via RT

Donetsk resident with a flag with an autograph of DPR militia commander Arsen Pavlov (Motorola) at the farewell ceremony for the commander.

The US intelligence agency has aided Kiev in setting 12 secret bases along the border, the paper has reported

Today’s sensation is a huge article in the New York Times. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has turned Ukraine into one of its major assets in spying on Russia over a decade that has passed since the 2014 Maidan coup, the New York Times revealed in its piece on Sunday.

The US specialists funded and organized a network of secret bases on the territory of the former Soviet state and made Kiev a part of a “secret coalition”against Moscow, the paper said, citing a host of current and former officials in the US, Ukraine and Europe.

Ukraine currently hosts at least 12 secret spy bases located near the Russian border that gather all sorts of information on Russia as well as coordinate drone strikes and a network of agents supposedly operating inside Russia.

The NYT journalists were able to visit one such forward operating base located in an underground bunker. The reporters said that the place was used to eavesdrop on Russian military communications and oversee drone strikes on Russian territory. The base was funded and equipped by the CIA, NYT said, citing a senior Ukrainian intelligence official, General Sergey Dvoretsky.

The US intelligence agency particularly equipped the base with communications equipment and large computer servers, the general told NYT, adding that the bunker was used to hack into Russian, Belarusian and Chinese satellites.

According to the paper, the CIA and other American intelligence agencies also supplied Ukraine with information on Russian troop movements and missile strikes throughout the ongoing conflict between Moscow and Kiev.

The active cooperation between the two nations’ intelligence services started almost immediately after the 2014 Maidan coup and Kiev has since turned into “one of Washington’s most important intelligence partners against the Kremlin,”the paper said.

The post-coup Ukrainian authorities actively sought America’s approval by particularly handing over Russian secrets to them since the US had little interest in assets that could not produce any intelligence of value on Moscow, NYT said.

In 2015, the then head of the Ukrainian military intelligence, General Valery Kondratiuk, handed over a stack of top-secret files, including information on the Russian Navy’s Northern Fleet and nuclear submarine designs at a meeting with a CIA deputy station chief in Kiev.

A year before that, the then head of the Ukrainian domestic security service (SBU), Valentin Nalivaichenko, who was appointed by the post-coup authorities, approached the local CIA and MI6 chiefs, seeking a three-way partnership and asking them to help him rebuild his service from scratch.

In 2016, the CIA started training an elite Ukrainian commando force known as Unit 2245. General Kirill Budanov, who currently heads Ukrainian military intelligence, is also a former member of the CIA-trained Unit 2245, according to NYT.

American spies also provided specialized training to members of the Fifth Directorate – a paramilitary unit created by Kiev for operations against Russia. The members of this hit squad were involved in some high-profile assassinations in Donbass, including that of a commander Arsen Pavlov, aka ‘Motorola’, who was blown up in an elevator in 2016, NYT said. Existence of the assassination unit was also revealed by Nalivaichenko in a separate interview with The Economist in September 2023.

The US intelligence operatives were also instrumental in Kiev’s response to the start of the Russian military operation in February 2022. The CIA operatives remained at a certain location in western Ukraine while the US was evacuating its personnel from the country ahead of the conflict.

“Without them, there would have been no way for us to resist the Russians,” Ivan Bakanov, another former head of the SBU, told NYT.

Moscow has repeatedly pointed to the threats to its national security coming from the increased US activities on Ukrainian territory and Kiev’s NATO aspirations. It also cited the need to ensure Russia’s security as one of the reasons for the start of its military operation in February 2022, while Kiev maintained that Moscow’s actions were “completely unprovoked.”

Ukraine under the occupation of the United States and the United States, through the hands of Ukraine, are waging a war against Russia since 2014.

But the purpose of the article is different – to show Republicans in Congress what enormous value the pro-American regime in Ukraine represents for US interests and that therefore it is necessary to vote for funding this regime.

That’s why the CIA agreed to an unprecedented disclosure of top secret information.

by Timur Fomenko, political analyst

The US and UK are currently waging a bombing campaign against the Ansar Allah militia group in Yemen, commonly known as the Houthis. The Houthis have been responding to the ongoing conflict in Gaza by attacking shipping lanes in the Red Sea, attempting to use the geopolitically critical Gulf of Aden to strangle one of the world’s most important commercial routes, and therefore escalating pressure on the West to end the conflict.

