Re: March 2, 2025 (fwd)

[robert <http://dummy.us.eu.org/robert>]

 > From: Noelle <noelle>
 > Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2025 04:15:10 -0800 (PST)
 >
 > wow

Yeah, goes along with my thesis that somehow Putin has got into Trump's
brain.  I doubt that Trump is a Russian asset, but Putin may have the
right psychological techniques to appropriately manipulate Trump.

 >  > From: Heather Cox Richardson from Letters from an American  <http://www.substack.com/~heathercoxrichardson>
 >  > Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2025 07:29:48 +0000
 >  > 
 >  > View this post on the web at 
 >  > https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/march-2-2025
 >  > 
 >  > On February 28, the same day that President Donald Trump and Vice President 
 >  > J.D. Vance took the side of Russian president Vladimir Putin against Ukraine 
 >  > president Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office, Martin Matishak of The 
 >  > Record, a cybersecurity news publication, broke the story that Defense 
 >  > Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered U.S. Cyber Command to stop all planning 
 >  > against Russia, including offensive digital actions.
 >  > Both the scope of the directive and its duration are unclear.
 >  > On Face the Nation this morning, Representative Mike Turner (R-OH), a strong 
 >  > supporter of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and Ukraine, 
 >  > contradicted that information. “Considering what I know, what Russia is 
 >  > currently doing against the United States, that would I’m certain not be 
 >  > an accurate statement of the current status of the United States operations,�>  > �� he said. Well respected on both sides of the aisle, Turner was in line to 
 >  > be the chair of the House Intelligence Committee in this Congress until 
 >  > House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) removed him from that slot and from the 
 >  > intelligence committee altogether.
 >  > And yet, as Stephanie Kirchgaessner of The Guardian notes, the Trump 
 >  > administration has made clear that it no longer sees Russia as a 
 >  > cybersecurity threat. Last week, at a United Nations working group on 
 >  > cybersecurity, representatives from the European Union and the United 
 >  > Kingdom highlighted threats from Russia, while Liesyl Franz, the State 
 >  > Department’s deputy assistant secretary for international cybersecurity, 
 >  > did not mention Russia, saying the U.S. was concerned about threats from 
 >  > China and Iran.
 >  > Kirchgaessner also noted that under Trump, the Cybersecurity and 
 >  > Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which monitors cyberthreats against 
 >  > critical infrastructure, has set new priorities. Although Russian threats, 
 >  > especially those against U.S. election systems, were a top priority for the 
 >  > agency in the past, a source told Kirchgaessner that analysts were told not 
 >  > to follow or report on Russian threats.
 >  > “Russia and China are our biggest adversaries,” the source told 
 >  > Kirchgaessner. “With all the cuts being made to different agencies, a lot 
 >  > of cybersecurity personnel have been fired. Our systems are not going to be 
 >  > protected and our adversaries know this.” “People are saying Russia is 
 >  > winning,” the source said. “Putin is on the inside now.”
 >  > Another source noted that “There are dozens of discrete Russia 
 >  > state-sponsored hacker teams dedicated to either producing damage to US 
 >  > government, infrastructure and commercial interests or conducting 
 >  > information theft with a key goal of maintaining persistent access to 
 >  > computer systems.” “Russia is at least on par with China as the most 
 >  > significant cyber threat, the person added. Under those circumstances, the 
 >  > source said, ceasing to follow and report Russian threats is “truly 
 >  > shocking.”
 >  > Trump’s outburst in the Oval Office on Friday confirmed that Putin has 
 >  > been his partner in politics since at least 2016. “Putin went through a 
 >  > hell of a lot with me,” Trump said. “He went through a phony witch hunt 
 >  > where they used him and Russia… Russia, Russia, Russia—you ever hear of 
 >  > that deal?—that was a phony Hunter Biden, Joe Biden, scam. Hillary Clinton,
 >  >  shifty Adam Schiff, it was a Democrat scam. And he had to go through that. 
 >  > And he did go through it, and we didn’t end up in a war. And he went 
 >  > through it. He was accused of all that stuff. He had nothing to do with it. 
 >  > It came out of Hunter Biden’s bathroom.”
 >  > Putin went through a hell of a lot with Trump? It was an odd statement from 
 >  > a U.S. president, whose loyalty is supposed to be dedicated to the 
 >  > Constitution and the American people.
 >  > Trump has made dismissing as a hoax what he calls “Russia, Russia, Russia� >  > � central to his political narrative. But Russian operatives did, in fact, 
 >  > work to elect him in 2016. A 2020 report from the Republican-dominated 
 >  > Senate Intelligence Committee confirmed that Putin ordered hacks of 
