#cyberoperations

[osintelligence]

https://bit.ly/3wllrV3 - 🔍 A recent leak on GitHub has unveiled documents allegedly showcasing China's offensive cyber operations, developed by the Chinese infosec company I-Soon. These operations reportedly target social media, telecom companies, and other organizations globally, with suspicion pointing towards orchestration by the Chinese government. #CyberSecurity #GitHubLeak 🌐 The leaked documents, analyzed by Taiwanese threat intelligence researcher Azaka Sekai, offer a deep dive into China's state-sponsored cyber activities, including spyware features for obtaining users' Twitter details, real-time monitoring, and more, although no official confirmation of their authenticity has been made. #CyberEspionage #StateSponsored 📱 According to the leak, the spyware targets Android and iOS devices, capable of gathering extensive sensitive data such as GPS locations, contacts, and real-time audio. Devices resembling portable batteries can inject spyware via WiFi, illustrating the sophisticated nature of these cyber tools. #DigitalPrivacy #Spyware 🔧 The documents detail various gadgets and software used in these operations, targeting users of Chinese social media platforms like Weibo, Baidu, and WeChat, and even extracting sensitive information from telecom providers in Kazakhstan. #TechSurveillance #SocialMediaSecurity 🌍 Victims identified in the documents include prestigious institutions and organizations such as Sciences Po in Paris, Apollo Hospitals in India, and government entities in China's neighboring countries, showcasing the broad scope of these cyber operations. #GlobalCyberThreats #DataBreach 💸 The leak also sheds light on the compensation of employees involved in developing the spyware, revealing an average salary of 7,600 RMB (about 1,000 USD) post-tax, highlighting the stark contrast between the employees' earnings and the gravity of their work.

[mariacallous]

Having consolidated his hold on power at the Chinese Communist Party’s recently concluded 20th National Congress, Chinese leader Xi Jinping has now set his sights on influencing the U.S. midterm elections. China’s latest efforts to sow doubt about U.S. election integrity are consistent with Xi’s stated goal of championing China’s autocratic model as a “new choice for humanity.” The threat of Chinese interference in democratic elections demands immediate action by policymakers in Washington and other Western capitals.

As early voting across the United States kicked into high gear this fall, so, too, did the activities of Chinese government-affiliated cyberactors seeking to discourage Americans from voting, discredit the election process, and sow further divisions among voters.

In one social media campaign uncovered by U.S. cybersecurity firm Mandiant, a Chinese hacker group with the code name Dragonbridge posted English-language videos across social media, blogs, and other platforms questioning the efficacy of voting and highlighting “civil war” as a possible way to “root out” the United States’ “ineffective and incapacitated” system. These posts also suggested attacks against law enforcement and other forms of political violence. Separately, Twitter announced in late October that it had disrupted several China-based operations on its platform. Those campaigns involved 2,000 user accounts and more than 250,000 tweets containing false election-rigging claims about the 2020 U.S. presidential election and hate speech against the transgender community.

Similarly, cybersecurity company Recorded Future identified another Chinese state-sponsored social media campaign aimed at dividing U.S. voters, this time by manipulating voter sentiments around divisive themes like racial injustice, police brutality, and U.S. military assistance to Ukraine. Likewise, in September, Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta uncovered fake accounts originating in China that targeted voters on both sides of the political aisle. While some of these fake accounts portrayed U.S. President Joe Biden as corrupt, others castigated the Republican Party and, in particular, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio for their stances on abortion access and gun rights.

For its part, the FBI warned that Chinese government hackers were actively scanning the two parties’ various internet domains, looking for vulnerable systems as a potential precursor to hacking operations. Such probing is broadly consistent with the intelligence community’s 2020 assessment about China’s interest in acquiring information on “US voters and public opinion; political parties, candidates and their staffs; and senior government officials.”

These and other election-shaping operations are not occurring in a vacuum, nor are they amateurish one-offs that can be ignored. Indeed, they reflect Xi’s growing emphasis on what the Chinese call “discourse power”: Beijing’s drive to alter global narratives about Chinese autocracy and Western democracy by comparing, contrasting, and consistently misrepresenting the two competing visions in ways that are advantageous to China.

In its most extreme form, which China’s People’s Liberation Army calls “cognitive domain operations,” discourse power seeks to influence individual and group behaviors to favor China’s tactical or strategic objectives. China’s ultimate goal: to undermine an adversary nation’s collective will to resist Beijing’s intentions. This can be done by sowing social division, undermining faith in public institutions, introducing conflicting social narratives, and even radicalizing specific groups within a population. All these themes featured prominently in China’s recent cyberoperations.

To achieve discourse victory, China has restructured its party-state to support the integrated employment, across peace and wartime, of public opinion, legal, and psychological warfare. Beyond simply aiding in the formulation and execution of China’s political warfare strategy, China’s decision to centralize command and control enables the party to more effectively direct the nearly $10 billion it spends annually on foreign interference. Central to the strategy, according to Lu Wei, the former head of the Cyberspace Administration of China, is to “occupy emerging public opinion spaces,” especially social media and other internet platforms, to propagate messaging about democracy’s failings and autocracy’s ostensible benefits.

If the principal target of these political warfare operations is the United States, Washington is hardly alone. Hours after former British Prime Minister Liz Truss announced her surprise resignation, the Chinese Communist Party’s Global Times claimed Britain’s political upheaval demonstrated that Western democracy “cannot solve new problems.” This specious framing mirrors Beijing’s portrayal of the West’s pandemic response as “chaotic,” whereas China claimed its superior governance model, consisting of mass surveillance and lockdowns, achieved a “strategic victory” over COVID-19. These themes were later broadcast on Chinese and foreign platforms around the world, leading to a marked increase in favorable views—most notably in the global south—about China’s global stewardship.

As for the U.S. midterms, Beijing’s meddling is unlikely to cease on Election Day. In fact, just the opposite. After polls close, malicious cyberactors and Chinese state-backed media will almost certainly amplify claims about voting irregularities and contested election outcomes. These operations will not be limited to any one political party or geography. Their goals will be the same: to undermine democracy’s credibility and exploit cultural cleavages inherent in all pluralistic, nontotalitarian societies.

Identifying these social media campaigns may very well be straightforward, in large part due to contributions by technology firms headquartered in the free world. But undoing the long-term damage to U.S. institutions will be much harder. Even worse, China will almost certainly seek to employ this same playbook in other countries in the coming years.