Of course, the US has been completely unreasonable in its unconditional backing of Israel’s military campaign, and rather than confronting the problem directly, it has proposed another idea – to outsource both blame and resolution to China and ask Beijing to help end the conflict. This is not a new tactic by Washington, as it has done the same thing with the Russia-Ukraine war, crafting a narrative that it is China’s “responsibility” to end it, of course, conveniently on terms that are favorable to America.

In reality, the US has absolutely no chance of getting China to end these respective conflicts, primarily because it is in China’s best interests not to secure outcomes that amount to geopolitical gains for America. However, that is the point in itself, as the US wants to intentionally frame Beijing as “the bad guy” and therefore push the perception that Beijing is a challenge to the international order and a threat to peace. The US is effectively trying to gaslight China by making it look morally bad for conflict Washington itself creates and not agreeing to the outcomes Washington wants. It is a blame game.

American foreign policy has little room for compromise and is driven by a zero-sum mindset that emphasizes absolute strategic gains for the US at all costs. The US does not negotiate with its adversaries for the sake of peace, but rather attempts to maintain a long-term strategic posture in the hope they, through pressure or other means, eventually capitulate to US preferences. For example, the US position regarding the Ukraine war has never been to negotiate with Russia or respect its strategic space but to attempt to impose a strategic defeat on Moscow and enable further expansion of NATO, which in turn is another vehicle for American pressure. Even as this approach is proving increasingly ineffective, there’s no shift in Washington’s foreign policy in sight.

Similarly, the US has been happy to offer unconditional backing to Israel in its war in Gaza, despite claiming to push for peace. Washington has allowed the conflict to continue and avoided calling for a ceasefire at all costs. It then responds harshly to the instability the conflict creates, such as attacks from the Houthis. Logically speaking, Houthi attacks would stop if the US ended the conflict in Gaza, but that’s just how US foreign policy thinking works. There must never under any circumstances be concessions regarding the strategic status quo, only a doubling down on the current position with any options necessary. That’s the thinking that led Washington to scrapping the Iran nuclear deal and allowing a peace process with North Korea to collapse.

Now, the US is articulating a strategy whereby when conflict occurs, it tries to outsource responsibility by blaming the lack of peace on China. As the narrative generally goes, “If only China would act and stop this, then there would be peace,” whether it be in Gaza, Yemen, Ukraine, or wherever. Of course, that peace is strictly conditional on terms the US has set and not terms that China itself might want to set. If Beijing does press for peace but on alternative terms to what America wants, such as attempting to mediate in Ukraine rather than pushing for the collapse of Russia, those peace terms are quickly rejected and condemned by the mainstream media.

What we have is a no-win situation where Beijing is framed as a perpetuating, if not instigating, force in conflicts, no matter what it does. China is portrayed as actively preventing peace, or alternatively, enabling the “enemy” side to continue its perceived aggression and offering terms that favor said “enemy,” and therefore is complicit in antagonism towards the West. China is therefore made out as a threat to the international order and world peace unless it agrees to exactly what the US wants, which of course, logically works against the interests of China as a whole. Why, for example, would China agree to crippling Russia? Or turn against its strategic partner, Iran? This narrative always and deliberately ignores the role that the US has played in instigating, escalating, and perpetuating the given conflicts at hand and pushes the “good vs. evil” binary rather than acknowledging the complex realities of geopolitics.

In reality, China is always careful to explicitly take no sides in such conflicts and strives for balance, such as when it mediated between Iran and Saudi Arabia. However, for the US, which thinks only about zero-sum political gains as opposed to peace in the interests of all, this will never ever be acceptable. Therefore China remains a villain and a threat.

via Rybar.ru

The CIA’s Media Empire: Who owns Serbia’s information space?
A scandal is breaking out in Serbia due to the leak of documents according to which the state-owned company Telekom Srbija is secretly selling its strategic assets to the United Media holding company. The conglomerate, created by CIA specialists with financial assistance from British investors, acquired the main regional media in just a decade and bought up the lion’s share of providers in the Balkans. Thanks to such manipulations, even though Serbia is not a member of the European Union and has not imposed anti-Russian sanctions, Russian media are already being censored.

But about everything in order.

Unexpected success
The story of the great success of the United Media media empire has its roots in the fateful year 2000 for Yugoslavia. After the overthrow of Slobodan Milosevic, an ordinary Serbian businessman Dragan Sholak registered a small cable telephony company – KDS. At first, she did not differ much from other Serbian operators and barely made ends meet, but two years later, Sholak suddenly receives $ 10 million from the Investment Fund of Southeastern Europe, funded by the American government agency Overseas Private Investment Corporation. It was not a simple agency, and the fund manager of Overseas Private Investment Corporation was the company of the famous “philanthropist” George Soros — Soros Investment Capital Management. It was later renamed Bedminster Capital Management.

