Cyber War: Largely unnoticed, it has already begun

A cyber attack on US infrastructure planned in China is expected soon. The most dangerous weapons in the digital arsenal, once controlled by the US, may be in foreign hands. 

By Greg Guma

China is developing the “ability to physically wreak havoc on our critical infrastructure at a time of its choosing… Its plan is to land blows against civilian infrastructure to try to induce panic.” 

- Christopher Wray, FBI Director, April 11, 2024

Twelve years after the massive oil drilling disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, experts still weren’t sure how it happened. But according to a detailed analysis, “Cybersecurity and Offshore Oil: The Next Big Threat,” the cause actually may have been cascading cyberattacks that crippled the operations of the rig and started an explosion. 

“If the federal government does not take stronger action to secure the country’s oil rigs a cyberattack on an American oil rig — that cripples its functions and causes fatalities, supply disruption, and millions of dollars of damage — is not only probable, but a near certainty,” the report concluded.

Now we know even more. Chinese government-linked hackers have burrowed into critical US infrastructure and are waiting “for just the right moment to deal a devastating blow,” according to FBI Director Christopher Wray. They have gained access to numerous companies in telecommunications, energy, water and other critical sectors, including dozens of pipelines.

How do they do it? By operating a series of botnets — compromised personal computers and servers around the world — that conceal their malicious activities.

In the immediate aftermath of the 2010 spill, experts and politicians immediately dismissed the possibility of a cyber attack. That simply couldn’t happen, they claimed. But even then there were plenty of clues. Sure, based on the first reports, it could have been a “technical failure,” or the result of human error. But labeling it an “accident,” as news outlets insisted, rather than admitting that it might also have been a premeditated attack, was a clear case of avoiding inconvenient reality. Wishful thinking at its mostly deadly. 

More then a decade later, it may be too late to prevent such attacks, or a cyber war that could spell the end of democracy.

There was no doubt, for example, about the May 2021 cyber attack on Colonial Pipeline. The company, which operates the largest gasoline pipeline network in the country, was forced to shut down operations due to ransomware. Its pipelines are crucial for the US eastern seaboard, transporting more than 2 million barrels a day — about 45 percent of fuel used on the East Coast. The attackers — identities still unknown — used a group called DarkSide, which has targeted other companies. 

The same thing happened in October 2020 to the UVM Health Network, which runs six hospitals in Vermont and New York. In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic UVM lost access to scheduling systems and patient information, and was forced to cancel many elective procedures. Ransomware attacks like this are becoming commonplace. According to Christopher Krebs, the former Homeland Security official ousted by former president Trump, “We are on the cusp of a global digital pandemic driven by greed.”

As I explained in a 2010 article, still available on multiple websites, the summer before the 2010 Gulf oil spill Foreign Policy posted an article citing credible research and directly warning oil companies worldwide that their offshore rigs were highly vulnerable to hacking. As Richard Clarke explained in his book Cyber War, “Computer commands can derail a train or cause a gas pipeline to burst.”

In early 2009, I noted, a 28-year-old contractor in California was charged in federal court with almost disabling an offshore rig. Prosecutors said the contractor, who was allegedly angry about not being hired full time, had hacked into the computerized network of an oil rig off the coast, specifically the controls that detected leaks. He caused some damage, but fortunately not a leak.

In January 2010, the Christian Science Monitor reported that at least three US oil companies had been targets of a series of cyber attacks. In these cases, the culprit was most likely a person or group in China. The incidents, kept secret for two years, involved Marathon Oil, ExxonMobil, and ConocoPhillips. The companies didn’t realize how serious their problem was until the FBI alerted them. Federal officials said that proprietary information – email passwords, messages, and information linked to executives – had been flowing out to computers overseas.

The companies wouldn’t comment, or even admit the attacks had happened. But the Monitor persisted, interviewing insiders, officials and cyber attack experts, and ultimately confirmed the story. Their overall conclusion was that cyber-burglars, using new spyware that was almost undetectable, posed a serious and potentially dangerous threat to private industry. An era of cyber warfare had clearly begun. But most people were mesmerized by the allure of social media and the Internet.

As Clarke noted in his book, many nations were already conducting Internet espionage and sometimes even cyber attacks. Several of the most aggressive were China, Russia, and North Korea.* Spying on defense agencies and diplomats was a major focus, but strategically important businesses and other countries were also being targeted. Google claimed that it had found evidence of at least 20 companies that were infiltrated from China. According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, “logic bombs” had been infiltrated into the US electric power grid. They could operate like time bombs.

On oil rigs, the advent of robot-controlled platforms made a cyber attack possible with a PC anywhere in the world. Control of a rig could be accomplished by hacking into the "integrated operations" that link onshore computer networks to offshore ones. But no one would admit that it had already happened, despite confirmation that computer viruses were causing personnel injuries and production losses on North Sea platforms.

The problem was that even though newer oil rigs had cutting-edge robotics technology, the software that controlled their basic functions was still old school. Most relied on supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) software, which had been created in an era when "open source" was more important than security,

"It's underappreciated how vulnerable some of these systems are," said Jeff Vail, a former counterterrorism and intelligence analyst with the US Interior Department who talked with Greg Grant, author of the Foreign Policy article. "It is possible, if you really understood them, to cause catastrophic damage by causing safety systems to fail."

