cybersecurity

new cat 1/17

prolly neglected

merri ok

TARGET BC RUSSIAN COLLUSION, SEE KREBS XO

see malware

see blk hat

// NOEM AND BONDI DISMANTLE HEGSETH?! kash patel? bongino?

most abstract is efforts by feds to protect its own servers, and those of corps it care about; also defense from attack on infrastructure/grid

vs anonymous hacktivist

but much of this is oursourced to contractors, whose white hats can go black, to surveill activists eg tigerswan

---

experts say most cyber secure ever, so trump want to fire head guy

fired by trump:https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/chris-krebs-2648968731/

---

Heather Honey, a high-profile denier of Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 election, has been appointed to a senior position in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in which she’ll help oversee the nation’s election infrastructure.

Honey is a protege of Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who tried to help Trump overturn the 2020 election results. In 2024, ProPublica reported that Honey had played a key role in Mitchell’s behind-the-scenes effort to change Georgia’s election rules to allow Republican officials to contest a potential Trump loss in that year’s presidential race. Honey also promoted election conspiracy theories, including one Trump cited in a speech to his followers before they stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Though states do the on-the-ground work of running elections, DHS supports them with tasks beyond their capacities, such as protecting IT infrastructure and voter databases from foreign intrusions. The agency, with bipartisan support, took on this role in the aftermath of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.

Experts on voting and state election officials warned that Honey’s appointment as DHS’ deputy assistant secretary of election integrity could erode trust between state and federal officials, prompting states not to share information with the agency.

“We are witnessing a dangerous trend: the elevation of known bad-faith actors like Heather Honey,” said Adrian Fontes, Arizona’s Democratic secretary of state, in a statement, citing Honey’s “well-documented history of spreading election lies that have been debunked in court.”

Fontes called her involvement with DHS “deeply troubling” and said “when the agency gives a platform to individuals who have actively worked to erode public trust, it becomes harder to view DHS as a reliable partner in election security.”

A DHS spokesperson did not answer questions from ProPublica on Honey’s appointment or the exact nature of her responsibilities. Honey didn’t respond to calls or emails. The White House also didn’t respond to a request for comment. Her name is listed on the organization’s leadership structure online, and her appointment was first reported by the website Democracy Docket.

In the first Trump administration, the federal government set up programs designed to shield U.S. elections from foreign interference, including the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, an arm of DHS. But Trump soured on this and other initiatives after the director of CISA publicly rebutted his claims that the 2020 election was stolen.

Since the start of the second Trump presidency, the administration has gutted those programs, cutting hundreds of employees at CISA. Its director, Chris Krebs, is now under federal investigation, DHS has said; Krebs told CNN that the investigation appeared to be an act of political retribution. The Justice Department has also rolled back a program aimed at combatting foreign influence campaigns. Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote in a memorandum that the Justice Department’s program was disbanded to “free resources to address more pressing priorities, and end risks of further weaponization and abuses of prosecutorial discretion.”

David Becker, the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, a nonprofit focused on building trust in American elections, said the cuts had dismantled “nearly all” of DHS’ capacity to protect election infrastructure. He said state elections officials feared that Honey’s appointment, combined with the program cuts, signaled the Trump administration’s intent to eliminate bulwarks of fair U.S. elections.

“The hiring of an election conspiracy theorist with no election knowledge or expertise is the culmination of this reversal,” Becker said. “DHS now appears poised to become a primary amplifier of false election conspiracies pushed by our enemies.”

Two sources familiar with Honey’s hiring at DHS said she began working for the agency last week. An organizational chart dated Aug. 18 on the department’s website identifies her as a leader in the agency’s Office of Strategy, Policy and Plans. Her position wasn’t on a version of the website archived in July, and officials in former administrations said that there’s been no such job previously.

It’s not clear yet what Honey will oversee, but former DHS officials said that deputy assistant secretaries are typically the agency’s top experts in their subject areas. They’re often involved in drafting executive orders and crafting policies. They also serve as liaisons to the White House and the National Security Council.