That’s why policymakers in Washington and other democratic capitals must prioritize whole-society counteroffensives to respond to and ultimately neutralize China’s political warfare operations. That will require hardening democratic institutions, including modernizing campaign finance, strengthening counterinterference, and tightening espionage laws to increase transparency and disclosure requirements for individuals and entities that may be acting on China’s behalf, as well as toughening enforcement and sanctions to deter potential violators. Additional work must also be done to equip government officials, journalists, political parties, companies, civil organizations, and the general public with the information needed to reduce their exposure to China’s malign discourse. And that’s just for starters.

Above all, policymakers must make clear to Beijing that election meddling will not go unpunished. Upcoming meetings between democratic leaders and Xi at the G-20 summit in Bali, Indonesia, are as good a place to deliver that message as any.

[politirapporten]

DANMARK: Politiet har anholdt tre personer i Danmark, der er sigtet for køb af talrige borgeres stjålne personlige bruger- og kontooplysninger via det ulovlige site Genesis Market. Anholdelserne sker som led i en større koordineret international cyberoperation under ledelse af FBI, EUROPOL og hollandsk politi. Adgangsoplysninger fra flere end 9000 danske computere anslås at være sat til salg på sitet. En stor international operation med deltagelse af i alt 17 landes politimyndigheder, herunder dansk politi, kulminerede tirsdag ved anholdelse af i alt 119 personer globalt. Derudover førte operationen til lukning af det ulovlige site Genesis Market, hvor op mod to millioner ofre globalt har fået lækket deres digitale oplysninger. I Danmark har National enhed for Særlig Kriminalitet (NSK) koordineret aktionen, som er gennemført i tæt samarbejde med Sydøstjyllands Politi, Fyns Politi, Sydsjællands og Lolland-Falsters Politi, Midt- og Vestsjællands Politi og Københavns Vestegns Politi. Herudover har Europol’s EC3 og Joint Cybercrime Action Taskforce (J-CAT), som NSK er en del af, støttet aktionen med dataanalyse og koordinering af de internationale efterforskningsskridt. De tre anholdte er sigtet for at have købt ulovlig adgang til hackede borgeres digitale identitet, der har været til salg på Genesis Market. Genesis Market er en ulovlig online markedsplads, der har udbudt salg af såkaldte bots, der er et spejlbillede af en konkret hacket computers adgangsoplysninger. Her får køber adgang til brugernavne, gemte passwords og cookies på den hackede computer. ”I et tæt samarbejde med en række politimyndigheder på cyberområdet er det med stærk fælles front lykkedes os at bremse en stor ulovlig udbyder af hackede oplysninger fra borgere i hele verden. I både dansk politi og i international sammenhæng pågår der nu yderligere efterforskning og analyse af den data og viden, som vi har fået i forbindelse med anholdelserne. Det vil give os et mere detaljeret billede af, hvad de købte personlige data er blevet brugt til med henblik på den videre efterforskning”, siger politiinspektør i NSK, Lars Mortensen. Adgangsoplysninger fra ca. 9000 danske computere eksponeret på Genesis Market NSK anslår, at flere end 9000 danske computere er blevet hacket, og at adgangsmidler fra disse har været til salg på Genesis Market før sitets nedlukning. Som en del af operationen og det videre forebyggende arbejde har hollandsk politi udarbejdet en webportal, hvor man som borger kan kontrollere, om man er blandt de forurettede, der har fået sine personlige data eksponeret på Genesis Market. Det gør man ved at indtaste sin mailadresse i webportalen. ”Har man fået sine personlige brugeroplysninger eksponeret på Genesis Market, så er det vores klare opfordring, at man opdaterer sin computer og scanner for virus med et antivirusprogram og ændrer samtlige brugernavne og kodeord til alle enheder og profiler”, siger politiinspektør Lars Mortensen. Sådan kontrollerer du om dine data er blevet lækket  Du kan undersøge, om dine konti har været en del af det lækkede data på Genesis Market ved at indtaste din mailadresse i webportalen her: https://www.politie.nl/checkyourhack Hvis du har fået stjålet dine adgangsoplysninger, så opfordrer politiet til, at du følger nedenstående gode råd for videre håndtering. 1) Fjern eventuel virus fra dine enheder med et opdateret antivirusprogram og sørg for, at operativsystem og programmer er opdaterede til nyeste version. 2) Opdatér først herefter samtlige adgangskoder til dine konti.  3) Opret en kreditadvarsel på borger.dk. 4) Hvis du ser tegn på misbrug af din bankkonto, skal du spærre dit kontokort. Hvis der ikke ses misbrug, anbefales det, at du bestiller et nyt kort og i mellemtiden holder øje med, at der ikke sker misbrug af dit kort. 5) Kontakt politiet, hvis du oplever, at dine konti har været brugt til ulovlige formål. Du kan kontakte Digitaliseringsstyrelsens Cyberhotline for digital sikkerhed på tlf.

nr. 33 37 00 37, hvis du har brug for yderligere råd og vejledning om it-sikkerhed, forebyggelse af cyberangreb eller identitetstyveri.

[arlopez]

Blog 7 - Tik tok war and nuclear colonialism

Nuclear Cyber war: From Energy colonialism to energy terrorism by Svitlana Matviyenko 

Drawing from the Russian occupations of Chernobyl and Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plants (NPPS) in Ukraine, Svitlana Matviyenko talks about nuclear colonialism and cyber war. Due to the continuous Russian firing, a fire broke out in the nuclear power plant at one point during the occupation which Matvieyenko regards as one of the most frightening broadcast events of our time. This is because it created a fear of close catastrophe. 

A Cold War poster raising awareness over nuclear bombs in the climax of nuclear anxiety of that time

Zaporizhzhia nuclear occupation

The author analyzes the close relationship between “cyber” and “nuclear” warfare, drawing on the compel to the concept of nuclear terrorism. For the author and media scholar Dyer-Witherford, cyber war has a broad and extensive multidisciplinary definition that outlines the phenomenon as technological developments manifest in the social world. The new level of automated non-human development will likely spread in all aspects of society, including war and conflict. Cyberwar may be distinct, preliminary, or simultaneous with kinetic warfare. 

Drawing from the example of the novel Neuromancer (1984) and the movie WarGames (1983), the author argues why even if its genealogy comes from science fiction it has now fundamentally moved into the reality realm. While Neuromancer introduced the public to the concept of cyberspace, WarGames featured a playful simulation of cyberoperations that ended up being mistaken as real and therefore almost triggered a third world war. This is where our understanding of the phenomenon and its potentialities may come from, but it is not no longer fiction, but a reality. 

Scene from the movie WarGames

Then, in a recall from the 90s onward, the author calls to mind some of the most significant first cyberattacks in the international realm. The cyber and nuclear domains of war overlapped in numerous of these actions. One of the most significant links is that the command of atomic power plants is dependent on digital systems whose compromise could lead to catastrophe. While the quiet nature of the cyber strike seems to be completely opposite to the mighty visible destruction of a nuclear bomb the two are complementary. 

