Lead GrapheneOS developer was forcibly conscripted into a war

https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/114825492698412916

by pabs3 • 1 year ago

82 108 1 year ago

theamk• 1 year ago

related post from few months ago: https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/21819-impact-of-ongoing-war...

"We avoided specifying the country or war to avoid involving GrapheneOS in a debate on forced conscription in an existential defensive war."

I will follow their wishes and not specify the specific war or side, but this comment gives me all the information to figure it out.

bawolff7• 1 year ago

I mean, afaik there is only one country in the world that is at war and is using conscription (as opposed to reserve forces or voluntary paid contracts)

defrost• 1 year ago

At least five ..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription_in_Israel

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription_in_Ukraine

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription_in_Russia

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/4/11/myanmars-military-d...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription_in_Sudan

pyuser583• 1 year ago

There are two that come two mind, but one has fairly short terms of duty of to balance these kinds of obligations.

strcat30• 1 year ago

See the response at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44583672.

tonyhart7• 1 year ago

why they don't just said outright???

is that controversial??

adastra22• 1 year ago

There is no upside for them and their users, and lots of potential downside.

wiseowise5• 1 year ago

Afraid to trigger Russian bots? Afraid of backlash in Ukraine? Afraid to “pick a side” in the conflict?

Even though the guy is obviously on the right side of history, it might be problematic for project like Graphene to acknowledge it.

spankibalt2• 1 year ago

It also opens the door to possibly inconvenient discussions with speculations about Graphene's security (referring to both products and org) in relation to, say, Israel, its military, as well as its associated espionage and sabotage efforts (e. g. Pegasus).

The same swings the other way around, i. e. Graphene protecting its devs against any outside threats. Etc.

DiogenesKynikos2• 1 year ago

In Ukraine, it is very dangerous to publicly say things that could be considered critical of the war. There is a real chance of arrest or disappearance by the security services.

bawolff7• 1 year ago

To me it sounds like they perhaps broadly support the war and maybe even think conscription is necessary, but also are worried about their friend, so they want to post something without creating negative press for the country (i think this would probably most fit if the country in question was Ukraine).

strcat30• 1 year ago

See the response at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44583672.

colordrops3• 1 year ago

Could be the Israeli army, considering the graphene logo may be a nod to the Star of David.

ThePowerOfFuet• 1 year ago

The logo is a nod to graphene.

bugtodiffer• 1 year ago

it said "defensive"

throwaway2905• 1 year ago

Maybe Israel or Ukraine if they keep "regular communication". On Russian side friend is able to text like once every few weeks I think because of jamming and internet shutdown at the border.

And "diverting somebody away from combat" for this kinda reason sounds not like russian army.

And they saying it is "defensive existential war" is another thing, if this turns out to be Russia GrapheneOS would be on my personal blacklist forever

k4rli• 1 year ago

Fortunately not. They have said not Russian or Isra*li

strcat30• 1 year ago

I will follow their wishes and not specify the specific war or side, but this comment gives me all the information to figure it out.

The primary goal of making it public was getting him diverted away from infantry to a role related to software engineering and/or security research. It makes little to send the lead developer of a security research and engineering project to launch grenades from a trench. We got in contact with high level people who were able to intervene after he completed 45 days of basic training. He had to do several weeks of menial tasks and was just recently transferred to a more sensible tech related role. We're still down our most important developer.

We deliberately made it obvious which country we were talking about without directly specifying it. A Russian opposition paper did the basic investigative journalism required to confirm what we implied:

https://meduza.io/feature/2025/04/22/veduschego-razrabotchik...

The way we approached it worked out well. It was an appeal to their military leadership based on it not being in their interest to use him as infantry, not a political statement. Ukraine forcibly conscripting men aged 25 through 60 to defend against an invader trying to wipe out their nationality is a messy topic. We had to publicly post about it to get help, that's all.

xyzal• 1 year ago

A friendly reminder that anyone can support the defending country.

https://war.ukraine.ua/donate/

wahern• 1 year ago

Technically anyone, but it might constitute treason for citizens of at least one country.

BobaFloutist2• 1 year ago

And they should get all the more respect for it if they do anyway.

triyambakam• 1 year ago

The country isn't specified. How do you know?

strcat30• 1 year ago

We've said they're Ukrainian in several places. We avoided being explicit about it for the initial announcement to focus on getting help. We avoided specifying it to avoid our post being perceived as a political statement against Ukraine or attracting a bunch of negative attention. We only got targeted with an insignificant amount of additional attacks due to this announcement because of how it was worded. It's fine to simply say it's Ukraine now instead of only heavily implying it.

giingyui• 1 year ago

That’s some damn bad bus factor.

strcat30• 1 year ago

He was conscripted in April and the project successfully continued on and ported to Android 16 in June. It's doing fine. It was a massive hit to the project but it won't die because of it.

wiseowise5• 1 year ago

Why do people jump to conclusion that he is necessarily sent right into the meat grinder?