Since Honey started, Trump has announced “a movement to get rid of” mail-in ballots and voting machines via executive order, though a top aide subsequently said the administration would pursue those goals through legislative action. DHS has also threatened to cut off about $28 million in grants to help states prepare for terrorism and disasters if they don’t change voting rules to conform to the administration’s priorities, NPR has reported.

Honey’s duties likely would include helping to organize the government’s policy responses if foreign actors make intrusions into the nation’s election systems, former officials said. To do this, and to assess the security of election infrastructure, someone in her position would typically have access to classified information, including the government’s election-related intelligence.

Experts expressed concern about Honey’s portfolio, given her history of spreading misinformation.

“Heather Honey’s past misleading claims about vote counts in Pennsylvania, among other things, have helped fuel false conspiracy theories about stolen elections,” said Larry Norden, an election expert at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law, a nonpartisan law and policy group.

Before becoming swept up in the “Stop the Steal” movement, Honey had no experience in the federal government or as an election administrator, working as a Pennsylvania-based private investigator.

Amid Rise of RFK Jr., Officials Waver on Drinking Water Fluoridation — Even in the State Where It Started](https://www.propublica.org/article/fluoride-drinking-water-rfk-jr-michigan-cdc-hhs)

After the 2020 election, she became a contractor for a Republican-backed audit seeking proof of fraud in ballots cast in Maricopa County, Arizona. According to emails between employees working on the review, which ended up reaffirming Biden’s win, Honey helped draft the final report.

Since then, Honey has led at least three organizations devoted to transforming election systems in ways championed by conservatives, such as tightening eligibility requirements for people to be on voter rolls. Members of Honey’s Pennsylvania Fair Elections, a state chapter of Mitchell’s nationwide Election Integrity Network, have challenged the eligibility of thousands of residents to be on voter rolls.

Honey has also been involved in numerous other efforts to transform elections around the country, including a successful push to get many states with Republican leadership to pull out of a bipartisan interstate partnership to share data to make voting more secure.

Do you have information you can share about Heather Honey or elections work being done in the federal government, especially at the Department of Homeland Security? Contact reporter Doug Bock Clark at doug.clark@propublica.org or on Signal at 678-243-0784. If you’re concerned about confidentiality, check out our advice on the most secure ways to share tips.

===

OMFG // BONDI LIFT SANCTIONS USSR DAY ONE?!

A prominent Republican congressman, the former House Intelligence Committee chair, appeared shocked on national television when he learned that U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has ordered a top Pentagon agency, U.S. Cyber Command, to suspend operations and planning against Russia’s cyber offensives.

Secretary Hegseth’s “stand down” order, while allegedly temporary, is expected to “last for the foreseeable future,” according to The Record, a cybersecurity news site which first reported the news.

CNN reported that a senior U.S. official called Hegseth’s order “a major blow.”

According to the network, “planning for such operations takes time and research to carry out. The concern, the official said, is that the pause on offensive cyber operations against Russia will make the U.S. more vulnerable to potential cyberattacks from Moscow, which has a formidable cadre of hackers capable of disrupting U.S. critical infrastructure and collecting sensitive intelligence.”

The development has received widespread coverage over the weekend.

“Russia is not a significant cyber threat to the U.S. anymore, Trump’s new Defense Secretary says,” the science and technology website Gizmodo reported. “The policy shift represents a complete 180-degree turn from America’s posture over the past decade, which has consistently considered Russia one of the top cybersecurity threats. Credible reporting and government investigations have shown that Russia has hacked into U.S. systems countless times.”

Experts were also stunned.

Veteran cyber expert James Lewis, formerly of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) said “it’s delusional to think” the stand down order “will turn Russia and the FSB [the Russian security agency] into our friends,” The Guardian reported. “They hate the U.S. and are still mad about losing the cold war. Pretending otherwise won’t change this.”

The order appears to extend past the Department of Defense, suggesting it may have originated at the highest levels of the executive branch.