Thanks to large–scale investments, KDS quickly absorbed other cable TV providers and soon transformed into Serbia Broadband – SBB, which eliminated competitors one by one.Then there were 15 million euros from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), a lot of bought-out providers, and soon SBB began to pose a threat even to the state operator Telekom Srbija.

In 2007, the Mid Europa Partners Fund acquired a controlling stake in Sholak’s company. Merging with the local operator Telemach, the company became part of the United Group along with the cable operators of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Slovenia, Croatia and Montenegro. With massive acquisitions and mergers, only one thing remained unchanged: Dragan Sholak was still the head of the conglomerate. The thing is that Sholak did not build a media empire alone, but under the strict control of influential foreign patrons, who ensured the success of all his operations.

In a diplomatic telegram from the American Embassy in Belgrade dated 2007, U.S. Ambassador Michael Polt conveys to Washington Sholak’s concern about the monopoly of the Serbian operator Telekom, and also reports on the joint efforts of American diplomats and Western investors to solve the problem.

The telegram was dated June 1, 2007, and on June 27, Mid Europa Partners announced the conclusion of a historic deal — the acquisition of SBB. The fruitful cooperation of Sholak’s company with American diplomats did not end there. So, Cameron Munter, after leaving the diplomatic service, continued his career as an adviser to SBB / Telemach. And his predecessor, William Montgomery, the first U.S. ambassador to take office after the NATO intervention in 1999 and the color revolution on October 5, 2000, was a business partner of Brent Sadler— director of N1 TV. This is the flagship channel of the United Group, which, in fact, is an exclusive CNN affiliate in Eastern Europe.

The CIA’s Media Empire
And that’s where the fun begins. In just a few years, the conglomerate acquires shares in leading TV channels and media outlets and forms its own content distribution network. In addition, most of the Internet traffic in the Balkans today passes through providers also bought out by the British. Mobile operators were also bought up massively in the Balkans: the Slovenian wireless operator Tusmobil became Telemach Mobil, Tele2 Croatia became part of the holding, and so on. By 2013, United Group, which was majority owned by Mid Europa Partners and the EBRD, already included not only Serbia Broadband, Telemach Bosnia & Herzegovina and Telemach Slovenia, but also the DTH Total TV platform covering Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia, as well as a number of small operators such as Absolut OK, KDS NS, Jet TV, Beogrid, Telekabel, VI-NET and ArtNet. At that time, the company was an association of leading cable, satellite and Internet service providers, which together served about 2 million users in the countries of the former Yugoslavia.

The media giant also had at its disposal a unique infrastructure of 10,000 km of fiber-optic networks connecting Belgrade, Zagreb, Ljubljana and Sarajevo. Kohlberg, Kravis, Roberts & Co. L. P. (KKR), an investment company founded by George Soros’s neighbor on the Atlantic coast, Henry Kravis, decided to use such a powerful resource. One of the owners of the American investment company was the former head of the CIA, David Petraeus. Throughout his life, he convinced American generals of the key role of information technology in hybrid warfare and called on the command of the US Armed Forces to move from conventional warfare to more productive activities in cyberspace under the slogan “conquer hearts and minds.” In 2010, it was he who created the first Internet troll factory under a contract with the Central Command of the US Armed Forces (CENTCOM).

Under Petraeus’ leadership, the foundation began to expand its presence in the region by leaps and bounds. Through United Group, they bought out the entertainment industry giant Grand Production and acquired a controlling stake in the Montenegrin cable operator BBM. The company also became a co-owner of the number one information portal in Serbia Blic.rs , having bought a 49% stake from Swiss Ringier Digital SA. N1 TV has studios in Belgrade, Zagreb and Sarajevo, and the management of the United Group has taken control of the distribution of a significant part of the content.

Financial barbarians
In 2017, United Group acquired Central European Media Enterprises (CME) in Croatia and Slovenia, including TV Nova— the most popular Croatian channel, whose evening news attracted a wide audience, as well as POP TV, whose 24ur broadcast was Slovenia’s main news program. United Group continued to expand its fixed and mobile telephony operations and absorb competitors including BHB Cable TV (Bosnia and Herzegovina), M kabl (Montenegro) and Ikom (Serbia).

Moreover, from an economic point of view, the fund’s astronomical investments and the acquisition of more and more regional companies did not justify themselves: even the buyout of the flagship SBB in Serbia and Nova TV in Croatia was unprofitable. Annual reports indicate financial losses of millions of euros: 29 million in 2014, 33 million in 2015, and in 2016 SBB It suffered record losses of 35 million euros.