The name of the piece, by the way, was “The New Threat to Oil Supplies – Hackers.” It sounded a lot like “Bin Laden Determined to Strike Inside the US.”

Unusual Suspects

Who would do such a thing? The Right, of course, was quick to blame environmentalists or “eco-warriors,” accusing them either of trying to punish big oil or build pressure for stricter regulations. But there were other, more likely candidates, including extortionists who hoped to blackmail big pocket companies or foreign governments. By 2010, between 20 and 30 countries had cyber attack capabilities. The motives for a government-sponsored attack included a strategic move to change the balance of global oil reserves, or a preemptive strike by a country that felt threatened or had a bone to pick.

Some circumstantial evidence at the time pointed toward North Korea. The Deepwater Horizon oil platform was built and financed by South Korea’s Hyundai Heavy Industries Co. Ltd. Thus, its destruction could hurt both the company and the country’s economy. In July 2009, North Korea was also the main suspect when a series of attacks paralyzed websites of the US and South Korean government. Known as a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDOS) attack, this one hit on July 4th, targeting computers at the White House, the Pentagon, and the New York Stock Exchange. The websites of the Department of Transportation, the Treasury Department and the Federal Trade Commission were shut down for days.

South Korean targets included the presidential Blue House, the Defense Ministry, the National Assembly, Shinhan Bank, Korea Exchange Bank and the country’s top Internet portal. The attacks coincided with North Korea’s anticipated testing of a long-range missile with the potential to hit Hawaii. That missile was never launched, but several scud missiles were fired.

There were other examples of cyber warfare allegedly orchestrated by a state against a rival government. Russia, for example, was implicated in attacks aimed at Georgia and Estonia. A 2007 cyber attack on Estonia crippled its parliament, banks, ministries, phone systems, newspapers and broadcasters. The reason was allegedly a dispute over the relocation of war graves and a Soviet-era grave marker. Russia denied responsibility, but an ethnic Russian Estonian was tried and convicted for being involved.

Dark Realities

The US government’s failure to address private-sector vulnerability to cyber attacks goes back decades and continues to this day. Even the Obama administration hesitated to challenge the status quo. Given the vulnerability of crucial infrastructure and much of the private sector, surprisingly little  has been done to prepare for what looks inevitable.

A US Cyber Command was established in 2009, and various branches of the military developed their own offensive capabilities. By 2012, under orders from Obama, and with a budget that had reached $14 billion, intelligence officials produced a list of foreign targets — systems, processes, and infrastructure. Attempts were also made to guard federal infrastructure. But not even the Department of Homeland Security took responsibility for protecting the private sector. According to Janet Napolitano, then DHS Secretary, legal and privacy issues were in the way of having the government monitor the Internet or business operations for evidence of potential cyber attacks. Businesses were wary of any regulation that might accompany government help.

Though cyber attacks certainly happened, many left no obvious trace. As Clarke explained, corporations tended to believe that the “millions of dollars they have spent on computer security systems means they have successfully protected their company’s secrets.” Unfortunately, they were wrong. Intrusion detection and prevention systems sometimes failed.

Nevertheless, no federal agency assumed responsible for defending the banking system, power grids or oil rigs from attacks. The prevailing logic was that businesses should handle their own security. Yet their experts readily admitted that they wouldn’t know what to do if an attack came from another nation, and assumed that defense in such a case was the government’s job.

The US was suffering from “a conspiracy of secrecy about the scale of cyber risk,” James Fallows wrote in a March 2010 article for the Atlantic. Companies simply could not admit how easily they could be infiltrated. As a result, the changes in law, regulation, or habits that might increase safety weren’t often discussed. But sooner or later, Fallows warned, “the cyber equivalent of 9/11 will occur—and, if the real 9/11 is a model, we will understandably, but destructively, overreact.”

A decade after planes hit the Twin Towers and Pentagon, offense had outpaced defense in the cyber arms race, and much of the best talent had gone private. The US remained a major buyer, but India, Brazil, Malaysia, Singapore, North Korea, Iran and Russia were also competing for the best weapons. Middle Eastern intelligence services emerged as the biggest non-US spenders. By 2013, the private market was bringing in $5 billion. And that didn’t include cash flowing freely in the largely criminal underground. 

Why was this happening? In part, it was about the money. Although many hackers were obsessed with the thrill of the cyber game and some were motivated by principle — the desire to protect people and their privacy, others just wanted to get rich quick. But beyond that, it was also political: the stark difference between democracy and autocracy. The US doesn’t conscript talented hackers; the Russians, Iranians, North Koreans, and Chinese do. Either serve the state or go to jail. 

Eventually, Russia moved ahead of other countries, including the US, in terms of sophistication. According to Nicole Perlroth, in her startling book This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends, Russian hackers infiltrated the Pentagon, White House, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and State Department, among others. In one attack, Russian hackers, posing as Islamic Fundamentalists, took a dozen French TV stations off the air. They were caught dismantling controls at a Saudi petro-chemical company. They manipulated the Brexit referendum, hacked the American grid, and meddled in both the French and US elections. During the same period, they also tested an advanced cyber arsenal in Ukraine.

Soon a group of hackers —  identities still unknown — began to steal the American cyber arsenal** of the National Security Agency, and offered these tools and code to any country, terrorist of cybercriminal able to pay. One buyer was Russia. In June 2017, it used them on Ukraine, in what Perlroth describes as “the most destructive and costly cyberattack in world history.” Every screen turned black. People couldn’t get money from ATMs, pay for gas, send or receive email, buy groceries, get paid, or even monitor radiation levels at Chernobyl. 