Analysts at the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) received a new priorities directive that included China, but not Russia, The Guardian also reported. One source “said analysts at the agency were verbally informed that they were not to follow or report on Russian threats, even though this had previously been a main focus for the agency.”

“Russia and China are our biggest adversaries,” that source said. “With all the cuts being made to different agencies, a lot of cybersecurity personnel have been fired. Our systems are not going to be protected and our adversaries know this.”

“People are saying Russia is winning,” they added. “Putin is on the inside now.”

U.S. Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH) has decades of defense experience in Congress, having served on several committees on the armed forces and veterans affairs, and as Chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence until January—when Speaker Mike Johnson unexpectedly removed him from that critical position. He is a strong supporter of Ukraine and opposes Russia.

At the time of his removal, The Bulwark’s Bill Kristol remarked, “If you’re going to sell out Ukraine to Putin, makes sense to get Turner out of the way first.”

Last year, Turner was also one of a few House Republicans who “were warning about how elements of their party had been infected by Russian propaganda,” The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake noted on Monday. (Video of Turner from last year here.) Turner, he added, “was removed 7 months later as chair of the House intel committee.”

In February 2024, Turner issued a “national security threat” warning on Russia’s activities in space so dire that President Biden’s National Security Communications Advisor John Kirby was forced to deliver a statement from the White House press briefing room.

On Sunday’s “Face the Nation,” CBS News’ Margaret Brennan told Congressman Turner (video below), that “CBS has confirmed these reports that Defense Secretary Hegseth has ordered U.S. Cyber Command to temporarily halt cyber operations and planning against Russia. The Washington Post reports that that’s as long as the negotiations continue. There are no negotiations under way. Does this concern you? Have you been briefed on this?”

A stunned and stammering Rep. Turner delivered his response.

“I can’t – I don’t – no, I’m not – unaware of that. And I don’t believe that that would be – there are too many, I’m certain, considerations there for that to be an accurate statement, so blanket,” he said, according to the official CBS transcript.

“But they have ordered Cyber Command to halt cyber operations,” Brennan reiterated.

“Considering what I know that – that – considering what I know what – what Russia is currently doing against the United States, that would, I’m certain, not be an accurate statement of the current status of the United States’ operations,” Turner insisted, despite multiple news reports confirming the stand down order.

“I’m confident, considering what Russia is currently doing against the United States, that the United States, the status against Russia would not be that, considering what we are facing from Russia operations,” Turner added.

Watch the video below or at this link.

---

brennan ctr has series on 2025

Few things are more important to our democracy than protecting election infrastructure from attack. U.S. elections have been targeted by foreign cyberattacks, and the scope and sophistication have grown aggressively in the past decade. In 2018, President Trump signed the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Act, creating an agency under the Department of Homeland Security to lead the national effort to understand, manage, and reduce risks for critical infrastructure, including election infrastructure.

CISA does not run elections, and its relationships with election officials around the country are voluntary — they can use services they find helpful and ignore those they don’t. Since 2018, the agency has played a critical role in building a more resilient election system. Election officials of all political stripes have expressed gratitude for CISA’s support in navigating ever-evolving security threats, adopted the agency’s recommendations, and sought out assessments and services. This partnership is a significant reason why elections are far more secure today than a decade ago.

CISA has received widespread bipartisan praise and support for its work to protect critical infrastructure. But in the aftermath of the 2020 election, then-President Trump fired the agency director he appointed, Christopher Krebs, for promoting accurate information and declaring that the 2020 election was secure.

Project 2025 builds on these actions and uses them to justify disrupting the entire agency’s vital work. Despite growing threats to elections and other critical infrastructure, Project 2025 suggests gutting CISA, splitting up its core responsibilities, and moving what’s left of its critical infrastructure functions to the Department of Transportation — a department with limited security expertise in this area. If implemented, the agenda would make election infrastructure more vulnerable at a time when advances in artificial intelligence, rising global tensions, and other factors are increasing the risk of cyber and physical threats.