 >  > Democratic computer networks, and at two crucial moments WikiLeaks, which 
 >  > the Senate committee concluded was allied with the Russians, dumped 
 >  > illegally obtained emails that were intended to hurt the candidacy of 
 >  > Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. Trump openly called for Russia to hack 
 >  > Clinton’s emails.
 >  > Russian operatives also flooded social media with disinformation, not 
 >  > necessarily explicitly endorsing Trump, but spreading lies about Clinton to 
 >  > depress Democratic turnout, or to rile up those on the right by falsely 
 >  > claiming that Democrats intended to ban the Pledge of Allegiance, for 
 >  > example. The goal of the propaganda was not simply to elect Trump. It was to 
 >  > pit the far ends of the political spectrum against the middle, tearing the 
 >  > nation apart.
 >  > Fake accounts on Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook drove wedges 
 >  > between Americans over issues of race, immigration, and gun rights. Craig 
 >  > Timberg and Tony Romm of the Washington Post reported in 2018 that Facebook 
 >  > officials told Congress that the Russian campaign reached 126 million people 
 >  > on Facebook and 20 million on Instagram.
 >  > That effort was not a one-shot deal: Russians worked to influence the 2020 
 >  > presidential election, too. In 2021 the Office of the Director of National 
 >  > Intelligence concluded that Putin “authorized, and a range of Russian 
 >  > government organizations conducted, influence operations aimed at 
 >  > denigrating President [Joe] Biden’s candidacy and the Democratic Party, 
 >  > supporting former President Trump, undermining public confidence in the 
 >  > electoral process, and exacerbating sociopolitical division in the US.” 
 >  > But “[u]nlike in 2016,” the report said, “we did not see persistent 
 >  > Russian cyber efforts to gain access to election infrastructure.”
 >  > Moscow used “proxies linked to Russian intelligence to push influence 
 >  > narratives—including misleading or unsubstantiated allegations against 
 >  > President Biden—to US media organizations, US officials, and prominent US 
 >  > individuals, including some close to former President Trump and his 
 >  > administration,” the Office of the Director of National Intelligence 
 >  > concluded.
 >  > In October 2024, Matthew Olsen, head of the Justice Department’s National 
 >  > Security Division, warned in an interview with CBS News that Russia was 
 >  > bombarding voters with propaganda to divide Americans before that year’s 
 >  > election, as well. Operatives were not just posting fake stories and 
 >  > replying to posts, but were also using AI to manufacture fake videos and 
 >  > laundering Russian talking points through social media influencers. Just a 
 >  > month before, news had broken that Russia was funding Tenet Media, a company 
 >  > that hired right-wing personalities Tim Pool, Dave Rubin, Benny Johnson, 
 >  > Lauren Southern, Tayler Hansen, and Matt Christiansen, who repeated Russian 
 >  > talking points.
 >  > Now back in office, Trump and MAGA loyalists say that efforts to stop 
 >  > disinformation undermine their right to free speech. Project 2025, the 
 >  > extremist blueprint for the second Trump administration, denied that Russia 
 >  > had interfered in the 2016 election—calling it “a Clinton campaign dirty 
 >  > trick”—and called for ending government efforts to stop disinformation 
 >  > with “utmost urgency.” “The federal government cannot be the arbiter 
 >  > of truth,” it said.
 >  > On February 20, Steven Lee Myers, Julian E. Barnes, and Sheera Frenkel of 
 >  > the New York Times reported that the Trump administration is firing or 
 >  > reassigning officials at the FBI and CISA who had worked on protecting 
 >  > elections. That includes those trying to stop foreign propaganda and 
 >  > disinformation and those combating cyberattacks and attempts to disrupt 
 >  > voting systems.
 >  > Independent journalist Marisa Kabas broke the story that two members of the �>  > ��Department of Government Efficiency” are now installed at CISA: Edward 
 >  > Coristine, a 19-year-old known as “Big Balls,” and Kyle Schutt, a 
 >  > 38-year-old software engineer. Kim Zetter of Wired reported that since 2018, 
 >  > CISA has “helped state and local election offices around the country 
 >  > assess vulnerabilities in their networks and help secure them.”
 >  > During the 2024 campaign, Trump said repeatedly that he would end the war in 
 >  > Ukraine. Shortly after the election, a newspaper reporter asked Nikolai 
 >  > Patrushev, who is close to Putin, if Trump’s election would mean “
 >  > positive changes from Russia’s point of view.” Patrushev answered: “To 
 >  > achieve success in the elections, Donald Trump relied on certain forces to 
 >  > which he has corresponding obligations. And as a responsible person, he will 
 >  > be obliged to fulfill them.”
 >  > Today, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told a reporter: “The new 
 >  > administration is rapidly changing all foreign policy configurations. This 
 >  > largely aligns with our vision.”
 >  > —