Trump to win?

[lakedaemonian]

Re: Trump to win?

lake - you have made clear that you at times act in a military or military-advisory capacity. at no time did it occur to me that you had hidden agendas. perhaps i am naive [per woodsman or chris coles] but that is still what i think.

Cheers for that jk.

It's good to see not everyone here is building a tinfoil wall.

[lakedaemonian]

Re: Trump to win?

Here's a pretty balanced article on the possibility of Russian interference(or at least attempts to interfere) with foreign elections:

http://warontherocks.com/2016/09/the...-warfare-game/

more specifically:

http://isq.oxfordjournals.org/conten...qv016.abstract

It even includes and acknowledges ALL of Woodsman's recent "America Bad" issues such as covert political action in Italy/Chile.

It even goes so far as to say that US/Russian overt/covert political action and interference in foreign elections is lopsided with a 2/3 US, 1/3 Russian count.

What can't be disputed is a rough alignment of interests and the very real possibility of attempts and possibly success by foreign actors.

The fact that Woodsman can't even acknowledge the possibility based on long standing behaviour and clear historical examples is both striking and telling.

I'm sure my article link and the substantiating links there will all be disparaged by Woodsman as a CIA plot with me as the agent provocateur.

The Obama Campaign was the first(in the US) to REALLY dive head first into leveraging the internet for political activation and campaigning.

Fast forward a couple of election cycles and the conventional leveraging of the internet for legitimate political activation and campaigning has been surpassed by the malignant potential of both state sponsored cyber information operations as well as non-state actors.

To think otherwise, and to think the US election process is not potentially vulnerable to external foreign actors(beyond the already well known and acknowledged foreign influence in political lobbying) via leveraging the malignant potential of the internet is truly madness.

Do I think there is a "tinfoil hat conspiracy" between Russia and Trump campaign? No.

Do I think Russia views information operations targeting adversary elections and shaping general population perceptions as a core competency? Absolutely.

[Woodsman]

Re: Trump to win?

There you go putting words in my mouth again. Now that's spooky.

And you can stuff that America bad crap. America and Americans are just fine, kiwi. It's the charter members of the "community" who are the bad guys and sowed the seeds of corruption that has brought us low. It seems the folks in this line of work have more in common with their "adversaries" than they do with their own people.

Revise history as you wish, just as you have revised my words and the premise at question. It is not whether the general idea of Russian information operations targeting adversary elections or shaping popular perceptions is accurate. Hell, our allies do that. Just ask the Israelis or your friendly FBI agent. Mossad has more residents in place here in the land of the free and brave than ever did the Russians in aggregate. They use Jewish American citizens and prey on their dual loyalties for them to do it for free (plus expenses, of course)!

Sayanim are Jews living outside Israel as foreign citizens that volunteer to provide assistance to the Mossad. This assistance includes facilitating medical care, money, logistics, and even overt intelligence gathering, yet sayanim are only paid for their expenses. No official number is known, but estimates put the number of sayanim in the thousands. The existence of this large body of volunteers is one reason why the Mossad operates with fewer case officers than fellow intelligence agencies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clande...ietary_support

The question at issue is this - is the Russian Federation actively targeting the US Democratic Party to help the Republican Party win the 2016 election. Yes or no?

[jk]

Re: Trump to win?

The question at issue is this - is the Russian Federation actively targeting the US Democratic Party to help the Republican Party win the 2016 election. Yes or no?

i doubt we'll ever know for sure, but i wouldn't be surprised. would you?

[Woodsman]

Re: Trump to win?

i doubt we'll ever know for sure, but i wouldn't be surprised. would you?

Clever, doctor.

Yes, given the historical caution of the Russian services, their palpable terror of US superiority (despite their gracious diplomacy and tough talking military bluster) and the massive chasm between benefit and cost should the operation be exposed. It is an act of war and that is the very last thing the Russians want with the US.

I would be surprised at the recklessness of it, but not more than I was to see the Democratic party return to red baiting and McCarthyism. Or that responsible people would advance this canard for the sake of HRC.

[jk]

Re: Trump to win?

Clever, doctor.

Yes, given the historical caution of the Russian services, their palpable terror of US superiority (despite their gracious diplomacy and tough talking military bluster) and the massive chasm between benefit and cost should the operation be exposed. It is an act of war and that is the very last thing the Russians want with the US.