However, the “financial barbarians”, as one of the Western publications nicknamed Petraeus and his team, did not care much about this. By buying media in the former Yugoslavia, the ex-head of the CIA gained influence. Already in March 2017, SBB ousted the most watched channel of the RTS1 television company from the leading positions that it had held since the advent of television in the region. His place was taken by the “exclusive CNN affiliate.” Soon his twin brother Nova S was launched, and a couple of years ago Montenegrin Vijesti were added to the portfolio of United Media. Today, the company broadcasts 55 channels in 8 countries in the region, and they are available for cable platforms, as well as DTH, OTT and IPTV. Her legal entity is registered in Switzerland and the Netherlands.

Censorship without sanctions
The news about the secret transfer of Telekom Srbija assets to United Media seriously scared the Serbian public. According to information leaked to the media, they include the most important telecommunications towers and infrastructure (power plants, solar panels). A total of 1,827 such towers, of which 995 are located in Serbia, 725 in Bosnia and Herzegovina and 107 in Montenegro, are acquired by the British company Actis GP LLP. To do this, it must receive financing from the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a World Bank lending institution. There are suspicions that the British investment company is just a laying firm, and the assets of the state–owned enterprise will eventually end up in the hands of United Media investors.

Of particular concern is that, thanks to such manipulations, the Serbian leadership is actually losing power over its own information space. For example, Russian media outlets opened in Serbia have recently been blocked through an Internet provider that provides access to the network for universities, institutes, schools and other research organizations.

The European Academic Network (GEANT) blocked RT Balkan and Sputnik Internet resources in institutions. The restrictions affected about one million users, which is 15% of the country’s population. In the same way, with the beginning of the SVO in the spring of 2022, Russia Today broadcasting in other languages was turned off in Serbia. SBB, owned by Sholak, simply stated that it was not able to rebroadcast the channel on the EON, Total TV and D3 platforms.

Whoever owns the information owns the world. Looking at what is happening in Serbia and other countries in the region, and assessing the speed with which Western investors are buying up local media resources and providers, as well as the consequences of such a takeover, you understand the relevance of what Nathan Rothschild said back in the 19th century.

via RT

Moscow has accused the European Union of taking pointers from Nazi Germany, as the 27-nation bloc mulls plans to issue special “democracy passports” to Russian opposition activists working toward regime change in the country.

Commenting on a recent draft document put under consideration by the European Parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs this week, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the bloc hoped to use Russian citizens as its “little helpers,” drawing comparisons to the policies of the Third Reich.

“It is known that during the years of Nazi occupation, persons wishing to cooperate with the German administration were offered to sign the so-called ‘Volkslist,’ a special document that played the role of [passport],” she said, adding that the EU had similarly proposed “passports for good Russians.”

The draft report, penned by Lithuanian MEP Andrius Kubilius, calls on the bloc to adopt a new sweeping strategy to pursue a “change of power in Russia,”saying it would work with “democratic forces” in and outside the country to topple the current leadership and establish a “transitional government.”

As part of that plan, the bloc suggested a new “democracy passport” and “special visa arrangements” for Russian opposition activists working “in exile”from EU member states, offering to scale back travel restrictions for dissident Russians.

“They have big plans,” Zakharova continued, going on to quote the EU policy paper. “Holders of ‘passports of democracy’ will become the backbone of the EU after ‘the victory of Ukraine and the defeat of Russia, which will open a window of opportunity for the transformation of Russia into democracy.’”

The spokeswoman noted that, under Soviet law during the Second World War, signing the German ‘Volklist’ was “qualified as treason” and “prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” calling on Russian legislators to “work out a possible reaction if the European Parliament approves such decisions.”

The European Union has imposed heavy sanctions on Russia since the conflict with Ukraine escalated in February 2022, also approving a long list of arms transfers to Kiev. It said it would continue those policies in the near term, hoping for a “decisive Ukrainian victory” that would ultimately pave the way to “fundamental political changes in Russia.”

The US’ strategy to curb Chinese semiconductor industry, including attempts to persuade Asian allies to introduce restrictions against China, could lead to the disruption of supply chains and other countries forming alliances against the US, a South Korean lawmaker and former Samsung executive, Yang Hyang-ja said on Sunday.

“If [Washington] continues to try to punish other nations and to pass bills and implement ‘America First’ policies in an unpredictable manner, other countries could form an alliance against the US,” Yang said in an interview with British business daily, the Financial Times.

