Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I can’t take this shit today. I just can’t.

No one could have predicted…

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

This fight is for everything.

Everybody saw this coming.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

The revolution will be supervised.

You are either for trump or for democracy. Pick one.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

What fresh hell is this?

Tick tock motherfuckers!

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

I did not have this on my fuck 2020 bingo card.

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Russian Mobilization, Ukraine, and What the Hell Is Going On?!?!?!

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“Probe with bayonets. If You encounter mush, proceed; if you encounter steel, withdraw.” 

— Vladimir Lenin

Sorry for the delay, been a busy week, but I wanted to take a few moments and do the promised post on what is going on with Russia and Ukraine.

Reports have been trickling in from a variety of sources that Russia has been repositioning significant military assets near its western border with Ukraine. This has followed an increase over the past ten days or so of Russian Information and Psychological Operations directed at Ukraine, the US, NATO, and the EU.

The official US position is that this is just repositioning for a military exercise:

This includes reports that Russia has mobilized all of its military assets everywhere.

And, of course, the Information Warfare and Psychological Operations are in full swing:

What I specifically think is going on with Russia vis a vis Ukraine is something similar to what we saw back in late Winter/early Spring of 2014 before Putin moved on eastern Ukraine and Crimea once the Olympics were over. Basic maskirovka principles of diversion. Russian media has been going 24/7 on and on about how Ukraine has mobilized additional assets and is preparing to take back eastern Ukraine and, perhaps, even Crimea by force. And that the US is going to move military assets into Ukraine, which is just hyperbolic fantasy for domestic Russian consumption.

The reporting also includes an explicit threat presented as real concern that this could become a tactical nuclear war, which ignores the fact that Ukraine doesn’t have nukes. But it is effective in the Information domain of reinforcing actual Russian military doctrine that, if the Russian military is unable to win a conventional fight, then Russia will use its nuclear weapons tactically to reverse conditions in the battle space. Putting out this type of information is itself part of Russia’s Information Operations/PSYOP doctrine for setting the battle space ahead of military operations. The purpose of this is to freeze the US and NATO from taking action because neither are willing to risk a nuclear strike by Russia or escalation to a nuclear exchange. I’m not really sure this information warfare is effective, but it is in line with Russia’s military doctrine of using Information warfare and PSYOP to set the battle space ahead of actual military operation at the same time that they are physically preparing to set the theater of operations.

At the same time, all of this also provides a convenient way for Putin to change the topic from the fact that Navalny appears to have contracted either COVID or TB from the other inmates on his cell block, that they’re torturing him using sleep deprivation, and that he’s now in the infirmary as a result of a combination of whatever respiratory infection/disease he’s contracted and the effects of his hunger strike.

Russia’s build up and increased Information warfare and Psychological Operations directed at Ukraine, the US, NATO, and the EU is also not happening in a vacuum. The Russians and the PRC are in fact quietly collaborating. We’ve been watching it in real time in Libya where the Russian backed Libyan general is being supported by not only Wagner mercenaries, but also Erik Prince’s Frontier Services Group, which is wholly owned by the PRC. The attempted coup in Jordan?* We already know one of Prince’s Israeli associates was involved. And Prince is the bridging node here between the PRC/Xi and MBS of Saudi and MBZ of the Emirates, who appear to have been behind the coup. So I have no doubt that there is, at least, informal coordination by Putin and Xi, as well as regional players like Muhammed bin Salman,  Muhammed bin Zayed, and Bibi because all of them suddenly are facing a very different strategic reality with the Biden administration than they did with Trump who didn’t actually give a damn about any of this stuff beyond being able to have these authoritarians say nice things about him while they took advantage of him.

One final point: this is basically the equivalent, by Putin and Xi at the geo-strategic level and Muhammed bin Salman and Muhammed bin Zayed and Bibi at the regional strategic level, of the bad guys increasing operations during a Relief in Place/Transfer of Authority (RIP/TOA) just as the outgoing units are almost out of the area of operations (AOR) and the incoming units are just fully taking control as the left seat/right seat ride comes to an end.

