That is pretty ****ing good, to be honest.Originally Posted by Julio3000
That is pretty ****ing good, to be honest.
Narrower than the Fitzgerald/Plame investigation?
... “When the annexation of Crimea took place, [Russia] shut down the internet to Ukraine, and they used social media to influence people’s behavior. And you can influence people’s behavior. You do it in a nice way, posting things to their friends, et cetera. There’s a whole factory in Russia doing this.”
This is known in the cybersecurity world as “social engineering”—a form of cyberattack in which people are psychologically manipulated into performing actions or divulging confidential information. According to some security experts, the best defense against this kind of threat is education.
“Man is the weakest link in the chain of information technology,” Mykhailo Vasyanovich, head of the Public Council for the Ministry of Information Policy of Ukraine, told The Daily Signal.
“With such cyberattacks, which are now taking place in Ukraine, it is necessary to raise the level of information technology literacy of users by conducting educational work on cybersecurity among employees of private and state enterprises,” Vasyanovich said.
Some experts worry this reliance on the security savvy of internet users to fend off Russian cyberattacks might be a vulnerability for the U.S.
“What may especially worry the U.S. is that Russia targets influential individuals, such as journalists or political analysts, especially those of rather skeptical approach toward Moscow,” Daniel Szeligowski, senior research fellow on Ukraine for the Polish Institute of International Affairs, told The Daily Signal.
“Unlike institutions or infrastructure, they don’t have state protection and are thus vulnerable to intimidation and blackmailing,” Szeligowski added. “And given the rising popularity of social media, such a threat is even more widespread.”
Hybrid War
Russia’s hybrid attacks against Ukraine have included, but are not limited to:
Using social media to shape public opinion among an adversary’s population.
Turning commercially available computer software into a tool for espionage and cyberwarfare.
Exploiting smartphones to spy on and wage psychological warfare against an adversary’s military forces.
Using cyberattacks to undermine an adversary’s electoral process.
Using pseudo-news reports to push a propaganda line that sows division within an adversary’s national culture.
All of these tactics have also been used by Russia against the U.S. since Russo-American relations took a nosedive in the fallout over Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine in early 2014.
“Ukraine is a perfect testing ground for hybrid warfare,” Szeligowski said. “Thus, it is no wonder that Russia has already seized the opportunity, and in Ukraine it has made a dry run of all sorts of its offensive techniques.”
Russian hybrid warfare is not covert warfare. Rather, it’s the combined use of conventional military force with other means such as cyberattacks and propaganda to sow chaos and confusion—both on the battlefield and deep behind the front lines.
Hybrid warfare is an evolving threat spanning every combat domain. Particularly, hybrid warfare weaponizes many pieces of everyday life, including smartphones, social media networks, commercially available computer software, and journalism.
“Russia is testing in Ukraine both procedures and concepts, which later on are being applied in the West—such as during the U.S. and French elections,” a Polish security official told The Daily Signal on background, asking not to be named due to professional restrictions on speaking to the media.
“In short, Ukraine remains for Russia a crucial hybrid warfare battleground and testbed,” the security official said. “The Russian hybrid warfare model is being further developed, perfected, and tested as we speak. Russia’s ability to escalate rapidly across the whole spectrum of conflict makes the West prone to the ‘surprise effect.’”...
...The advent of the internet, and social media in particular, has given the Kremlin direct access to the populations of its adversaries—bypassing the gatekeeper role America’s media institutions used to play.
“Everything today is digitized, including phone and mail services, and everything runs on the same network,” Kenneth Geers, ambassador of NATO’s cybersecurity center and a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, told The Daily Signal. “There is only one internet, and one cyberspace, inhabited by all of the world’s citizens, soldiers, spies, and statesmen.”
Meanwhile, Americans’ distrust in their media institutions has reached historic levels. Russia has stealthily taken advantage of Americans’ crisis of confidence in the media to permeate the U.S. news cycle with misinformation spread by propaganda mouthpieces cloaked as alternative news sources, such as RT and Sputnik....
...Russia’s purchase of $100,000 worth of Facebook advertisements in the run-up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election sparked a media frenzy in America and an outcry from lawmakers for social media sites to provide better transparency about the identity of those who purchase advertisements on their sites.
In Ukraine, Russia has been exploiting social media as a weapon of war for years....