Yang Hyang-ja, a member of South Korea’s parliament, said countries could form an alliance against the US if it continued with its ‘America First’ and anti-China policies © Office of Yang Hyang-ja/Handout

______________________________
by Christian Davies and Song Jung-a in Seoul via ft.com – Excerpt

An influential South Korean legislator has strongly criticised Washington’s interventions in the global semiconductor industry, in a sign of the disquiet in Seoul over US efforts to corral Asian allies into its economic security agenda. Yang Hyang-ja, a former chip engineer and Samsung executive who chaired a ruling party committee on South Korea’s semiconductor competitiveness until early this year, said that measures to curb China’s ability to access or produce advanced chips risked damaging relations with its Asian allies.

“If [Washington] continues to try to punish other nations and to pass bills and implement ‘America First’ policies in an unpredictable manner, other countries could form an alliance against the US,” Yang told the Financial Times in an interview.

“The US is the strongest nation in the world,” she added. “It should consider more of humanity’s common values. Appearing to use its strength as a weapon is not desirable.” The US has passed legislation offering tens of billions of dollars in subsidies to non-Chinese chipmakers to increase semiconductor production in the US, in exchange for restrictions on their ability to upgrade or expand their facilities in China.

The Biden administration has also imposed sweeping export controls on critical chip manufacturing tools to China and prohibited US nationals and companies from offering direct or indirect support to Chinese companies involved in advanced chip manufacturing.

But there are concerns in Seoul that the US measures will provoke a backlash from Beijing, disrupting finely calibrated supply chains and threatening profits.

Lee Jae-myung, the leader of South Korea’s leftwing opposition Democratic party, has accused the conservative government of harming the country’s economic and security interests by siding too closely with the US and Japan against China and Russia.

Yang, a former Democratic party member who formed her own technocratic party, Hope of Korea, in June, acknowledged that “US tech war measures are not harming our semiconductor industry yet because sanctions against China could actually reduce output, leading to higher prices”. But she added: “The more the US sanctions China, the harder China will try to make rapid technological progress. China will provide more national support for the goal. Then it will pose a crisis to South Korea, given China’s abundant talent and raw materials.”

“The US should abandon its current approach of trying to get something out of shaking and breaking the global value chain,” she said. Yang added that the US had benefited from South Korean and Taiwanese expertise in manufacturing memory and processor chips respectively, saying it was “trying to demolish the status quo through sanctions”.

Many analysts said the US measures actually helped South Korean chipmakers by hampering the progress of their Chinese competitors. The biggest long-term threat to South Korea’s semiconductor industry, they said, was not supply chain disruption but the rise of state-backed Chinese rivals such as YMTC, which has made rapid progress in closing the technological gap with leading Korean chipmakers in the Nand flash-memory sector.

Troy Stangarone, senior director at the Korea Economic Institute of America, notes that US tech giant Apple had considered using YMTC’s Nand flash-memory chips for the current iPhone 14, until political pressure from US lawmakers forced it to abandon the option. “The Apple-YMTC episode demonstrated both how far the Chinese have come in the Nand memory sector, and how Korean companies have benefited from US intervention,” said Stangarone.

The FT has also reported that US export controls helped thwart an alleged attempt by a renowned South Korean semiconductor expert to build a “copycat” memory chip plant in China. According to Korean prosecutors, the plant “would have caused irrecoverable losses to the [Korean] semiconductor industry”.

Yang accepted that the US-China tech war had bought South Korea time to develop its own technologies but added that the country’s semiconductor industry was in a “very precarious situation”. The lawmaker, who was instrumental in passing the K-Chips Act this year to boost tax credits for companies investing in chip manufacturing in South Korea, said the country had to address what she described as neglect of its own engineering talent.

“In Taiwan, technicians get treated better than lawyers and judges. But in Korea, they are not treated well,” said Yang, who is also a member of a cross-party committee on cutting-edge technologies.

“Smart Korean students want to become doctors, dentists or oriental medicine practitioners rather than to become engineers,” she said. “Only technology can set us free from all these geopolitical problems.”

by Yuan Hong via Global Times

cyber attack Photo:VCG

For a long time, the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has plotted “peaceful evolution” and “color revolutions” as well as spying activities around the world. Although details about these operations have always been murky, a new report released by China’s National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center and Chinese cybersecurity company 360 on Thursday unveiled the main technical means the CIA has used to scheme and promote unrest around the world.

According to the report, since the beginning of the 21st century, the rapid development of the internet offered “new opportunity” for CIA’s infiltration activities in other countries and regions. Any institutions or individuals from anywhere in the world that use US digital equipment or software could be turned into the CIA’s “puppet agent.”