Army is not only generals and meat waves.

pickledoyster• 1 year ago

Indeed, as another comment linked to https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/21819-impact-of-ongoing-war... it seems pretty clear that this is not the case:

We've used our available connections to try to keep them safe. There's no way to get them out of the conscription. However, they're an incredibly talented security researcher and engineer and it would be extraordinarily misguided to send them to front line combat. This seems to be understood now.

wiseowise5• 1 year ago

would be

strcat30• 1 year ago

Why do people jump to conclusion that he is necessarily sent right into the meat grinder?

He was assigned to being infantry since that's the default. Due to our public post on X specifically, he ended up being transferred to doing development work instead. That transfer was only finalized in the past couple days.

He's safe but we're still down our most important developer. We successfully migrated to Android 16 despite this combined with Android 16 no longer providing Pixel device repositories in the Android Open Source Project but it took a lot longer than usual. We're currently recovering from the massive amount of work we had to do for the Android 16 port so development is going fairly slowly right now. We plan to hire more experienced developers.

graphenecheck• 1 year ago

The GrapheneOS author frequently claims to be targeted by many actors, governments, other open source projects...

https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS

GrapheneOS has only ever posted about Braxman in response to his misinformation about us. In his latest video attacking us, he engages in clear libel towards our team.
GrapheneOS is currently under a state sponsored attack attempting to misrepresent it as being for criminals
Due to F-Droid deliberately causing friction and annoyances for GrapheneOS users
There's currently an example of one of these attacks on the project ongoing across Swedish forums and social media.

draftendirekt• 1 year ago

[flagged]

dontleakkeys5• 1 year ago

Looks like Micay stepped down as leader of the project in 2023?

other80265• 1 year ago

That's not at all correct. Members of GrapheneOS readily admit when there are things that can be improved, but will call out misinformation when needed.

The fact that you're bringing up the Rossmann video after saying that is very telling. There's a huge difference between technical discussion and what was very clearly an attack by Rossmann. He clearly knew what he was doing. The video was made shortly after GrapheneOS's founder was swatted. He was understandably upset about that and with Rossmann and Rossmann recorded a private conversation and used that to attack not only GrapheneOS, but also its founder in an attempt to harm GrapheneOS's reputation. Louis didn't actually stop using GrapheneOS, so that part was a lie. It's clear that he was still using GrapheneOS in his later videos.

It's pretty low to bring that video up here. If you have a real technical issue with GrapheneOS, then you could bring that up instead.

other80265• 1 year ago

Isn't it strange how graphenecheck, draftendirekt, and dontleakkeys were all made less than 6 hours ago and are the only three participating in this discussion? Anyway...

The response to Braxman was after he posted a video calling GrapheneOS's founder crazy and made up a whole bunch of lies about the state of GrapheneOS, then plugged his own product. Clearly trying to damage GrapheneOS while helping himself at the same time. https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/114824444524603470

The thread about a state sponsored attack came after a sudden flurry of news articles about GrapheneOS being used by criminals and claims that devices running GrapheneOS have been exploited with 0 evidence https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/114784469162979608

F-Droid's approach is incorrect. GrapheneOS adds the sensors permission the same way that upstream AOSP adds and splits permissions, so F-Droid blaming GrapheneOS for an issue with their app is incorrect. People should read https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/114790171247296048 for more info.

strcat30• 1 year ago

The GrapheneOS author frequently claims to be targeted by many actors, governments, other open source projects...

GrapheneOS is an open source project with many project members including many developers. It isn't one person as you're portraying it. GrapheneOS has been attacked by many people, of which there is ample verifiable evidence.

GrapheneOS has only ever posted about Braxman in response to his misinformation about us. In his latest video attacking us, he engages in clear libel towards our team.

It's easy for people to verify this and to see that this is a charlatan selling insecure products/services. We linked to content from a security researcher who has never been involved in our project going through his content and products/services evaluating it. Other security researchers have done the same.

GrapheneOS is currently under a state sponsored attack attempting to misrepresent it as being for criminals

People can verify there were multiple news article in Spain from law enforcement contacting publications and portraying GrapheneOS as being for criminals. There were then hundreds of news stories based on those. None of these publications contacted us, but several do say they talked to Spanish law enforcement. We consider a state spreading clear misinformation about GrapheneOS and our userbase to be a state sponsored attack. We explained very clearly what was happening and did not portray it as anything other than what it was.

Due to F-Droid deliberately causing friction and annoyances for GrapheneOS users

People can see for themselves they're doing this. Multiple F-Droid developers were involved in the company which tried to take over our project in 2018 and have continued on attacking the project since then. That takeover attempt in 2018 is where nearly all the attacks on GrapheneOS originate.

There's currently an example of one of these attacks on the project ongoing across Swedish forums and social media.

This is accurate information and it's easy to verify it's happening. We didn't speculate about the origin of these attacks.

