Summarizer

Was the OSRS economy affected by the strikes? I'm assuming they didn't disrupt internet access for most Venezuelan citizens but I have not looked into it yet.

Yes, it looks like it definitely was: https://x.com/eslischn/status/1104542595806609408

There is not really any reason to conclude that "american tech" was responsible for this attack. If anything, given all the sanctions Venezuela was under and how friendly they are with china, i would be surprised if they were using american tech in their infrastructure. [Of course i agree with the broader point of dont become dependent on the technology of your geopolitical enemies]

What would be the result of this? I think it would route data through Sparkle as a way of potentially spying on internet traffic without having compromised the network equipment within Venezuela, but I'm not familiar enough with network architecture to really understand what happened.

Maybe there would be some benefit in just dropping some packets. For example to WhatsApp, Telegram, Gmail servers. Could add a communication delay that could be critical and denies people a fairly reliable fallback communication method.

The effect of this would be traffic from GlobeNet destined for Dayco would transit over CANTV's network for a period. I'm not sure why the author singled out Telecom Italia Sparkle.

Solid OSINT methodology here. The 10x AS path prepending is the most interesting detail to me b/c typically you'd see prepending used to de-prioritize a route, which raises the question: was this about making traffic avoid CANTV, or was it a side effect of something else? A few thoughts: - The affected prefixes (200.74.224.0/20 block → Dayco Telecom) hosting banks and ISPs feels significant. If you're doing pre-kinetic intelligence gathering, knowing the exact network topology and traffic patterns of critical infrastructure would be valuable. Even a few hours of passive collection through a controlled transit point could map out dependencies you'd want to understand before cutting power. - What's also notable is the transit path through Sparkle, which the author points out doesn't implement RPKI filtering. That's not an accident if you're planning something (you'd specifically choose providers with weaker validation). - The article stops short of drawing conclusions, which is the right call. BGP anomalies are common enough that correlation ≠ causation. But the timing and the specific infrastructure affected make this worth deeper analysis. Would love to see someone with access to more complete BGP table dumps do a before/after comparison of routing stability for Venezuelan prefixes in that window.

General Caine specifically said they utilized CYBERCOM (which is the US inter-branch hacking command) to pave the way for the special ops helicopters. I personally have no doubt that any (whether or not they all were) lights being out was due to a US hack. Some of the stuff that got blown up may well have been to prevent forensic recover of US tools and techniques.

I don't think calling shutting down the internet horrific is appropriate at all in the context of bombings.

Ridiculous post. Power outages would kill a lot of people if sustained. A Carrington event would devastate modern society.

The only anomaly was military. As far as I can tell, Venezuela's AD was shut down, or told to shut down. Didn't the US use Chinooks? They're supposed to be loud. And AD didn't take even one out. If Venezuela as corrupt as most socialist countries, I have no doubt that someone in his inner circle gave him up. Back in the days of our version of socialism we had Indian politicians selling out for $100K, leave alone $50M.