And the attack wasn’t restricted to Ukraine. It also hit any company that did business there, including Pharma giants Pfizer and Merck, the shipping conglomerate Maersk, FedEx, even the Cadbury chocolate factory in Tasmania. 

What saved Ukraine, in the end, is precisely what makes the US the most vulnerable nation on earth. It wasn’t fully automated! In other words, its critical infrastructure was not yet “web-enabled.” It also had another advantage — a sense of urgency. After being attacked by Russia for years, it knew that survival depended on cyber vigilance. Thus, when Ukrainians elected a new president in 2019, they voted on paper. No fancy machines. Every ballot was counted manually. 

A Digital Pandemic

America still hasn’t embraced the same awareness as Ukraine or taken the necessary steps to create an effective defense. Yet the leading edge of 21st century warfare, despite the brutal footage from Ukraine we see every day, is not land, air or sea. It is digital. Beyond the disinformation campaign launched during the 2016 presidential election, the more dangerous long-term threat to democracy is manipulation of back-end election systems and voter registration in all fifty states. 

“They may have stopped short of hacking the final vote tallies” in 2016, Perlroth writes, “but everything they did up to that point, American officials conclude, was a trial run for some future attack on our elections.”

In May 2021, Colonial Pipeline was the target. Eight months earlier, it was the UVM Health Network and other hospital systems. In Vermont and elsewhere, the culprit was a botnet called TrickBot, whose developers were based in Moscow and St. Petersburg, according to a detailed account in Perlroth’s book on cyber warfare. By that September, she documents, TrickBot was selling access to targets in both Europe and the US, including Florida, Georgia courts, and state agencies in Louisiana. In response, the US Cyber Command hacked into TrickBot and tried to neutralize the attacks. 

This worked, but only briefly. A week later, TrickBot ransomware was back, and Cyber Command had to strike again. This time the goal was also to send a message: We’re watching you, and if you come after our election, we’ll take you out. A similar warning was issued to Iran. In the following weeks, Microsoft went to federal court on a related matter, accusing cybercriminals of violating copyright law by using its codes for malicious purposes. The objective was to force web hosting providers to take TrickBot offline. It appeared to work. 

But wounded animals can be dangerous. In this case, TrickBot’s Russian operators retaliated by attacking US hospital systems, including the UVM Health Network. One by one, in the days leading up to the election, just when hospitals were seeing spikes in coronavirus cases, more than 400 were hit by ransomware. In a private exchange, later captured by a cyber threat researcher, a Russian hacker explained, “We expect panic.” 

In response, the FBI and other agencies arranged an emergency call with administrators in the targeted hospitals, explaining what was happening and how to handle it. But the damage was done. The attacks interrupted treatments, reduced staffs to pen and paper, and diverted resources. And it was also part of a larger strategy, what was eventually labeled a “perception hack.” The idea is that multiple smaller attacks can be amplified and ultimately become evidence to support the idea that the election itself was unsound — “rigged.” On Election Day, there were some snags, like the suspicious water main break in Georgia that delayed vote counting in Atlanta. But larger attacks didn’t materialize. 

Some experts and researchers claim that the coordinated US response, by government and the private sector, created an effective deterrent. Evidence for this view includes a statement by President Putin, issued just before the US election, calling for cyber “reset.” But others suggest a less optimistic reason there wasn’t more interference: Putin decided the job was done. Russian trolls no longer needed to stir up discord and chaos. Now, led by Trump, there were lots of elected officials and millions of citizens ready and willing to help. So, mission accomplished.

The attack cost Vermont’s hospital between $40 million and $50 million, mostly in lost revenue. Apparently no ransom was paid. Yet almost a year later Doug Gentile, senior VP of network information technology at the medical center, mistated the case. “There was no specific ransom note,” he said, “no specific dollar amount or anything like that, it was just: ‘here’s how you contact us.’” Yet he also claimed, “The motive here was clearly money, nothing else.” Based on his account, however, and especially on what has been revealed since October 2020, this doesn’t make sense.

And after that? On April 13, 2022 US. government agencies issued an alert warning about malicious cyber tools that are capable of sabotaging the energy sector and other key industries. The culprit wasn’t named, but evidence suggests that Russia is behind the control system-disrupting tools, and that they were configured to target America’s energy concerns.

While alarm about the implications of the attempted coup on January 6, 2021 is certainly warranted, most Americans, as well as their elected representatives, still haven’t noticed the handwriting on the wall. The most dangerous cyber-weapons, once controlled by the US, are now in foreign hands. There are hackers inside our hospitals and the power grid. They probe computer networks millions of times a day, and make this so-called superpower extremely vulnerable to a Cyber Pearl Harbor. 

Two decades after 9/11, it’s far easier to sabotage the software of a fighter jet — or a passenger flight — than physically take the controls and crash it into a building. The warnings began years ago. Even now too few are listening.

* Those who feel I am unfairly accusing these nations would do well to conduct some serious research. China and Russia have been advanced players for at least four decades, later joined by DPRK. Among experts in this field, as distinct from ideologues, there is no dispute. Nicole Perlroth’s 2021 book, This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyber-Weapons Arms Race, provides a definitive, well-documented history.