One of the most famous examples is the 2010 Stuxnet attack on the Iran Natanz nuclear facility. The US-Israeli government (despite attribution never being officially proved) engaged in a joint cyber project to disable thousands of centrifuges at Iranian nuclear facilities in order to slow down or prevent Iran's ability to build atomic weapons. The mean was the Stuxnet worm (a type of cyberattack) that was ahead of its time and needed extensive intelligence access for its effective targeting result. 

Trailer of the documentary Zero-Days about the Stuxnet worm

Going back to the idea of nuclear terrorism, the author argues that the Russian occupation of the two NPPS made it so dangerous that transformed them into weapons in an act of terrorism. As Historian Townshend prompts, war, and terror are very much related as there is no war without fear and terror. Terror is paradoxically however a negation of fight, since in its constitution, prohibits self-defense and deprives opponents of a timely response. 

But what is the connection between cyberwar and nuclear terrorism? Between the Stuxnet and the Zaporizhzhia occupation? The reality of their dismal and horrific future permanently intrudes into the current reality in this savage cyberspace dimension. The cases may seem very different, but they are structurally similar, one in the reversed version of the other. While the Stuxnet stopped a nuclear weapon from creating, the act of terrorism at Zaporizhzhia NPP aimed to create one (in its potentially accidental danger). An act of cyberwarfare links different domains of war together. 

Typical of terrorism acts, the occupations at the NPP were also symbolic and aimed at being mediated. However, the mediatic aspect must be controlled. In fact, at the plants only Russian-owned media was allowed on the site, distorting information. The occupation of a nuclear power plant has many implications. Military, it is strategic since the Russian military is safe in a place where Ukrainian would never be hit in fear of catastrophe. Politically there is Putin’s imperial fantasy of adding power plants to the Crimean energy system, in any inspiration by Soviet times when more than five power plants were constructed in Ukraine. At the time, before the Chernobyl disaster, there was this other fantasy of a “peaceful atom”. The author recalls the popular Soviet slogan “Let the atom be a worker, not a soldier”. In this sense, cybernetics, and nuclear capabilities both cross the thin line between war and peace, ordinary and extraordinary. Defiantly written on some Ukrainian building one could read the counter-propaganda slogan “There is no way the atom is a worker but a soldier.” 

Soviet slogan "Let the atom be a worker, not a soldier" on a building.

There is a close connection between these imperialist fantasies and colonialism. However, the Ukrainian case is complex and it would be unfitting to call part of its history broadly “colonialism”. Philosopher Paul Virilo's term endo-colonization may be more appropriate. It is not associated with territorial expansion but more with colonialism turned inward. The occupation of Zaporizhzhia is an imperialist zero-day cyberwar exploit, that unfolds when a barbaric army from another era invades your territory and acts as though it still belonged to the same Union that disintegrated more than three decades ago. 

Radioactive domination is just another imperialist attempt to control bodies, just as the Soviet Union forced resettlements and obstruction of social migration (for example by refusing inhabitants their passports). Nuclear production in Polissia results in taking away land to create nuclear power plants and also making citizens run away because of radioactive scores. Very imperialistically this had a great impact on the local cultural traditions of the tutenshni, people from Polissia. With the construction of Chernobyl, the tutenshni had to go through both the imperial surveillance security regime and the imperial exposure to radioactive scores, which by the way were even prior to the infamous disaster. 

The modern invasion of Chernobyl NPP has no rational explanation if not that of a symbolic aim, an element of many terroristic phenomena. Virilio's theory of accidents theorizes that without accidents one doesn’t even know the technology. It is in the accidents that one understands its potentiality and functions. But while Virilio believes the Chernobyl meltdown was the invention of the nuclear power station the author believes that the full comprehension of the nuclear power plant is more recent, with the imperial acts of nuclear terrorism carried out in the Ukrainian-Russian war.

A song from the 1980s that in my opinion perfectly reflects the sensation of nuclear anxiety of the Cold War generation and that it is very relevant nowadays in that we are starting to feel that anxiety once again

The propaganda war for Ukraine – DW documentary

The documentary “The propaganda war for Ukraine” touches on many important elements of how the war is being mediated today such as Russia's fake information campaign, the grassroots aspect of the social media war mediation, the agenda setting of the Ukrainian media, the techniques used to move or compel audiences and so on.

First of all, it is interesting to look at the difference between how the war is being mediated in Ukraine versus Russia. A war that has to happen “never again” and a war that “we can repeat”.

The Ukrainian media are trying to portray a David vs Goliath narrative with a typical structure of storytelling with the antagonist, protagonist, helper, and so on. Ukraine's campaign aims to receive foreign support by showing them “this could be you too” and by reinforcing the idea of us with you, them against you. “Freedom has to be armed more than tyranny,” says at one point the president of Ukraine Zelensky. Of course, since they are the ones who were attacked, Zelensky also has to give its people hope and move them to fight, showing that Ukraine is strong and supported by the foreign community.

Russia instead aims to the fantasy of the Soviet Union, to bring victory once again to the empire by gaining back what’s already theirs. The way they justify the war is by the propagandistic association of Ukrainian with Nazis and by constantly claiming that Ukrainian reportages of the war are staged.

Arestovic is an interesting character, and it is even more interesting to compare him to Putin's mouthpiece Vladimir Solovyov. All the Ukrainian spokespersons are using the tactic of coming closer to the audience through the use of social media, and the vlogger aesthetic, wearing comfortable clothes. This also had to do with the fact that many of them such as Arestovic and Zelensky come from the entertainment world. Instead, Russia tv uses imperial and official music, stances, and even wardrobe to portray a vision of a strong Russia. Solovyov in his tv programs always stands at the center and uses various communication tricks such as repeating the word nazis near the term Ukrainians several times to inculcate unconscious correlation in the audience.

Putin instead makes his appearances look threatening while he stays close to the camera, in a first-view angle, occupies the whole shot, and stands next to two white corners phones, showing that he could make the war escalate with a simple call anytime. The Russian Federation continuously engages in fake news and staging of evidence (such as the capture of a presented nazi assassin planning to kill “Putin’s chef”, with obviously staged presence of Nazi memorabilia, positioned perfectly and unnaturally in his house). Very interesting is the video shown in the documentary where Zelensky shifts from the eye-level selfie vlogger shot to the president sitting at an official desk shot, in a transformation from soldier to president, from civilian to official. Also very symbolic is the parallel between Maria Avdeeva, a political scientistic who became a reporter on social media after the start of the war, and Tatyana Ulyanova who instead was forced under her state-media job In Russia to spread false information.

