud-based intelligence services for consumption optimization, risk assessment, and predictive maintenance.
• Cognizant provides leak detection and gas pipeline integrity solutions.
• Accenture claims that digital asset management and smart infrastructures can assist update energy and gas infrastructures and increase operational efficiency.
• According to PwC, its analytics and solutions platform has aided a big gas station chain in modernizing its operations by providing real-time data and competitive information.

Opposing political parties dispute on how much the US needs to depend on Russian energy supplies, although it may be substantially less than countries in Europe.

“It won’t be a disastrous event for us,” says Paul DeCotis, senior partner and head of West Monroe’s East coast energy and utilities practice.

“In the United States, we have adequate refining capacity, especially in the Gulf Coast area, to ramp up rather fast." 

Land-based drilling, on the other hand, may take six to one year to obtain oil and convert it into a product, according to him.

Even yet, DeCotis believes the prohibition will have a limited effect.

He also claims that the US has showed robustness in its natural gas mining and operations.

Despite the fact that the nation is coming out of the heating season, when natural gas is in high demand, the driving season is approaching, which, according to DeCotis, pushes demand for oil in the form of gasoline.

While recent worldwide developments are worth noting, the oil and gas sectors have had to adjust production management to unexpected shifts before.

"A number of drilling sites shuttered when gas prices truly dropped,” DeCotis adds.

“They couldn’t possibly be cost-effective.” Fracking gas, for example, suffered some decreases due to a supply surplus at the time.

“The gas industry’s upstream consequences are quite variable,” he explains.

“I don’t believe it’s as stable as the oil industry, which is older and more battle-tested.” I don’t see any major issues with the sector growing up to meet demand.

“All it takes is time.” Meanwhile, he claims that the efficiency of electrical energy consumption in the United States has been increasing for decades.

According to the Energy Information Administration, fossil fuels like as coal, gas, and oil provide around 61 percent of the country’s power, which may make the restriction on Russian resources a worry; however, alternative sources are expanding on this front.

“Smart grid technologies, the digital grid, and rising penetrations of tiny, distributed energy resources - whether solar, wind, geothermal, or fuel cells - have all shown to be quite beneficial,” adds DeCotis.

According to him, this development necessitated investment in grid infrastructure to support innovations like distributed energy resources and electric car charging stations.

“The only way we could get meaningful economic value out of them is if the grid could accept them." 

With demand becoming more unpredictable and users producing their own energy, the dynamics of electric utility resource planning have altered throughout time.

"When you put distributed energy resources on the grid at different locations, the utility has control over some of those resources and doesn’t have control over others,” DeCotis explains.

The new issue is to co-optimize demand and supply in situations where demand is changeable and the location of demand is uncertain.

“Utilities are searching for sight and/or control over those resources,” he explains.

As more technology are deployed to the grid edge, electric utilities are feeling the need to digitize, according to DeCotis.

“Once things are digitized,” he continues, “utilities want to establish use cases across many data platforms and databases to provide insights.” “It’s the next step in digitization, which is the analytics component.”

~ Jai Krishna Ponnappan

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He misread Putin and the realities of armed might in international relations. Even in hindsight, war has a way of changing people’s perceptions.

Angela Merkel and Barack Obama are two leaders whose legacies have taken a hit as a result of the conflict in Ukraine.

Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel held her nation hostage to Russian energy, misunderstood Vladimir Putin, and committed far too little to NATO’s defenses.

In less than a week, her successor has renounced her legacy.

Mr. Obama, on the other hand, should be remembered as the President who refused to supply Ukraine deadly defense weaponry, even after Mr. Putin grabbed Crimea in 2014.

He wouldn’t even sell Javelin anti-tank weaponry, which are currently assisting Ukraine’s forces in slowing Russia’s invading army.

That was terrible enough, but his reasoning betrays his ignorance of both Mr. Putin and global events.

Here’s an example from Mr. Obama’s 2016 interview with the Atlantic, which often functioned as his Boswell: “‘Putin acted in Ukraine in reaction to a client state that was ready to slip out of his control.” And he innovated in order to maintain authority there,’ [Mr. Obama] said.

'He did the very same thing in Syria, at huge cost to his own country’s well-being.

And the concept that Russia is in a better position today, in Syria or in Ukraine, than they were before they invaded Ukraine or before he had to commit military troops to Syria is completely flawed.

True power is being able to get what you desire without resorting to violence.

Mr. Obama went on to say that Ukraine “is going to be vulnerable to military domination by Russia no matter what we do.” Clearly, Mr. Obama underestimated the Ukrainian people and leaders, who have shown they are willing and able to defend themselves if they have the weapons.

Throughout his presidency, Mr. Obama also failed to recognize that the “nature of power in global affairs” still involves military force.

Mr. Putin definitely believes this. Mr. Obama inflicted great damage to American strength and interests over the course of eight years, and the cost is still being paid.

~ Jai Krishna Ponnappan

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Biden, like Jimmy Carter, must adapt to confront emerging dangers.