** The US government was among the first to develop cyber weapons. As Fred Kaplan noted in his riveting book Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War, at least twenty nations were already in the game before 2016. At that point the focus turned to Russia's "hybrid warfare," the weaponizing of hacked documents to influence the presidential race. But information war began much earlier, including the US-NATO campaign against Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic. The first major cyber attack, a US-Israeli operation called Olympic Games, was directed at Iran's nuclear program. Later known as Stuxnet, it involved a cyber worm that destroyed a quarter of Iran's centrifuges and set back its nuclear program by several years. The trouble with waging cyber war, warned Kaplan, is that "what we can do to them, they can someday do to us." It's a type of blowback, and did eventually happen. In an afterword written after the 2016 election, he pointed beyond the Russia-Trump operation to the next threat -- denial-of-service attacks executed by thousands of household devices. "There are now about 10 billion Iot (Internet of Things) devices in the world," Kaplan concluded. "Some estimate that, by 2020, there will be 50 billion. That's a lot of bots to be enslaved for a cyber war."

Battling Truth Decay: A Social Virus Can Also Be Deadly

Corruption of truth has been contributing to social division and civic decay for years. Yet there are few consequences for peddling lies and paranoia, intentionally confusing speculation with fact, or perpetrating a vile premeditated hoax.

By Greg Guma

Conspiracy theories. They used to be good fun, provocative dinner table conversation and the focus of action movie plots. They were like certain parts of the body. Everybody had them and, most of the time, no one got hurt.

But that’s no longer true. Now believing in conspiracies can get people killed— like thinking a virus infecting millions is just more fake news— or cause confusion and havoc at the very least.

2019 Podcast

Listen to "The People’s Republic #5: Conspiracies" on Spreaker.

— Conspiracy History: From the Illuminati to Kennedy —

According to the FBI — itself the focus of considerable theorizing —  “conspiracy theory-driven domestic extremists” associated with the QAnon conspiracy theory are now officially a “domestic terror threat.” What’s QAnon? Also known as The Storm, it’s a secretive network that believes in a deep state conspiracy against President Trump, and also in Pizzagate, a related theory that a pedophile ring including Clinton associates was run out of the basement of a Washington, D.C., pizza restaurant — which didn’t actually have a basement.

Forget Jeffrey Epstein. These are the real perverts. Epstein is just another deep state victim. That’s how this thinking works.

Back in reality, supporters of QAnon have been linked to multiple threats, attempted acts of violence, even murders. And Trump has amplified Q messages dozens of times on Twitter. Just days before he destroyed part of downtown Nashville and killed himself last week, the Christmas Day bomber sent packages containing writings and videos promoting conspiracy theories to multiple people.

In October 2017,  QAnon jumped to the mainstream in the form of shirts and signs that were prominently visible at a Trump campaign rally in Tampa, FL. After that Trump met with several supporters of the conspiracy theory — at the White House. A QAnon supporter co-chaired a coalition group for Trump’s reelection campaign, and several believers have since been elected to Congress. In 2021, they are challenging the legitimacy of the last presidential election.

Do more people buy into conspiracies today? Or is it mainly more media coverage? Either way, for most of the last 50 years, between 60 and 80 percent of the country has believed in some form of JFK conspiracy theory. They’re obviously not all “conspiracy nuts.”

On the other hand, conspiracy thinking did cross over in 2016 — probably with foreign help — from Internet chat groups to mainstream news coverage. For example, a Yahoo News podcast, aptly named "Conspiracyland,” revealed that Russia’s foreign intelligence service was the origin of a hoax report that tied the murder of Seth Rich, a Democratic National Committee staffer, to Hillary Clinton. Washington police concluded that Rich was killed in a botched robbery. There was no proof that his murder had any political connections. But many people believed there were.

Among the violent conspiracy theories cited by the FBI is one involving a man who thinks Transportation Security Administration agents are part of a New World Order elite. Another focuses on the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP), a government-funded facility in Alaska that has been linked to everything from death beams to mind control. (See Podcast Extra for more on HAARP.)

Whatever the truth about HAARP, two men were arrested in 2019 for “stockpiling weapons, ammunition and other tactical gear in preparation to attack” the Alaska facility. They believe it is being used “to control the weather and prevent humans from talking to God.”

 

Source: Reliable Sources/CNN

In response to the spread of conspiracy-motivated violence, the FBI is applying the same radicalization analysis it has used against foreign terrorism. They essentially focus on the ideological motives. FBI Director Wray claims that the Bureau is only concerned with violence, not with what people believe. 

But the number of extremist categories has certainly grown. According to Michael German, a former FBI agent with the Brennan Center for Justice, “It’s part of the radicalization theory the FBI has promoted despite empirical studies that show it’s bogus.”

“They like the radicalization theory because it justifies mass surveillance,” the former agent claims. “If we know everyone who will do harm is coming from this particular community, mass surveillance is important. We keep broadening the number of communities we include in extremist categories.”

But this argument is also, basically, a conspiracy theory. And that’s the problem. It’s increasingly hard to tell which ones to give credibility.

Not all conspiracy theories are dangerous. Even the FBI admits that much. Some may even be benign. But others have led to attempted or successful violent attacks. The Pizzagate conspiracy, for example, led a 28-year-old man to invade a Washington, D.C., restaurant to rescue the children he believed were being kept there and fire an assault-style weapon.