There is something grassroots about how social media entered the world. Families under war document their life on telegram, Instagram, and Twitter… collecting feelings of solidarity all over the world. Tik Tok becomes “wartok.” Svitlana Matvienko outlines how the power of the phenomenon lies in the dis-correlation between what the platform usually does and the unusual war content. The experts in the documentary also talk about how Ukrainian youth defiantly use irony and emojis online to cope with the absurdity of this war. To respond to this grassroots dimension of war the Russian Federation indirectly tried to launch the youth-led (but oligarchy-supported) project Cyberfrontz, in an attempt to win the information war.

The documentary shows how the internet and the grassroots-inspired reportage on social media have become such a big part of the modern-day conflict, creating a new front of the battle.

[indelicateink]

“[...] I appreciate the sentiment here, but it makes no sense. If the intelligence community is willing to talk to the Times, they obviously aren’t concerned about Trump’s blabbing. Nor are they concerned about the fact that he might cancel the operation.

“My amateur guess is a little different: this is really a way of making sure the American public knows about the cyberwar program. Trump could still stop it, but he now knows that his cancellation would be leaked and he’d look like a Putin stooge—not something he can afford more of right now. This is not a subtle form of bureaucratic battle, it’s hardball of the most explicit kind. The intelligence community—including Trump’s own NSC—pretty obviously wants to make sure there’s no chance of Trump not getting the message.”

[phooll123]

By BY DAVID E. SANGER AND ERIC SCHMITT from NYT U.S. https://ift.tt/2J5lPyG

[bountyofbeads]

Analysis: On Iran, Trump Must Convince World His Word Can Be Trusted https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/17/us/politics/trump-iran.html

Trump’s Challenge: Can His Word on Iran Be Trusted?

President Trump’s “hyperbole and outright fabrications through a daily tweet diet,” said Wendy R. Sherman, who negotiated the details of the Iran deal for the Obama administration, has left him with “little credibility with Congress, allies and partners, let alone the American people.”Credit Erin Schaff/The New York Times

By David E. Sanger | Published Sept. 17, 2019 | New York Times | Posted September 18, 2019 2:00 PM ET |

For a president with a loose relationship with the facts and poisonous relationships with allies, the attack on the Saudi oil fields poses a challenge: how to prove the administration’s case that Iran was behind the strike and rally the world to respond.

President Trump must now confront that problem as he struggles with one of the most critical national security decisions of his presidency. Over the next few days or weeks, he will almost certainly face the reality that much of the world — angry at his tweets, tirades, untruths and accusations — could be disinclined to believe the arguments advanced by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and others that Iran bears responsibility for the attack.

If Mr. Trump tries to gather a coalition to impose diplomatic penalties, tighten sanctions to further choke off Iranian oil exports or retaliate with a military or cyberstrike, he may discover that, like President George W. Bush heading into Iraq 16 years ago, he is largely alone.

Already, intelligence officials are hinting, in background conversations, that the evidence implicating Iran is just too delicate to make public. One theory gaining support among American officials is that the cruise missile and drone attack was launched from southwest Iran or in the waters nearby.

But the evidence gathered so far, one official said, “isn’t a slam-dunk,” deliberately using the phrase that George J. Tenet, the C.I.A. director in 2003, came to regret when he employed it to argue, incorrectly it turned out, that Iraq was building weapons of mass destruction.

After the bitter Iraq experience, it would be hard for any American president to persuade the country and its allies to take his word that it is time to risk another war in the Middle East, barring incontrovertible evidence that could be made public. For Mr. Trump, it could be an especially tough sell.

“Painfully, the word of the president will be suspect,” Wendy R. Sherman, who negotiated the details of the Iran deal for the Obama administration, said on Tuesday.

Mr. Trump’s “hyperbole and outright fabrications through a daily tweet diet,” she said, has left him with “little credibility with Congress, allies and partners, let alone the American people.”

“All will be challenged to accept a Trump assessment of what occurred in the attack on Saudi oil facilities,” she added.

Rex W. Tillerson, Mr. Trump’s first secretary of state, warned on Tuesday that his former boss, who fired him a year and a half ago, will have to tread carefully.

“Setting aside the question of U.S. credibility, that challenge would be there,” said Mr. Tillerson, who as a former chief executive of Exxon Mobil spent much of his life operating in the Middle East.

Speaking to Harvard’s American Secretaries of State Project, where he was explaining his tumultuous 14 months in the Trump administration, Mr. Tillerson said that building a concrete case against Iran would be difficult.

“I have no doubt that we will find Iran’s fingerprints on this,” he said, “but we may not find their hands on it.”

Even if American and other experts who are now in Saudi Arabia to conduct a forensic study conclude that Iran built the drones or cruise missiles, they may have a hard time establishing — especially for the public — where the weapons were launched from, or who shot them toward the Saudi oil fields.

“A military response on the sovereign territory of Iran is a very serious matter,” Mr. Tillerson cautioned. “And not one that anyone should take with less than fully conclusive information.”

Pentagon officials appear to agree. That is why the options now being discussed include alternatives like retaliating against Iranian facilities outside of Iranian territory and conducting cyberstrikes. If the latter option were chosen, it would be akin to the cyberoperations that blew up Iran’s nuclear centrifuges a decade ago and the move to wipe out military databases several months ago, after the shooting down of an American drone by Iran.

The Saudis seem to sense the credibility problem.

Even they have not yet publicly followed Mr. Pompeo in accusing Iran of responsibility. In a statement on Monday, the Saudi government urged an international investigation, led by the United Nations, to determine responsibility.

That move, unusual for a country that disdains the United Nations almost as much as the Trump administration does, seemed an acknowledgment that the world would not take Mr. Trump’s word, nor that of the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman.

Over the past year, the crown prince has encountered credibility problems of his own. He has repeatedly denied that he sent or had knowledge of the Saudi team that killed the Washington Post columnist and Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi. The evidence suggests otherwise.

For Mr. Trump, the suspicions about any American assessment of responsibility will be colored by another problem: European officials blame him, as much as the Iranians, for creating the circumstances that led to the attack.

In their telling, it was Mr. Trump’s decision, soon after he fired Mr. Tillerson, to abandon the 2015 nuclear deal that set in motion the events that culminated in the crippling of the two Saudi oil fields.

For the past 18 months, Mr. Trump has been steadily reimposing sanctions on Iran. At first, the Iranians largely ignored those steps and remained part of the four-year-old agreement that limited Iran’s nuclear ability in return for lifting most sanctions on the country.