Project 2025 makes four recommendations for CISA that would drastically reduce its ability to safeguard American elections.

First, it recommends significantly limiting CISA’s role in supporting election security, suggesting that “CISA should help states and localities assess whether they have good cyber hygiene in their hardware and software in preparation for an election — but nothing more.”

Second, it states that “CISA should not be significantly involved closer to an election.”

Third, it stipulates that “CISA should refrain from duplicating cybersecurity functions done elsewhere at the Department of Defense, FBI, National Security Agency, and U.S. Secret Service.”

Finally, it calls for CISA to end “counter-mis/disinformation efforts.”

These proposals reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of election security threats and CISA’s role and value in safeguarding election infrastructure. If implemented, they would severely undermine the progress the United States has made in the last decade to protect its election infrastructure from attack.

Restricting CISA’s role to assessing “cyber hygiene” would significantly roll back valuable services and support that election officials rely on to keep elections safe and secure.

CISA’s primary methods for supporting election infrastructure fall into three categories: information sharing to promote communication and coordination on threats across the federal, state, and local levels; no-cost training in which security experts recommend best practices and run exercises on the evolving threat landscape; and no-cost, voluntary services including security assessments, incident management assistance, and scanning of election systems for vulnerabilities.

Limiting CISA’s role to “nothing more” than assessing the cyber hygiene of hardware and software would take away the agency’s information-sharing and training support altogether, and it would cut a wide range of no-cost, voluntary services that election officials rely on to protect election infrastructure. For example, through the agency’s “Last Mile” initiative, CISA has developed more than 380 customized incident-response products for more than 2,000 election jurisdictions across the country. These products recognize that, even if election technology has good cyber hygiene, bad actors can still exploit vulnerabilities; election officials need support in hardening election infrastructure, but also responding effectively if attackers nonetheless get through the first line of defense. Limiting CISA’s work to mere assessment would also eliminate critical cybersecurity services that the agency proactively develops or funds for state and local officials’ use, including endpoint security and malicious domain blocking services.

Equally concerning, Project 2025 takes far too narrow a view of CISA’s security expertise. The agency does more than help state and local governments with cybersecurity — it also helps protect critical infrastructure from physical attacks. This expertise has become increasingly important as election workers face a rising risk of threats, intimidation, and political violence. Over the past four years, CISA’s Protective Security Advisors have conducted physical security assessments for election officials across the country, helping them identify risks and implement mitigations to keep election workers and voters safe.

The vast majority of election offices simply do not have the resources or capability to be effective frontline national security figures as they now must be. These offices often have little or no dedicated security expertise and are often dependent on other offices in their county for IT support. Nearly half of election offices operate with one or fewer full-time employees, and nearly a third operate with no full-time staff at all. CISA’s expertise and support are needed to fill this gap.

CISA becomes more critical closer to an election. Forcing it to step back would lead to more vulnerabilities and hinder the response to security threats.

To state the obvious, an adversary looking to disrupt U.S. elections is most likely to attack immediately before, during, or after an election. The period when voters are casting ballots and election officials are counting them is when state and local election officials most need CISA’s expertise and support.

As mentioned above, a critical service that CISA offers is continuous monitoring of election systems to detect vulnerabilities. This monitoring is most beneficial during the election period, when risks are highest and security breaches would be most damaging.

If security threats arise during an election, CISA’s communication structures are needed to share critical information with state and local election officials. Moreover, election officials may need to implement new security precautions in response to those threats, and CISA’s support would be needed to guide fast and effective mitigation efforts. Again, many election offices simply do not have the capacity to address these matters on their own, especially with their limited staff dedicated to overseeing election operations.

Forcing CISA to take a step back when its services are most valued would push many election officials into the dark and severely hamper states’ collective ability to respond to national security threats.

CISA plays a proactive and singular role in safeguarding election infrastructure that no other agency would be equipped to fill.

