tyb
right on bro
Ukraine foreign minister to cooperate with alleged DOJ review of Biden info.
Ukraine's top diplomat has welcomed the DOJ review of corruption in his country, which allegedly involved Rudy Giuliani's case against Joe and Hunter Biden. One America's Kristian Rouz looks into the matter.
Five myths about cyberwar
It’s not all about crashing power grids and airplanes.
The U.S. indictment of four Chinese hackers in the massive Equifax breach, The Washington Post’s recent revelations about CIA encryption back doors, President Trump’s desire to rewrite the Russiagate findings and swirling worries about Huawei’s cybersecurity have all put cyberwar back into the national lexicon. It’s a topic fueled by decades of dramatic movies, blue-ribbon commissions and academic theorizing, to say nothing of the devastating cyberattacks that have occurred. But as recent events show, many long-held ideas about cyberwars aren’t always borne out.
Myth No. 1
Cyberwar is overhyped and impossible.
One of the most common myths in cybersecurity is that destructive hacking is a wildly overblown threat, or nearly impossible, or incapable of shaping geopolitical conflicts. The cybersecurity expert Bruce Schneier, for example, has argued that we should eschew the vocabulary of statecraft for “the more measured language of cybercrime” when talking about such attacks. Others love to point out that squirrels cause more blackouts than hackers, suggesting, as the Guardian put it, that “cyberwarfare remains a slightly overblown fear.”
But while some may overstate the risks, careful investigation shows that cyberattacks can be very damaging and are only becoming more so. The Rubicon of cyberattack-caused blackouts was crossed in 2015 and 2016 when Russian hackers turned off the power in parts of Ukraine, with both incidents showcasing code that could do still more extensive harm in future operations. NotPetya, another Russian cyberattack, ricocheted around the world in June 2017, bringing major corporations like Maersk to their knees and causing more than $10 billion in damage.
The list of harmful cyberattacks waged for geopolitical reasons goes on and on, from the Stuxnet operation that helped the United States and Israel slow the Iranian nuclear program to North Korea’s attack on Sony Pictures in retaliation for the movie “The Interview,” which damaged 70 percent of Sony’s computing infrastructure, according to one estimate. The majority of major destructive cyberattacks have taken place in the past few years, and with many militaries — led by the United States — racing to develop and integrate their own offensive hacking tools, the trend of geopolitical aggression seems set to grow.
Myth No. 2
Cyberwar is about big hacks that crash power grids and airplanes.
Even as some question the very feasibility of cyberwarfare, others insist that it will lead to spectacular catastrophes, an idea that has been around almost as long as the concept of cyberwar itself, with movies like “WarGames” depicting hackers taking the planet to the brink of nuclear conflict. In his book “Cyber War,” former State Department official Richard Clarke depicts a nationwide emergency in which refineries catch fire, classified networks go down, planes plummet from the sky, the financial system dissolves, 157 cities plunge into darkness and thousands of Americans die. Because of scenarios like these, terms like “Cyber Pearl Harbor” and “Cyber 9/11” have been widely used by lawmakers such as then-Sen. Joe Lieberman and top government officials such as then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.
In reality, looking for theatrical cyberattacks means missing the ones that matter most. Cyber-engagements between nations are daily competitions in which the United States, Russia, China and others continually struggle for advantage. Much more often than not, they take the form of espionage or information operations. Consider, for example, the extensive Chinese economic and military espionage campaign that has hit thousands of American firms and government agencies, prompting the Defense Science Board to warn that more than two dozen U.S. weapons systems have been compromised. Or take Russia’s activities in 2016, hacks that did not do physical damage to a single computer yet injected themselves into the core of the American political debate.
(Abridged . . . )
Myth No. 3
Cyberspace is borderless, with no geography.
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Myth No. 4
The purpose of cyberattacks is readily apparent.
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Myth No. 5
It's impossible to know who conducted a cyberattack.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/five-myths/five-myths-about-cyberwar/2020/02/20/54d89458-5289-11ea-b119-4faabac6674f_story.html
https://archive.is/pS9sD
Analysis // Sanders vs. Bloomberg Scenario Is Like a Jewish Joke Turned Ominously Real
Two Jewish finalists in the Democratic race is a source of pride for U.S. Jews – as well as a reason for grave concern
The late and great Leo Rosten recounted in his book "Hooray for Yiddish" that whenever his father would marvel at the wonders of the United States, instead of using the staple quip “Only in America,” he would exclaim “America gonef!” The saying literally means “America the thief,” but in the mouths of Jewish immigrants to the United States, it evolved to signify their unending gratitude and admiration for the country that took them in and made them prosper.
