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I swear, each month of 2020 will have its own history degree.

We can agree to disagree, but i’m right.

Let there be snark.

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Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

There will be lawyers.

Something seems odd about that, but i have been drinking.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

The revolution will be supervised.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

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

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

I really should read my own blog.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Deploy the moving finger of emphasisity!

All your base are belong to Tunch.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

Wetsuit optional.

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Consistently wrong since 2002

Women: they get shit done

‘Forty-two’ said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm.

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Not Everything Is Russia: Oldsmar, Florida’s Water Treatment Facility Edition

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Last Friday someone was able to access the Oldsmar, Florida water treatment facility computer system and adjust the levels of sodium hydroxide, aka lye, that would be added to the water. The Tampa Bay Times has the details:

Local and federal authorities are investigating after an attempt Friday to poison the city of Oldsmar’s water supply, Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said.

Someone remotely accessed a computer for the city’s water treatment system and briefly increased the amount of sodium hydroxide, also known as lye, by a factor of more than 100, Gualtieri said at a news conference Monday. The chemical is used in small amounts to control the acidity of water but it’s also a corrosive compound commonly found in household cleaning supplies such as liquid drain cleaners.

The city’s water supply was not affected. A supervisor working remotely saw the concentration being changed on his computer screen and immediately reverted it, Gualtieri said. City officials on Monday emphasized that several other safeguards are in place to prevent contaminated water from entering the water supply and said they’ve disabled the remote-access system used in the attack.

The Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office is investigating, along with the FBI and the Secret Service, Gualtieri said.

Nobody has been arrested, Gualtieri said, though investigators have some leads. They do not know why Oldsmar was targeted, he said.

Though some cities obtain water through Pinellas County, Oldsmar provides water directly to its businesses and roughly 15,000 residents, Gualtieri said. The computer system at the water treatment plant was set up to allow authorized users to remotely access it for troubleshooting.

A plant operator was monitoring the system at about 8 a.m. Friday and noticed that someone briefly accessed it. He didn’t find this unusual, Gualtieri said, because his supervisor remotely accessed the system regularly.

But at about 1:30 p.m. the same day, Gualtieri said, someone accessed the system again. This time, he said, the operator watched as someone took control of the mouse, directed it to the software that controls water treatment, worked inside it for three to five minutes and increased the amount of sodium hydroxide from 100 parts per million to 11,100 parts per million.

The attacker left the system, Gualtieri said, and the operator immediately changed the concentration back to 100 parts per million.

“At no time was there a significant adverse effect on the water being treated,” the sheriff said. “Importantly, the public was never in danger.”

Even if the operator hadn’t caught it, he said, it would have taken more than a day for the water to enter the water supply.

“The protocols that we have in place, monitoring protocols, they work — that’s the good news,” said Oldsmar Mayor Eric Seidel. “Even had they not caught them, there’s redundancies in the system that would have caught the change in the pH level.

“The important thing is to put everyone on notice,” he said. “There’s a bad actor out there.”

Much more at the link, including a profound statement by Florida’s senior senator Micro Rubio.

Malcolm Nance immediately jumped to conclusions:

These conclusions were then picked up and broadcast to everyone by Rachel Maddow on her show this evening.

I know a little something about Oldsmar, Florida. Largely because the Balloon Juice Bunker compound in the cypress scrub is adjacent to Oldsmar. For lack of a better geographic locator, since the post office refuses to recognize Balloon Juice Bunker Compound, Cypress Scrub, FL, USA as a legitimate address*, I ACTUALLY FUCKING LIVE IN OLDSMAR!!!! And I can honestly say NO ONE WHO DOESN’T LIVE IN OLDSMAR OR NORTH PINELLAS COUNTY OR WESTERN HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY OR SOUTHERN PASCO COUNTY OR KNOWS SOMEONE WHO DOES EVEN KNOWS THERE IS AN OLDSMAR, FL!!!!!!

