{"id":1289829,"date":"2023-05-19T15:11:01","date_gmt":"2023-05-19T19:11:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/adversarial-actors-home-and-abroad\/1289829\/"},"modified":"2023-05-19T15:11:01","modified_gmt":"2023-05-19T19:11:01","slug":"adversarial-actors-home-and-abroad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/adversarial-actors-home-and-abroad\/1289829\/","title":{"rendered":"“Adversarial Actors, Home And Abroad”"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a><\/div>\n

“Adversarial Actors, Home And Abroad”<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Authored by Thomas Neuberger via “God’s Spies” Substack,<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Which non-foreign ‘adversaries’ do elites have in mind when they promote domestic censorship and news blockades?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

I want to put three thoughts in front of you, drop three stones in the slipstream of your mind. Perhaps you\u2019ll see the ripples as they cross, note their interaction, hear what their crossing says.<\/p>\n

The future this article previews isn\u2019t new, just newly forgot.<\/p>\n

Domestic \u2018Terror\u2019 from the Activist Left<\/h2>\n

First, from ace investigator\u00a0Lee Fang<\/a>\u00a0(parts of this piece are subscriber-only):<\/p>\n

\n

DHS and FBI Depict Vegan Activists as Potential Domestic Terrorists<\/strong><\/p>\n

Imagine a young woman named Jane who recently adopted a vegan lifestyle after learning about factory farming in college. She discusses animal welfare and begins attending protests.<\/p>\n

For most, Jane\u2019s experiences sound remarkably benign.<\/p>\n

But for the Department of Homeland Security, the young woman is following a “path of potential radicalization,” according to new documents released through a public records request.<\/p>\n

The scenario was one of several depicted in a violence prevention workshop from the DHS Office for Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention, a division of the agency that works to counter domestic terrorism.<\/p>\n

Jane’s supposed path towards violence \u2014 as featured in the DHS workshop \u2014 is composed of little more than everyday experiences that many Americans take as they embrace activism.<\/p>\n

In the workshop scenario, Jane reacts with anger when discussing animal cruelty and mentions that she joined a group that has “a reputation for holding controversial protests.” She had not only become “an animal lover,” but had become “militant about food and animal rights, and other issues like testing.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Note the \u201cworkshop.\u201d This is a report of a DHS workshop on domestic terrorism, where new threats may come from, and what to do. The\u00a0source doc is here<\/a>; you can probably guess the rest of what it says. If not, Fang lays it out.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the cover portion of the document and summary-first remarks:<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Fang\u2019s report includes the FBI component in defining the animal-rights \u201cthreat\u201d to internal security:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Can you see where this is headed? If you do, you\u2019re not alone.<\/p>\n

The \u2018Foreign-Domestic Switcheroo\u2019<\/h2>\n

The second stone drops here. Does what you read above touch what’s below?<\/p>\n

Through a complicated set of leaks (described\u00a0here<\/a>), we find \u201cthat the Aspen Institute hosted a \u2018Hack-and-Dump Working Group\u2019 exercise in the summer of 2020 titled, \u2018Burisma Leak,\u2019 which predicted with uncanny accuracy an upcoming\u00a0derogatory story<\/a>\u00a0in the\u00a0New York Post<\/em>\u00a0about Hunter Biden’s lost laptop.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a link to the Aspen Institute\u00a0document in question<\/a>. In it we find the following. First, from the Executive Summary (emphasis mine):<\/p>\n

\n

Once a promise of free expression and the democratization of information, the Web and its many channels are now polluted with mis- and dis-information, bots, abuse, lies, and conspiracies – sometimes planned by\u00a0adversarial actors from home and aboard<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Then, from the section about dealing with \u201cReporting and Promoting Hack-and-Dumps\u201d:<\/p>\n

\n

As we countdown to election day, the risk of a major hack and dump of documents aimed at undermining a candidate or party grows more acute. How can news organizations put provenance front and center? What happens when fabricated documents are released alongside genuine (stolen) content? How can social feeds avoid serving as promoters of\u00a0foreign or other adversarial entities<\/strong>? Aspen Digital is\u00a0convening Platform Trust and Safety leaders, cybersecurity reporters, journalism ethicists and First Amendment attorneys<\/strong>\u00a0to develop and adopt new norms guidelines for publication and coverage of hacked documents.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Note that the Aspen Institute is not just a think tank. It\u2019s where the elites’ 2020 discussion over moderation of hacked content was happening.<\/p>\n

Now consider what \u201cpromoters of foreign or other adversarial entities\u201d means? The only other adversarial entity that isn\u2019t foreign is \u2026 domestic. Can you trust, given what\u2019s above, that this designation \u2014 \u201cother adversarial entities\u201d \u2014 is reserved just for Proud Boy types?<\/p>\n

