On This Election, Donald Trump and Russian Intervention

A Facebook friend of mine and area resident, one Kent Hartland wrote and posted the following on Facebook today. I thought it worth the time and thought.

The CIA says they have clear evidence Russia is hacking into American servers in an attempt to alter the apparent outcome of a presidential election. Twenty states have also reported evidence of Russia attacking servers in an attempt to overthrow state-wide elections for congress. Yet most folks here seem oblivious or complacent.

If Russia assassinated one of our candidates or launched a strike against us to eliminate the person we chose as our leader, we would all be down at the recruiting station to enlist. But that is what they are doing. The 21st century equivalent of a Regime Change. A political assassination.

No matter what your politics, if you claim to be an American, a patriot, then this should be your line in the sand. Do not facilitate, accept, brush aside or look away from what is currently happening.

Russia has launched a cyber attack on America. Our president has promised a proportional response. Russia is warning it's citizens and America of the growing risk of nuclear war.

Nuclear war.

This from CNN:

"It is now clear that the illegal hack of my personal email account was -- just like the other recent, election-related hacks -- the work of the Russian government," John Podesta said in a statement. "This level of meddling by a foreign power can only be aimed at boosting Donald Trump and should send chills down the spine of all Americans, regardless of political party."

Trump has called on Moscow to hack into Clinton's computers, downplayed criticism of Putin's authoritarian tendencies, tried to suggest that Russia hasn't hacked US systems and promoted foreign policy positions that jibe more closely with Moscow's than Washington's. He's relied on aides with ties to Russia and most recently, quoted an incorrect Russian news report to raise questions about Clinton.

"Russia, are you listening?" Trump said from the stage of a rally, calling for a foreign country to interfere in an election, an unprecedented moment in presidential politics.

Trump has taken foreign policy positions that analysts say would please Russia, declaring in March that he would consider pulling the US out of NATO because it's "obsolete." The 28-member organization, founded in 1949 to defend against the Soviet Union, is the core US-Atlantic security mechanism.

Trump campaign advisers have had ties to Russia. Former campaign chairman Paul Manafort lobbied on behalf of Russian-backed Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovich. Carter Page, described at one point by the campaign as an informal policy advisor, reportedly had investments in Russian gas company Gazprom and has publicly criticized the US in a speech in Moscow.

A Trump security adviser, Lt. General Mike Flynn, the retired head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, attended a December gala for the the state-backed Russia Today television network, placed two seats away from Putin, according to Politico.

Trump's refusal to release his tax returns makes it impossible to get a full sense of his investments and whether he has any in Russia, but he does have business ties to Russians.

Trump has also written about trying to build a Trump property in Moscow since 1987 in his book "The Art of the Deal," signing his most recent deal to build in Moscow in 2013, according to the Washington Post.

The Republican candidate worked with Russian oligarchs to stage the Miss Universe pageant to Moscow in 2013. And his son Trump Jr told a real estate investment conference in 2008 that "Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets," adding that they "see a lot of money pouring in from Russia."

"I've been there many times, I've spent quite a bit of time in Moscow looking at deals," Trump Jr. said.

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If Russia doesn't want Clinton or the Democrats in power and DOES want Trump and the GOP in, that should tell you who to vote for.

Stand. Take a strong and immediate stand against these attacks. Russia cannot see a divided America, where some of the citizens are cool with Russia literally trying to overrule our choices for elected officials.

Back to me:

I don't think this, he, is overstating the situations. Seems like good to great food for thought.

Additionally, this story broke yesterday.

Trump's refusal to accept intelligence briefing on Russia stuns experts

I hope this is all only fascinating.

Is World War III being waged right now?

You know how they say people are usually always fighting the "last war" and that that's also why they usually lose? News out this morning tells of a "State actor seen behind 'enormous' wave of cyber attacks" BOSTON (Reuters) - Security experts have discovered the biggest series of cyber attacks to date, involving the infiltration of the networks of 72 organizations including the United Nations, governments and companies around the world. Security company McAfee, which uncovered the intrusions, said it believed there was one "state actor" behind the attacks but declined to name it, though one security expert who has been briefed on the hacking said the evidence points to China. The long list of victims in the five-year campaign include the governments of the United States, Taiwan, India, South Korea, Vietnam and Canada; the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN); the International Olympic Committee (IOC); the World Anti-Doping Agency; and an array of companies, from defense contractors to high-tech enterprises. The thing is, if we are in the midst of WWIII, we won't know until after someone's conquered. Sobering thought, no? Link: http://news.yahoo.com/biggest-ever-series-cyber-attacks-uncovered-u-n-040749882.html

Thoughts on TV last evening

---Why are so many (all?) of the shows for the Fox Channel "Viewer Discretion Advised"?  House?  Really?

---Why would ANYONE want a "Windows phone"?  Aren't there enough problems with the software in the form of viruses and bugs that you'd be thrilled to NOT have an electronic gadget that was based on Microsoft's Windows program?

Really.  I don't get it.  Either one.

The biggest--and most overlooked--event of the last year, bar none

Submittal:  The Stuxnet virus was the single-biggest event of the last year, barring anything even worse that wasn't actually released to the public's attention.