And in Putin’s case it conforms to Lenin’s statement: “Probe with bayonets. If You encounter mush, proceed; if you encounter steel, withdraw.”

Right now Putin, as well as XI, Bibi, Muhammed bin Salman, Muhammed bin Zayed, and everyone else is probing to see what Biden and his team will do. In Putin’s case it is entirely possible that he is high on his own misinformation and agitprop supply that Biden is some sort of addled, neurologically ill mental case that is being taken advantage of by Ron Klain, Kamala Harris, and Tony Blinken who are really running the US government. Regardless, all of these bad actors, even the ones like Saudi, the UAE, and Israel that are supposedly partners and clients, are probing. If they find steel, they’ll withdraw. If they find mush, they’ll proceed.

That said, I’d like to see us call Putin’s bluff. The US Army has recently stood back up V Corps. It should be temporarily relocated to Kyiv and it should be plussed up with the 1st Armored Division and the rapid response brigade combat team – the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team – should be brought from FT Bliss and Vicenza respectively to keep them company. Operational Detachments Alpha (ODAs) from the 10th Special Forces Group, Civil Affairs Teams Alpha (CAT-As), and theater strategic Psychological Operations Teams should be added as enablers from Special Operations Command Europe (SOCEUR). Let the conventional elements train with our Ukrainian, NATO, and EU partners. Have the 10th Group bubbas do some Foreign Internal Defense training, the CAT-As do some military support to government work, and the PSYOPers conduct some counter-Psychological Operations with their Ukrainian, NATO, and EU partners.

Open thread!

* It’s been a busy week. I’m nowhere near caught up, but hope to be by tomorrow noon. So I’ll hopefully get to the Jordan post I promised sometime this weekend.

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The Office of the Director of National Intelligence Has Released Its 2020 Election Assessment & the Executive Summary of Its 2021 Domestic Violent Extremism Assessment

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I had originally planned on covering the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s (ODNI) assessment of Foreign Threats To the 2020 US Federal Elections on Tuesday night, but decided we needed something on the then just happened domestic terrorist attack in Atlanta. Yesterday, ODNI also released the executive summary from a recently completed threat assessment into domestic violent extremism. Given that the two assessments overlap in a key finding, I’ve decided to basically deal with them in one post. Especially because the assessment on foreign threats to the 2020 elections basically tracks with everything we covered here between my Black PSYOP series of posts beginning in October 2019 and Cheryl’s posts on the topic here and at her Nuclear Diner. In other words, between Cheryl and I, you all were getting pretty close to the same assessment that ODNI has put together. On behalf of Cheryl: we demand a raise!!!!  

You can click across and read the whole assessment for yourself, but here’s the key findings:

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence Has Released Its 2020 Election Assessment & the Executive Summary of Its 2021 Domestic Violent Extremism Assessment

You’ll notice that Key Judgement’s 2, 3, and 4 all track with what we’ve been discussing here since October 2019. In the Black PSYOP 1 and 2 posts we covered what misinformation and agitprop was being laundered, by whom, and why. Including this lovely little item dated May 2014, which I misdated to April 2014 in the post:

Anyone surprised by these findings, such as self declared information warfare expert Thomas Rid, quite simply, didn’t want to know about them because they had their own agendas. Specifically downplaying that anything that has actually been happening since at least 2014 if not 2011 in terms of Russian information warfare was actually happening. He’s suddenly surprised because he’s spent the past several years writing, publishing, and defending a book on information warfare that essentially denies it is actually occurring.

We also covered what Rudy Giuliani, Chanel Rian, and OAN News were doing to mule this Russian misinformation and agitprop to Trump, his surrogates in the House and the Senate, in the conservative movement, and in the conservative news media. As well as what Senators Johnson, Grassley, and Graham were doing with that material in the Black PSYOP Part X. And while it was reported at the time, in July 2020, we now have confirmation directly from Democratic members of Congress that Congressman Nunes received this fabricated material directly from Andreii Derkach. As in the Democrats actually have the delivery receipt!