You can sneeze across Oldsmar if the wind is blowing the right way. Oldsmar is about a dozen stoplights running north-south and east-west at the northwestern most point of Tampa Bay. It got its name because RE Olds and his family had their winter home here, which they named Oldsmar. As in Olds by the sea. Or the sea of the Olds. And given the amount of venerable elders, Olds by the sea is an appropriate name!

I could be wrong, but I would be highly surprised if this was the Russians. I’ve been working on the Russian active measures, hybrid warfare, and political warfare problem set since January 2014 when I was assigned, under temporary assigned control, as the Cultural Advisor/Senior Civilian Advisor to the Commanding General of US Army Europe. I have published, in Special Warfare**, which is the professional journal of the Special Warfare community***, about how the Russians have probed for vulnerabilities and weaknesses in order to target a variety of utilities and the systems that control them. Three years before my article was published, in May of 2016, I included this strategic concern in a briefing I gave at FT Bragg to a room full of American and allied general officers and senior staff that partially dealt with Russia and its geo-strategic and regional strategic ambitions. My professional assessment, given what we know now, is that it is highly unlikely that this is the Russians. I have also published, just last July, on political warfare, which included this concern. This isn’t something I’ve just started thinking about today, I’ve been considering the problem off and on for over seven years as part of my professional work.

There are several reasons why I doubt this was the Russians. The first is that right now Putin does not want to do anything to further stress Russian relations with the US. President Biden and his team are not Trump and his team. And President Biden has already made it clear to Putin that he is not going to tolerate Putin’s actions the way Trump did. The second is that since almost no one in most of Florida, let alone the rest of the US knows that Oldsmar existed, at least before today, that it is a very strange place for Putin’s merry band of mischief makers to target a water treatment facility.

I think it is far more likely that either a disgruntled current or former employee of the City of Oldsmar or of Pinellas County who knew that this point of access existed and exploited it for their own purposes. Or that a local mischief maker went probing for an access point, found one, and decided it was party time. We do have a small, but sizable white supremacist, neo-NAZI, and domestic right wing extremist presence in the area, so it is also possible one fo them did it. Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if we find out that an actual authorized user who was teleworking and on the system stepped away from their computer for a few minutes without logging out to get something to drink or use the facilities and their cat walking across the computer desk or their toddler wanting to help daddy or mommy work unintentionally reset the levels. I think the Russians attacking Oldsmar, Florida through a water treatment facility that only supplies Oldsmar is, in my professional opinion, a big stretch. Is it possible it was the Russians? Sure. Is it probable and plausible? I think it likely improbable and implausible.

We’ll know more when we know more. And I know enough about what I don’t know to state that I could be wrong.

Open thread!

* I personally blame Louis DeJoy.

** I apologize for the random capitalizations, I’m pretty sure whoever copyedited this decided these were operational terms of art and capitalized them.

*** It was nice of them to hide their professional journal in plain sight.

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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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Assassination Attempt On Iran’s “Father Of Nuclear Program”

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There has just been an assassination attempt on Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, Iran’s leading nuclear scientist. He is seen within Iran in a role much like that of Robert Oppenheimer in the United States.

Israel has assassinated other Iranian nuclear scientists and is thus the prime suspect. Bibi Netanyahu has mentioned Fakhrizadeh by name.

Israel, and the Trump administration, have been trying to break the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) so that it cannot be revived. The JCPOA froze and even pushed back Iran’s nuclear weapons program, putting it under greater international scrutiny than any nuclear program in the world.

But war with Iran is what Mike Pompeo and other Trump advisors have wanted. It is also what Netanyahu wants, as long as the losses are primarily America’s.

On top of the devastation of the Iraq War, a war with Iran would tear the Middle East apart. Those desiring war imagine that it would destroy Iran without extreme damage to themselves. Pompeo has mentioned the Rapture, which requires such a war to ensure his personal salvation.

