They're effectively at war and are freaking out about capital flight which poses a unique existential risk to them especially.

I imagine most countries in that situation would clamp down on freedom of speech and prohibit sharing photos of missile strikes. This would include most of the ones that pay lip service to freedom of speech in peace time.

Ukraine does this too.

Loose Lips Sink Ships was itself an information management scheme to avoid informing the public.

The Germans didn't have spies collecting rumors in the US. Nor did they need them during Operation Drumbeat (the U-Boat attack on the US coast). The US was completely unprepared for Drumbeat. They had no harbor defenses, no convoys, inadequate and unprepared coastwatcher and patrol services.

The point of the censorship is to not cause panic among the public as they realized how badly the US was losing. Drumbeat was worse for the US than the attack on Pearl Harbor was, both in terms of lost ships and number of Americans killed. It was about controlling embarrassment for the Navy. American ships were blowing up and sinking within eyesight of shore. Vacationers were finding dead seaman washed up on the beaches of Florida and New Jersey. The military did not want these events turning into major media events.

And to the extent that the censorship was justified, yes, at the very least we were legally in a properly declared war.

Ironically, there was one time the media did cause a massive problem that could have affected the outcome of the war.

The Chicago Tribune sent a reporter to Pearl Harbor after the battle of Midway and managed to learn from some indiscreet senior commanders that we knew where the Japanese fleet was because we cracked their codes.

The reporter published the story in the Tribune. It was pure dumb luck that the Japanese never noticed the story. Roosevelt wanted the reporter and Robert McCormick brought up on espionage charges, but Admiral King asked him not to prosecute because the Japanese didn't seem to notice the article but they'd definitely notice the trial.

Iran is going to be getting constant satellite date. They not only have their own satellite surveillance systems, but also will be getting support, probably covert, from a variety of other countries which also have robust satellite networks.

This is solely for "domestic" (which extends well beyond the UAE) PR purposes, and I expect the US is actively encouraging these countries, behind the scenes, to keep losses under wraps.

For what it's worth, the quote is half and half. The full context is that he went on to say he wanted to avoid the second camel.

https://www.aap.com.au/factcheck/dubai-sheikhs-words-lost-in...

So in other words; Mercedes-Benz was the peak, and he was estimating a decline trajectory slower than the rise.

Dubai's brand (before the war) was "you're welcome to come here to make money, but criticize the government and you're out". I'm sure there's a ton of young influencers who don't know the first thing about the place to not have internalized it, but I remember a spate of articles and books about 15 years ago of Westerners falling afoul of the local laws and losing everything.

There are a lot of things that I would expect to hurt Dubai's "brand" but people still travel there. I don't understand why anyone would travel there in times of peace, let alone during war. You don't even need it for connecting flights.

Well, in Russia you would most likely accidentally fall out of the window that a careless person left open.

obviously, countries have ways to determine BDAs for their attacks, but you don't have to give it to them for free. The concept of oversharing is lost in the age of social media.

Problems such as 'Dubai porta-potty'

But how can they improve if they don't let the slaves criticise the state?!

The actual text from the article implies that OS exploits compromised the device.

"The UAE government owns majority holdings in telecom companies Etisalat and Du. This gives security services the power to observe all communications on their networks.

"The Arab state has also used the Israeli-developed software Pegasus which allows agents to listen into private calls and read messages, even if they are shared on encrypted apps like WhatsApp,.

"The spyware can infect a device even without the user activating a link - such as via a WhatsApp call, even if it isn't answered.

"Once inside, it can access all WhatsApp messages, logos and contacts."

> you are also missing the elephant in the room, whatsapp's claim of end-to-end encryption is a lie

Not exactly.

E2E is illegal in the UAE, and Meta has only advertised E2E in countries where it can operate E2E freely.

All chat apps that operate in the UAE need to store data locally with full access given to the UAE's Telecom and Interior Ministries.

Group chats are openly not E2E encrypted.

Even personal chats are publicly not E2E encrypted.

There are other insidious ways you can publicly and openly end E2E encryption (I think backups might do that).

Essentially, while WhatsApp may not be lying their default 1 to 1 chats are E2E encrypted, it makes sense to use it as if it weren’t because it’s so easy to disable it even with their publicly disclosed information.

We now know what happens to a lot of influencers and wannabes: https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/dubai-porta-potty-influencer...

The car junk yards are also really sketchy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrGCv3sZXAQ

Exactly. A dictatorship with a medieval religious view on human rights related topics.

And most of those influencers aren't even rich...

I visited and asked a friend there if women can vote. She became very offended. What! Of course we can vote!!

10 seconds later

Hang on a minute. We have a king. Nobody can vote!

I'm not American. America didn't even exist when most of the core social concepts I referenced were popularized, and it certainly wasn't in the 20th century.

Also, very self-telling, that I said "UAE should do better for UAE's own future sake" to which you responded: "you want to take away UAE's sovereignty!" Hmm, very odd, that.