About this, Matt Taibbi\u00a0writes<\/a>\u00a0(emphasis mine):<\/p>\n

\n

First of all, this notion that there may be fabrications mixed in with real content is a suggestion that pops up somewhere in nearly every one of these leak stories, even if all the material proves to be real (old friend Malcolm Nance did the job in 2016 in suggesting the Podesta leaks were \u201criddled with forgeries<\/a>\u201d). More importantly however,\u00a0that last line is a great example of what former cybersecurity official and\u00a0Foundation for Freedom Online<\/a>\u00a0head Mike Benz calls the \u201cforeign-domestic switcheroo.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s the basic rhetorical trick of the censorship age: raise a fuss about a foreign threat, using it as a battering ram to get everyone from congress to the tech companies to submit to increased regulation and surveillance. Then, slowly, adjust your aim to domestic targets. You can see the subtlety: the original Stanford piece tries to stick to railing against \u201cdisinformation\u201d and information from \u201cforeign adversaries,\u201d but the later paper circulated by Aspen slips in, ever so slightly, a new category of dubious source: \u201cforeign or other adversarial entities.\u201d<\/p>\n

These rhetorical devices are essential. It would be preposterous to form (as Stanford did) an \u201cInformation Warfare Working Group<\/a>\u201d if readers knew the \u201cwar\u201d being contemplated was against domestic voices. \u2026\u00a0But<\/strong>\u00a0if you start by focusing on Russians and only later mention as an afterthought \u201cother adversarial entities,\u201d you can frame things however you want, from espionage to warfare<\/strong>. As reader O\u2019Neill correctly pointed out, \u201cthey are now getting close to being explicit about the fact that their motivation for suppressing news is to fight domestic political adversaries.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

You don\u2019t have to be a lover of these sources to hate what\u2019s you\u2019ve just found out. And I think it\u2019s reasonable to fear, even if you fear Trump more than God herself, what our security agencies do with domestic power.<\/p>\n

Regime Change<\/h2>\n

The last stone dropped in the pond is the oldest one. Before most of you were born, the halls of power fully understood that our security agencies, birthed in the Soviet threat, were fully capable \u2014 even tasked with the job \u2014 of making sure the global world was a safe American playground.<\/p>\n

The list of American-led coups in other countries is long as your leg and both arms.\u00a0Start here<\/a>\u00a0to see most of it. Do these agencies act domestically as they do abroad? The\u00a0FBI sure does<\/a>. But what about the CIA and the rest of the\u00a0alphabet community<\/a>?<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what Robert Kennedy, the man who was murdered on his way to the 1968 nomination, thought of the murder that felled his brother Jack in 1963 (via\u00a0The Hill<\/a>, emphasis mine):<\/p>\n

\n

[Robert] Kennedy Jr. said the first call his father, former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, made after learning his uncle had been shot was to a CIA desk officer.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy father said to him, \u2018Did your people do this?\u2019<\/strong>\u201d Kennedy Jr. told\u00a0Fox News\u2019s \u201cHannity\u201d<\/a>\u00a0on Monday.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHis next call was to [Enrique Ruiz-Williams], who was one of the Cuban Bay of Pigs leaders who had remained very, very close to our family and to my father,\u201d he continued. \u201cMy father asked him the same question.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kennedy Jr. said his father then called John McCone, the head of the CIA, and asked him to come to the family\u2019s house.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I came home [from] Sidwell Friends School, my father was walking in the yard with John McCone, and my father was posing the same question to him, \u2018Was it our people who did this to my brother?\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cIt was my father\u2019s first instinct that the agency had killed his brother.<\/strong>\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The Hill later tags this story as a \u201cconspiracy theory,\u201d no doubt to distance itself from both charge and source. But the underlying report is nonetheless true, or RFK Jr. is lying.<\/p>\n

Ripples In the Pond<\/h2>\n

What do these data points sum to? I\u2019ll leave it to you. If you love the FBI as some today do, would you love them still if they thought their remit included squelching you and your kind, not just Trump and his, using control of media as their tool?<\/p>\n

As I\u2019ve said before, it\u2019s appropriate to fear what a Trump, or worse, a DeSantis \u2014 who unlike Trump, who loves adoration and cash, truly loves power \u2014 would do if power were given them.<\/p>\n

Is it therefore not also appropriate to fear these agencies?<\/p>\n

After all, their goals won\u2019t always align with what\u2019s broadly called \u201cthe left.\u201d Their goals have never aligned with ours in the past. And unlike Republicans, who are only halfway to their goal, these agencies have power now, and practice using it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Tyler Durden<\/a><\/span>
\nFri, 05\/19\/2023 – 18:20<\/span><\/p>\n

From:Zerohedge<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Adversarial Actors, Home And Abroad” Authored by Thomas Neuberger via “God’s Spies” Substack, Which non-foreign ‘adversaries’ do elites have in mind when they promote domestic…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1289829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","wpcat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1289829","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1289829"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1289829\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1289829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1289829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1289829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}