Or the related, overarching Deep State conspiracy theory. The FBI cites an unnamed California man, arrested in December 2018 after being found with what appeared to be bomb-making materials in his car. He was allegedly planning to “blow up a satanic temple monument” in the Capitol rotunda in Springfield, Ill. Why? To “make Americans aware of Pizzagate and the New World Order, who are dismantling society.”

The FBI’s intelligence analysis doesn’t mention Alex Jones or InfoWars by name. But it does include some of the conspiracy theories frequently associated with him, especially the New World Order theory. Jones claimed the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, in which 26 children were killed, was a hoax, a false flag operation intended as a pretext for the government to seize or outlaw firearms. The families of a number of victims sued Jones for defamation, saying his conspiracy-mongering contributed to death threats and online abuse.

Following the conspiracy trail a bit further, you quickly come to President Trump, who promotes a number of theories. Here’s a short list: He often talks about the Deep State, and frequently retweets output from QAnon. He’s the godfather of Spygate, which alleges that Obama and others wiretapped him, and a big pusher of the voter impersonation lie, aka the existence of millions of phantom voters. There is also white genocide theory, baked into his output, and of course, the Obama citizenship theory — which launched the movement that launched his presidential candidacy.

Yet it’s highly unlikely that the FBI will be investigating Trump for peddling conspiracies — no matter who they hurt — even after he is no longer in power. Instead, Michael C. McGarrity, the FBI’s assistant director of the counterterrorism division, has told Congress that the bureau now classifies domestic terrorism threats into four main categories: 

* racially motivated violent extremism 

* anti-government/anti-authority extremism 

* animal rights/environmental extremism, and

* abortion extremism, used to classify pro-choice and anti-abortion extremists

The new focus on conspiracy theories falls under the broader category of anti-government extremism. And that’s a slippery slope.

A decade ago, the most successful right wing conspiracy theory involved Obama as a secret Muslim. Before Trump piled on, millions of people already believed it. They also believed that secular humanists wanted to repress religion, and that liberals were plotting to confiscate people’s guns and push a “gay agenda.” All of that set the context for Trump’s election.

At the other end of the ideological spectrum, however, there is the idea that 9/11 was an inside job — and all that entails. On the first 2021 broadcast of Meet the Press, Chuck Todd raised that theory from the conspiracy graveyard, comparing the idea to Sen. Ron Johnson’s allegations about election fraud. Tit for tat.

In the past, I’ve been called a conspiracy theorist myself —for example, for saying that we should know more about the attack on the Twin Towers. Nevertheless, I also think that a modern-day Reichstag fire at multiple locations qualifies as a radical, somewhat implausible conclusion.

On the other hand, despite the fact that conspiracy theories can be distractions, even deliberate deceptions, some are worth consideration, as long as we stipulate that they aren’t necessarily 100 percent accurate, and certainly resist exaggeration or total buy-in. But some theories definitely pose a real and present danger as incitements to violence.

The problem is that it has become difficult for millions of people to tell the difference between the strange and the dangerous in an era when facts have been so seriously devalued. There are so many possibilities, the standard of proof appears to be in decline, and the theories tend to evolve, expand and mutate rapidly in unexpected ways as they circulate through cyberspace. There is often also too little follow up to see whether new facts reinforce or discredit a particular theory.

For several years, corruption of truth has been contributing to social division and civic decay. Yet there are few consequences for peddling paranoia, intentionally confusing speculation with fact, or perpetrating a premeditated hoax. Instead, more actors are weaponizing these things to expand or hold onto power.

For all the false prophets, gross opportunists, and irresponsible rumor-mongers who currently threaten societies with truth decay, real accountability has been hard to get so far. But we do know who many of them are. 

So, how about this as a start? Let’s call them out, publicly, maybe even post their names on billboards, banner ads, and Trump’s Great Wall of Lies down at the border. And on the wall, please make the names big enough to be seen from space. Then let’s all stop listening to them.

Podcast Extra: REALITY CHECK

Let’s keep things in perspective — if that’s possible in such a confusing world — with a look back. Here’s some of what I observed on the same topic about ten years ago:

I usually resist the urge to challenge the controversial theories of fellow travelers, at least in public. Years ago, during an after-dinner discussion about Al-Qaeda after Osama, someone casually asserted that President Roosevelt knew about the attack on Pearl Harbor in advance and let it happen. No one objected or said a word. I thought about it, but let the moment pass.

Anything’s possible, right? Why be rude? But some theories and predictions are just too important. They are widely accepted as indisputable and part of an overall world view, usually linked with an anti-establishment ideology. They have practical consequences for social action, can spark deep divisions, and influence how people see and treat others. In some groups, if you question the conclusions of a prevailing theory you’re either a dupe or a collaborator.

Deep skepticism is often at the root, a good thing in general. After all, so much of what we once believed has turned out to be a lie, or at least a very selective version of reality. But still, shouldn’t there be standards? Also, why do some theories get all the attention while others, perhaps more credible ones, get buried? And can’t we at least call people to account when their claims repeatedly lead down false trails?

In 2004, when friends claimed that George W. Bush would invade someplace – probably Cuba – before the election, I was skeptical but said nothing. Four year later, when colleagues embraced the idea that either a) there would be a pre-election invasion – Syria this time, or b) federal troops would be used to install Bush as dictator and block Obama’s election – in short, Martial Law was imminent – I took bets.