The executive summary of the ODNI’s report on domestic violent extremism brings us to the overlap. Here are the findings:

(U) The IC assesses that domestic violent extremists (DVEs) who are motivated by a range of ideologies and galvanized by recent political and societal events in the United States pose an elevated threat to the Homeland in 2021. Enduring DVE motivations pertaining to biases against minority populations and perceived government overreach will almost certainly continue to drive DVE radicalization and mobilization to violence. Newer sociopolitical developments—such as narratives of fraud in the recent general election, the emboldening impact of the violent breach of the US Capitol, conditions related to the COVID-19 pandemic, and conspiracy theories promoting violence—will almost certainly spur some DVEs to try to engage in violence this year.

(U) The IC assesses that lone offenders or small cells of DVEs adhering to a diverse set of violent extremist ideologies are more likely to carry out violent attacks in the Homeland than organizations that allegedly advocate a DVE ideology. DVE attackers often radicalize independently by consuming violent extremist material online and mobilize without direction from a violent extremist organization, making detection and disruption difficult.

(U) The IC assesses that racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists (RMVEs) and militia violent extremists (MVEs) present the most lethal DVE threats, with RMVEs most likely to conduct mass-casualty attacks against civilians and MVEs typically targeting law enforcement and government personnel and facilities. The IC assesses that the MVE threat increased last year and that it will almost certainly continue to be elevated throughout 2021 because of contentious sociopolitical factors that motivate MVEs to commit violence.

(U) The IC assesses that US RMVEs who promote the superiority of the white race are the DVE actors with the most persistent and concerning transnational connections because individuals with similar ideological beliefs exist outside of the United States and these RMVEs frequently communicate with and seek to influence each other. We assess that a small number of US RMVEs have traveled abroad to network with like-minded individuals.

(U) The IC assesses that DVEs exploit a variety of popular social media platforms, smaller websites with targeted audiences, and encrypted chat applications to recruit new adherents, plan and rally support for in- person actions, and disseminate materials that contribute to radicalization and mobilization to violence.

(U) The IC assesses that several factors could increase the likelihood or lethality of DVE attacks in 2021 and beyond, including escalating support from persons in the United States or abroad, growing perceptions of government overreach related to legal or policy changes and disruptions, and high-profile attacks spurring follow-on attacks and innovations in targeting and attack tactics.

(U) DVE lone offenders will continue to pose significant detection and disruption challenges because of their capacity for independent radicalization to violence, ability to mobilize discretely, and access to firearms.

And it is the last sentence of Key Judgement 2 regarding US officials and prominent Americans promoting the Russian misinformation and agitprop against Biden that was key to Putin’s efforts to effect the 2020 election outcome and the final sentence of the first finding on domestic violent extremism –  narratives of fraud about the election, calling “patriots” and “real” American to the Capitol to stop the certification of the Electoral College votes, use of racial slurs when referring to COVID-19, etc – overlap. Because we’ve seen the same US officials and prominent Americans within the conservative movement and conservative news media promote Putin’s misinformation and agitprop and promote the conspiracy theories about the election being stolen, calling “patriots” and “real” Americans to action to do something about it, and using racial slurs to refer to COVID-19. Additionally, as in Key Judgement 2 and the fourth finding on domestic violent extremism, we see the connection to foreign actors promoting, facilitating, and encouraging Americans to act on either Russia’s misinformation and agitprop, a variety of conspiracy theories, and white Christian supremacy. It is well documented that the Russians have funded, supported, and manipulated American white supremacists, Christian supremacists, and anti-government extremists.

Do take the time to read both documents, neither is very long, and you’ll get both a real solid understanding of how the Intelligence Community understands these problem sets and an appreciation for having professional, mature leadership running the US Intelligence Community.

Open thread!

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A Pictorial Explanation of the Strategy Behind the Assassination In Iran

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Last week Bibi Netanyahu made a secret trip to Saudi Arabia to meet secretly with Mike Pompeo and Mohammed bin Salman. It didn’t stay secret for long. As the meeting was getting underway the Houthis attacked a Saudi ARAMCO facility. Which means the Iranians, who the Houthis have turned to for support, have excellent SIGINT fidelity on Bibi’s movements. Bibi should, probably, keep that in mind.

