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We ran high-level US civil war simulations. Minnesota is how they start

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jan/21/ice-minnesota-trump
15•Teever•1h ago

Comments

bwestergard•1h ago
In 20th century civil wars (e.g. the Spanish Civil war), telegraph and phone exchanges were strategically important targets. In a hypothetical U.S. civil war, one wonders how successful the belligerents would be in seizing, controlling, or destroying means of communication (data centers, undersea cable termination points, cell towers, microwave towers).

Tech workers, like all workers, would have to make difficult decisions about their allegiances. Let's hope this can be avoided.

Bender•1h ago
I suspect this could be mitigated by finding who is funding the paid rioters and removing them from the picture. Once the funds dry up people will stop traveling to Minnesota to stir up shenanigans that could lead to a local war. Some of the rioters have admitted as much bragging to journalists how much they get paid. There will not be a national level civil war in my opinion. More likely someone will make a mistake, people will get hurt and things will escalate and then the admin will have an excuse to invoke the insurrection act.
greenie_beans•57m ago
> finding who is funding the paid rioters

prolly the FBI

Bender•54m ago
It could be anyone in the current admin as they stand to benefit by invoking the insurrection act as has been done many times before be previous presidents. They could then press the "That was easy" button.
danorama•55m ago
Oooh! I know this one! Just follow the money. All the way back to the Department of Homeland Security. You’ll find the paymasters and your answers there.
eithed•48m ago
As an outsider I have a question - do you actually feel that protest after ICE killing an american citizen would be driven by somebody paying for it, instead of being a civic movement?
Bender•46m ago
do you actually feel that protest after ICE killing an american citizen is driven by somebody paying foe it?

In my opinion there is almost always money involved. People need incentives to put their lives and their families lives at risk when they would otherwise not be involved living multiple states away and would otherwise not be impacted such as by ICE in this case. There will be exceptions but I suspect those are a minority that may involve mental health, loneliness, attention seeking, virtue-signalling, roped in by emotion triggering videos, etc... I suspect one motivation would be to radicalize people when their paid rioters are told to do things that could risk an agent using bad judgement and someone gets hurt.

BizarroLand•40m ago
It could also be a "happy accident".

Statistically, if you put enough stupid people into enough spaces with hateful rhetoric being taught consistently, make them immune to consequences, and reward them when they do things that push towards the civil war you want to have, then eventually either you will completely oppress your country or you will have a civil war.

Bender•31m ago
Statistically, if you put enough stupid people into enough spaces with hateful rhetoric being taught consistently, make them immune to consequences, and reward them when they do things that push towards the civil war you want to have, then eventually either you will completely oppress your country or you will have a civil war.

I could not have said it better myself. I still think it would not become a national level civil war but Minnesota could get messy. Plenty of other states would never let things escalate to this level. All of this could have been avoided by having local law enforcement or worst case the national guard get things under control. Minnesota have conflicting incentives delegate counts driving their bad judgement in addition to their governor being in the hot seat at the moment requiring a distraction.

Or from a movie some of us have seen, someone will do something stupid [1].

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnvTo8sLFJo