The political question here isn't why intelligence agencies aren't all over this but why politicians are deciding to not do anything about it.
A bunch of kids were able to figure out which ships were the source of these drones. Good work. I assume/hope this information wasn't new to intelligence agencies.
Relevant questions to ask here:
- were these ships not tracked and monitored 24/7 since they left Russian ports?
- in fact aren't all ships that leave those ports not tracked?
- isn't the journey of ships in the so-called shadow fleet documented in detail so that it is exactly known what's on board and who is buying it?
The answer to this is: of course that is all happening and known.
And the obvious one: why weren't these ships dragged to a port and completely dismantled to the last bolt?
Answer to that: that would be an escalation as these ships are in international waters and protected by maritime law. The obvious counter to that is that military aerial activity launched from foreign ships technically is an escalation in itself that could be considered a direct act of war.
I'm not going to speculate further on this. But it's obviously a highly political topic and not some kind of intelligence failure.
A bunch of kids were able to figure out which ships were the source of these drones. Good work. I assume/hope this information wasn't new to intelligence agencies.
Relevant questions to ask here:
- were these ships not tracked and monitored 24/7 since they left Russian ports?
- in fact aren't all ships that leave those ports not tracked?
- isn't the journey of ships in the so-called shadow fleet documented in detail so that it is exactly known what's on board and who is buying it?
The answer to this is: of course that is all happening and known.
And the obvious one: why weren't these ships dragged to a port and completely dismantled to the last bolt?
Answer to that: that would be an escalation as these ships are in international waters and protected by maritime law. The obvious counter to that is that military aerial activity launched from foreign ships technically is an escalation in itself that could be considered a direct act of war.
I'm not going to speculate further on this. But it's obviously a highly political topic and not some kind of intelligence failure.