But the warmongers have been unsuccessful in provoking Iran into leaving the JCPOA. After the US left the agreement, Iran has taken reversible steps toward a more robust nuclear program and has made clear that these are in response to US actions. The other participants in the JCPOA have held firm.

The attack on Fakhrizadeh is an enormous provocation, most likely an escalation by those who want Iran to leave the JCPOA so that there is justification for war. As usual, early reports are confused. Current tweets follow.

Update: Official sources now say Fakhrizadeh is dead.

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Trump Wanted To Bomb Iran

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Donald Trump and his toadies are trying to wreck as much as they can on the way out.

President Trump asked senior advisers in an Oval Office meeting on Thursday whether he had options to take action against Iran’s main nuclear site in the coming weeks. The meeting occurred a day after international inspectors reported a significant increase in the country’s stockpile of nuclear material, four current and former U.S. officials said on Monday. (New York Times)

This is, of course, what a number of people have been driving for in pressing Trump to break out of the nuclear agreement (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, JCPOA) and keep adding sanctions in their “maximum pressure”. They have hoped that Iran would behave in a way that would give them an excuse to bomb.

Iran, however, seems to be fine with the JCPOA and would prefer to have the US back in the agreement. What they have been doing is taking reversible steps to indicate that they have a say in this matter too. That increase in the stockpile of nuclear material can easily be given up or diluted down.

So the brilliant plans for a war haven’t been working. But hey, why not on the way out?

At the same time, Trump’s new Acting Alternative Maybe Secretary of Defense is saying words about withdrawing from Afghanistan.

What these people don’t understand is that war isn’t as action comix portray it. You need to move planes and ships and land vehicles and people to do these operations. You can’t bomb Iran tomorrow.

You could send a few missiles in, but they aren’t enough to damage Iran’s underground facilities, which most of them are now. And Iran has air defense, which might shoot down those missiles. So you might want to take out that air defense first. And that takes more planes and crews.

Likewise, you don’t just say “Withdraw the troops.” Controlled withdrawal is one of the most difficult of maneuvers. There are only a few routes for US troops in and out of Afghanistan, with many unfriendly people around. And is it really cool that there’s a good chance that a full civil war will break out if the Americans and Europeans leave? Oh yes – we might just let the Europeans know we’re leaving so they can plan.

In short, more ignorance and potentially death from the Trump clown squad. They can’t withdraw from the White House fast enough for me.

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The DNI/FBI Announcement On Election Interference: Before Anyone Asks, I Really Have No Idea

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Not that I don’t appreciate getting texts and emails asking me about breaking news… So let me just start with: I have no idea.

I watched the press conference, I’ve read The Washington Post‘s reporting on this, and I’m basically like, (except with much more facial hair):

The DNI/FBI Announcement On Election Interference: Before Anyone Asks, I Really Have No Idea

The Washington Post provides us what I think are the important details:

The technical data embedded in the emails did not make immediately apparent who was behind the messages. But metadata gathered from dozens of the emails pointed to the use of servers in Saudi Arabia, Estonia, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates, according to numerous analysts.

The hosting service that previously carried the Proud Boys domain canceled the registration after Google Cloud notified the customer that a nonprofit group had raised concerns about the controversial organization, said Ladd, the Google Cloud spokesman.

Following the action from the hosting service, the domain appears to have been left unsecured, allowing anyone on the Internet to take control of it and use it to send out the menacing messages, said Trevor Davis, CEO of CounterAction, a Washington-based digital intelligence firm.

I have no idea what other, corroborating information that the CIA, NSA, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA, which is part of DHS), National Counterintelligence and Security Center (NSCS, which is part of ODNI), and the National Security Division at the FBI have, but this doesn’t scream Iran to me. Could it be Iran? Sure. Can I say it is or isn’t definitively based on what I know about how Iran behaves after working on issues dealing with Iran for the Army and DOD for over a decade? I can’t. With this information I could just as easily make an argument that this is an Emirati Crown Price Mohammad bin Zayed and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman effort intended to make Iran look bad, which is a fair amount of the attempted covert and clandestine efforts made by the Emiratis and the Saudis. The whole point of the recent agreements between Israel and the UAE, Israel and Bahrain*, and attempt to get agreements between Israel and Saudi Arabia are really attempts to formalize and make overt the decades long covert and clandestine relations that these states have had with Israel in order to establish an anti-Iranian regional alliance.

