A PUBLIC WAR

Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine has catalyzed a worldwide northern tier grassroots war against Putin’s evil. Corporations, private individuals, banks, governments are fighting Putin. At some point, it will become clear to world leaders that the Rule of Law is toothless if it can’t withstand a murderous demon with nukes. If the Rule of Law loses to Putin, he and his fellow autocrats like Bashir al-Assad can rule the world, proving that dictatorship beats democracy. This is not good for business, nor for the planet, nor for humanity.

This war is unique. It’s happening at a time when people everywhere on earth can participate with our cell phones and keyboards. We video events with our phone cameras. We transmit our war footage around the world in a second. https://t.me/dvish_alive/9541 We teach one another how to jam their drones. We post videos of volunteers from South Carolina, from Ireland, from UK, going to Ukraine to fight. We hack and jam at our keyboards. We join hackers’ groups. Mainstream media are posting links to hackers’ groups we can join and provide secure computers to participate in mass denial of service attacks on Russian government websites. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/04/technology/ukraine-russia-hackers.html

In Telegram channels, participants cheer their collaboration with the government in going after targets such as Sberbank, the Russian state-owned bank.

“We are creating an I.T. army,” Ukraine’s minister of digital transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, directing cybersecurity enthusiasts to a Telegram channel that contained instructions for knocking Russian websites offline. “There will be tasks for everyone.” By Friday, the Telegram channel had more than 285,000 subscribers.

Inside the main English-language Telegram page for the I.T. Army of Ukraine is a 14-page introductory document providing details about how people can participate, including what software to download to mask their whereabouts and identity. Every day, new targets are listed, including websites, telecommunications firms, banks and A.T.M. processors.

Yegor Aushev, the co-founder of the Ukrainian cybersecurity company Cyber Unit Technologies, said he was flooded with notes after posting on social media a call for programmers to get involved. His company offered a $100,000 reward for those who identify flaws in…