In the wake of this morning’s news, which Cheryl brought to all of our attention, we can now speculate that this morning’s operation was a likely topic of discussion at the secret Netanyahu-Pompep-bin Salman meeting.

Regardless, we need to understand the strategic reality right now that the lame duck Trump administration, as well as Bibi Netanyahu, and Mohammed bin Salman are involved in. And we can do it with pictures!

The Iranians are playing chess*:

A Pictorial Explanation of the Strategy Behind the Assassination In Iran

Bibi is this guy:

A Pictorial Explanation of the Strategy Behind the Assassination In Iran 1

And this is Trump:

A Pictorial Explanation of the Strategy Behind the Assassination In Iran 2

As a bonus, the Chinese are playing go, which, I would argue, is even harder to master than chess!

A Pictorial Explanation of the Strategy Behind the Assassination In Iran 3

The only good news is that the Iranians are smarter and better at this than Trump, Bibi, Pompeo, and bin Salman. They know Biden will be president soon. And while the Iranians may not have invented the game of chess, they’re willing to absorb the loss of a piece to win the game.

I expect we’ll eventually find out that this is the same in country team the Israelis used to kill al Masri back in July. As always, Bibi is willing to fight Iran to the last American. As I wrote back in August 2018, based on analytical work I’ve done on the issue for the Army beginning in January of 2012, going to war with Iran would be strategic malpractice and tactically stupid.

Open thread!

* Before someone starts, I am well aware that while the name for chess is derived from the Persian/Farsi word shah, meaning king, it is most likely that the game was introduced to Persia from what is now India.

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Regarding the Alleged Hunter Biden Materials: This Is Some of the Most Amateur Looking Garbage I’ve Ever Seen

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Since Tucker Carlson, the host of the White Power Hour of Glower Hour, has been told that UPS has found whatever documents and materials he was bitching were stolen last night have been found and will be delivered, I want to make a couple of quick points about the alleged Hunter Biden materials. These will be in line with my previous remarks, but I wanted to add a few things before Tucker starts peddling doctored documents, misinformation, and agitprop on the air tonight.

Cole texted me to ask if I’d seen the repository of alleged Hunter Biden pictures, videos, and emails posted on a site owned by Guo Wengui. I’ve now gone through the materials and here are my takeaways:

  1. These are some of the most amateur looking materials I’ve ever seen!
  2. Some of the pictures are legitimately of Hunter Biden.
  3. Some of the pictures may be of Hunter Biden.
  4. Some of the pictures are clearly altered/adjusted.
  5. Some of the pictures, specifically the vast majority that purport to show actual or simulated sex acts, could be of anybody. Some of these only show the face of one person so it is unclear who the other person is. A lot of them don’t show anyone’s faces, so there is no way to tell who the pictures are of.
  6. The picture of “Malia Obama’s credit card” is most certainly not of Malia Obama’s credit card.
  7. There are NO pictures depicting sex or simulated sex acts with minors/juveniles.
  8. There are several pictures with blurred out faces of women, including one with a blurred out upper body, that have text box overlays asking “are these underage?” Based on the visual evidence presented, there is no way to know, but if they are then everyone in possession of the unaltered photos is in a lot of trouble.
  9. In all the other pictures showing sex or simulated sex acts, the women are clearly not underage.
  10. The picture of the threesome/simulated threesome, which has a text box overlay asking if the women are Malia Obama and one of Hunter Biden’s daughters, is CLEARLY NOT A PICTURE WITH MALIA OBAMA AND/OR HUNTER BIDEN’S DAUGHTER IN IT!!!!! Frankly, I’m not even sure Hunter Biden is in the picture. Specifically, I’m not sure that the picture is not altered.
  11. The couple of network analysis charts are absolute crap. Also, they’re captioned in Chinese, which doesn’t help as my Chinese is limited to martial arts terms. And menu items.
  12. The few emails posted, like the emails published by The New York Post, are dead images. There’s no metadata, so know way to demonstrate their provenance. This implies to me they’re not legit. The same for the photos, though they all have text books with the alleged date, time, and location of where the pictures were taken. But here too, there’s no way to verify any of that.
  13. I did not watch the videos because based on the photos, I’m sure that a few will be of Hunter and some will be doctored, most likely by deep faking them.

