IS RUSSIA AN EVIL EMPIRE YES OR NO

hunting for compromising WDYLLs

Russia hacked the US and made them bomb that school in Syria

Putin must be annoyed they hadn't bombed that one yet.

This is great

http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/what-russian-journalists-think-of-how-american-reporters-cover-putin-and-trump

I completely agree that the mental model most western intelligence agencies have of the Russian cyber apparatus is probably shit. We project our own capabilities & force structure onto our adversaries - which worked / works when we talk about the Chinese PLA - but when you apply it to a state so alien to Western institutional structure as Russia, it's kind of dumb and has tons of blind spots. That is not to say at all that I don't think their various shops deliberately and, in their own way, systematically, fucked with the election and will proceed to do the same to every other similar event they think they might be able to influence in their favor, I just think the journalists in this article are on point that Russia's not that good at stuff - echoing, sort of, what ShariVari has frequently argued on this thread and elsewhere. But not being "good" in the sense of professionally managed, focused, trained, etc. doesn't mean you can't accomplish the goal.

^ last sentence is urgent & key

Yep, it's a very good article.

To expand on that wrt hacking, the article echoes what I've always heard about Russian methods:

Still, Turovsky is suspicious of the level of specificity in U.S. reporting on Russian hackers. For example, the way that the terms “Fancy Bear” and “Cozy Bear”—nicknames for hacking units linked to Russian intelligence services—entered the American journalistic lexicon gave him pause. “As I understand, there aren’t really groups, just a lot of different people who do this work; it’s pure conjecture to think they form into discrete, particular squads that you could call this or that,”

Also, aiui, a lot of state-linked hacking is more or less outsourced to commercial hackers - which is also the idea behind the arrests of Nikulin and Belen and the placing of non-state actors on the hacking-specific sanctions list. This isn't done just to maintain plausible deniability, it's because the commercial hackers are better - which is why there is a lot of scepticism when newspapers say X, Y or Z is 'so sophisticated it could only have been a state attack', or w/e. In terms of attribution, there is a theory you're better off relying on traditional human intelligence rather than trying to work it out from the kind of tools used. Given the reluctance to publicly outline human intel, it also makes it harder to give everyone slam-dunk evidence, which is why a lot of analysts were underwhelmed by the US reports released ahead of the sanctions.

The last sentence is nonsense. Most analysts believed Russia did it from the start, though not because of US reports.

don't say things are nonsense before you're sure you've understood them properly, fred

It was clear from the beginning that the Russia DNC hack was uncoordinated. Both the Bears intruded, and while one had apparently been there for close to a year, they were only kicked out because the other entered, and was discovered. Then when the mails were released, they only covered the time period of the second hack. So it should have been clear it was fairly incompetent early on. But media gonna conspiracy, if they can.

Most analysts believing it was a Russian state hack before the reports doesn't contradict the idea that the reports themselves were lighter on definitive evidence than a lot of people expected. Everyone seems to pretty much agree that people linked to both the FSB and GRU were accessing the database but the questions around whether 'Fancy Bear' exists as an entity, whether it was state employees or stuff outsourced to external hackers, etc, is still opaque. The detail in the Crowdstrike report looks a lot stronger taken in concert with statements on the strength of human intelligence than it would in isolation.

Yes, a lot of people don't understand why there are two "extra" words in nation state sponsored

Also the reports we released ahead of the sanctions were shredder bag filler hastily shoved out the door by a very angry NSC that was counting down seconds until their resignations imho

The whole Fancy Bear / Cosy Bear was just an easier way to frame it, it seemed pretty obvious to me. Two different methodologies, often overstepping each other. Both seemed connected to Russia. Something, something, bear. They should have called it Fancy Boris and Cosy Boris to make it 100% clear it was a western coinage.

One of the most tragicomic pieces of evidence was that the attacks always seemed to come during Moscow office hours. Makes me think cyberwarfare is basically just the sadder parts of John le Carré with a few more computers.

uh, yes.

and to think, we get all this excitement because the koch boys and their ilk A) don't want to pay taxes and B) don't want to miss out on cashing in their oil/coal reserves before rising temperatures / oceans destroy human civilization. what a way for us to go out :)

indeed

A+ display name

qualmsley did u forget this country was started to not pay taxes

i don't recognize this as a country. we are a confederacy of 50 sovereign states. the federal government is the problem

rolling explain ShariVarism, by ShariVari:

I'm aware that i probably sound like i'm being fairly dismissive a lot of the time but it's not so much a 'both sides do it' / 'eh, it's business' approach, it's much more a case of 'this isn't far removed from business as usual, and that's terrifying - so looking at it in isolation as part of a unique conspiracy and not unpicking how similar stuff underpins business and political relationships all over the world is just papering over the cracks'.

