Given yesterday's blog about the most recent explosion of a chemical plant in China and the inevitable speculations about covert activities that it raises, I thought, in that context, that the following article, shared by Mr. S.D., was highly significant, and deserved some commentary:
Russia and China could be 'making it impossible for the US to hide' its intelligence activities
Let's look at a few crucial paragraphs:
The intelligence community fears that sort of a database could be used to identify, profile, track, and potentially blackmail or recruit US intelligence operatives around the world.
Digital analysis of the data can reveal "who is an intelligence officer, who travels where, when, who's got financial difficulties, who's got medical issues, [to] put together a common picture," William Evanina, the top counterintelligence official for the US intelligence community, told the Times.
In recent months, hackers linked to the Chinese government have stolen data on millions of Americans via the US Office of Personnel Management, which holds US security clearance background checks; the health-insurance giant Anthem; and two major airlines, United and American.
And towards the end of the article, this:
Still, "the combination of information [the hackers] obtained from OPM with the travel information they now have from United [Airlines] is hugely powerful" for the Chinese, Aitel told Business Insider last month, "and it will make the kind of work the CIA does much more difficult."
Aitel noted that the hackers' breach of United Airlines was especially significant, as it's the main airline in and out of Washington, D.C.'s Dulles International — the nearest international airport to the CIA's headquarters in Langley, Virginia.
"Every CIA employee and visitor coming from abroad flies in and out of Dulles, and chances are they're flying United," Aitel told Business Insider.
"Cross-referencing names contained in the OPM, IRS, and other caches would expose identities of US personnel working abroad under commercial or diplomatic cover," Robert Caruso, a former US Navy special security officer who has worked in security at the US State and Defense departments, told Business Insider via email.(emphasis added)
"We need to assume China has hacked every database" at this point, Aitel said. "Anything China competes with, they hack first. Economic sanctions is the obvious response, and it's long overdue."(emphasis addded)
Adding all this up, and one has a definite cyber-warfare scenario that is taking place: American meddling in the Ukraine, countered by Russian hacking; Chinese devaluations of the yuan, possible American covert responses in blowing up CHinese industrial plants, Chinese response in hacking a variety of databases that could, upon analysis, identify likely American covert operatives, followed by American calls for economic sanctions on China.
Stop and ponder that last one, for a moment, and the huge implications it might have. For one thing, you can forget - at least momentarily - all those cheap (and cheaply made) Chinese goods at Walmart-Wally World. Wally World might, indeed, be forced back on the philosophy of its founder, Sam Walton, who wanted (for a time at least) to carry nothing but American manufactured goods. At the minimum, it would mean a huge loss of income for China, and, if carried out over a prolonged time, could lead to a re-industrialization of the West as manufacturing returned home, or, alternatively, pulled out of CHina and went elsewhere, like Africa. It would also, inevitably, lead to Chinese retaliation of some sort, perhaps an even more massive sell-off of US sovereign securities than we have seen thus far, or perhaps another devaluation of the yuan. It would certainly lead to stepped up Chinese cyber-espionage. Additionally, such actions would place the ball firmaly in Europe's court, and a choice would have to be made, one with long term implications: choose the devil you know (the USA), or the devil you don't (China and the east). THe short term prospects would favor the one you know; the longer term prospects, the one you don't.
But it's the cyber-warfare aspects of this that most intrigue me. Clearly, China and Russia have built up their cyber-espionage capabilities, and are choosing the vulnerable "soft targets" such as the Office of Personnel Management, the Pentagon email system, airline manifests. But this suggests inevitably that the reall capabilities against hard and "secure" targets, like the NSA's system, the NAtional Reconnaissance Office's system, and so on, might be better than imagine, but that these capabilities will not be revealed until the game goes "warm" if not "hot." So why would either Russia or China risk even the minimum revelations of their capabilties that we've already seen?
The answer reveals itself as soon as the question is asked: it's because, from their point of view, the war has already gone "warm" (the Ukraine) if not "hot"(the chemicals plants explosions), and the identification of those covert operatives' networks is now, for them, a matter of life and death and therefore of their national security. Additionally, and more importantly, it allows the identification of counterespionage capabilities, capabilities that would have to be known in detail, if one were contemplating covert operations of one's one.