This stuff is just incredibly amateurish. They are clearly not intended to persuade anyone, let alone really convince law enforcement or intelligence personnel to take them seriously. Rather, they’re intended to push misinformation and agitprop out through outlets like Carlson’s show on Fox News, The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, and The New York Post so the President and his key surrogates like Rudy Giuliani can refer to them at rallies and during media hits. And Don Jr. can shitpost them on Twitter.

And now a little bit about Guo Wengui. Guo’s back story is that he’s in self imposed exile from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) because he pissed of Xi and Xi wants him back for what would be a political trial. As a result, Guo took his billions and fled to the US where he’s embraced the hardest of the hard right within the GOP, the conservative movement, and Trumpworld. Guo’s thrown his money around to them as well, which is why he’s funding Bannon’s operations and why Bannon was arrested on Guo’s yacht. They appear to have an initiative they call the New Chinese Federation, which is tied to the Guo backed website that is now posting the alleged Hunter Biden material.

While it is possible that Guo’s story is legit, it is just as likely, and in my professional assessment highly likely, that the story is a cover story*. It’s just too good to be true. Just as the Russians sent a somewhat physically attractive young woman to penetrate the GOP and conservative movement using both gun rights and white Christian religious freedom as the cover story, a cover story that was catnip to the folks at the NRA, other shooting organizations, the National Prayer Breakfast folks (C Street/the Family/the Fellowship), and other white Christian conservative organizations, I think Guo’s cover story is engineered to be equally irresistible.

The Trumpified GOP and conservative movement have over the past four years stopped talking about, as in literally have stopped using the terms China or the PRC and started screaming about the Chinese Communist Party, the CCP, and/or the ChiComs. This is language used for the boundary maintenance of GOP/conservative/Trumpworld identity by allowing for easy identification of those who speak the right words (the literal definition of political correctness that came out of the crypto-fascist movement of Father Coughlin).

Guo’s story seems to be created to be equally irresistible to the Republican Party, the conservative movement, and Trumpworld and to capitalize off of this weird Republican, conservative, and Trumpworld reimagining of the PRC. Just as Butina’s cover story of the emergence of a 2nd amendment absolutism movement in Russia, which is implausible if you know anything about Russia, was designed to be irresistible to the GOP and the conservative movement in the US. When you combine the cover story with all the money he has to share, just as Butina managed to have money to share, you’ve got what appears to be a not for cover operation to penetrate the Republican Party, the conservative movement, and Trumpworld.

It is important to remember, that despite the President’s statements, as well as those by former Acting DNI Grennell and current DNI Ratcliffe, as well as other of the President’s surrogates, Xi does want to see the President reelected:

Donald Trump has argued frequently of late that China is rooting for Joe Biden come November’s U.S. presidential election. In Beijing, however, officials have come around to support four more years of Trump.

Interviews with nine current and former Chinese officials point to a shift in sentiment in favor of the sitting president, even though he has spent much of the past four years blaming Beijing for everything from U.S. trade imbalances to Covid-19. The chief reason? A belief that the benefit of the erosion of America’s postwar alliance network would outweigh any damage to China from continued trade disputes and geopolitical instability.

While the officials shared concerns that U.S.-China tensions would rise regardless of who was in the White House, they broke largely into camps of those who emphasized geopolitical gains and those who were concerned about trade ties. Biden, the former vice president, was viewed as a traditional Democrat who would seek to shore up the U.S.’s tattered multilateral relationships and tamp down trade frictions.

“If Biden is elected, I think this could be more dangerous for China, because he will work with allies to target China, whereas Trump is destroying U.S. alliances,” said Zhou Xiaoming, a former Chinese trade negotiator and former deputy representative in Geneva. Four current officials echoed that sentiment, saying many in the Chinese government believed a Trump victory could help Beijing by weakening what they saw as Washington’s greatest asset for checking China’s widening influence.

