There is a perhaps unprecedented volume of video and photography coming out of the combat zone, leading to many commentators to declare we are witnessing the first “open source war.” But is it really as open-sourcy as everyone claims? No, not really.
To quote David Petraeus (famous for losing a war to farmers) in his recent interview with CNN:
Bergen: Is this the first truly open-source war? The war in Ukraine is being fought in part on social media by Zelensky; commercial overhead satellites capture Russian battle groups moving around in real-time, and the social media accounts of Russian mercenaries in the Wagner Group document what they are doing.
Petraeus: Yes, I believe it is. This is the first war in which smartphones and social media have been so widely available and also so widely employed. The result is unprecedented transparency and an extraordinary amount of information available – all through so-called “open sources.”
If this is truly an “open-source war” – let me ask Petraeus, or anyone else, a simple question. Based on only open-source information, tell me, how many Ukrainian troops are in Bakhmut? How many Russian troops? How many casualties have both sides sustained? Or, simply, who is winning and who is losing?
From the pro-Russian side, you can see claims from commentators like the Military Summary Channel on YouTube – and he’s just aggregating daily updates from the Russian MoD. For the pro-NATO side, you can look at Wikipedia. So, really, the deluge of videos and photos on social media didn’t give the public useful or actionable information about, well, anything. It’s all white noise. We’re still dependent on “official” sources and nothing has changed in that department. We are quite literally no better off than people huddled around their radios and television sets in WWII. We’re not even better off than people reading a newspaper in a remote Siberian village without plumbing or electricity. We’re not any more connected with the war than those people in WWII. Arguably, we’re not better off than people during the Crimean War. We are just fed a 24/7 dopamine rush of instant gratification to give us the illusion that we’re in tune with current events from the front, when in reality we couldn’t be further from it.
With 20/20 hindsight, modern historians can declare Hitler had missed his chance for a quick victory after failing to take Moscow in 1941, in danger of defeat after losing his army at Stalingrad in early 1943, and crushing defeat became inevitable after Kursk later that same year. But it was not so obvious at the time. Consider WWII through the eyes of a family in Berlin and a family in Moscow. What could they do with the information available to them? They could be optimistic and believe everything is going according to plan. They could, alternatively, be cynical and wonder if the government is exaggerating or outright lying. They could wonder if the army is competent and fighting the war properly. Apparently, regardless of what some of them may have claimed later, the vast majority of Germans chose to be optimistic.
And that brings me to my next, most important point. WWII only ended after Germany literally lost the means to continue fighting. Surrender was a formality as there was basically nothing left to surrender. Diplomacy didn’t fail, Germany just refused to try it. They could have overthrown Hitler and surrendered back in 1943, avoiding most of the death and destruction. What’s the worst that could have happened? Demilitarization? Occupation? Reparations? Trials for war crimes? All those things happened anyway, and the country was partitioned for 50 years in the Cold War. A surrender in 1943 would have at the very least avoided permanent loss of their independence and ongoing occupation by American soldiers. Maybe Stalin would want to occupy Germany too but I doubt there would still be 30-60 thousand Russian troops there 80(!) years later.
The chief reason such diplomacy didn’t happen is because Germans believed their government’s propaganda. They continued believing in delusions of victory long after there was any plausible chance of it happening. And, just as importantly, they believed in the alleged atrocities that would befall them if they were defeated. Barbaric, drunken Slavs would overrun Europe, rape all the women, bayonet the babies, and enslave everyone under a horrific communist dystopia. Are modern western audiences more calm than back then? Of course not. We still believe the same propaganda and dehumanization of the enemy. Arguably, modern western audiences are even more cemented in these stereotypes.
So, not only has “open-source information” failed to provide people with useful information, it has further incited mass hysteria, making a good resolution to the conflict even more elusive.
What’s interesting about the “NATO assessment” of Russian casualties on Bakhmut, as of me writing this article, it’s from an “anonymous source” within NATO. At least Hitler and Mussolini were willing to put their names behind the claims they made. Biden and his cronies can’t even do that. They produce ridiculous lies that are so outrageous, they’re attributed to anonymous NATO official guy. Like, for example, the claim that the Nord Stream sabotage was actually done by the all-powerful Ukrainians. I wonder if they did 911 and the Gulf of Tonkin incident too. To be fair, it’s on brand for them. Ukrainians dug the Black Sea and joined the European Union 1,000 years before it was created, after all.
For Nord Stream, please check out my post here:
Ian Kummer
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there have been quite a few good (if a bit macabre and gory) videos popping up on telegram and eva bartlett and graham phillips have done great work. most western MSM stenography is done from berlin or a fortified condo in kiev. any claims to transparency from the ukie side are laughable as they’ve straight up banned coverage of the meat grinder for obvious reasons. anecdotally i can say the main hurdle is someone not being able to read russian (especially as the “All Powerful God AI” of google is less than useless for translations and searches).
as for germans in WWII i can only guess. maybe after the abject humiliation of WWI they had a “you’ll never take me alive, coppers!” attitude. yanks tolerated vietnam for the years when they actually knew anything was happening in the region because it started to affect them directly. war is an organic force that can’t be controlled by the human drones that carry it out so maybe keep it in its cage under lock and key. [and i need to work on my mixed metaphors.]
That Crimean War photo is quite a well known one! I believe it is a group of non commissioned officers.
I think for sure we are no better off today. After all, the Irishman William Howard Russell of The Times criticised the failings of the British Army in that war. Today’s western war correspondents seem simply to be typists for Pentagon press briefings.
Unfortunately, Russian correspondents aren’t much better. A lot of speculation and gossip, little useful content.