But as the administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign took its toll, Iranian officials began breaking out of the accord’s limits — arguing they would not be bound by an agreement Mr. Trump had abandoned — and seizing oil tankers.

The European argument is that Mr. Trump has unnecessarily provoked the Iranians. That is why France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, is leading an effort to undermine the American sanctions by issuing a $15 billion line of credit to Iran, in hopes of getting them back in compliance with the deal to which France was a partner.

Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, said on Tuesday that the best strategy for defusing tensions with Iran was for Mr. Trump to back down.

“The deal to stop Iran from acquiring military nuclear capabilities is a building block we need to get back to,” she said.

Mr. Trump’s envoy for Iranian issues, Brian H. Hook, has argued that the Europeans fundamentally misunderstand Iran’s strategy. Even after Tehran signed the 2015 agreement, Mr. Hook has said, they were arming terrorist groups, supporting President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, building more powerful missiles and conducting cyberoperations against the United States.

That argument will not be easily resolved. European leaders will most likely be cautious about siding with Mr. Trump and the Saudis if they propose steps that could escalate into a broader conflict.

Americans may wonder, too, whether it is worth it, noted Meghan L. O’Sullivan, Mr. Bush’s Iraq coordinator and the author of “Windfall: How the New Energy Abundance Upends Global Politics and Strengthens America’s Power.”

“Many Americans think U.S. interests in protecting Middle Eastern oil supplies have dramatically declined,” she said on Tuesday.

“They are largely wrong about this,” she said, “but certainly, most Americans think the days of going to war over oil are in the past.”

The next few days will be critical. Michael J. Morell, the former deputy director of the C.I.A., who briefed Mr. Bush on Sept. 11, 2001, said Mr. Trump will face a difficult trade-off.

After he gets the intelligence agency’s “best assessment on who was behind the attack,” Mr. Morell said, Mr. Trump “must then balance the need to protect sources and methods with the need to inform Congress and the American people about why he takes or doesn’t take any action.”

“The credibility of the United States matters every single day,” he added. “And when it is eroded in the eyes of our allies over time, it then ultimately makes moments like this even more difficult.”

[jazz427-blog]

Intel is Having Security Problems With its Processors

   Among other recent flack on large companies, Intel is another one on the list. It has been found that Intel’s management engine on their last three generations of processors has multiple security flaws. It does appear that someone would need at least network access to your pc to exploit one of these processors but as of yet the full extent of the problem is not known.

https://www.engadget.com/2017/11/22/intel-security-flaw-core-processors/

[gettothestabbing]

I predicted that the Dem 2020 candidate will run on restoring relations with Russia, the way Obama did. And with the INF toast, an America presence in the Arctic, and moments like this, the media is starting to clumsily pivot to, "Trump will get us into a war with Russia." 

[profoundpaul]

Ukraine Identifies 600 Sites Quietly Compromised by China Just Days Before the Invasion

Although propaganda from both the Russians and the Ukrainians has become a distinguishing feature in this war, intelligence reports from the SBU, the Security Service of Ukraine, that claim that Chinese hackers compromised up to 600 websites inside the country in the days leading up to the Russian invasion are easy to believe.

The Times, a British newspaper, reported it had obtained copies of SBU intelligence memos and that the targets included the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council, the State Border Guard Service, nuclear facilities, the national bank, the railway authority and other key military sites.

EXCLUSIVE: China staged a huge cyberattack on Ukraine’s military and nuclear facilities in the build-up to Russia’s invasion, according to intelligence memos obtained by The Times https://t.co/johEE0k2VF

— The Times (@thetimes) April 1, 2022

The memos indicate the cyberattacks “peaked on February 23,” which was the day before the invasion began.

The Times reported the attacks were intended to “steal data” and to discover ways to “shut down or disrupt vital defense and civilian infrastructure.” The article noted that the memos are “thought to be prepared by another country” although the Times said it received them from the SBU.

The Russians were also conducting cyberattacks on Ukrainian sites at the time. The Times noted the SBU was able to determine the origins of the hacks “by the trademark tools and methods of the cyberwarfare unit of the People’s Liberation Army.”

According to the Times, U.S. intelligence sources confirmed this information is accurate.

Considering Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping, prior to the opening of the Winter Olympics in Beijing, signed a joint statement to proclaim a friendship between their countries that has “no limits,” as Newsmax reported, this story is entirely credible.

China has a lot to lose if its complicity with Russia were to be proven and made public. It could be hit with punishing economic sanctions by the West. Given the magnitude of the trade China conducts with Western nations, even a small reduction in business could have an impact on the country’s economy.

At any rate, the SBU memo said Ukraine intelligence agencies detected an “increase in activity against our country’s networks in mid-February with active CNE [computer network exploitation] operations being conducted daily.” The Times noted that CNE attacks are “typically used for reconnaissance and espionage.”

One of the memos stated: “Intrusions that are of particular concern include the CNE campaigns directed at the State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate and the Ukrainian Investigation Website focused on Hazardous Waste. This particular CNE attack by the Chinese cyberprogram included the launch of thousands of exploits with attempts pointed to at least 20 distinct vulnerabilities.”

The Times spoke to a number of cybersecurity experts to get their takes on the SBU memos.

Tom Hegel, a senior threat researcher at SentinelOne, a U.S. cybersecurity firm, told The Times, “It sounds like they didn’t care that they were seen — they had an objective to get in and get what they needed as quickly as possible.”

“It’s abnormal for a CNE-type effort, it stresses the importance of what they knew was coming.”

Hegel also said SentinelOne had “identified a separate, smaller Chinese cyberattack against Ukraine on March 22.” It was able to do so “confidently” after its analysts examined “the command and control servers” for the software involved. Another telltale sign that tied this to the Chinese was the “technique used to deliver it into Ukrainian systems,” The Times reported.

Steve Tsang, director of the Soas China Institute, spoke to the Times. He said, “The number of people China has engaged in cyberoperations is enormous. A lot of them are part of the People’s Liberation Army, which is part of the [Chinese Communist] Party.”

He continued, “We all believe that they have a cyberforce that attacks states. They have been more engaged in getting information rather than shutting people down. If they’re working in Ukraine, they’re working in support of Russians. The implications of this would be they are potentially subjected to sanctions.”

Sam Cranny-Evans, an intelligence and surveillance expert at the Royal United Services Institute, a British think tank, told The Times the findings have huge implications regarding cooperation between China and the chief Russian security service, known as the FSB.

“The attacks suggest a certain level of collusion between Russia and China, which may prompt revised assessments of the nature of the relations between Russia and China and the willingness of the two nations to support each other in military operations,” Cranny-Evans said. “It may also raise questions about what other support Beijing will provide Russia’s operation in Ukraine, and the potential for this to prolong the conflict.”