Having a catspaw – Guo – with an irresistible to Republicans and conservatives cover story and lots of money to spread around on those same Republicans and conservatives pet projects, including smearing VP Biden to weaken his election chances, makes sense. It also explains why Russian agitprop that was seeded in 2014 to dirty up VP Biden, Secretary Kerry, and VP Cheney, is now being pushed by a self exiled ultra-wealthy Chinese national who has ingratiated himself with and is funding Steve Bannon and other key Trumpworld figures.

We are off the map and through the looking glass.

Open thread!

* The link is to a lawsuit by a private US research firm that Guo had hired to dig up dirt on Chinese nationals in the US that Guo believed to be working for the PRC. However, in the lawsuit that US research firm alleges that Guo was actually having them try to dig up dirt on Chinese working for the US government under false allegations that they were working for the PRC. The case was ultimately dismissed.

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Meanwhile, in Hong Kong China

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Back in 1997, when the UK’s lease on Hong Kong expired, did it seem plausible that China would maintain a “one country, two systems” policy for fifty years? I was not yet a teenager, so I have no idea what the general thinking might have been. But for the last fifteen years or so, it’s been increasingly clear to me that China’s claims about Hong Kong’s independence were laughable. Once President Xi came to power in 2013 amid a wave of neo-Maoism, surely it was obvious that the old pragmatism was dead–and some of the old pragmatists along with it.

So I was saddened, but not at all surprised, to read that Beijing has decided to impose an anti-speech, anti-protest, anti-democracy law on the island under the guise of public safety.

After steadily eroding Hong Kong’s political freedoms, Beijing signaled that the national security law will be a new tool that allows it to directly tackle the political dissent that erupted on Hong Kong’s streets last year. The months-long and sometimes violent protests began last June and fizzled out only over public health concerns related to the coronavirus outbreak.

The new tactic marks an escalation in Beijing’s crackdown in the former British colony and the clearest indication that it views Hong Kong as a restive region to be brought to heel after last year’s protests.

[…]

“The social unrest last year showed that the Hong Kong government was unable to handle passing [national security legislation] on its own,” said Ng, a Beijing loyalist who has for years pushed for a similar law. “Hong Kong’s status will be sacrificed with or without this law if society is unstable due to the protesters’ violence.”

Zhang Yesui, the spokesman for the NPC session, said in comments to Chinese media that Hong Kong is an “inseparable” part of China and that national security is the cornerstone of stability in the country.

(Editor’s note: much–most?–of the violence during last year’s protests was by the police.)

I don’t have much to add.

Afernoonish open thread!

Meanwhile, in <s>Hong Kong</s> ChinaPost + Comments (150)

Weaponizing Bullshit, Chattering Classes Edition

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A couple of weeks ago (a gazillion years in COVID time, I know), former intellectual Niall Ferguson published a piece in the Sunday Times, asserting that the Chinese government had allowed travel from Hubei province for international destinations after banning such trips to destinations within China, adding,

As far as I can tell from the available records, however, regular direct flights from Wuhan continued to run to London, Paris, Rome, New York and San Francisco throughout January and in some cases into February.

I’m not going to bother linking to the column itself–Murdoch clicks, and it’s behind a paywall;  I’ll connect this instead to the blog post from which I got the quote and information above, written by Daniel A. Bell, dean of the School of Political Science and Public Administration at Shandong University, and a professor at Tsinghua U. (sometimes called China’s MIT, though I suspect the nicknaming may go the other direction soon).  As in, not a dummy, based in China, and with some expert ability to navigate knowledge in that setting. (H/t James Fallows for the link to the post, btw.)

Bell was, he wrote, “surprised by the allegation,” especially given the speed with which Ferguson’s assertion was picked up in the US and Canada by ready-to-otherize-China folks. So he asked Ferguson if he was sure. Ferguson replied:

 “I can assure you I wouldn’t write a sentence like that if I had not researched it rather thoroughly.” To support his claim, he sent me several pieces of evidence.