After all, and as I've said many times, two can play the covert operations, color revolution game, and if this high octane reading of the tea leaves is correct, then China and Russia might be getting ready to play it. And in a digital world, the safest thing remains analogue. Perhaps this is why they're not going "cashless" and buying so much gold?
See you on the flip side...
Identifying covert operatives would be useful but good luck trying to blackmail any US intelligence agent. Most traditional blackmail material is considered a badge of honor today– closet homosexual, transvestite, drug abuser, spy for a foreign ally, pedophile and even child murderer are no longer transgressions in DC but instead make you part of the club.
I suspect our oligarchs may be fishing around for some kind of excuse to impose sanctions on China in order to turn up the heat on their oligarchs a bit more. But I’m sure the American dollar store lobby and the adult s*x toy industry may have something to say about that as they rely heavily on Chinese manufacturing for their products. ( I couldn’t even imagine the bevy of sleaze that would make up a dollar store lobby.) Imagine an empty dollar store? What would people do if they didn’t have such useless crap to buy? I guess the dollar stores still could sell their stock of ten year old food items. Most of that must still be made in the US. But if people stopped going to the dollar stores, the medical industry would start to suffer as the cold and flu germs which love to fester in these filthy places under their fluorescent grow lights would not spread into the populous so easily. So the hospitals may also have to oppose sanctions as well. The only big winner in this scenario would be the American landscape, if the Dollar store blight was halted and even reversed.
Wasn’t the main intel gathering source in WWII for the US in Europe the insurance agents throughout Europe?
William Engdahl has a new article, “The Great Stock Crash-Chinese Leaders Ignore Lessons of Wall Street At A Peril”.
http://williamengdahl.com/
This surprises me. Of all those interpreting the shenanigans of the Weasels of Wall Street, I thought he didn’t believe in the “market”. As the ups & downs are controlled by the circulation of money into the real economy. Turn of the spigot[Bank Credit} and Pesto! you have an engineered crash. 1929 was engineered. Then they bought up established businesses on the cheap and turn on the spigots and Pesto! they were financial geniuses[rats to those in the know].
Fast forward to today’s explosions in the markets and chemicals factories and Presto! it’s engineered. Both are using levers of hidden power, operating on known knowns, with televised “Market reactions backed by established historical precedence’. And those explosions are induced by Chinese “agents in place”[probably in the financial/political/military sectors]. Just your spy vs spy classic games, with all the up-to-date magic illusions of technology.
The Russioans/Chines know it. And like Dr. Farrell says/two can play at this game. Of course, two is a metaphor; as the game is being played by too many, even when you have the all-seeing-eyes of total surveillance with beaucoup upgraded 2001 HALS – it’s still a roll-of-the-dice. And it’s going to get Chinese interesting with dicey twists/surprises.
It’s become globalized crap-shoot.
Looks like the most powerful force in the universe is in for some competition. Could these CERN-like Godzilla mega-data banks combine with IoT access, including the social platforms, be engineering the planet’s mass populations reality -via the quantum observer effect? Yes! It appears Einstein would have to[if he were alive] recalculate the power force of compound interest; that compound interest that Napoleon thought would devour the human race itself[he truly wondered why it had not done so yet].
And who said neoliberalism didn’t spawn any innovative competitive advantages that weren’t, in one form or another, monopolized?
Yes! Man’s innovation for craving power knows no bounds. Survival? Who cares about living, when you can have absolute power of mankind?
…over mankind?
In the real world, such as it is, the US has been undermining, attacking, bombing, sanctioning and generally laying waste to sovereign nations at a breath-taking pace. To give a bit of perspective on just to what degree, I just watched a video of George Carlin from 1995 in which he says exactly that — to thunderous applause. 1995 folks, and already the USA was a blood-thirsty corporate war machine.
So, with that perspective, let’s turn to the cyber world. These articles are written (dictated) from a US perspective (i.e., from Langley, VA, home of the Mighty Wurlitzer). So they are little more than propaganda.
Shift your perspective to China or Russia and just imagine the constant cyber-attacks your own sensitive databases are under, nonstop, 24/7 from the US.