Your own post from a sockpuppet account demonstrating the attacks on our project including harassment towards our development team where people baselessly claim that I'm insane, delusional, etc. and push fabricated stories about it. Several other freshly created sockpuppet accounts can be seen here too.

other80265• 1 year ago

This was months ago. The official announcement was in the middle of April. See this response from the official GrapheneOS X account.

We're in communication with him and he has been diverted away from combat.

https://x.com/GrapheneOS/status/1933311869122720069

closewith7• 1 year ago

What an odd comment by the person. Why would a software developer of all people be particularly worthy of protection in wartime?

alex_duf• 1 year ago

software is a useful skill during a war. The same way you probably wouldn't send a doctor to a fight as the doctor is more useful to help with the wounded, a software engineer with an infosec background(as I assume the lead dev of graphene would) could be extremely useful to the war.

jeroenhd2• 1 year ago

Software development is a common skill, but software security is a niche. I imagine any army can make good use of someone who's an expert in finding (and patching) security holes and coming up with new exploitation techniques (to thwart).

This isn't so much about being worthy of protection as it is about the army dealing the most damage it can. Exploiting software vulnerabilities to disable production (like the Ukranians did for that drone production company) can save as many lives as sending someone to the front can. Breaking into networks to gather OPSEC is crucial for any military operation, offensive or defensive.

red-iron-pine• 1 year ago

if you have an existing skillset they're not going to throw you into the infantry.

odds are the dev is in some sort of signals intelligence unit or doing dev on some sort of drone control system, etc.

ditto for if/when they draft doctors, dentists, welders, etc. -- put people with skills and experience in those fields into areas where they can be used.

doesn't mean the graphine dev ain't working 20 hour days and ain't getting targeted by drones -- just they're not line grunts.

strcat30• 1 year ago

It would be quite stupid to send one of the most talented security engineers/researchers in their country and beyond to fight as infantry in trench warfare. Our thread was posted as an appeal to Ukraine's military leadership. The end result is that he'll avoid being highly likely to die and Ukraine will be better off than if they'd wasted him as infantry. Where's the downside?

h4kunamata• 1 year ago

The "system" hates what they cannot control. GrapheneOS, Proton, all are victim of such direct attack.

I checked the guy GOS mentioned: Robert Braxman. One single photo gives you all the vibes from the guy.

It is the same as "Stop Killing Games" movement with Pirate Software totally against it while spreading misinformation. Bad for him tho, the internet uncovered all the lies and bs, that guy's life is finished lmao

For GOS, they need some serious security analysts to review Robert's doing and exposed everything, just like "Stop Killing Games" heroes did.

Not that we don't trust GOS but the position they are in, make it easy to be judged as "bias" by the media, only them Robert and cia will stop this bs.

strcat30• 1 year ago

This was not an attack on GrapheneOS. Our lead developer is Ukrainian and his country is being invaded so there's ongoing forced conscription of men aged 25 through 60.

sunshine-o2• 1 year ago

Lead GrapheneOS developer was forcibly conscripted into a war

Just this headline should really scare us.

Grapheneos is a fantastic project and we should all support them but recent headlines here on HN make me believe we are just delaying a little what is unavoidable. Meaning, soon you will need:

1/ A common spyware smartphone turned off with your digital ID and banking app or whatever.

2/ Another device you can reasonably trust and use with confidence, hopefully with Internet connectivity.

I do not know what that second device will be:

- probably a PinePhone

- or a ClockworkPi uConsole with cellular modem

- maybe one of those LilyGo T-Deck with cellular modem

The open source community have greatly contributed to the success of Android but today I would rather have the smart people of GrapheneOS working on the real escape plan rather than trying to keep us just a little bit longer in the Google trap.

I understand they are working on their own hardware which is a bold step toward this direction.

other80265• 1 year ago

GrapheneOS isn't going anywhere. People keep getting all anxious when they see news and don't seem to understand the facts.

The lead developer was conscripted, but the rest of the development team prepared for Android 16 and the port was completed in a couple of days.

Device-specific repositories were not included by Google this time, so while the port was finished quickly, they had to work around this. And now GrapheneOS has finished the Android 16 port.

So I'm not sure why people need to freak out and start using insecure devices because they _think_ something will happen with no proof. The fact is GrapheneOS is still going strong. And you can see they've been talking about talks with a big OEM on their socials, so even if new Pixels can't be supported in the future, other OEMs are interested.

sunshine-o2• 1 year ago

To be clear I am freaking out about the Android ecosystem.

As of today I already need an 2 Android phones

1/ One Google Android phone for my banking app with Google Integrity API working

2/ One GrapheneOS phone for everything else

I could switch bank for the 3rd time, sure. But how long can I run away?

So what I meant is hopefully in the future we will have a GrapheneOS hardware device, but they might also need to fork or leave AOSP. Because trying to be in the Google Android ecosystem and out of it at the same time became impossible or too costly.

We can't spent most of our resources trying fit in instead of creating our own path.

Lead GrapheneOS developer was forcibly conscripted into a war

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