Weaponizing Bullshit, Fancy Pants Edition

The evidence was, I’m sure you’ll be shocked to learn, bullshit–links to articles that did not support the incendiary claim in Ferguson’s article.

Ferguson also sent Bell flight records that the former historian of 19th century British banking believed confirmed that 31 flights had in fact left Wuhan for Europe after the domestic travel ban kicked in on January 23.

Did those records actually show that? Here’s Bell:

 I checked all the flights listed on the spreadsheet Professor Ferguson sent me. It turns out that none of the flights that supposedly left from Wuhan after 11:26 am on Jan. 23rd actually left from Wuhan. The flights listed as red on Ferguson’s spreadsheet were cancelled. The six listed as black left from Guangzhou and in normal times would do a stopover in Wuhan on the way to SFO but the stopover was cancelled. The app shows the actual flight paths of those flights as direct from Guangzhou, bypassing Wuhan.

Bell goes on, with all the receipts that show that Ferguson, most kindly, simply did not understand the records he was using.

Bell sent his results to Ferguson, by the way. With this result:

Ferguson continues to support his allegation even after I pointed out that the evidence he provided does not support it. That’s worrisome. Conspiracy theorizing of this sort deflects attention from what actually went wrong. And it fuels the demonization of the Chinese political system at the same time we need collaboration between China and the rest of the world to deal with an urgent global pandemic.

In this latest effusion, the consequences of those career choices are on display: what is either a lazy mistake or the willingness to trade in too-good-to-check conspiracy theories (leavened with a measure of anti-Chinese bigotry, perhaps) produced a column based on an elementary error in reading a slightly technical source, combined with a willful misreading of a couple of news stories.

This is what passes for the cream of conservative intellectual life these days.

TL:DR Niall Ferguson–and the prominence given to him by credulous editors–is one of the reasons we can’t have nice things. There are others who are more consequential, more harmful in their reckless disregard of evidence, and the obligation not to spew bullshit.

Mistakes are one thing–I’ve made plenty and will make more. It’s the contempt for the idea of even trying to get it right, to allow reality to confound your desired narrative that makes the contemporary radical right such an existential threat.

Fuck it. I’m tired. Whacking those who are wrong on the internet is an endless task–by design: the whole enterprise of illiberal authoritarianism turns on wearing out the opposition, as much as overtly crushing it.  But still–this is the kind of chickenshit up with which no civilized society should have to put.

Open thread.

Francisco de Goya, The Sleep of Reason Brings Forth Monsters, 1799.

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COVID-19 & National Security Part IV: Do Not Turn Challenges Into Threats and Competitors Into Enemies During a Crisis!

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The Daily Beast has reported that the Trump administration has decided to escalate the rhetoric with the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

As the number of coronavirus cases continues to grow at a rapid pace in the U.S., the White House is launching a communications plan across multiple federal agencies that focuses on accusing Beijing of orchestrating a “cover-up” and creating a global pandemic, according to two U.S. officials and a government cable obtained by The Daily Beast.

The cable, sent to State Department officials Friday, lays out in detail the circumstances on the ground in China, including data on coronavirus cases and deaths, the local business environment and transportation restrictions. But it also issues guidelines for how U.S. officials should answer questions on, or speak about, the coronavirus and the White House’s response in relation to China.

The talking points appear to have originated in the National Security Council. One section of the cable reads “NSC Top Lines: [People’s Republic of China] Propaganda and Disinformation on the Wuhan Virus Pandemic.”

“Chinese Communist Party officials in Wuhan and Beijing had a special responsibility to inform the Chinese people and the world of the threat, since they were the first to learn of it,” the cable reads. “Instead, the… government hid news of the virus from its own people for weeks, while suppressing information and punishing doctors and journalists who raised the alarm. The Party cared more about its reputation than its own people’s suffering.”

I cannot tell you how GALACTICALLY FUCKING STUPID THIS IS!!!! Even if you set aside the whole “is this something we really need to be focusing on right now as we are confronting a pandemic” that has been mismanaged by the Federal government since January 2020*, just from a Psychological Operations (PSYOP) or Information Operations (IO) perspective this is just absolutely, mindnumbingly dumb! Despite the PRC’s internal and external mistakes at the beginning of the outbreak, mistakes that were made because the PRC is an authoritarian state and society and it is led by authoritarians who fear the free flow of information, especially bad information on their ability to maintain power and control, it is too late for the US to shape the information domain by establishing information dominance before moving on to diplomatic and humanitarian efforts.