I would be surprised at the recklessness of it, but not more than I was to see the Democratic party return to red baiting and McCarthyism. Or that responsible people would advance this canard for the sake of HRC.

we need someone who knows something about hacking. i think it is very, very hard to trace, if even a naif such as myself knows about using tor, i can't imagine what the pros know. so i don't think any such operation would in fact be exposed. i don't think stuxnet, e.g., although widely accepted as a joint u.s.- israeli operation, has ever been PROVEN to be such. has it?

furthermore, the targets were not even u.s. gov't entities, but the dnc, john podesta, etc- where's the act of war? and i suppose you could make the same argument about hillary's PRIVATE server.

did we declare war on north korea when they hacked sony? this stuff is going on every day- the chinese, the russians, the u.s. i'm sure, and even retarded north korea. it's routine.

so i don't think the risk is great at all, while the potential gain might well be - in their eyes at least - enormous. if nothing else it's a massive psyops.

===

as for this:

[tried to insert your graphic of minutes covering trump tape vs wikileaks and did not succeed, so you'll just have to look at the post above and imagine that graphic inserted here]



i think the coverage is directly proportional to how titillating the revelations were, i.e. straight tabloid journalism. after all, how often does a network anchor get to say "pussy"?

meanwhile the wikileaks info on hillary was basically old news. was there anything in it that was at all revelatory? it had little or no information content. i'm sure the proportion of coverage on fox, which created that graphic, was quite different. they were giving their audience what their audience wanted- an msm conspiracy! [just like they faked that kenyan's birth certificate!] and i suspect the fox audience is more politically driven and interested than the other major networks' audiences. the msm audiences want entertainment, drama, conflict, scandal, sex.

this election is a reality tv show, haven't you noticed?
so quiz: which better fits reality tv: "pussy" or "sidney blumenthal"?

[Woodsman]

Re: Trump to win?

which better fits reality tv: "pussy" or "sidney blumenthal"?

Old news? Jk, that's just not true. No argument though on our insouciant electorate. But if we're going to entertain this sort of thought, then why not get realistically creative about it?

What if this entire Russian hacking thing is part of something bigger? It's clearly an info op, but who is running it? You say the Russians, but if the standard of evidence is going to go that low, then why stop there? What's to say the information operation isn't being run by the Russians, but by the American politico-military-finance establishment itself? It's certainly easier for them to do it than it would for the Russian cloak and dagger types. Did you ever read "Yankee and Cowboy War"? Did you take anything at all from it?

If we're ready to accept without a scintilla of evidence that the Russian Federation/SVR is targeting the Democratic Party so as to elect the Republican Party nominee, then anything goes. It's just as likely - if not more - that what we're seeing is in effect an operation to prepare the public mind by our own sub rosa powers, so that in the event of a Trump win - especially a big, once in a lifetime Nixon and LBJ-sized majority (60%+) - these establishment figures can call November's election a fraud and lay the blame on the feet of Russia. And then that segues nicely into a provocation, real or tv-generated, that kicks off the long desired kinetic (oh how I hate that newspeak word) operations against Russia in Syria or Ukraine or both.

Or take it one further. Maybe it's not our cloak and dagger boys doing this on behalf of the establishment, but the Israeli's doing it and spoofing the American services to think it's Russia, again to further their geopolitical interests in Syria by letting the Americans and the Russians fight it out on their behalf. Israel has the best hackers in the world in their Unit 8200. Mossad has infiltrated virtually every organization of American life thought to have some use to the interests of Israel. They use our own citizens against us. Again, if we accept the standard of evidence necessary to believe this Russian hack canard, then any of these I posit are just as likely to be the case. More especially, in the case of Israel given their notoriety.

Sounds far fetched but hardly more than the Russians working to get the GOP elected! Look it, you have all the major media reporting this story as if it were fact when it's ether and no one has produced a single piece of evidence, compelling or otherwise, to prove the least of it. If you take the implications in Bernstein's article on Mockingbird seriously, then it's an easy jump to make. I don't expect anyone to give the theory any sort of hearing, but it has no more supporting it than does the theory of Russian hacks. And remember who started the all woo woo talk first, the DNC and HRC.

You asked earlier who was claiming this could be an act of war? Well Hillary is, for starters. And so does the Pentagon.

MAGA! GO TRUMP! JAIL HILLARY! GO TRUMP! MAGA!



MAGA! GO TRUMP! JAIL HILLARY! GO TRUMP! MAGA!

[Milton Kuo]

Re: Trump to win?

we need someone who knows something about hacking. i think it is very, very hard to trace, if even a naif such as myself knows about using tor, i can't imagine what the pros know. so i don't think any such operation would in fact be exposed.