“At the capability level, it is interesting that the Russian security apparatus involved Chinese actors in this operation; they are typically quite capable and committed considerable resources to the intelligence operation in Ukraine in the lead-up to the conflict. The FSB for instance, had a staff of 200 personnel focused on gathering human intelligence in Ukraine, which included cyberattacks to gather information on the population.”

SentinelOne’s principal threat researcher, Juan Andrés Guerrero-Saade, weighed in.

“Credit to the Ukrainian government, I don’t know what they’ve done with [their] computer emergency response team, but they are killing it,” he told The Times. “It’s very plausible that the U.S. government is helping or that they have other companies on the ground — no one we know has owned up to that yet. There’s something going on there.”

Given the high number of hacking attempts against Ukrainian targets, analysts are surprised they haven’t been able to inflict more damage. The Times attributes this to efforts by the U.S. and the United Kingdom to fortify Ukraine’s cyber defenses ahead of the invasion.

Not only are the accusations made in the SBU memos plausible, I would argue that they’re probable. Of course, the Chinese are on Russia’s side.

The Chinese can’t overtly express their support for their ally’s invasion of Ukraine because they stand to lose highly profitable trade relationships with Western partners. But neither have they condemned Russia’s aggression.

At Friday’s virtual EU-China summit, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen enlisted China’s help in ending the war in Ukraine. In a statement, von Der Leyen said, “We underlined that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is not only a defining moment for our continent, but also for our relationship with the rest of the world. There must be respect for international law, as well as for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. China, as a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, has a special responsibility. No European citizen would understand any support to Russia’s ability to wage war.”

According to post-summit media reports, China remained noncommittal. The Washington Post noted that the bar had been set so low ahead of the meeting that nobody was surprised that no progress had been made.

A source “familiar with official discussions in Beijing” told the Post that Chinese officials are concerned the Russian invasion has brought the EU and the U.S. closer. Prior to this, China’s strategy had been to drive a wedge between them.

What did China expect would happen after two powers of the world trumpeted their “no limits” partnership on Feb. 4?

The post Ukraine Identifies 600 Sites Quietly Compromised by China Just Days Before the Invasion appeared first on The Western Journal.

source https://www.westernjournal.com/ukraine-identifies-600-sites-quietly-compromised-china-just-days-invasion/

[citizenlayne]

American operatives are messaging Russians working on disinformation campaigns to let them know they’ve been identified. It’s a measured step to keep Moscow from escalating.

[xtruss]

‘ZERO THREAT TO WEST’: Sceptics Note No US Officials’ Names in Much-Hyped Pandora Papers, Question If Leak Will Tackle Corruption

— October 4, 2021 | RT

Though they may be embarrassing to certain individuals and companies, the Pandora Papers’ revelations of offshore assets are not a challenge to the US government or the Western system of corporate power, sceptics say.

The Pandora Papers are the latest barrage of reporting by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and its media partners, based on leaked financial data. Like the previous data dumps, dubbed the Panama Papers and Paradise Papers, they expose how some of the mega-rich and corporations are using the global financial system to allegedly obfuscate asset ownership and dodge taxes.

Giving the public a sneak peek into the ways that rich people handle their wealth has been a nuisance for some allies of the US. The royal palace of Jordan, for example, issued a statement on Monday, explaining how King Abdullah II was widely known to be a rich man and stating that the part of Pandora Papers revealing his finances doesn’t show any impropriety. The king was one of the ‘big game’ targets for the publications.

Another example is Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, who may take a political beating for his use of offshore accounts. Zelensky came to power on a promise to fight the political corruption exemplified by his predecessor Petro Poroshenko, rein in powerful oligarchs, and stand up to Russia.

The leaked materials are bad optics for Zelensky and indicate that he allegedly proceeded to park wealth in tax havens (just like Poroshenko did, according to the Panama Papers), keeps cozy relations with oligarchs, and has a Russian company managing a luxurious London property.

But despite those and similar examples, sceptics believe that the Pandora Papers won’t do much good in tackling the worst kinds of corruption. Unlike what was revealed by the transparency website WikiLeaks or NSA leaker Edwards Snowden, “few – if any – important [players] in the West will be exposed,” predicted journalist Alan MacLeod, who writes at the independent outlet Mint Press. Corporate media’s hyping of the leak is a good indicator of how unthreatening it is to the Western establishment, he said.

The ICIJ Compiled a bunch of graphs detailing the statistics of the new leak. One map, titled ‘Where are the 336 politicians in the Pandora Papers from?’ shows exactly zero such individuals for the US. The US is a major destination for people interested in offshore arrangements for their riches, the investigators pointed out, thanks to trust-friendly jurisdictions like South Dakota, Florida, and Delaware.

The Grayzone’s Ben Norton sarcastically touted the absence of American politicians as evidence that they are “all pure and free from corruption.” Journalist Mark Ames joked that “honest incorruptible oligarchs” like George Soros and Pierre Omidyar are likewise nowhere to be seen in the new ICIJ disclosure – just like in the previous ones.

American super-billionaires may have been somehow screened out from the disclosure – or simply don’t need to utilize services to optimize their wealth and dodge taxes. Wondering whether the recurring peculiarities of the leaks indicate Washington’s hand behind them is hardly conspiracy thinking.

‘Pandora papers’: New leaks reveal how world leaders use offshore companies to dodge millions of dollars in taxes. King Abdullah II of Jordan (L), Shakira (C), and Tony Blair (R) © Reuters / Elizabeth Frantz, Mike Blake, and Henry Nicholls

The Trump administration gave the CIA extra powers to engage in disruptive cyberoperations, and the agency “wasted no time in exercising the new freedoms,” according to a 2020 Yahoo! News report. The operations included not only cyber sabotage, but “also public dissemination of data: leaking or things that look like leaking,” an intelligence source told the outlet.

That angle does not necessarily apply to the ICIJ investigations, and even if it did, it would be irrelevant to facts that the investigators established, as long as the underlying materials are authentic. At least, that was the long-held standard for journalism before Western media decided that some leaks are more equal than others, and if one exposes potential corruption of presidential candidate Joe Biden, it can be ignored and suppressed.

Snowden, one of the biggest leakers of our time, found the story “very serious” – but he also found humor in the fact that, even after two previous leaks, offshore operators “are still compiling vast databases of ruin, and still secure them with a Post-It Note marked ‘do not leak.’”

[talk-and-tech-bytes]

In this article, the author goes into a recent court case where three ex-US intelligence officers sold their skills at hacking and cyberoperations to foreign governments. The author brings up the point that while laws exist to protect 20th century military secrets like fighting tactics or the selling of weapons, no such laws exist for the skills of cyberwarfare that operatives may have. This landmark case could be signal a shift, and be the start of new laws being written to protect US trade secrets on cyberoperations.

