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[return to "X offices raided in France as UK opens fresh investigation into Grok"]
1. stickf+gv1[view] [source] 2026-02-03 18:13:35
>>vikave+(OP)
Honest question: What does it mean to "raid" the offices of a tech company? It's not like they have file cabinets with paper records. Are they just seizing employee workstations?

Seems like you'd want to subpoena source code or gmail history or something like that. Not much interesting in an office these days.

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2. nieman+k52[view] [source] 2026-02-03 20:45:10
>>stickf+gv1
Gather evidence against employees, use that evidence to put them under pressure to testify against their employer or grant access to evidence.

Sabu was put under pressure by the FBI, they threatened to place his kids into foster care.

That was legal. Guess what, similar things would be legal in France.

We all forget that money is nice, but nation states have real power. Western liberal democracies just rarely use it.

The same way the president of the USA can order a Drone strike on a Taliban war lord, the president of France could order Musks plane to be escorted to Paris by 3 Fighter jets.

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3. gruez+7p2[view] [source] 2026-02-03 22:27:22
>>nieman+k52
>Sabu was put under pressure by the FBI, they threatened to place his kids into foster care.

>That was legal. Guess what, similar things would be legal in France.

lawfare is... good now? Between Trump being hit with felony charges for falsifying business records (lawfare is good?) and Lisa Cook getting prosecuted for mortgage fraud (lawfare is bad?), I honestly lost track at this point.

>The same way the president of the USA can order a Drone strike on a Taliban war lord, the president of France could order Musks plane to be escorted to Paris by 3 Fighter jets.

What's even the implication here? That they're going to shoot his plane down? If there's no threat of violence, what does the French government even hope to achieve with this?

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4. knallf+qq2[view] [source] 2026-02-03 22:34:03
>>gruez+7p2
fighter jets ARE a threat of violence, and it is widely understood and acknowledged.

Again: the threat is so clear that you rarely have to execute on it.

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5. gruez+Ar2[view] [source] 2026-02-03 22:40:03
>>knallf+qq2
>fighter jets ARE a threat of violence, and it is widely understood and acknowledged.

That's not a credible threat because there's approximately 0% chance France would actually follow through with it. Not even Trump would resort to murder to get rid of his domestic adversaries. As we seen the fed, the best he could muster are some spurious prosecutions. France murdering someone would put them on par with Russia or India.

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6. anigbr+TK2[view] [source] 2026-02-04 00:29:04
>>gruez+Ar2
I think the implication of the fighter jets is that they force the plane to land within a particular jurisdiction (where he is then arrested) rather than allowing it to just fly off to somewhere else. Similar to the way that a mall security guard might arrest a shoplifter; the existence of security guards doesn't mean the mall operators are planning to murder you.
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7. zzrrt+FP2[view] [source] 2026-02-04 00:58:15
>>anigbr+TK2
Guards can plausibly arrest you without seriously injuring you. But according to https://aviation.stackexchange.com/a/68361 there are no safe options if the pilot really doesn’t want to comply, so there is no “forcing” a plane to land somewhere, just making it very clear that powerful people really want you to stop and might be able to give more consequences on the ground if you don’t.
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8. anigbr+LU2[view] [source] 2026-02-04 01:33:17
>>zzrrt+FP2
I suspect fighter pilots are better than commercial pilots at putting their much-higher-spec aircraft so uncomfortably close that your choices narrow down to complying with their landing instructions or suicidally colliding with one - in which case the fighter has an ejector seat and you don't.
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9. zzrrt+sh3[view] [source] 2026-02-04 04:54:23
>>anigbr+LU2
I felt like you ruled out collision when you said they're not going to murder, though, granted, an accidental but predictable collision after repeatedly refusing orders is not exactly murder. I think the point stands, they have to be willing to kill or to back down, and as others said I'm skeptical France or similar countries would give the order for anything short of an imminent threat regarding the plane's target. If Musk doesn't want to land where they want him to, he's going to pay the pilot whatever it takes, and the fighter jets are going to back off because whatever they want to arrest him for isn't worth an international incident.
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