Rosten recounts that his father, Sam Rosenberg of Lodz, would exclaim “America gonef” at least five times a day. If he were alive today to witness the Democratic primary race, Mr. Rosenberg would have surely doubled or tripled his daily output. As if it weren't amazing enough that one Jew is leading the Democratic pack, his main challenger could very well turn out to be yet another Jew. If Mad Magazine were still breathing, it might have replaced its legendary strip “Spy vs. Spy” with “Jew vs. Jew.” America gonef!
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It is a veritable minefield for Israel, for Democrats and for the American Jewish community. "Two Jews enter a presidential race" may sound like the start of a good Jewish joke, but it has morphed into a surreal and potentially hazardous reality. On the other hand, two Jews is the basis of any solid dialogue in Yiddish literature and to paraphrase Tevye the Milkman’s familiar remedy to bad news in his talks with his creator Shalom Aleichem: “Enough with the tzures (troubles). Let’s talk about happier news. Have you heard about the coronavirus?”
https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/.premium-sanders-vs-bloomberg-scenario-is-like-a-jewish-joke-turned-ominously-real-1.8558007
https://archive.is/GM8yY
EXCLUSIVE: The Case For The Disestablishment Of The CIA
Angelo Codevilla, senior fellow of the Claremont Institute and professor emeritus of international relations, argues for the disestablishment of the CIA and the transfer of its authority to multiple other branches of government.
An author, and former U.S. Navy officer and staff member of the Select Committee on Intelligence of the U.S. Senate, Codevilla spoke Monday with the Daily Caller to further discuss his beliefs on the powerful intelligence agency.
So can you give a summary of the CIA’s role in the 2016 election, what led up to them being a more politically driven organization and what can be done to remedy that?
About that I don’t know more than anybody else, I know the CIA very well having superintended it for 8 years and continuing contact with it, for better or worse it really hasn’t changed very much, it has changed some, in the same direction. Look when I was involved in it, it’s interference in politics was through the policy process, you see, now they’ve gone directly to ad hominem involvement, which is something else, not that you couldn’t see this happening, but it really hadn’t happened yet.
So you’ve written that ‘senior intelligence officials were the key element in the war on Donald Trump’s candidacy and presidency.’ Could you expand on that?
Oh absolutely, yes of course. I mean look, the talk about the so called uncertainty about who sicced [professors] [Joseph] Mifsud and Stef Halper onto the Trump people is nonsense, both of these people were strictly CIA assets. I mean I’ve known Stef Halper for 40 years. This had to be done by Brennan. (RELATED: Mueller Claimed Joseph Mifsud Lied To The FBI About Papadopoulos Contacts, But He Wasn’t Charged)
Is this the first time the CIA has interfered in an election or taken action in a political matter that should be outside of their purview?
Oh no, heavens no. They do that all the time, they did it primarily through policy. Now I’ll give you … most recently what they tried to do to George W. Bush and ended up merely screwing poor Scooter Libby. I mean that was a straightforward direct interference in the presidency. Let me tell you how they worked into that from the policy angle. (RELATED: Former CIA Officer: Whistleblower ‘Is An Anonymous Source’ For House Democrats)
After 9/11, the practical question for the US government was ‘who do we hit … who in the Middle East do we hit and why?’
The Department of Defense, Rumsfeld and others and yours truly, strongly believed that that the regimes of the Middle East, Saudi Arabia and Iraq, from different standpoints, were responsible for anti-American terrorism coming from their jurisdictions and so we said look, tell these people you cut it out or we will get you, you personally, you the rulers. And CIA was totally opposed to that, hence George Tenet’s statement that Osama Bin Laden had done it, game, set and match. Parenthesis, by the way, to this day, no one knows what Osama Bin Laden did, that’s another long story. But The CIA wanted to preclude any and all retaliation against regimes. And so it went out of its way using its usual tools in the press and the bureaucracy to say look, these are rogue individuals, religiously driven, got nothing to do with regimes. Well, it so happened that Scooter Libby got Dick Cheney to take up the views of the Defense Department. And CIA fought against that, they swung from that into attacking Bush, hence the Valerie Plame affair.
Now the Valerie Plame affair was a straightforward attack, and by the way, many of the elements of the Valerie Plame affair were replayed in 2016, there was no crime committed, the whole Valerie Plame/Fitzgerald investigation was not premised on any crime. How do I know that? Because the Intelligence Identities Protection Act is something I helped to write and we damn well made sure- liberals, conservatives, everybody who was involved in writing that act made sure to exclude from the coverage of the act any disclosure made in the course of a political argument. But the CIA and the New York Times together deleted that and put pressure on poor, stupid, weak, dumb George W. Bush to appoint a special prosecutor who then … I don’t know if you know the story of Patrick Fitzgerald, but all of that followed. So the answer to your question is ‘no,’ this is not the first time that it was done, and no it was not the first time that a non-crime was the premise for the interference.
(Cont.)
https://archive.ph/E5RK3
https://dailycaller.com/2020/02/20/angelo-codevilla-claremont-cia-central-intelligence-agency-interview/