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Former FBI Director Predicts Russian Hackers Will Interfere With More Elections (nytimes.com)
An anonymous reader quotes the New York Times:
James B. Comey, the former director of the F.B.I., testified that the Russians had not only intervened in last year's election, but would try to do it again... Russian hackers did not just breach Democratic email accounts; according to Mr. Comey, they orchestrated a "massive effort" targeting hundreds of -- and possibly more than 1,000 -- American government and private organizations since 2015... As F.B.I. director, he supervised counterintelligence investigations into computer break-ins that harvested emails from the State Department and the White House, and that penetrated deep into the computer systems of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Yet President Barack Obama's administration did not want to publicize those intrusions, choosing to handle them diplomatically -- perhaps because at the time they looked more like classic espionage than an effort to manipulate American politics...
Graham Allison, a longtime Russia scholar at Harvard, said, "Russia's cyberintrusion into the recent presidential election signals the beginning of what is almost sure to be an intensified cyberwar in which both they -- and we -- seek to participate in picking the leaders of an adversary." The difference, he added, is that American elections are generally fair, so "we are much more vulnerable to such manipulation than is Russia," where results are often preordained... Similar warnings have been issued by others in the intelligence community, led by James R. Clapper Jr., who has sounded the alarm since retiring in January as director of national intelligence. "I don't think people have their head around the scope of what the Russians are doing," he said recently.
Daniel Fried, a career diplomat who oversaw sanctions imposed on Russia before retiring this year, told the Times that Comey "was spot-on right that Russia is coming after us, but not just the U.S., but the free world in general. And we need to take this seriously."
Graham Allison, a longtime Russia scholar at Harvard, said, "Russia's cyberintrusion into the recent presidential election signals the beginning of what is almost sure to be an intensified cyberwar in which both they -- and we -- seek to participate in picking the leaders of an adversary." The difference, he added, is that American elections are generally fair, so "we are much more vulnerable to such manipulation than is Russia," where results are often preordained... Similar warnings have been issued by others in the intelligence community, led by James R. Clapper Jr., who has sounded the alarm since retiring in January as director of national intelligence. "I don't think people have their head around the scope of what the Russians are doing," he said recently.
Daniel Fried, a career diplomat who oversaw sanctions imposed on Russia before retiring this year, told the Times that Comey "was spot-on right that Russia is coming after us, but not just the U.S., but the free world in general. And we need to take this seriously."
Comey who Democrat's some how loved after he got fired did same thing many times, intelligence on person looking to commit an attack yet did nothing. Fort hood, Pulse night club, San Bernadine, Boston marathon. All those they had intel on person that committed the attack yet nothing was done.
Some of you seem like you don't even read the news you comment on. Obama expelled 35 Russian diplomats when he found out, closed the embassies they were housed in and accused them of using the premises the conduct espionage.
There has been a few Democrat's even one on the senate intelligence committee that came out and there is NOTHING. He said there is a lot of smoke but no gun. If i remember right as well that "company" that examined the DNC servers even back tracked on their claims it was russia.
As an outsider i'm quite shocked that this isn't a bigger scandal than it is in the US. I think the only reason is a group of people are in flat-out denial when it comes to anything that might tarnish Trump's image.
This is Cold War shit all over again.
it's almost as if times can change, or that hindsight is 20/20. See, this is the trouble with the Right. Zero ability to adapt to change. If Russia was an Ally yesterday they're always gonna be an ally, right? Oh, and no shades of grey. Russia's either balls to the walls evil and needs to be exterminated or our ardent friend.
As for Iran, they were well on their way to modernizing before we put a bunch of religious nuts in power. There's pictures of girls in Iran wearing the sorts of skirts that wouldn't have been out of place in 1960s America before we screwed with 'em. And don't get me started on the shit we do and did in South America so Code can sell cheap sugar water.
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Intervened? I missed that, but wikileaks reported on US espionage on the French elections.
However , here is an article "The long history of the U.S. interfering with elections elsewhere". Is Washington Post MSM enough for you?
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
Perhaps it would help if the US admitted past CIA corruption of democracy and apologised.
Nutsign detected: vague non-specific claims with "Google it" instead of providing links to corroborating evidence.
No. Some of us are old enough to remember and its only the "kiddies" who need to Google things. Some of the top links for Clinton and Chinese donations.
... According to congressional investigators, Ng laundered the illegal campaign donations through a close Clinton associate in Arkansas named Charlie Trie during the 1996 election."
"The 1996 United States campaign finance controversy was an alleged effort by the People's Republic of China to influence domestic American politics prior to and during the Clinton administration and also involved the fund-raising practices of the administration itself.
While questions regarding the U.S. Democratic Party's fund-raising activities first arose over a Los Angeles Times article published on September 21, 1996, China's alleged role in the affair first gained public attention when Bob Woodward and Brian Duffy of The Washington Post published a story stating that a United States Department of Justice investigation into the fund-raising activities had uncovered evidence that agents of China sought to direct contributions from foreign sources to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) before the 1996 presidential campaign. The journalists wrote that intelligence information had shown the Chinese embassy in Washington, D.C. was used for coordinating contributions to the DNC in violation of United States law forbidding non-American citizens or non-permanent residents from giving monetary donations to United States politicians and political parties. A Republican investigator of the controversy stated the Chinese plan targeted both presidential and congressional United States elections, while Democratic Senators said the evidence showed the Chinese targeted only congressional elections. The government of the People's Republic of China denied all accusations."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe invited the Chinese businessman whose donations to him have been named as a focus of Justice Department investigators to a 2013 fundraiser at Hillary Clinton's personal Washington, D.C., residence. Wang Wenliang, a Chinese national with U.S. permanent residency, briefly shook Clinton’s hand at the Sept. 30 event, a representative for Wang told TIME. An American company controlled by Wang made a $60,000 contribution to McAuliffe’s campaign three weeks before the fundraiser. Less than a month later, a separate Wang company pledged $500,000 to the Clinton Foundation, the first of several donations that eventually totaled $2 million."
http://time.com/4348675/terry-...