Considering how incredibly incompetent the administrator of HRC's private e-mail server was and the extremely high likelihood that the DNC is too cheap, too crony-istic to hire a skilled infosec specialist, it is impossible to know who hacked the DNC servers if the hackers were skilled state-sponsored actors. I wouldn't be surprised if script-kiddies hacked the DNC's servers.

i don't think stuxnet, e.g., although widely accepted as a joint u.s.- israeli operation, has ever been PROVEN to be such. has it?

I do not believe it has been proven but the complexity of the software and the amount of know-how and effort required to create such a piece of kit makes it very unlikely that it wasn't created by a state entity.

[lakedaemonian]

Re: Trump to win?

What if this entire Russian hacking thing is part of something bigger?

What if the moon is made of cheese? No plan survives first contact with the enemy. And the more complex the plan, the more it fails.

It's like teaching my kids chess. They can eliminate an opponent in 3 moves, but only if the enemy follows the exact templates plan. And that just doesn't happen.

It's clearly an info op, but who is running it? You say the Russians, but if the standard of evidence is going to go that low, then why stop there? What's to say the information operation isn't being run by the Russians, but by the American politico-military-finance establishment itself? It's certainly easier for them to do it than it would for the Russian cloak and dagger types.

This is tin foil hat stuff.

It really is.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...8b3_story.html

Mandiant is the firm that knocked it out of the park with the forensic analysis of APT1(Advanced Persistent Threat 1):

https://www.fireeye.com/content/dam/...pt1-report.pdf

in the form of Chinese PLA IP espionage unit 61398

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLA_Unit_61398

I think I'll take the Occam's razor assessment of Mandiant with a successful track record in cyber forensics over yours, unless you've got experience in cyber?


If we're ready to accept without a scintilla of evidence that the Russian Federation/SVR is targeting the Democratic Party so as to elect the Republican Party nominee, then anything goes. It's just as likely - if not more - that what we're seeing is in effect an operation to prepare the public mind by our own sub rosa powers, so that in the event of a Trump win - especially a big, once in a lifetime Nixon and LBJ-sized majority (60%+) - these establishment figures can call November's election a fraud and lay the blame on the feet of Russia. And then that segues nicely into a provocation, real or tv-generated, that kicks off the long desired kinetic (oh how I hate that newspeak word) operations against Russia in Syria or Ukraine or both.

Or take it one further. Maybe it's not our cloak and dagger boys doing this on behalf of the establishment, but the Israeli's doing it and spoofing the American services to think it's Russia, again to further their geopolitical interests in Syria by letting the Americans and the Russians fight it out on their behalf. Israel has the best hackers in the world in their Unit 8200. Mossad has infiltrated virtually every organization of American life thought to have some use to the interests of Israel. They use our own citizens against us. Again, if we accept the standard of evidence necessary to believe this Russian hack canard, then any of these I posit are just as likely to be the case. More especially, in the case of Israel given their notoriety.

Sounds far fetched but hardly more than the Russians working to get the GOP elected! Look it, you have all the major media reporting this story as if it were fact when it's ether and no one has produced a single piece of evidence, compelling or otherwise, to prove the least of it.

Wow. Far fetched is correct. Right into gordion knot territory wrapped in tin foil.

You demand a level of evidence to convict a murderer when it comes to the Russians, but you're happy to go down the "Mossad is evil and they quite possibly are behind this with a plan of Bond villain complexity" rabbit hole.

Mandiant was acquired by Fire Eye. Fire Eye have In Q Tel(CIA funded arms length VC firm) as an early stage investor with a small stake.

So I'm sure you'll instantly disparage and discount it, despite the multiple arms length involved and countless legal issues if shareholders(who sue for any/all reasons) got a sniff of impropriety.

At least you can maybe use it to weave it into your conspiracy.

-----

That doesn't change the fact that the diverse(including a lot of Hillary and big government deep state haters) info sec community is quite largely and consistently in agreement that Russian cyber ops are in absolute overdrive(and have been for the last couple of years) that run the full spectrum of espionage and sabotage hacking, political disinformation, and political disruption operations in Eastern Europe as well as targeting western countries' perceptions.

Yes, of course it's a two way street and I'd even go so far as to say I'd agree with a rough long term 2/3, 1/3 ratio of political interference by US and Russia respectively as per the professional research I linked earlier.

It is well within the the realm of reason and real possibility Russia would attempt to disrupt the US elections. Especially in light of their behaviour in recent years(since 2007 in Estonia). It passes a very simple sniff test.

I would love to see Israel get smashed with it's hand in the cookie jar( as I am privy first hand to a very real and nasty incident regarding Israeli security services, no comment) but 8200/Mossad/Talpiot involvement is "Bond Silly" in light of the fact that global cyber talent would nail that like a pack of rapid hyenas.