Part of the problem here is that DNI Ratcliffe has no credibility. Especially as I’m not sure anyone who isn’t a partisan would classify emails like the one below as being anti-Trump.

The DNI/FBI Announcement On Election Interference: Before Anyone Asks, I Really Have No Idea 2

My read of the email above is an attempt to deactivate Biden voters through intimidation. And based on what was said, I’m not even sure these were the emails that DNI Ratcliffe was referring to.

This leads to my other concern here, especially given what Ratcliffe said and what FBI Director Wray did not. DNI Ratcliffe stated that the intelligence points to Iran and Russia, and that in the case of Iran he generically referenced intimidatory emails and then specifically stated that these Iranian efforts are intended to harm the President’s reelection chances. He provided no details regarding whatever Russia is doing. Director Wray said nothing specific at all; he just provided a general warning that both Iran and Russia are actively trying to disrupt the election and that the US government has thwarted one such attempt.

DNI Ratcliffe is both highly partisan and highly unqualified for the position he is currently serving in. My worry is that by making the statements that he did, and rushing to do them tonight before 8 PM EDT, he has provided the President with talking points for his rally tonight. Something the President can pitch to the rally goers as “Did you hear what Director of National Intelligence Ratcliffe – great man, great man – said earlier tonight? He said the Iranians are interfering in the election to get Sleepy Joe elected. Can you believe that? Can you? It’s true, it’s true!”

Frankly what was presented by DNI Ratcliffe was very thin and very concerning because it was very thin. The more generic statements of Director Wray was better largely because he didn’t provide just enough details to make people question the integrity of what was being briefed.

I want to make one final point. What Director Wray told Americans tonight was what should have been announced back in August, September, and/or October 2016 in regard to what Russia was doing in 2016. The Obama administration wanted to do it, but decided it also wanted bipartisan buy-in, so the President pitched it to both the Democratic and Republican leadership in Congress. Senator McConnell killed it by threatening to use any announcement, no matter how appropriate and how non-partisan, as a weapon to politically attack both President Obama and Secretary Clinton. My issues and concerns here are not that a press conference to warm Americans about foreign election interference was done. My issues and concerns of the lack of specificity except in regard to one statement from DNI Ratcliffe that the interference was intended to harm the President and his reelection chances and the need to do this tonight before 8 PM when there’s nothing that couldn’t have waited till 9 AM tomorrow morning.

We are off the looking glass and through the map!

Open thread!

* Just earlier today we learned that Israel has been running a clandestine embassy in Bahrain that was being presented as a development corporation. This reporting raises the questions of 1) how many other Gulf States has Israel done this in, 2) how many US companies, defense or non-defense sector, have been compromised by doing business with companies that are secret Israeli embassies that only Israel and the host country know are fronts, and 3) how much US intellectual property, especially critical for US national security, wound up being stolen as a result?

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Mike Pompeo’s War On Iran

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One of the many damages Donald Trump inflicts on the country is the inability to focus on events elsewhere in the world. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo uses Trump’s distractions to move closer to war with Iran.

Pompeo’s diplomacy begins by presenting a list of impossible demands to establish leverage for his next moves. In the case of arms control, the next move has been to pick up his marbles and go home. The US believes that Russia has been violating treaties. Instead of using the treaties’ mechanisms to bring Russia back into compliance, the US representative insisted that Russia publicly admit to its violations. When it didn’t, the US withdrew from the intermediate-range missile treaty and shot off a missile that would have violated the treaty. They are using the same strategy now to allow the New START Treaty, the last of the big arms control treaties, to lapse.