This article brings me to mind of the new types of crimes made possible by the invention of the telephone in the 19th Century. Just as in this case, people had no experience with these new crimes, and were unprepared to counter them. With every new technology, some growing pains are felt in the realm of the legal system.

[architectural-review]

Ryan Blackford | Motherboard Russia | Bartlett School of Architecture | Stephansdom Cutaway Scheme Diagram - Overview Drawing of Russian Cyberoperations Center, Vienna | ryanblackford.tumblr.com 

[leanpick]

Ex-U.S. Intelligence Officers Admit to Hacking Crimes in Work for Emiratis

Ex-U.S. Intelligence Officers Admit to Hacking Crimes in Work for Emiratis

WASHINGTON — Three former American intelligence officers hired by the United Arab Emirates to carry out sophisticated cyberoperations admitted to hacking crimes and to violating U.S. export laws that restrict the transfer of military technology to foreign governments, according to court documents made public on Tuesday. The documents detail a conspiracy by the three men to furnish the Emirates…

[bountyofbeads]

How Not to Plot Secret Foreign Policy: On a Cellphone and WhatsApp https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/18/us/politics/giuliani-cellphone-hacking-russia-ukraine.html

How Not to Plot Secret Foreign Policy: On a Cellphone and WhatsApp

American officials expressed wonderment that Rudolph W. Giuliani was running his “irregular channel” of diplomacy over open cell lines and communications apps penetrated by the Russians.

By David E. Sanger | Published Nov. 18, 2019 | New York Times | Posted November 19, 2019 |

Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York mayor at the center of the impeachment investigation into the conduct of Ukraine policy, makes a living selling cybersecurity advice through his companies. President Trump even named him the administration’s first informal “cybersecurity adviser.”

But inside the National Security Council, officials expressed wonderment that Mr. Giuliani was running his “irregular channel” of Ukraine diplomacy over open cell lines and communications apps in Ukraine that the Russians have deeply penetrated.

In his testimony to the House impeachment inquiry, Tim Morrison, who is leaving as the National Security Council’s head of Europe and Russia, recalled expressing astonishment to William B. Taylor Jr., who was sitting in as the chief American diplomat in Ukraine, that the leaders of the “irregular channel” seemed to have little concern about revealing their conversations to Moscow.

“He and I discussed a lack of, shall we say, OPSEC, that much of Rudy’s discussions were happening over an unclassified cellphone or, perhaps as bad, WhatsApp messages, and therefore you can only imagine who else knew about them,” Mr. Morrison testified. OPSEC is the government’s shorthand for operational security.

He added: “I remember being focused on the fact that there were text messages, the fact that Rudy was having all of these phone calls over unclassified media,” he added. “And I found that to be highly problematic and indicative of someone who didn’t really understand how national security processes are run.”

WhatsApp notes that its traffic is encrypted, meaning that even if it is intercepted in transit, it is of little use — which is why intelligence agencies, including the Russians, are working diligently to get inside phones to read the messages after they are deciphered.

But far less challenging is figuring out the message of Mr. Giuliani’s partner, Gordon D. Sondland, the American ambassador to the European Union, who held an open cellphone conversation with Mr. Trump from a restaurant in Ukraine, apparently loud enough for his table mates to overhear. And Mr. Trump’s own cellphone use has led American intelligence officials to conclude that the Chinese — with whom he is negotiating a huge trade deal, among other sensitive topics — are doubtless privy to the president’s conversations.

But Ukraine is a particularly acute case. It is the country where the Russians have so deeply compromised the communications network that in 2014 they posted on the internet conversations between a top Obama administration diplomat, Victoria Nuland, and the United States ambassador to Ukraine at the time, Geoffrey R. Pyatt. Their intent was to portray the Americans — not entirely inaccurately — as trying to manage the ouster of a corrupt, pro-Russian president of Ukraine.

The incident made Ms. Nuland, who left the State Department soon after Mr. Trump’s election, “Patient Zero” in the Russian information-warfare campaign against the United States, before Moscow’s interference in the American presidential election.

But it also served as a warning that if you go to Ukraine, stay off communications networks that Moscow wired.

That advice would seem to apply especially to Mr. Giuliani, who speaks around the world on cybersecurity issues. Ukraine was the petri dish for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, the place where he practiced the art of trying to change vote counts, initiating information warfare and, in two celebrated incidents, turning out the lights in parts of the country.

Mr. Giuliani, impeachment investigators were told, was Mr. Trump’s interlocutor with the new Ukrainian government about opening investigations into the president’s political opponents. The simultaneous suspension of $391 million in military aid to Ukraine, which some have testified was on Mr. Trump’s orders, fulfilled Moscow’s deepest wish at a moment of ground war in eastern Ukraine, and a daily, grinding cyberwar in the capital.

It remains unknown why the Russians have not made any of these conversations public, assuming they possess them. But inside the intelligence agencies, the motives of Russian intelligence officers is a subject of heated speculation.

A former senior American intelligence official speculated that one explanation is that Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Sondland were essentially doing the Russians’ work for them. Holding up military aid — for whatever reason — assists the Russian “gray war” in eastern Ukraine and sows doubts in Kyiv, also known as Kiev in the Russian transliteration, that the United States is wholly supportive of Ukraine, a fear that many State Department and National Security Council officials have expressed in testimony.

But Mr. Giuliani also was stoking an unsubstantiated conspiracy theory that Mr. Putin has engaged in, suggesting that someone besides Russia — in this telling, Ukrainian hackers who now supposedly possess a server that once belonged to the Democratic National Committee — was responsible for the hacking that ran from 2015 to 2016.

Mr. Trump raised this possibility in his July 25 phone call with the new Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky. It was not the first time he had cast doubt on Russia’s involvement: In a call to a New York Times reporter moments after meeting Mr. Putin for the first time in Hamburg, Germany, in 2017, Mr. Trump endorsed Mr. Putin’s view that Russia is so good at cyberoperations that it would have never been caught. “That makes sense, doesn’t it?” he asked.

He expressed doubts again in 2018, in a news conference with Mr. Putin in Helsinki, Finland. That was only days after the Justice Department indicted a dozen Russian intelligence officers for their role in the hack; the administration will not say if it now believes that indictment was flawed because there is evidence that Ukranians were responsible.

Whether or not he believes Ukraine was involved, Mr. Giuliani certainly understood the risks of talking on open lines, particularly in a country with an active cyberwar. As a former prosecutor, he knows what the United States and its adversaries can intercept. In more recent years, he has spoken around the world on cybersecurity challenges. And as the president’s lawyer, he was a clear target.