The DNC, Hillary, the mass media, the deep state have little to no influence and control over the global and diverse hacking community with the exception of FBI informants on the dark side.

But when white side security professionals are consistently pointing at Russia and you're not, who is likely to be right and wrong?

What credibility do you have with anything cyber?

I'm just learning and listening to a broad cross section of that community and they're pointing at Russia.

How the hell do you explain that?

Have they all been hypnotised by the CIA?

[Woodsman]

Re: Trump to win?

No conspiracy, Riley. Just a thought experiment. You go low, I go high.

Say, don't you have somebody you need to waterboard or shoot in the face or something? Don't want to be late.

[lakedaemonian]

Re: Trump to win?

we need someone who knows something about hacking. i think it is very, very hard to trace, if even a naif such as myself knows about using tor, i can't imagine what the pros know. so i don't think any such operation would in fact be exposed. i don't think stuxnet, e.g., although widely accepted as a joint u.s.- israeli operation, has ever been PROVEN to be such. has it?

furthermore, the targets were not even u.s. gov't entities, but the dnc, john podesta, etc- where's the act of war? and i suppose you could make the same argument about hillary's PRIVATE server.

did we declare war on north korea when they hacked sony? this stuff is going on every day- the chinese, the russians, the u.s. i'm sure, and even retarded north korea. it's routine.

so i don't think the risk is great at all, while the potential gain might well be - in their eyes at least - enormous. if nothing else it's a massive psyops.

===

Cyber has become THE primary dominant for HUMINT(human intelligence) targeting, primarily through user created and supplied social media content.

OSINT(Open Source Intelligence) has blown up huge with some excellent OSINT crowdsourced teams gathering evidence to counter Russian lies and disinformation, as well as other targets of course.

Cyber is breaking big after nearly a decade since it first really kicked off with geopolitical implications(Russia cyber attacking Estonia in 2007).

Cyber typically falls into several categories:

cyber espionage(very common, ie. China hoovering up western IP like a Borg vacuum cleaner)

cyber sabotage(not really hit its stride, but a few clear examples have occurred, ie STUXNET and Eastern European utilities more recently) This is very real, but very hard. Each cyber "weapon" has to be custom tailored to each target, thus very expensive and very high specificity and risks outing "zero day" exploits that are held in inventory as precious as Tolkien's ring.

cyber information operations(political action by both state and non state actors, this one is going HUGE, it's not just influencing, but disrupting).

Irregular Warfare is the most common form of warfare used by states and non state actors which is back to front with conventional warfare which is actually very uncommon.

Unconventional Warfare is a subset of Irregular Warfare.

Cyber is it's own domain, much like land, sea, air, and space.

But overlaps with the other domains and all types of warfare.
-----

Cyberwire Podcast is an excellent and very frequent resource averaging 15 minutes.

There are many others, but there's only so many hours in the day.
-----

Killing a single human being has gotten much, much easier....but also much, much more expensive.

Example: killing an Iraqi/Afghan paid $50 to emplace a $50 IED with an F15E Strike Eagle costing $100,000 an hour to loiter for 5 hours using a $500,000 precision weapon is a 10,000 to 1 "relative investment battle".

That's nothing short of a road to national financial ruin.

Influencing a single human being has gotten much, much easier.....and also cheaper("Thanks inter webs!")

Why kill someone for a whole lot of money when you can influence them for a whole lot less money(where possible, otherwise kill them per usual)?

[lakedaemonian]

Re: Trump to win?

No conspiracy, Riley. Just a thought experiment. You go low, I go high.

Say, don't you have somebody you need to waterboard or shoot in the face or something? Don't want to be late.

Be careful of that high altitude. Oxygen deprivation leads to all kinds of embarrassing and silly MH17 lapses in judgement.

I guess it's time for me to jump on my CIA Rendition Express Gulfstream to hypnotise all those diverse infosec professionals all around the world and force them to believe the Russian state and proxies are extremely active in aggressive cyber operations.

Because that's about the only way your DNC/Hillary/Deep State conspiracy hack story adds up.

[Woodsman]

Re: Trump to win?

Sure thing, 99. We'll just have to trust you.









MAGA! GO TRUMP! JAIL HILLARY! GO TRUMP! MAGA!

MAGA! GO TRUMP! JAIL HILLARY! GO TRUMP! MAGA!

[vt]

Re: Trump to win?

It's not the Russians. It's the NSA and FBI. They really don't like Clinton.

[Woodsman]

Re: Trump to win?

It's not the Russians. It's the NSA and FBI. They really don't like Clinton.

It is KAOS and that dastardly Count Ludwig Von Siegfried up to his old tricks again.

Missed it by THAT much!