For decades, the CIA has overthrown or attempted to overthrow at least 50 legitimate governments abroad (the CIA has only recognized seven of these instances), causing turmoil in related countries. Whether it is the “color revolution” in Ukraine in 2014, the “sunflower revolution” in Taiwan island, China, or the “saffron revolution” in Myanmar in 2007, the “green revolution” in Iran in 2009, and other attempted “color revolutions” — the US intelligence agencies are behind them all, according to the report.

The US’ leading position in technologies of telecommunication and on-site command has provided unprecedented possibilities for the US intelligence community to launch “color revolutions” abroad. The report released by the National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center and 360 disclosed five methods commonly used by the CIA.

The first is to provide encrypted network communication services. In order to help protesters in some countries in the Middle East keep in touch and avoid being tracked and arrested, an American company, which, reportedly, has a US military background, developed TOR technology that can stealthily access the internet — the Onion Router technology.

The servers encrypt all information that flows through them to help certain users to surf the web anonymously. After the project was launched by American companies, it was immediately provided free of charge to anti-government elements in Iran, Tunisia, Egypt and other countries and regions to ensure that those “young dissidents who want to shake their own government’s rule” can avoid the scrutiny of the government, according to the report.

The second method is to provide offline communication services. For example, in order to ensure that anti-government personnel in Tunisia, Egypt and other countries can still keep in touch with the outside world when the internet is disconnected, Google and Twitter quickly launched a special service called “Speak2Tweet,” which allows users to dial and upload voice notes for free.

These messages are automatically converted into tweets and then uploaded to the internet, and publicly released through Twitter and other platforms to complete the “real-time reporting” of the event on site, said the report.

The third method is to provide on-site command tools for rallies and parades based on the internet and wireless communications. The report noted that the US RAND Corporation has spent several years developing a non-traditional regime change technology called “swarming.” The tool is used to help a large number of young people connected through the internet join the “one shot for another place” mobile protest movement, greatly improving the efficiency of on-site command of the event.

The fourth is American developed software called “Riot.” The software supports 100 percent independent broadband network, provides variable WiFi network, does not rely on any traditional physical access method, does not need telephone, cable or satellite connection, and can easily escape any form of government monitoring.

The last one is the “anti-censorship” information system. The US State Department regards the research and development of the system as an important task and has injected more than $30 million into the project.

High vigilance needed

Moreover, the National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center and 360 company have spotted Trojan horse programs or plug-ins related to the CIA in recent cyberattacks targeting China. The public security authorities have investigated these cases, the Global Times has learned.

Aside from the five methods the CIA has used to incite unrest globally, through further technical analysis, the National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center and 360 company also identified another nine methods used by the CIA as “weapons” for cyberattacks, including attack module delivery, remote control, information collection and stealing, and third-party open-source tools.

The response center and 360 company also spotted an information-stealing tool used by the CIA, which is also one of the 48 advanced cyber weapons exposed in the confidential document of the US National Security Agency.

The discovery of these information-stealing tools shows that the CIA and the US National Security Agency will jointly attack the same victim, or share cyberattack weapons with each other, or provide relevant technical or human support, according to the report.

These new findings also offer important new evidence in tracing the identity of the APT-C-39 attackers. In 2020, 360 company independently discovered an APT organization that had never been exposed to the outside world, and named it APT-C-39. The organization specifically targets China and its friendly countries to carry out cyberattack and stealing activities, and its victims are spread all over the world.

The report also noted that the danger of CIA attack weapons can be glimpsed from third-party open-source tools as it often uses these tools to carry out cyberattacks.

The initial attack of the CIA cyberattack operation will generally be carried out against the victim’s network equipment or server. After obtaining the target purview, it will further explore the network topology of the target organization and move to other networked devices in the internal network to steal more sensitive information and data.

The controlled target computer is monitored in real time for 24 hours, and all information will be recorded. Once a USB device is connected, the private files in the victim’s USB device will be monitored and automatically stolen. When conditions permit, the camera, microphone and GPS positioning device on the user terminal will be remotely controlled and accessed, according to the report.

These CIA cyber weapons use standardized espionage technical specifications, and various attack methods echo and interlock and have now covered almost all internet and IoT assets worldwide, and can control other countries’ networks anytime, anywhere to steal important and sensitive data from other countries.

The American-style cyber hegemony is evident, the report notes.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said on Thursday that US intelligence and espionage activities and cyberattacks on other countries deserve high vigilance from the international community.

