Slashdot Mirror
The US Waged A Secret Cyber War Against North Korean Missiles (tampabay.com)
Early Monday morning North Korea fired four ballistic missiles into the sea of Japan, lending a new urgency to Saturday's revelation from the New York Times of America's "secret cyberwar" with North Korea. Slashdot reader Frosty Piss summarizes its suspected effects succinctly: "Soon after ex-President Obama ordered the secret program three years ago, North Korean missiles began exploding, veering off course, or crashing into the sea."
The Times reports the program was started when Obama "concluded that the $300 billion spent since the Eisenhower era on traditional anti-missile systems...had failed the core purpose of protecting the continental United States," with tests of missile interceptors showing an overall failure rate of at least 56%. But after interviewing government officials, the Times concludes that the U.S. "still does not have the ability to effectively counter the North Korean nuclear and missile programs." Options include escalating the cyber and electronic warfare, trying to negotiate a freeze, asking the Chinese to cut off trade and support, or preparing for direct missile strikes on the launch sites, "which Obama also considered, but there is little chance of hitting every target." The New York Times article concludes: The White House is looking at military options against North Korea, a senior Trump administration official said. Putting U.S. tactical nuclear weapons back in South Korea -- they were withdrawn a quarter-century ago -- is also under consideration, even if that step could accelerate an arms race with the North.
The Times reports the program was started when Obama "concluded that the $300 billion spent since the Eisenhower era on traditional anti-missile systems...had failed the core purpose of protecting the continental United States," with tests of missile interceptors showing an overall failure rate of at least 56%. But after interviewing government officials, the Times concludes that the U.S. "still does not have the ability to effectively counter the North Korean nuclear and missile programs." Options include escalating the cyber and electronic warfare, trying to negotiate a freeze, asking the Chinese to cut off trade and support, or preparing for direct missile strikes on the launch sites, "which Obama also considered, but there is little chance of hitting every target." The New York Times article concludes: The White House is looking at military options against North Korea, a senior Trump administration official said. Putting U.S. tactical nuclear weapons back in South Korea -- they were withdrawn a quarter-century ago -- is also under consideration, even if that step could accelerate an arms race with the North.
Leaking this to make Obama look good was not a good idea.
North Korea appears to be super-unstable right now. The chubby one can't get along with his Chinese masters, and lacks a good understanding of what is important. His underlings don't respect him, understand that the outside world is better (at least, the high-ranking ones do). He keeps them in line by killing them but that doesn't work for very long.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
America won't invade, if anything they'd strike with Tomahawks and airstrikes. And if you mean literally China will try nuking American forces, then that's pretty unlikely as I am sure the leaders in Beijing understand quite well that if they ever did do that, they'd have approximately 30 minutes left to enjoy breathing. Probably more like 10 though, as I'm sure if things were hot enough in the Korean Peninsula to warrant airstrikes and Tomahawks, the US Navy would have a couple of SLBMs in the area to pop out short quick nuke strikes if things go to hell.
In other words, no. They won't. Not a lot of people are fans of the US's military industrial complex, but few people with any sense would deny that same military is absolutely capable of country/world ending retaliation if it goes that far.
Unfortunately top officials of USA nor NK do not fall into that category.
Yes, the Russian sources were named in the (unredacted) memos, they were trusted sources known to US and UK security services, some of the stuff was precient, e.g. Flynn was being courted by Putin in the memos dated back in August, and yet Flynn wasn't even on the Trump shortlist till December. Lots of names, all of them became later involved in Trump leadership.
More to the point, it passes the common sense test. So much so, that I cannot imagine any scenario where Trump didn't have a sex party in a room opposite the FSB headquarters without FSB recording it for future use.
Trump's obsession with Obama is also clearly evident now (look at his flaky Obama tweets of the last few days), but even at his inauguration, the inauguration cake shows the obsession.
Cohen, it's now clear met with the Russian ambassador (just before the GOP removed weapons for Ukraine from their platform due to Trump lobbying), and he's also revealed to have carried a peace plan to Flynn (the one where Russia would lease Crimea from Ukraine and Ukraine would give up rights to it.). So Cohen listed in the memos matches the current known state of Cohen. i.e. As revelations have come out, the memos becomes more verified.