Mr. Giuliani said in a phone interview Monday that nothing he talked about on the phone or in texts was classified. “All of my conversations, I can say uniformly, were on an unclassified basis,” he said.

His findings about what happened in Ukraine were “generated from my own investigations” and had nothing to do with the United States government, he said, until he was asked to talk with Kurt D. Volker, then the special envoy for Ukraine, in a conversation that is now part of the impeachment investigation. Mr. Volker will testify in public on Tuesday.

Mr. Giuliani said that he never “conducted a shadow foreign policy, I conducted a defense of my client,” Mr. Trump. “The State Department apparatchiks are all upset that I intervened at all,” he said, adding that he was the victim of “wild accusations.”

Mr. Sondland is almost as complex a case. While he is new to diplomacy, he is the owner of a boutique set of hotels and certainly is not unaware of cybersecurity threats, since the hotel industry is a major target, as Marriott learned a year ago.

But Mr. Sondland held a conversation with Mr. Trump last summer in a busy restaurant in Kyiv, surrounded by other American officials. Testimony indicates Mr. Trump’s voice was loud enough for others at the table to hear.

But in testimony released Monday night, David Holmes, a veteran Foreign Service officer who is posted to the American Embassy in Kyiv, and who witnessed the phone call between the president and Mr. Sondland, suggested that the Russians heard it even if they were not out on the town that night.

Asked if there was a risk of the Russians listening in, Mr. Holmes said, “I believe at least two of the three, if not all three of the mobile networks are owned by Russian companies, or have significant stakes in those.

“We generally assume that mobile communications in Ukraine are being monitored,” he said.

🍁☕🍂🍞🍁☕🍂🍞🍁☕🍂🍞🍁☕

Republicans Are Following Trump to Nowhere

There’s an impeachment lesson hiding in the president’s failure to produce the political results he wants.

By Jamelle Bouie, Opinion Columnist |

Published Nov. 19, 2019, 6:00 AM ET | New York Times | Posted Nov 19, 2019

Americans have gone to the polls four times this month to vote in major, statewide races. In Virginia, they voted for control of the state Legislature; in Mississippi, Kentucky and Louisiana, they voted for control of the governor’s mansion. In each case, President Trump tied himself to the outcome.

“Governor @MattBevin has done a wonderful job for the people of Kentucky!” Trump tweeted before Election Day. “Matt has my Complete and Total Endorsement, and always has. GET OUT and VOTE on November 5th for your GREAT Governor, @MattBevin!”

Trump sent a similar message ahead of the Virginia elections. “Virginia, with all of the massive amount of defense and other work I brought to you, and with everything planned, go out and vote Republican today,” he said.

“The people of this country aren’t buying” impeachment, Trump said at a rally in Louisiana last week. “You see it because we’re going up and they’re going down.”

“You gotta give me a big win please,” he said later. “Please.”

Trump thought voters would repudiate impeachment and vindicate him. Instead, they did the opposite. Virginia Democrats won a legislative majority for the first time since 1993, flipping historically Republican districts. Kentucky Democrats beat incumbent Gov. Matt Bevin in a state Trump won by 30 points in 2016. And Louisiana Democrats re-elected Governor John Bel Edwards in a state Trump won by the more modest but still substantial margin of 20 points. Democrats in Mississippi made significant gains even as they fell short of victory — their nominee for governor, Jim Hood, lost by five-and-a-half points, a dramatic turnaround from four years ago, when Republican Phil Bryant won in a landslide.

It’s true that Democrats didn’t run on the issue of impeachment. These races were centered on more quotidian issues like health care, transportation and education. If anything, this was the second consecutive election cycle where health care made the difference. In Kentucky, the Democratic candidate, Andy Beshear — whose father, also as governor, implemented the Affordable Care Act in the state — promised to protect Medicaid and hammered Bevin on his plan for work requirements. Edwards ran for re-election on his implementation of the Medicaid expansion in Louisiana, which gave coverage to more than 400,000 state residents. Medicaid was a key issue in the Mississippi race as well, where an estimated 100,000 residents would be eligible for coverage under the expansion.

But just because no one ran on impeachment doesn’t mean it wasn’t in the air. Voters could have shown they were tired of Democratic investigations. They could have elevated the president’s allies. Instead, voters handed Trump an unambiguous defeat. And that is much more than just a blow to the president’s immediate political fortunes.

To start, it confirms recent polling on impeachment. A new ABC News poll shows majority support for impeachment and even removal. Fifty-one percent say that “President Trump’s actions were wrong and he should be impeached by the House and removed from office by the Senate.” And an overwhelming 70 percent of Americans say that the inciting offense — Trump’s attempt to coerce Ukraine into investigating a political rival — was wrong. A similarly fresh Reuters poll has lower numbers for removal (44 percent of Americans say they want the House to impeach and the Senate to convict), but also shows that most Americans want Congress to investigate Trump if he “committed impeachable offenses during his conversation with the president of Ukraine.”

Worried about backlash and committed to restraint, House Democrats have limited their impeachment inquiry to the Ukraine scandal. You could read these numbers and election results as vindication — proof that Democrats were right to take a narrow, focused approach to the president’s wrongdoing.

But it’s also possible that Democrats are leaving political advantage on the table — that there’s still opportunity for an even broader investigation that tackles everything from White House involvement in Ukraine and the president’s phone calls with other foreign leaders (the records of several of these, not just the one involving Ukraine, have been inappropriately placed on a classified server) to his deals with authoritarian governments in Turkey and Saudi Arabia. These wouldn’t be fishing expeditions — given the president’s refusal to divest from his businesses or separate his personal interests from those of the state, there’s good reason to suspect inappropriate behavior across a range of areas — but they would mean a longer process. Democrats couldn’t wrap up impeachment before the end of the year. They would have to let it move at its own pace, even if it stretches well into 2020. (Watergate, remember, took more than two years to unfold.)

I don’t see the downside. A long inquiry keeps impeachment out of Mitch McConnell’s hands until there’s a comprehensive case against the president. Yes, there’s the chance of a late campaign acquittal, but if the past month is any prediction, Trump will have sustained a large amount of political damage over the course of a long investigation. It would keep him off-balance, especially if further investigation uncovers even more corruption. It would also allow the six Democratic presidential candidates in the Senate to campaign through the primary season instead of returning to Washington for a trial. But most important it would show a commitment to getting to the full truth of what’s been happening in the White House under the guise of making America great again.

🍁☕🍂🍞🍁☕🍂🍞🍁☕🍂🍞🍁☕