OTM

Rob Goldstone,
Emin Agalarov,
Aras Agalarov,
Natalia Veselnitskaya,
Rinat Akhmetshin,
Anatoli Samochornov,
Irakly (Ike) Kaveladze,
Christopher Steele,
Aleksej Gubarev,
Webzilla B.V.,
XBT Holdings S.A.,
Alfa Group,
Dmitry Peskov,
Vladimir Putin,
The Ritz Carlton Moscow Hotel,
Paul Manafort,
Carter Page,
Igor Sechin,
Sergei Ivanov,
Igor Divyekin,
Sergei Millian,
Dmitry Medvedev,
Michael Flynn,
Jill Stein, [SERIOUSLY?]
Michael Cohen,
Konstantin Kosachev,
Viktor Yanukovych,
Corey Lewandowski,
Sergei Kislyak,
Yuri Ushakov,
Anton Vaino,
Mikhail Kalugin,
Andrei Bondarev,
Mikhail Fridman,
Petr Aven,
German Khan,
Oleg Govorun,
Sergey Lavrov,
Rosneft,
Sergei Kiriyenko,
Oleg Solodukhin.

they're pretty good at this psychological warfare thing, yeah?

http://money.cnn.com/2017/10/31/media/russia-facebook-violence/index.html

^^ this is a rehash of old news but got me thinking anyway

rolling explain ShariVarism, by ShariVari:

I'm aware that i probably sound like i'm being fairly dismissive a lot of the time but it's not so much a 'both sides do it' / 'eh, it's business' approach, it's much more a case of 'this isn't far removed from business as usual, and that's terrifying - so looking at it in isolation as part of a unique conspiracy and not unpicking how similar stuff underpins business and political relationships all over the world is just papering over the cracks'.

OTM

― El Tomboto, Thursday, July 20, 2017 7:35 AM (three months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

For example, "Being Patriotic," a group that regularly posted content praising Donald Trump's candidacy, stated in an April 2016 post that Black Lives Matter activists who disrespected the American flag should be "be immediately shot." The account accrued about 200,000 followers before it was shut down.

Another Russia-linked group, "Blacktivist," described police brutality in a November 2016 post weeks after the election, and stated, "Black people have to do something. An eye for an eye. The law enforcement officers keep harassing and killing us without consequences."
The group "Secured Borders" had the most violent rhetoric, some of it well after the presidential election. A post in March 2017 described the threat of "dangerous illegal aliens" and said, "The only way to deal with them is to kill them all." Another post about immigrants called for a draconian new law, saying, "if you get deported that's your only warning. You come back you get shot and rolled into a ditch... BANG, problem solved." And a post about refugees said, "the state department needs to be burned to the ground and the rubble reduced to ashes."

Pretty chilling. Thanks for the link.

I find it more chilling how many Americans express those sentiments unprompted, tbqh.

i agree! it's upsetting. obviously this stuff wouldn't have as much traction if the political divide in the country weren't so bad ... but it does make you wonder ...

the thing is, our perception of "how many americans express those sentiments" is shaped by the russian troll factory too

True. I am increasingly creeped out by the Internet. There is so much unaccountable, violent, abusive speech floating around and it is impossible to discern where it is all coming from.

for a while now i have been in the habit of perusing comment boxes on news articles / facebook links as a barometer for "public opinion" (or even just counting likes and upvotes) but i am not sure how accurate that is anymore what with this troll factory / bot stuff

Like has there been any good research into the people who send sexist and racist threats to people’s inboxes? The phenomenon is widespread, but how many individuals are really behind it? What motivates them? Increasingly social media seems like a sinister hall of mirrors that inevitably leads people to become cynical/exhausted/misanthropic

If you google image search "russian children", you get about 70% fewer smiles than if you image search "american children". Now, I'm not saying that makes them evil, but it just feels like something grim is going on over there.

https://josmarlopes.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/russians.png

xp why would you do that

great piece by julia ioffe

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/01/putins-game/546548/

read the whole thing

Was watching Icarus, and my God.

there were pictures of naked trump

A man who is critically ill after being exposed to an unknown substance in Wiltshire is a Russian national convicted of spying for Britain, the BBC understands.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-43295134

blimey, we were only discussing umbrellas and the Cold War on twitter this morning*

*(and er derrida and rihanna)

He also had a second piece of advice for such "traitors or those who simply hate their country in their free time": "Don't choose Britain as a place to live."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-43330498

Blaring out a cacophony of conflicting denials and 'yeah we did it' innuendo on a daily basis might be what they'll do from here. Guilty or not, it could still be useful for scaremongering tactics.

She also took a swipe at Boris Johnson's warning to Russia this week, saying the foreign secretary was known for his "unpredictable antics" and was "an infant in a man's suit".

i mean say what you like but

Daytime TV hosts are unlikely to know any more than The Sun, tbh, but there is a register of snarky trolling that sections of the media - and the official embassy Twitter account - are apparently unable to break out of even when it is nagl and hugely counterproductive.

Has anything remotely interesting, informed or incisive been written in the mainstream Western press about what Russia *wants* beyond the usual assassinations, hacking and Trump puppetry? Everything I've read has taken malevolence as a given without really expanding on that.

Okay there's one like six posts above this.

They want the 2014 sanctions lifted, is the short answer for anything to lazy to read the interesting, informed and incisive articles :)

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/alexander-litvinenko-murdered-because-he-accused-putin-of-being-a-paedophile-a6824806.html

Putin kissed boy 'like a kitten'