Sources like [redacted *ex* FSB agent] match the profile of people arrested in Moscow. Which suggests: a) co-incidence, b) Trump team passing names over, c) Other. I think, if those agents are US intelligence sources, then we're looking at b) due to the timing of the arrests, shortly after Trump gets access to the unredacted memo. If they're not, we're looking at a) co-incidental timing. If you look at the misinformation coming from Moscow, b) looks strong (Moscow leaked a claim that it was from an old case 7 years ago... which doesn't seem likely.).
Is "alpha bank' spelled wrong? That was the key claim point, 'alfa' bank is actually the Russian word for the greek letter alpha. So no, it's exactly how I'd expect a Russian focussed observer to translate - (does Slashdot supports unicode yet??).
So yeh, I looked at it, and it passes Occams Razor and I think it's real and Trump is genuinely a puppet and not just an incompetent leader.
"He's immensely scrutinized already."
So you have his taxes yet? Or the Trump co accounts? The missing millions in profit from the Scottish golf course he claimed... did you find them? The contracts separating him from his business, that big pile of paper at the press conference, have you had a look? Has the ethics committee had a look? No?
Do you think all those secrets can stay secret?
I don't think Trump will be impeached, I think he will implode from the scruitiny.
I suggest to any interested parties that they read Victor Cha's book "The Impossible State: North Korea, Past and Future". Cha worked for a lot of different US administrations in dealing with North Korea and having actually been there and participated in negotiations, he has an insider's look at things.
Basically, China has more influence than they are willing to use, but not as much as outsiders think. China paid a real price in blood to defend the North in the Korean War. One of Mao's own sons was killed in the conflict, although if you look up the information about this, you may realize that he put himself in jeopardy when it happened. China seems to have used what I will call a brute force approach to the war after entering it, but simply throwing huge amounts of soldiers into battle and suffering horrific casualties, but winning enough ground to push UN forces back about to the current dividing line. Even though the vast majority of the Chinese Communist Party leadership either were kids when this happened or not born yet, the CCP does still like to bring this up. They still drill into school children in China about how Mao himself lost a son in the conflict.
The Soviet Union and China had been vying for position and influence in North Korea and Kim Il Sung was a master of playing them off each other. In fact, the whole reason they have nuclear weapons is because the Soviet Union gave them their reactors and the technical know-how that led to them developing the weapon. When the Soviet Union collapsed, Boris Yeltsin immediately cut off all aid to North Korea, leaving China to look around and sort of say "What just happened?" China picked up the slack in terms of providing aid. Some of this is because of the shared legacy of the Korean War. A lot of it is that China benefits big time from North Korea's existence. North Korea has a lot of rare earth deposits which China gets at a huge discount for helping them. And as North Korea borders a Chinese province with a very large ethnic Korean population (China took it by force from an old Korean kingdom almost 800 years ago), China fears that if the North Korean government collapses, there will be a humanitarian crisis and tons of illegal immigrants will flee into China in desperation. China is telling the truth when they say they want stability in the peninsula and when they say they want it denuclearized, but China sees the status quo as totally in their favor and views all changes as bad outcomes for China, so there are real limits as how far they will push things. Here's what China fears if North Korea collapses.
1) A huge influx of refugees will cross the border, causing China to have to spend large amounts of resources to feed and house them and it will take away from using these resources to keep their own population in check.
2) International aid organizations will likely demand access to China to help, which China doesn't want.
3) North Korea's nuclear weapons could end up in South Korea's hands, which China doesn't want.
4) A united Korea would definitely be a US ally. It could be that instead of the US leaving, that the US ends up having military bases in the former North Korea and thus are right on China's doorstep.
5) China will no longer get North Korean rare earths at a bargain price. In fact, there may be so much resentment towards China for helping to prop up the North Korean government that those rare earths go anywhere but China.
China realizes that eventually the North Korean state will collapse. But they hope to push that date as far into the future as possible as, like I said, they view all post-North Korean outcomes as very bad for them. Note too that China is very good at the duplicity game of telling outside countries that they need to do something which China itself is unwilling to do. I get that they don't like THADD going to South Korea, and personally I think that sending it there should never have been made public, but their lack of interest in really turning the screws on North Korea has led to this and they seem unwilling to accept their own responsibility here.