...Also in May, Ukraine banned commercially available Russian software, including anti-virus software from Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab—the same company U.S. officials now say was used as a Trojan horse for Russian intelligence agencies to steal classified information from the U.S. government.
...In America, as has been the case in Ukraine, manipulation of the media by a foreign power increasingly is regarded as a hostile act warranting retaliation.
“America has experienced a sustained attempt by a hostile power to feed and exploit our country’s division,” former President George W. Bush said in an Oct. 19 speech in New York.
Russia “has made a project of turning Americans against each other,” Bush said, adding, “Foreign aggressions, including cyberattacks, disinformation, and financial influence, should never be downplayed or tolerated.”
Link
jpx7 (12-05-2017)
While the Daily Signal (article linked above) might try to make a pro-Trump argument, I see the Russians employing a hybrid war strategy to their advantages pitting both sides against the other in the US and keeping political turmoil going.
jpx7 (12-05-2017)
Yes, very much so, and with substantial return on a relatively small investment.
BedellBrave (12-05-2017)
Sekulow denying that Deutsche has been subpoenaed re Trump and family records.
It was a single sourced story to start with. First reported by Handelsblatt then Bloomberg and Reuters.
Last edited by nsacpi; 12-05-2017 at 05:14 PM.
"I am a victim, I will tell you. I am a victim."
"I am your retribution."
Depends on your perspective. Depends on what you think Mueller is actually doing.
The Plame game covered a lot of ground; Niger, WMD, Joe Wilson, Rove, etc.
this one is bigly yuge
"I am a victim, I will tell you. I am a victim."
"I am your retribution."
Um, I guess so. But it seems like the Fitzgerald inquiry was about who leaked Plame's identity to the media, and necessarily spread into Wilson's trip and the forged yellowcake docs.
The Mueller investigation has already subsumed at least two existing cybercrime investigations and the existing counterintelligence probe. Plus the Manafort money-laundering investigation and Mike Flynn's personal entanglements. Add obstruction of justice and consider that it's looking at three distinct legal entities (campaign, transition, and administration) and it appears much larger in terms of its formal scope and actual breadth.
jpx7 (12-05-2017)
plus trying to decipher the inner workings of the Kremlin...that can't be too easy
"I am a victim, I will tell you. I am a victim."
"I am your retribution."
Is there anyone on Muller's team that does not hate Trump?
More fake news on McFarland?
Serious question to the Russia collusion crowd. At what point is the integrity of the investigation compromised?
Natural Immunity Croc
Great point by tucker carlson.
What other cases has this agent influenced? Has he received any larger sums of money or a residual stream of income at a premium in compared to services provided?
How far could this go?
When there is gross malfeasance, negligence, or misconduct that causes actual harm? It's an interesting question, but a purely academic one of you're asking for lay opinions.
For all of your hyperventilation over FBI Supervillain (TM) Peter Strzok, you haven't really explained exactly how his private political opinions compromise the investigation.
I feel like we're talking in circles here. Career public servants are allowed to have political opinions. They generally aren't allowed to take them to work, depending on the kind of work they do. Is this platonic ideal going to be universally upheld? No. Is there any evidence that political bias has affected this investigation in a meaningful way? No.
IMO it's silly to even engage in this discussion with you.
I find it interesting that you chose to characterize what essentially became a very broad and very public re-litigation of the grounds for going to war with Iraq as a 'necessary' component behind determining who leaked Plame to Novak.
How do you explain the way this agent treated the cases of Abedin, Miller and Flynn. All three made false statements to the FBI. Two were not charged.
Look at the nature of the interview/interrogation process. This stinks to high heaven and I know you believe that deep down. I said many months ago that the campaign contributions were suspect. You said this is nothing. Now we are faced with more evidence of partisianship and on its own that is not the worst thing in the world. However, now you marry that to an analysis of his actions and that is when you build a case of corruption. The first piece is already clear. This man is a Liberal. He supports the democratic/liberal political party and candidates of that party. Now its time to take a look at his caseload.
I think we can all see where this is going.
Natural Immunity Croc
How do you figure that it was Fitzgerald's investigation that caused that? The investigation pertained to Wilson/Niger/Uranium, because that was the context of the leak, but it wasn't investigating same.
Besides, I'd argue it wasn't a re-litigation.
Fitzgerald's inquiry was mostly waiting for journalists to cooperate.
Even more fake news. This is crazy right now.
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