First, what Stuxnet is, from Wikipedia:  Stuxnet is a computer worm targeted at industrial equipment^[1] that was first discovered in July 2010 by VirusBlokAda, a security firm based in Belarus. While it is not the first time that hackers have targeted industrial systems,^[2] it is the first discovered worm that spies on and reprograms industrial systems,^[3] and the first to include a programmable logic controller (PLC) rootkit.^[4][5] It was specifically written to attack Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems used to control and monitor industrial processes.^[6] Stuxnet includes the capability to reprogram the PLCs and hide its changes.^[7]


Next, then, on the ramifications of this new "computer worm":


Russian digital security company Kaspersky Labs released a statement that described Stuxnet as "a working and fearsome prototype of a cyber-weapon that will lead to the creation of a new arms race in the world."


Perhaps the ultimate tribute to it was by a computer security expert who called its advent—and the swath of destruction it cut through Iran's nuclear program—"an Oppenheimer moment" in the history of hacking. A moment in which malware viruses had made the leap from troublemaking but controllable depredations to potentially unstoppable, history-changing weapons, their capabilities miles ahead of their predecessors', the way the first nuclear weapon Oppenheimer built at Los Alamos left mere TNT in its wake and shadowed the world we live in with the threat of cataclysmic extinction.


Computer-security experts who have handled the most complex "malware" virus infections are agog.


More:


But an Oppenheimer moment means more than a quantum leap in the power and deceptiveness of the virus. It means dramatic geopolitical ramifications. If the original Oppenheimer moment may have guaranteed that WWII would end with the horrific Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombings, the Stuxnet Oppenheimer moment may have bequeathed us an unexpected last-minute reprieve from what seemed like a potential outbreak of nuclear warfare. Consider the fact that Stuxnet disabled Iran's key nuclear facilities (and infected an estimated 60,000 of its computers) just at the moment whenthe Israelis were giving out signals that they were prepared to use air strikes on Iranian facilities, using whatever weapons it took (and, of course, they have an undeclared nuclear arsenal), to prevent Iran from getting the bomb. Whatever you think of the Israeli position, there was little doubt they'd do it if there were no other options, and in doing so risk not only Iranian retaliation but nuclear retaliation from Iranian sympathizers in Pakistan's military, which all-too-loosely controls Pakistan's "Islamic bomb," the generic term for the 60 to 100 nuclear warheads the Pakistanis possess.


Finally, on what nearly happened last year, it is thought:


"The world was on the verge of a regional nuclear war with unknowable further consequences. 


Until Stuxnet did its work."  --Ron Rosenbaum, from his article "Stuxnet and the triumph of hacker culture", Slate Magazine


This last quote, above,  is, by itself, pretty remarkable, I think, for what it suggests we came perilously close to--I wonder how many other such events we've almost had--but what's also remarkable is the term "regional nuclear war".  Yeah, right.  As if.  There would--will?--be nothing "regional" about a nuclear war, anywhere in the world, but particularly if it begins in the Middle East, let there be no doubt.


Apparently the Middle East, at least, nearly literally blew up in nuclear war last year, folks.  


The good news is that nuclear war was averted.


The bad news is that now a "pandora's box" of computer virus "missiles" and all that entails are now released on the world.


Let's hope it's all in humankind's favor... forever and ever, amen.




Have a good weekend, y'all.


Try to think happy thoughts.


Link to original article:  http://www.slate.com/id/2281938/?from=rss
Link to definition of Stuxnet:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet

The Stuxnet computer worm source?

It's beginning to look as though the Americans and Israelis may be responsible for it after all, as suspected:

Israeli Test on Worm Called Crucial in Iran Nuclear Delay

By WILLIAM J. BROAD, JOHN MARKOFF and DAVID E. SANGER

The Dimona complex in the Negev desert is famous as the heavily guarded heart of Israel’s never-acknowledged nuclear arms program, where neat rows of factories make atomic fuel for the arsenal.

Over the past two years, according to intelligence and military experts familiar with its operations, Dimona has taken on a new, equally secret role — as a critical testing ground in a joint American and Israeli effort to undermine Iran’s efforts to make a bomb of its own,

I think the question may be whether we opened yet another "pandora's box" on humanity and, too, whether it was an inevitability.  It seems as though it likely was (inevitable).


Link:  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/16/world/middleeast/16stuxnet.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print

Important article on "Stuxnet and the Year of the Geek"

--“I think Stuxnet the prime example of the modern, targeted cybermunition,” says (Rodney) Joffe. “It’s capable of being unleashed anonymously somewhere in the world, finding its way to a highly specific set of targets and then destroying them without risk to the attacker. In this case, if generating systems were to explode, people could easily be hurt in the process. It's a very short step for there to be loss of life in the future.” --Rodney Joffe, computer security specialist --“There's a blurring of the lines between criminals and nation states. It’s no longer easy or even important to differentiate between a criminal attack and a politically motivated attack, because more and more they're going to blur. The political attacks will employ criminals to develop and generate them.” --Rodney Joffe; --Last week, the cascade of cyberthreats led Gen. Keith B. Alexander, the military’s new commander of cyberwarfare operations, to call for a secure computer network to protect critical civilian and government infrastructure from attack. Back to me: Notice how this has gone over from private, commercial security issues, problems and people to a military general? Also, I should think this may well mean the end of Microsoft's ubiquity. --“I don't consider myself to be an evil person at all—but I will tell you that if it was me and I was evil, I absolutely know how I could kill hundreds of thousands of people, and cause damage to millions; and if I could do that, why would I possibly think that a world that could give us Hitler couldn’t give us someone else who would make that same decision?” --Rodney Joffe. Herein lies your Sci-fi movie---if we last that long as functioning nation-states. The entire article is here: http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-09-27/stuxnet-and-the-year-of-geek-terror/