In 2011, word spread in activist circles that the rise in US Drone strikes and NATO helicopter attacks inside Pakistan were harbingers of something bigger. The war was going to be extended into Pakistan with the ultimate goal of seizing that nation’s nuclear weapons. Turns out they went after Osama, although many people believe that is also a lie and bin Laden was killed years earlier. 

These death conspiracies sound like the classic one about a fake moon landing – we never went there, right? – including phony video and a staged photo of the National Security brain trust looking at…what? Seal Team Six on a Top Secret movie set?

But speaking of plots, depopulation has been getting some attention, specifically related to the use of covert technology to allegedly cause earthquakes and tsunamis. (Which bring me back to HAARP — The High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program, a joint military program involved in classified experiments involving the ionosphere.) 

The basic claim is that it has been involved for decades in developing various types of weather-based and environmental warfare capabilities. It doesn’t help that the military has a name for this kind of thing – weather modification. (That’s why the two men were stockpiling ammunition for an attack.)

Still, using HAARP to cause earthquakes, wipe out regions and thin the herd is something else. The theory went like this: Supporters of the depopulation theory say Haiti was a transparent example, and claimed as evidence that a US task force was ready to invade before the earthquake occurred. And before that came the Indian Ocean tsunami, where people weren’t warned as soon as possible. Afterward came Fukushima, a full-scale assault not only on Japan, but on the oceans and atmosphere.

“The established pattern, with disasters and invasions, is incremental escalation,” explained a friend who supported the theory. Nuclear reactors in the US are therefore sitting ducks, just waiting for a HAARP attack. “And they have made it clear that an 80% reduction in world population is their goal,” he explained. Who made it clear? The overseers of the New World Order. Them.

Early in 2011 a rumor also began circulating that Wikileaks was a CIA plot. The idea was that the leaks actually supported the US imperial agenda around the world. In short, Wikileaks was a US intelligence con job that would be used to crack down on the Internet and advance a long-standing anti-civil liberties agenda. 

Evidence used to support this idea included the shutting down of Wikileaks servers in the US and the 2009 introduction of S. 773, The Cybersecurity Act, which, if it had passed, would have given the president the power to disconnect private-sector computers from the Internet. We dodged a bullet there.

The problem was that, while the Wikileaks-CIA plot looked even then like a distraction, the Department of Homeland Security had actually begun to seize and shut down web domains without due process or trial. The focus was sites that supposedly “violate copyrights.” But the risk was that cyber censorship could be extended to, let’s say, combat alleged cyber terrorism.  A very slippery slope.

After several more websites were shut down, DHS held a hearing on the move to give the President more authority over the Internet during an emergency. Senate Homeland Security Committee Chair Joe Lieberman noted that China “can disconnect parts of the Internet in case of war and we need to have that here too.” In this context, the Wiklieaks-CIA story may have been an attempt at disinformation, one that didn’t go viral.

(Additional comments from the August 8, 2019 podcast) 

Culture War, Schizofascism and Thinking Digitally

After a while at ground zero in the emerging culture war, I appreciated returning home to Vermont in 2010. But Arizona certainly did provide a preview of the weirdness to come — purportedly normal people buying into a warped “counter narrative” in which the President (Obama) was an illegal alien and an egomaniacal sheriff running inhuman “tent cities” was a folk hero and potential governor. In other words, there were early warnings that basic values — even assumed facts — were changing.

Around that time I began posting more actively on social media. Since some platforms keep everything we offer, a benefit is that it is possible to go back and reflect, rethink and aggregate. The experience can be confusing; after all, we live in a fragmented, short attention span world. On the other hand, it can also help to focus the mind and distill ideas. 

Aiming for the latter, here is a sample of (mainly Facebook) posts, from pre-Trump to recent days. The topics range from the rise of fascism and social media’s impacts to judging presidential fitness for office, Brett Kavanaugh, Caesar, Mussolini, brute force in Helsinki, war games in Ukraine, and the nostalgia of Space Force, all reflections of our reality-challenged world. Except where indicated, these are verbatim.

Sept. 1, 2018: After US White Nationalists defended Putin’s war to dismember Ukraine, he repaid them by using the Confederate flag as the basis for one promoted as the emblem of territory Russia occupied in southeastern Ukraine. Full text below.   

Aug 3, 2010: Arrived in Vermont after several weeks on the road, from AZ via Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, South Dakota, then across to St. Paul and down to Kentucky and Virginia before taking the Blue Ridge Parkway back to my "ancestral" home. Much to say...but not right now. Since returning I'm re-entering Burlington's social & political scene. Much to learn, and a far cry from Sheriff Joe and Arizona's sad psychic meltdown.

A year earlier, however, on Aug. 8, I’d observed... Thinking about fascism, a system and philosophy that uses racism, nationalism and suppression of opposition to achieve its ends. We may well be seeing its re-emergence in the extreme tactics of the corporate-manipulated movement to delegitimize the current US government. Can violence be far behind? It still CAN happen here...

Feb. 5, 2010: The post-modern world is turning out to be just a little chaotic. Truth has become a debatable notion, news is mainly spectacle, and self-promotion is the ultimate form of work. What's next? President Palin? Just sayin'.

April 19, 2011: A year after signing AZ's Papers Please law, Gov Jan Brewer has vetoed the state's Birther Bill. Does this mean that some on the Right see a "downside" to exploiting racism, delusion and irrational thinking for short-term gain? Maybe, but too late. The Trump's out of the bag and we're having another culture war.