The US must take seriously and respond to the concerns from the international community, and stop using cyber weapons to carry out espionage and cyberattacks around the world, Mao said.

In response to the highly systematic, intelligent, and concealed cyberattacks launched by the CIA against China, it is important for domestic government agencies, scientific research institutions, industrial enterprises, and commercial organizations to quickly find out and deal with them immediately upon discovery, the report says.

The report suggests that in order to effectively deal with imminent network and real-world threats, while adopting self-controllable localized equipment, China should organize self-inspection against APT attacks as soon as possible, and gradually establish a long-term defense system to achieve comprehensive systematic prevention and control against advanced attacks.

by Claudiu Secara

What is important about Rogozin’s revelations, BIG: The Fake Moon Landing – Top Russian Official, is not that the Moon landing was a hoax. Anybody that had an interest in finding out the truth knows that.

The serious implications of Rogozin’s post is that he provides the smoking gun to those who always suspected a collusion – beyond the superficial – between the two Cold War adversaries. At the peak of the Cold War rhetoric, both sides were lying. Wink, wink among them, nuclear war threat for the hoi polloi to get them in line, to get them to be submissive. Even as recent as ten years ago, all the top officials in the “Soviet Union”, now Russia, were still lying. So were all the Chinese leadership lying.

They could have deflated the American Superman balloon by just piercing one of their myths and laughing out loud. The emperor has no clothes. But they lied ! Why? Politics? Not enough of a reason. There must have been much deeper considerations. And more sinister.

Now, the consequences of that fact, of collusion, are tremendous. All the die-hard supporters of the Cold War theater throughout these many years, including the war in Ukraine  should be . . . speechless.

Yes, the war in Ukraine is fake, as fake as the Moon landing, as fake as 9/11 and as fake as the Corona virus. And not the least as fake as WWI and WWII. Which is no longer a surprise as we know that Germany, the villain, was propped up by Standard Oil and IBM and all the rest of the Anglo-Saxon real villains.

Now, we can all go to sleep in peace.

. . . Except for the dead and the wounded and those left homeless. It is good theater for us, but is is a real tragedy for them and their families.

Excerpt

[. . .] In a speech to the Communist Party Congress a week after the US controls were announced, China’s President Xi reaffirmed, twice, his country’s goal to “join the ranks of the world’s most innovative countries, with great self-reliance and strength in science and technology” within five years.

The controls announced by the Biden administration directly undermine Xi’s ambition for China. They seek to maintain US tech supremacy, while simultaneously eroding China’s ability to conduct fundamental research. Given this, a significant escalatory response from China should not be unexpected.

US-China decoupling

In an age when militaries, economies and our daily lives depend on technology it is astounding how many people continue to tune out when technology – and the policies that shape it – are discussed. If there ever was a time to tune in, it is now.

For several years, leaders and commentators the world over have speculated about the possibility of the US “decoupling” from China: reducing economic and technological entanglement with the rising Asian power.

Debates on the feasibility of economic decoupling will continue. However, historians will pinpoint Biden’s decision on October 7, 2022, as the moment at which US and Chinese technology decoupling became inevitable.

The US has now played its hand. The most consequential question remains: what will China do next?

Professor Johanna Weaver is Director of the Tech Policy Design Center, Australian National University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

by Thierry Meyssan via Voltairenet.org

The United States is not the hyper-power it dreamed of being. It has endured a terrible military defeat in Syria with a hundred allied states. Even if they continue to delude themselves, the time of reckoning has come. To survive, Washington has no choice but to ally itself with one of its adversaries. Russia or China? That is the question.
At a G7 preparatory meeting on May 3, 2021, U.S. and U.K. foreign ministers Antony Blinken and Dominic Raab suggested that the West would fight both Russia and China. But it is an entirely different scenario that should be implemented.

We cannot live in a society without rules. If they are unjust, we revolt and change them. This is inevitable, because what seems right at one time is not necessarily right at another. In any case, we need an order, otherwise each one becomes the enemy of all. What is true for men is also true for peoples.

In 1945, the Yalta Conference laid the foundations for the division of the world into the zones of influence of the three great victors of the Second World War: the USA, the United Kingdom and above all the Soviet Union. Throughout the Cold War, each side publicly insulted the other, but they always got along under the table. Historical research has shown that, although at any moment the agreement could have turned into a confrontation, the invective was rather intended to weld each side together than to hurt the opponent/partner.