In less than a week, Germany’s military strategy has been transformed by Vladimir Putin’s attack on Ukraine.

Will the Biden Administration have a similar epiphany about safeguarding Americans in the face of advancing dictators? Progressives complain that the Pentagon’s budget is higher than that of any other country, but the fact is that military expenditure is at an all-time low.

It is on track to account for less than 3% of the economy.

Defense expenditure hit a postwar high of 9.1 percent in 1968 but never went below 4.5 percent even in the 1970s, peaking at 6 percent in 1986 at the height of Reagan’s Cold War buildup.

(See the adjacent graph.) In the previous two decades, American military capability has been depleted by terrorist operations, and the present army may be too weak and elderly to smash a peer military, much alone aggression on two fronts.

Some argue that it doesn’t matter: Europe can deal with Russia, and Taiwan is in China’s area of influence.

However, authoritarians have no incentive to stop devouring territory if there is no cost, and the United States is obligated to protect treaty friends in NATO or Japan if they are next on the menu, not to forgetting the US territory of Guam.

One reason the United States is failing to dissuade bad conduct is because rivals are aware that American military strength is waning.

Controlling the sky is critical to American warfighting in any region, but the US Air Force fighter inventory has shrunk from 4,000 aircraft in 1991 to about 2,000 now, with an average age of 29 years, up from 11.5 in 1991.

OPINION: POTOMAC WATCH WSJ Potomac Watch Keep an eye on the Energy Sanctions That Would Really Hurt Putin.

SUBSCRIBE The Air Force has sacrificed preparedness in order to purchase more capable equipment, which it also needs to remain competitive.

Heather Wilson, President Trump’s Air Force Secretary, was correct in stating that the United States needs 386 squadrons by 2030, up from 312—particularly additional bomber and tanker squadrons to deal with distance in the Pacific.

The Navy is operating at the same rate as during the Cold War, but with half the number of ships, and the fleet is smaller and older than China’s.

The Navy needs and desires many more attack submarines as a strong deterrent against China, but it lacks the repair yards to keep up with the present inventory.

Longer-range attack aircraft are required for carriers.

The Marines are the only branch that is rapidly adapting to the future.

However, the cost is a diminishing military, including three fewer infantry battalions and tanks that the nation may lose if land hostilities return.

The Army’s mandate should be Europe, but according to analyst Thomas Spoehr, the land force’s budget is down about 11 percent in real terms since 2018, including cutbacks to drills and purchasing less of everything from helicopters to munitions.

Any confrontation would need massive volumes of ammunition, and under present plans, US troops might run out of some of the most powerful and vital weapons in weeks.

The Pentagon must accelerate planned procurement of long-range antiship and combined air-to-surface standoff missiles right now.

However, it cannot afford to halt working on hypersonics or offensive cyber, which implies that budget must be increased.

The Biden administration has been promoting a “divest to invest” approach that foregoes weapons in order to create technologies for the 2030s, a plan that now belongs in a Pentagon paper shredder.

A paper titled “Battle Force 2025” at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies is full of proposals for making the most of current assets: For example, modifying Navy submarine-hunting aircraft to combat with anti-surface ammunition.

An increase in military budget does not prohibit decreasing waste, including controversial concepts such as limiting staff expenses and healthcare costs.

Instead than utilizing so many pricey uniformed cops, hire public relations and attorneys.

Inform retirees that they will have to make do without subsidized food, and shut the commissaries.

General officers should be reduced.

If an Air Force colonel or a Navy captain can occupy a billet appropriately, it should not be a flag job.

The top brass bears some of the responsibility for the country’s lack of readiness, particularly procurement blunders like the F-35 and the Ford-class aircraft carrier.

But there has never been a better moment for Congress to overhaul the way the Pentagon purchases equipment, consolidating political responsibility in a single agency.

The Biden administration has been promoting a “divest to invest” approach that foregoes weapons in order to create technologies for the 2030s, a plan that now belongs in a Pentagon paper shredder.

A paper titled “Battle Force 2025” at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies is full of proposals for making the most of current assets: For example, modifying Navy submarine-hunting aircraft to combat with anti-surface ammunition.

An increase in military budget does not prohibit decreasing waste, including controversial concepts such as limiting staff expenses and healthcare costs.

Instead than utilizing so many pricey uniformed cops, hire public relations and attorneys.

Inform retirees that they will have to make do without subsidized food, and shut the commissaries.

General officers should be reduced.

If an Air Force colonel or a Navy captain can occupy a billet appropriately, it should not be a flag job.

The top brass bears some of the responsibility for the country’s lack of readiness, particularly procurement blunders like the F-35 and the Ford-class aircraft carrier.

But there has never been a better moment for Congress to overhaul the way the Pentagon purchases equipment, consolidating political responsibility in a single agency.

~ Jai Krishna Ponnappan

Read more by Jai at CommentaryByJaiKrishnaPonnappan.com

You may also want to read more analysis about geo-politics here.

Find Jai on Twitter | LinkedIn | Instagram