CYBER-WAR AND CYBER ATTACKS ON SAUDI ARAMCO?

Over the past few weeks I've been preoccupied in many blogs on this site with the idea that there is a covert geopolitical conflict shaping up between the West, or, to put it more accurately, the Anglo-American oligarchs, and the "East," terms which, especially in the latter case, seem increasingly irrelevant and inaccurate, for the "East" now represents a growing bloc of nations  - not just Russia and China - that have, in the phrase, simple "Had it" with American, and to a lesser extent, British and NATO heavy-handedness in dealing with the rest of the world. In a way, as I sit here composing this blog on a beautiful rainy day(I simply do not like sunshine), I wish I was back in Oxford, sitting in the Union Society bar during a rain, and sounding out the views of my British friends in the Labour and Conservative parties on what they think is going on, or, for that matter, able to hop the train to London, and find out from my non-political friends in that sprawling city, what theirreaction is to all of this, if they, as British subjects, have the same sense of unease and the same growing frustration with this Anglo-American elite, as I and my friends on this side of the puddle. I suspect, recalling the many and warmly hospitable friends in Great Britain that I made, that they do, and I suspect that, as here in the USA, they cross party-political and socio-economic class and professional lines.

In any case, this new geopolitical warfare is, I have been arguing, perhaps with less success then more, is being waged covertly, via a variety of "soft" forms of warfare that allow its perpetrators to maintain plausible deniability as the culprits. Indeed, I have advanced the scenario that 9/11 itself, contrary to the views of most in the 9/11 truth movement, was at its deepest level an external operation penetrating an internal one, and that there was another principal on stage than the usual LIHOP(Let it Happen on Purpose) or MIHOP (Made it happen on purpose) parade of neo-cons and rogue elements within the U.S. I have argued that the technologies apparently in evidence at least with respect to the Twin Towers collapse were so far outside the inventory of any of the suggested principals that the deepest player had access to technologies that even the LIHOP and MIHOP crowds would be envious.

Well, interestingly enough, Mr. D.W. in the United Kingdom sent me this article, and it would appear to confirm, at first glance, that this covert war is heating up:

Connecting the Dots After Cyberattack on Saudi Aramco

I can think of a few reasons why this attack may be a "false flag" attack, originating from within the corridors of Western power itself, and I can think of equally plausible reasons why this attack may be a genuinely external attack. A few days ago I pointed out that then Russian President Dmitri Medvedev had ordered that Russia beef up its cyber warfare capability. Doubtless the order followed the actual efforts to do so, a typical procedure in more authoritarian societies. We need only recall that Hitler gave the formal order to develop the atom bomb and the V-2 rocket long after the formal research projects were under way.

It is the geopolitical context of the moment, however, that makes me suspect this is a genuinely external attack, and though my suspicions would be to entertain Russia and/or CHina as the ultimate enablers, rest assured, the placing of an agent within Suadi Aramco, will be via means of at least one, if not many more, cut outs, and that it would be very difficult to trace back to one of those two countries. Even if Western intelligence services were able to do so - which ultimately they would be - nothing, really, publicly could be done with that information, since to disclose it would be perhaps to reveal assets in place in those countries that the West would not wish to see compromised.

The placing of such an agent with a chestful of computer viruses would be a message in another way, and for this reason, I suspect Russia: A few days ago I blogged about the Farewell case, the famous French mole inside the KGB, Col. Vladimir Ippolitovitch Vetrov, who facilitated the transfer of bugged software into the Soviet Union, software which was subsequently used to cause and immense explosion in a Soviet gas pipeline. It would be Russia's little way of saying "two can play this game."

Let us recall the implications of this: if the USA can sponsor "democratic spontaneous uprisings" against Putin, and covertly fund and organize the same, then, by the same token, internal cynicism within the USA and UK can be tapped into, and manipulated, by foreign powers.

This is another way of saying, folks, that the "war on terrorism" rhetoric of our fearless Fuehreren may soon be replaced by a much more ominous and McCarthyite type of rhetoric: "Russian sympathizer" or "Chinese sympathizer." Indeed, I'm willing to bet on it.

See you on the flip side.