It took several more years, but Trump happened and America’s culture war escalated...bigly.

Feb. 28, 2016: Trump retweets Mussolini saying "it is better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep." Asked why he smiles, "it's interesting." So, we've been warned. A bunga-bunga strongman. Sinclair Lewis nailed it.

Feb. 19, 2017: Able to serve? Even if a president has a mental disorder, that may say little about his fitness to serve. After all, Lincoln had severe depression, Theodore Roosevelt was probably bipolar, and Grant was an alcoholic. According to a study based on biographical data, 18 of America’s first 37 presidents met criteria suggesting they suffered from a psychiatric disorder during their lifetime: 24 % from depression, 8 % from anxiety, 8 % from bipolar disorder and 8 % from alcohol abuse or dependence. And 10 of those presidents showed signs of mental illness while they were in office.... You can be psychiatrically ill and perfectly competent, just as you can be mentally healthy but totally unfit... So the nation doesn’t need a shrink to help it to decide whether President Trump is fit to serve, mentally or otherwise.

Looking Back, Feb. 19, 2018: A year later we’re still grappling with the same question. The problem is that Trump supporters so identify with their leader that they view questions about his fitness or mental state as judgements about them. Thus, they project his problems onto others. It’s much easier and more comforting than admitting a mistake.

Jan. 31, 2018: Like a reality TV show, Michael Wolff’s book is basically a showcase for the crass motives and strange doings of its quirky subjects. It’s a pleasantly voyeuristic ride, as long as you don’t expect to much. Starting with convincing evidence that neither Donald Trump nor his minions actually wanted to win, Fire and Fury tracks the power dynamics pulling at this accidental president, mainly from the perspective of a Rasputin-like Steve Bannon. The other main factions are “establishment” Republicans like Reince Preibus — doomed to humiliation in this White House — and Trump’s family and friends...

March 7, 2018: “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” This advice from one infamous psychopath has clearly been taken to heart by another.

March 7, 2018: Despite hybrid warfare, perception management and the painful struggle over what is or isn’t fake, most of us still share a fact-based view of reality. On the other hand, polarization is increasing around the world, right along with faster communication.

March 19, 2018: Six falsehoods in one tweet: this could be some kind of record! Also sounds like the basis for a new reality show - THE BIGGEST LIAR. People compete to see if anyone can make up more (or bigger) lies than the president. Losers are humiliated on live TV. Spoiler: Trump always wins. 

March 19, 2018: Why are many Republicans abetting Trump’s fascist moves? Like Russians who see the USSR’s collapse as the nation’s great tragedy, GOP leaders recall what happened to Nixon (and afterward) and think, “Never Again!”

March 19, 2018: So, how exactly did the Trumpsters mess with American minds to seize power? The answer is emerging, but it’s not great news for 50 million users of this platform: their Facebook profiles were harvested by a UK-based academic and his company Global Science Research. Then a deal was struck to share this information with Cambridge Analytica, funded by billionaire Robert Mercer and manged by Steve Bannon on behalf of Trump. According to a whistleblower, most of this personal information was taken without authorization. Cambridge Analytica used it to build a powerful software program to predict and influence choices at the ballot box. Unfortunately, attempts have been made to keep this breach from being revealed.

March 22, 2018: Millions on Trump’s email list (not Twitter) just received a signed, high-pitched appeal: “I will not hide from the truth -- this is a WITCH HUNT,” he brays. Then accuses Nancy Pelosi of using Russia “as a political ploy to RAISE MONEY from her supporters.” How dare she, right? Ploys are his thing. But Pelosi is such a time-tested trigger word.

Then the conspiracy theory: that “the swamp” (it’s whatever you imagine) is using government as a weapon to overturn elections. Namely, his. Bad swamp! This is followed by an appeal for just one dollar. So it’s not about the money. What then? Apparently linking the “witch hunt” with his agenda — build the wall, stop immigration and no more “nation-building.” Plus an attempt to appropriate the progressive call for a “fair economy.”

March 24, 2018: Straight talk from a Nation columnist about Russia and the election. Katha Pollitt addresses some key questions and concludes, “If you’re a skeptic, ask yourself what could change your mind. If the answer is nothing, you may be in for an embarrassing time.”

April 15, 2018: Beyond social media, perceptions have been manipulated by experiments called "reality shows," most based on the assumption that competition, fame and distrust are fundamental truths. And the contestants aren’t the only subjects. So are the viewers.

May 24, 2018: Like a long anticipated prequel, Trump/Russia: A Definitive History, provides the backstory — a sordid tale of organized crime, shape-shifting oligarchs and money laundering —that led to our current predicament. One of Trump’s biggest lies, it turns out, is his protest about having nothing to do with Russia. Its the opposite. Russia has been his piggy bank and object of desire for decades. And his election was a perfect storm, fueled by the combined force of his narcissism and greed and Putin’s thirst for respect and revenge.

May 29, 2018: Just when we thought we were moving forward, we’ve been pulled back into raw class struggle (among other challenges). Today’s big players are assorted oligarchs, a veritable international league of tyrants and crooks that ignore all the laws and norms they can get away with. And they’re playing for keeps.