So methinks the Exceptional Nation doth protest too much, by half. Two can play at this game, and clearly are. Stop whining and suck it up, you dimwit, professional hypocrites!
And as for the sanctions so glibly thrown about, under international law they are defined as acts of war. It just goes to show you what imbecile psychopaths are nominally in charge in the USA carny show.
And finally, GHW Bush, honored elder cretin and august head spider of the Bush Family Crime Syndicate (TM), was the one who created the China manufacturing monster to begin with, specifically to destroy the American middle class and usher in globalization. His work is now done, and the next of his accursed seed wants to continue where his sibling left off and further drive the nation into bondage.
Honestly, sometimes you have to marvel at the majesty of the insanity.
Yeah though, HW is D. R.’s “Mai Guy,” always has been, just like their granddads ere pals….
Cashless society we already on the way with the population being forced to use credit-debit cards. To purchase or subscribe instead of checks and money orders the Chinese-Russians are right to purchase gold and hold on to the use of money,checks,money orders digital is not the way to go it’s a deadend. The UK-USA put their heads on the block why shouldn’t China-Russia not swing the ax to cut them off.
The mayor of Detroit Michigan is doing a deal with China to bring in 30,000 workers to get the car manufacture plants running again. They are also buying up houses in Detroit that are trashed without running water and electricity. This is colonization. China has also purchased farmland that is in production of hay and feed for livestock a third of which is being shipped to China. Watch what happens when the full production is going over to China.
Does this sound like over government is working toward the goal of bringing back our industrial and agriculture base?
Economic sanctions? You must be kidding. The US does not have a strong position in monetary policy or economic standing. The world is dumping our treasuries at a clip that is breathtaking. We are impotent.
Frankly, if Russia or China can stop this spying grid that is forming over the citizens in the US and elsewhere, God’s speed.
So “Dr. Fu Manchu” is back, and he is a hacker. As Third Way readers are aware, “western” sponsored jihadist extremism started with Kaiser Wilhelm and his alliance with the hapless Ottoman Sultan, in order to try to dominate the seething Islamic world; but the Kaiser was even more obsessed with the “yellow peril”, in an oddly selective form of racism. This meme was shared by his British cousins/rivals, as also evidenced by the bestseller novels by Arthur Henry Ward aka Sax Rohmer; and was to some extent inherited by the Americans. They then partially transferred the initial obsession with evil Chinamen to sinister Japanese. However, the present resurrection of this political meme in its original anti-Chinese form has yet to find a suitable literary/film expression from the propaganda mill, at least as far as I know.
Would not a cashless system be the ultimate control mechanism? Whoever controls the banking would control everything. If they did not want you purchasing, say a gun and ammo, they would simply deny the transaction. The same would apply to anything else they didn’t want you to purchase.
It would also be the ultimate tax tool, as there would be no more cash transactions, which many people depend on for tax free income in order to keep that 40+% the government skims off the top. There would be no “living off the grid”. You might see the return to a widespread, black market, bartering economy this country hasn’t seen in a long time among the poor and those who simply don’t care for the government knowing their business.
A quick look at the Bush and Obama executive orders would seem to indicate that the government has already taken possession of everything, including the food in your freezer, and you, in the event of a “national emergency” which the President can declare at any time, for whatever reason.
I’m sure Russia is taking note of Amerika’s accelerating decent into total tyranny; China, on the other hand, is pretty much already there.
This country is ripe for, and in many ways already beginning to experience its’ own “color revolutions”, however, these revolutions wont be for “regime change” but for the division and subjugation of its people. So, now we will have not only our own government stirring the pot, but other governments adding their own stirring into the mix which will accelerate that decent even quicker.
Nothing to see here, everything’s going to plan, move along…
A company called Norse Corp has a map of cyber attacks on their website:
http://map.norsecorp.com
I’m not a tech person by any stretch of the imagination and I have no idea if the map is accurate or not…but it is mesmerizing to watch the various bomb being lobbed at each other by different countries.
If that map is even remotely accurate, it looks like its ON…
The only people with enough computing and surveillance capability to even generate a remotely accurate map of this nature would be the intelligence communities. This would, by it very nature, call into question its accuracy as they would portray whatever scenario would fit their agenda.