"Ng, a Macau businessman with ties to the Chinese government, was accused of funneling over $1 million in illegal foreign donations to support Bill Clinton's reelection campaign in 1996. "Ng, a Macau businessman with ties to the Chinese government, was accused of funneling over $1 million in illegal foreign donations to support Bill Clinton's reelection campaign in 1996
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new...
And that's all they talk about, to distract from the heart of the matter. It's nothing but a 'shoot the messenger' campaign. The DNC and Clinton were behaving in an unethical manner, and the Russians leaked the evidence of it. The underlying unethical behavior should be the focus. And yes, the retort is that they only leaked information on one party, but a) that doesn't absolve the DNC and HRC of what they did, b) What they did pales in comparison to what Trump openly did anyway, and c) They almost certainly alienated even more voters who realized a) and b) and watched them try to scream about Russians stealing the election anyway. And no, I'm not a Trump supporter, because Clinton was still the lesser evil by miles. Thinking that anyone who says anyone other than Russia was at fault is automatically a Trump supporter is another thing that's just alienating even more people so that they stay home and cost the Dems the midterms and next presidency too.
I agree, the Democrats behaved unethically but quite frankly, having taken a look at Donald Trump's extensive record of unethical behaviour (excluding the hullabaloo about Russia), the Democrats look like a bunch of Eagle Scouts by comparison.
China is only a scary boogieman if you ignore all of the serious internal issues they have. They're undergoing a socioeconomic change the pace and scale of of which the world has never seen before. That can't continue if they need to divert resources to a war. It's not clear if it can continue anyway, given the serious raw material and energy shortages they have.
A million plus man army is indeed staggering, but china has 1.3 billion people that are increasingly exposed to and embracing the standards of living in the west. Hundreds of thousands, now perhaps millions of young people educated in the west, and who saw the freedom the west has. While I don't discount that China has stolen vast amounts of tech from the west, and is using this to make dramatic leaps forward, their current struggle is to take care of themselves. More and more goods are not being shipped to the west, and are instead kept for their own populace.
The major issue is this rapid pace is slowing down, and a half billion Chinese still live in abject poverty. Large swathes of China still aren't electrified. China's rapid growth is not impacting half of the country, and that's causing a lot of unrest. As China's manufacturing growth slows and exports continue to drop off, that's going to really impact their economy. None of this is conducive to them being a world military power. Regional? Sure. But definitely not one that's going to go out and conquest. That's just a fever dream.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
Roger Stone, Trump's best friend, literally tweeted advanced notice of the Guccifer 2.0 (Russian Intelligence) hack. I'm shocked at the absence of knowledge on this site nowadays. Yes Russia just wants influence, Russia just wants chaos. But They also co-opted the Trump campaign.
I just said this here last week: The Russians post comments on Finnish news sites and forums in Finnish. If they have the time and the resources to do propaganda on sites with readerships that are a tiny tiny fraction of /.'s, there's absolutely no doubt that they're actively posting and moderating here as well.
The way they operate in the social media is by having vast amounts of bots/fake accounts, usually with western names. Then they push out articles through their own media corps directly (RT etc,) or via 3rd parties like different conspiracy sites and communities that then share these on FB & al. Then they use the bots to 'moderate' these post for high visibility with likes and shares. In here, probably some of their people just gather mod points and then other write posts which the modders then vote up.
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead
I've always wondered, if the Iraqi people had the choice to go back in time and keep Saddam and his progeny instead of what they have now, would they? At the time they seemed very happy when he was removed.
How is this even a question?
“...I am one of the political prisoners who was arrested in 1988, but life was better in Saddam’s days, compared with now.”...
If they had such an option they would probably want to return to a point in time to prevent Bremer from disbanding the Iraqi army and delaying Iraqi's from taking control of the government.
The problem with Iraq wasn't really the invasion, it was the occupation that followed.
No, the biggest problem was the invasion. I'm not saying you're completely wrong. But to pick out one mistake out of so many is misleading. To begin with the war was based on a lie. So if not WMD, what were the real reasons for going to war? If Jack shoots himself with a gun, then doesn't dress the wound properly, the reason Jack died was because he shot himself.
But anyway, after the invasion, Col. Ted Spain was the guy in charge of law & order, he seems like a great resource to list all the mistakes:
This mindless parroting needs to be put on ice. Trump's team has been under a counterintelligence investigation, but not Trump himself. That's what his comment was about.
There is also, now, the collusion investigation, which Mueller has taken over. That is what Trump is being investigated for. Believe it or not, our intelligence community can handle more than one investigation at once. And I wouldn't expect any of them to tell the subject of their investigation that they're under investigation.
All that said, when people talk about what they're investigation and it's in a public forum, don't expect know everything. I never make this assumption, and none of us should either imho - we don't have security clearance. Still, if you want to cling to that line about 'Comey told Trump 3 times', well, go ahead - it doesn't mean anything and Beetlejuice ain't comin' either.