July 8, 2018: Two years ago, while reading this rich and revealing history of Italy under fascist rule, it was already hard not to be reminded of Donald Trump. As R.J.B. Bosworth shows in Mussolini’s Italy, Mussolini's brand of fascism was also powered more by charisma than policies, and drew from a widespread sense of victimhood that fueled aggression, authoritarian quick fixes, and a desperate yearning to recapture a glorious, yet mythical past. It’s all too familiar. World War II ended the Duce's tyranny, but clearly did not excise fascism's totalitarian approach and mindset. Unfortunately, traces and echoes can be found today in many democracies and a league of crypto-fascist states may well be in formation.

July 10, 2018: Here’s Francis Boyle, law professor and Federalist Society critic, on Trump’s Supreme Court nominee. “Kavanaugh drafted portions of the Starr report, a political hit job. Perhaps more importantly, he drafted parts of the Ken Starr 'referral' to the U.S. Congress recommending that Bill Clinton be impeached for a blowjob and lying about a blowjob. Kavanaugh worked for then-Republican nominee George W. Bush in Bush v. Gore, which effectively robbed the American people of the presidency. 

 "The fact that if Kavanaugh gets through, the entire Supreme Court will have gone to Harvard or Yale is terrible for the country. And I say that as having graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law.”

July 17, 2018: Moments before the (Helsinki) Putin-Trump presser Sam Husseini, who was covering it for The Nation, was sitting on the US side when he held up a sign reading "Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty." That was enough to draw security men, who questioned him briefly before opting for removal. As Sam struggled with guards, at one point waving the sign but mainly trying to keep it out of one man's hands, other journalists pulled out phones and started recording the incident. No press outrage, however, and no word yet on how he was treated afterward.

July 22, 2018: This just In: Trump just admitted he misspoke when declaring himself a “stable genius.” Meant to say “evil genius,” arguing that things are going “precisely as unplanned.” Asking to comment, Rudy Guliani noted, “That proves he’s at least half right.” #RudyAndTheBeast

Aug. 4, 2018: It turns out Trump has built a wall...of tweets, a barrier of lies “so big and strong it is impenetrable to criticism, logic or reason.” And we’re all going to pay for it. Quote from the Daily Show’s Presidential Twitter Library.

Aug. 9, 2018: During Nixon’s time it sometimes felt like Rome. It’s feeling that way again. In 44 BC, Julius Caesar became dictator of the world's most powerful empire. But his "vulgar scheming for the tawdriest mockeries of personal worship", as H.G. Wells put it, became a shameful record. The air buzzed with talk of democracy and the proletariat. But the popular "comitia," the gathering of tribes for public votes, didn’t reflect the feelings of the masses. The sham forced the cheated and suppressed to use strikes and insurrection. And it didn’t end well, for Caesar, Rome or Nixon. 

Aug. 10, 2018: Here we go again! Space Force, the president’s latest weapon of mass distraction, is nothing new. About 20 years ago, there were already big plans. As the Space Command said in a slick Vision for 2020 brochure, "Control of space is the ability to assure access to space, freedom of operations within the space medium, and an ability to deny others the use of space if required." As usual they were shooting for “dominance.” In other words, the past is calling and they want their empty rhetoric back. This story made it to the censored top ten, which is probably why the idea can be recycled to “low information” people (aka uninformed and deluded).

Aug. 15, 2018: TrumpWorld sometimes looks like a modern kitsch version of Dante’s hell, a land of perverted desire — desire even for Hell itself. Filled with people who know their greed and excess will destroy them, yet choose to binge anyway. It’s a state of mind that spurs leaders to pursue war and destruction for its own sake. Rather than feeling fear, Trump and his disciples seem driven by insatiable appetites.

Aug. 28, 2018: Now it’s been a full decade since McCain faced Obama, Palin got her close up, and reality began to blur. Soon the economy collapsed and conspiracy theorists went mainstream.

Sept. 1, 2018: In our “schizofascist” world, Russia is supposedly antifascist. But really the opposite. One clue is that many of its allies, like US White Nationalists Richard Spencer and David Duke, are openly fascist. They defended Putin’s war to dismember and absorb Ukraine. And he repaid them for the support by using the Confederate battle flag as the basis for a new one promoted as the emblem of Novorossiia, the territory Russia occupied in southeastern Ukraine. That made them allies with fascist parties and factions in Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, Italy and elsewhere that took Russia’s side. The war became a training field for 21st century terrorism. The Serbian who attempted a coup in Montenegro in 2016 has admitted that he was recruited by Russian nationalists and trained in Ukraine.

September 2, 2018: Simultaneously engaging and deeply disturbing, (The Road to Unfreedom) should feature a warning: Abandon your illusions, since they aren’t likely to survive. Building on ideas introduced in his pocket guide, On Tyranny, Timothy Synder describes the last six years as a period of shattering change that has led Russia, America and parts of Europe into what he calls “schizofascism,” or, in Trump’s case, possibly “sado-populism.” A core concept is the shift — with strategic nudges by the Putin gang — from the politics of inevitability to the politics of eternity. Inevitability politicians argue that specifics of the past are ultimately irrelevant, merely grist for progress; Eternity politicians see endless cycles of threat, victimhood, and restoration, and have a penchant for supressing facts, dismissing reality, and creating political fiction.

“Americans were vulnerable to the politics of eternity,” Snyder explains, “because their own experiences had already weakened inevitability. Trump’s proposal to ‘make America great again’ resonated with people who believed, along with him, that the American dream was dead. Russia had reached the politics of eternity first, and so Russians knew the techniques that would push Americans in the same direction.”