I have evidence of a sophisticated Russian information campaign to get security nerds to say "nation-state" when they just mean "state". We spent TWO LECTURE PERIODS on this subtle distinction in college geography and it all ends, like tears in the rain, so people can sound cool
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Replying to @Pinboard
I'll take this one for the team. Not being a native English speaker and failing to google a relevant answer, I'd appreciate a short explanation of this difference, especially pertaining to infosec literature (i.e., why/where the difference matters). Thanks in advance!
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Replying to @mkolsek
Thanks for asking! Outside the world of information security, a nation-state is a country where you have a single dominant ethnic group that runs the apparatus of the state and defines national identity. So Japan is a nation-state, while India and the US are not.
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But... India's government pretty clearly defines India that way. And the US? Not that far behind. It seems like a porous boundary.
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Replying to @twneslscience @mkolsek
People are complicated! That's why there's a Wikipedia article about it as long as your arm. My only point is that it's a term of art with a specific meaning, and that people saying 'nation-state' in all cases just mean 'state', which is shorter, more correct, and less jargony.
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Replying to @Pinboard @twneslscience
I attended a presentation once and someone in the audience asked something about a "state" actor, to which the presenter replied "Do you mean state or nation-state?" I was confused and later forgot about it but I feel I can probably get this clarified here. Please proceed.
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By "proceed", I mean to explain where "nation state" would ever be useful in our infosec context. Or was it a misnomer from the get go?
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Replying to @mkolsek @twneslscience
The only situation I can imagine is a contrived one where you are talking about US states like California and want to compare to countries like Sweden. But while this is the scenario everyone gives me, I have never seen an example of this ambiguous usage in the wild
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Replying to @Pinboard @twneslscience
So to an American, a "state" might primarily mean a US state, and they might then use "nation-state" to denote a non-US country? I can imagine that.
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That is my theory of why the jargony use of it took hold. My complaint is that there are fields outside information security where it has a specific technical meaning, and computer people are generally respectful of not abusing technical terminology.
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But don't you dare use font when you mean typeface
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