As with every other aspect of the President’s and his administration’s response to SARS-CoV2/COVID-19, it failed to do anything to set the information space to establish the conditions for informational control pertaining to SARS-CoV2/COVID-19. As a result, and despite the PRC’s early communication and information stumbles, derived from authoritarian paranoia about maintaining control, the PRC quickly got its information operations back in order, set the information space, and used that to facilitate its diplomatic and humanitarian efforts in regard to the pandemic response. This is why we had stories last week that as the President and his administration dithered and careened wildly and fell farther and farther behind, the PRC now had a handle on the outbreak within China and was sending doctors, nurses, and medical supplies and material as humanitarian aid to Italy and other states. And that the PRC’s utlra-wealthy, with the backing of Xi’s government, were going to do the same thing to help America dig itself out the hole that the President and his administration keep digging us deeper into, as well as to Asian-Pacific states that needed assistance that the US would normally be, but is not providing.

The announcement of these efforts by the PRC directly, or indirectly through China’s ultra-wealthy, were intended to set the information space as if it was a theater of operations in order to establish information dominance and establish information control of the operating environment. Just as the President and his administration have wasted over two months since being alerted by the US Intelligence Community that the PRC wasn’t being forthcoming, that things were worse than were being reported by the PRC in its official communications with the World Health Organizations (WHO) and other states like the US, it failed to quickly move to establish information control. Again, just from a PSYOP or IO perspective, this would have meant immediately going public that things were worse than being reported, that the US was on it, that the Defense Production Act was being invoked and orders issued tasking US domestic manufacturers to immediately switch to producing personal protective equipment (PPE: gowns, masks, gloves, face shields), ventilators, increase pharmaceutical production to get ahead of possible shortages, and tasking domestic laboratories and university health science research centers to make tests using the data provided by the PRC through the WHO. And that the US would be available to provide some of these to states in need because the US is the only state that can do global strategic lift and logistics because we have an expeditionary military designed to be proactive to meet all challenges and threats. None of this was done. And once Xi felt that he had his domestic situation under control he immediately moved to fill the vacuum left by focusing on America first and keeping America great. Neither of which are actually working so well for actual Americans. As a result, Xi moved to occupy this information space by offering humanitarian assistance, which furthers his diplomatic efforts through the Belt and Road Initiative. Xi and the PRC now hold the information equivalent of the ridge of Little Round Top and the administration’s attempt to take control of the information space regarding SARS-CoV2/COVID-19 is the Information Operations equivalent of Pickett’s Charge.

But it is even worse than just wasting time and resources trying to reclaim information control over SARS-CoV2/COVID-19 when other more important efforts are needed to respond to the pandemic. What these geniuses on the National Security Staff on the National Security Council and others within the administration, including the President, who think this is a good fight to pick seem to have forgotten is THAT ALL OF THE PERSONAL PROTECTIVE EQUIPMENT – GLOVES, MASKS, FACE SHIELDS, GOWNS – AND THE PRECURSORS FOR ALMOST ALL OF OUR PHARMACEUTICALS COME FROM THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA!!!!! And that If you piss Xi off right now, he can destroy us just by shutting off the supply chain!

Not one bit of this futile, stupid effort will do A DAMN THING TO HELP A SINGLE AMERICAN OR ANYONE ELSE ANYWHERE ELSE SURVIVE THE SARS-CoV2/COVID-19 PANDEMIC OR THE ECONOMIC DAMAGE THAT IS A RESULT!!!!!

MORONS!

Open thread!

* I’m going to try to get to this monumental clusterfuck of an intelligence failure by the President tomorrow.

COVID-19 & National Security Part IV: Do Not Turn Challenges Into Threats and Competitors Into Enemies During a Crisis!Post + Comments (65)