In May 2018, Pompeo presented a list of twelve demands to Iran. Iran has ignored those demands, which amount to Iran’s giving up its sovereignty. Pompeo and a number of allies, including Republican legislators, have long wanted a war with Iran. In addition to the twelve demands, they pressed Trump to withdraw from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the carefully negotiated agreement that contains Iran’s nuclear program. Explicitly in response to that withdrawal, Iran has taken a number of steps in violation of the JCPOA which can be reversed if the United States returns to compliance.

Pompeo has used those Iranian violations an excuse to argue to the United Nations that “snapback sanctions,” a part of the JCPOA, should be imposed on Iran. The other members of the agreement correctly rejected this proposal by a non-party to the agreement.

Earlier this year in Iraq, the United States assassinated Qasim Soleimani, the commander of Iran’s Quds Force. In response, Iranian militias in Iraq have targeted Americans. I have not kept up fully with the back and forth except to note the absurdity of the phrase “restoring deterrence,” which is what Pompeo says he would like to do. Deterrence is a state in which action is not taken because of fear of retribution. Clearly the Iranian militias lack that fear. A reciprocal attack is probably within their calculations; “restoring deterrence” would require more and is a recipe for escalation.

But now Pompeo has found another path the could lead to war. He is pressuring the Iraqi government to get the Iranian militias under control. Yes, that is Iraq with a “q”. He says that the US will withdraw its embassy from Baghdad, possibly to Erbil in northern Iraq. Some American troops were recently withdrawn. A complete American withdrawal from Iraq would be a major victory for Iran.

After the 2003 US war against Iraq, the government crumbled, and it’s been difficult to build it back. Saddam Hussein was an enemy of Iran – Iraq and Iran fought a war through most of the 1980s. Removing the government of Iraq disrupted that power balance and allowed Iran to infiltrate its sympathizers into the new Iraq government.

Withdrawing the American embassy from Baghdad would not be a total withdrawal from Iraq, but it would make interactions with the Iraqi government more difficult. It would be a vote of no confidence in that government, weakening it among the Iraqi people. The Trump government has declared it will nearly halve its troops in Iraq to 3000 by the end of October.

Iran would flow into this vacuum. It’s possible that Pompeo’s threat is empty and he will not carry through, but empty threats indicate weakness and invite intervention. Iran has declared its desire to remove the United States from the region, and Pompeo may do that for them.

Today additional sanctions go into effect on Iran, in defiance of European allies protests. These sanctions are likely to limit Iran’s access to medical supplies, and other necessities to deal with the pandemic. Previous US sanctions on Iran have devastated its, but Iran has not budged on American demands.

Also today, Trump threatened Iran with nuclear war once again.

Iran responded to the US withdrawal from the JCPOA in measured and reversible fashion, giving little basis for war. Now that it looks like the Trump administration will be voted out of office in November, Pompeo is stepping up the actions he hopes will provoke Iran into a move that can be responded to with war.

A cause for Pompeo’s longed-for war is unlikely to show up in the next month. If Trump wins, Pompeo can continue his destruction and perhaps get that war in another year or two. If Joe Biden wins, he will attempt to mend the damage and bring the United States back into the JCPOA.

 

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Joe Biden On Iran

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I followed the negotiation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA, Iran Deal) very closely and wrote quite a lot about it. I think that was before I became a front pager here. There were great wars on Twitter about it, in which I fended off, with Jeffrey Lewis’s help, three AP reporters and two editors. They had a vested interest in disinformation that their Vienna correspondent was peddling. And there were others, like the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, whose objective, still, is to trample Iran into the dirt.

The JCPOA is a well-crafted piece of statesmanship. Iran has responded quite moderately to Donald Trump’s withdrawal from it, but Trump has put us in an unstable situation. Fortunately, the other parties have kept their heads, no doubt hoping that the US will have enough sense to elect a president who knows what he is doing.

Joe Biden released a long statement on Iran and the JCPOA today. It’s very good. Take a look.

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