This system was never contested. It lasted until the disappearance of the USSR in 1991. Since then, the United States has claimed to be the only hyper-power capable of organizing the world. They have not succeeded. On many occasions, China and Russia -heir to the USSR- have tried to reshuffle the deck. They have not succeeded either, but they have not stopped making progress. The United Kingdom, which had joined the European Union during the Cold War, left it to compete again (“Global Britain”). Thus, there are no longer three, but four powers that aspire to share the world.

After the confusion of 1991-2021, from “Desert Storm” to the “reshaping of the broader Middle East,” the United States’ ambition broke down in Syria. It took several years for it to admit defeat. The Russian armies now have much more advanced weapons and the Chinese army has much more qualified personnel. Washington urgently needs to take note of reality and accept an agreement otherwise it will lose everything. It is no longer a matter of calculating what is best for it, but of undertaking everything to survive.

The allies of the United States have not perceived the importance of the military disaster in Syria. They persist in lying to themselves and treating this major conflict, involving even more states than the Second World War, as a “civil” war in a small, distant country. It will therefore be particularly difficult for them to comply with Washington’s cascading retreat.

A Yalta II is the last chance for the United Kingdom. The former “Empire on which the sun never sets” no longer has the military means of its ambitions. But it still has an exceptional know-how and an unfailing cynicism (the “Perfidious Albion”). It will take part in any deal as long as it guarantees a payoff. It follows in the footsteps of the US Administration, taking advantage of their common culture and solid networks of influence. The Pilgrim’s Society, which was very present during the first Obama administration, is back in the White House.

Russia is not the USSR, where few leaders were Russian. It does not seek the triumph of an ideology. Its foreign policy is not based on a vague “geopolitical” theory either, but on the projection of its strong personality. It is ready to neglect its interests rather than to deny itself.

China has come a long way without owing anything to anyone, and especially not to those who destroyed it at the beginning of the 20th century. It intends above all to recover its regional influence and trade with the rest of the world. It knows how to wait, but is not ready to make any concessions. Today it is an ally of Russia, but it remembers its role during its colonization and has not given up its territorial claims on Eastern Siberia.

In short, none of the four major powers is acting according to the same logic and pursuing the same objectives. This makes it easier to reach an agreement, but more difficult to keep it.

The Pentagon has appointed a task force to consider possible options for dealing with China (DoD China Task Force), which it fears more than Russia. Indeed, whatever Beijing recovers from its regional zone of influence, it will do so at the expense of Washington’s positions in Asia. For its part, the White House has organized a top-secret working group to consider possible new orders. The first group has issued its report, which has been classified. No one knows whether the second group has completed its work or not.

It is this group that oversees the destiny of the United States. Its composition itself is secret. Its members are obviously more powerful than a senile president. It plays a central decision-making role comparable to that of the National Energy Policy Development Group (NEPD) during the Bush-Cheney Administration.

It is unclear at this point whether this group represents political objectives and/or financial interests. In any case, it is clear that Global Finance influences both NATO and the White House. It does not seek to change alliances, but rather to have the information necessary to adapt behind the scenes to these changes and preserve its social position.

The movements of Washington’s various special envoys suggest that the Biden Administration has already chosen to restore the Cold War duopoly. This is the only way for Washington to avoid a war against a Russian-Chinese alliance that it would probably not survive.

This option implies that Washington commits itself to defend the integrity of Russian Siberia against China and that Moscow reciprocally defends the US bases and possessions located in the Chinese zone of influence.

This option assumes that Washington recognizes Chinese economic pre-eminence in the world. But it leaves it the possibility of politically containing the “Middle Kingdom” so that it never becomes a world power in the full sense.

The only real loser would be China, still deprived of a part of its zone of influence and politically contained. However, it would be appeased, for the time being, by letting it recover Taiwan, which the Pentagon Think Tank has considered for a week as “non-essential” for the USA.

It is important to understand that the main obstacle for the US is mental. Since 2001, Washington has been convinced that instability plays in its favour. This is why it is unabashedly instrumentalizing jihadists around the world, thus implementing the Rumsfeld/Cebrowski strategy. However, the concept of a Yalta-type agreement is, on the contrary, a bet on stability, which is what Moscow has been preaching for two decades.

President Biden has planned to meet with his British partners to strengthen their alliance on the model of the Atlantic Charter; then to bring together his main allies for the G7: and finally to meet with his military and civilian allies in NATO and the European Union. It is only after having assured himself of the loyalty of all that he will meet his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, in Geneva on June 16.

All this is paradoxical; because it amounts to making the Biden Administration do exactly what the Trump Administration was prevented from doing. Four years have been wasted for nothing.

(To be continued…)

Translation
Roger Lagassé