Project 2025 misunderstands CISA’s role in protecting critical infrastructure. The agency’s responsibilities are fundamentally different from the duties of the Department of Defense, FBI, National Security Agency, and U.S. Secret Service. These other departments and agencies may also track security threats, but CISA goes beyond that, using its security expertise to help state and local jurisdictions prevent, detect, and effectively respond to infrastructure vulnerabilities. CISA’s purpose is to make this infrastructure more resilient to security risks.

While federal law enforcement agencies like the FBI and the Secret Service also work on security breaches, their primary role in response is to investigate and eventually build a case to prosecute, not to help victims recover and increase their resilience to future attacks.

CISA’s limited role in providing accurate information on electoral processes has been mispresented for political reasons.

Finally, Project 2025 targets — and misrepresents — CISA’s role in promoting accurate information on electoral processes, such as how, when, and where to vote. CISA’s relatively limited work here has focused on two efforts. First, CISA has managed an “Election Security Rumor vs. Reality” webpage that shares accurate information on electoral processes. Second, CISA has forwarded third-party reports of false election information to social media platforms. While both efforts are important for promoting accurate election information, they represent a very small component of CISA’s election security work compared to the outsize political attention paid to these efforts.

Importantly, CISA never asked social media companies to do anything with the posts. It simply flagged them for the companies’ awareness, something the Supreme Court noted when it recently dismissed a lawsuit targeting CISA’s role in forwarding false information about the electoral process for social media platforms. The Court ruled that the plaintiffs lacked a legal right to bring the case in the first place, but its opinion also rejected findings that CISA was censoring information or coercing social media platforms into moderating certain election information.

As an election security expert, CISA has a proper and valuable responsibility to boost accurate electoral process information. The agency has deep expertise about election systems and the steps election officials can take to secure these systems, as well as an interest in ensuring voters have access to accurate information about election processes and systems. Media and social media platforms are often ill-equipped to sift through and curate election information; they rely on the expertise of subject-matter experts like CISA. And election officials value this work. In a 2023 Brennan Center survey, 85 percent of local election officials said it is very or somewhat beneficial for CISA to dispel false information about the electoral process by promoting accurate information on election administration and technology.

By limiting the services CISA provides local jurisdictions and forcing the agency to step back from election security in the weeks before an election, Project 2025’s plan for the agency would leave election workers and voters more vulnerable to physical threats and violence and simultaneously make it far more difficult for election officials to secure our election infrastructure and recover from attacks when they happen.

As advances in AI threaten to make cyberattacks more damaging and easier for adversaries to launch, Project 2025 would restrain the federal agency best positioned to prevent these attacks, jeopardizing not just election security but all critical infrastructure that our economy and democracy depend on.

---

no lnx

Aug 19, 2024

Project 2025 Will Undermine America’s National Security

The far-right policy proposals in Project 2025 will fundamentally undermine the national and economic security of the United States, benefiting its adversaries and making all Americans less safe.

Authors

Alan Yu

Allison McManus

Dan Herman

Media Contact

Sam Hananel

Senior Director, Media Relations

shananel@americanprogress.org

Government Affairs

Doug Molof

Director, Government Affairs

dmolof@americanprogress.org

Download

Part of a Series

Project 2025: Exposing the Far-Right Assault on America

This article is part of a series from the Center for American Progress exposing how the sweeping Project 2025 policy agenda would harm all Americans. This new authoritarian playbook, published by the Heritage Foundation, would destroy the 250-year-old system of checks and balances upon which U.S. democracy has relied and give far-right politicians, judges, and corporations more control over Americans’ lives.

In a nearly 1,000-page proposal, a group of far-right former officials and experts have authored a policy agenda, dubbed “Project 2025,” for a future right-wing presidency. The plan, which would gut America’s 250-year-old system of checks and balances to allow far-right extremism to take over the federal government, includes a vision for the “common defense” that will place the United States in direct confrontation with its adversaries and privilege unilateral militarism over a thoughtful, holistic, and adequately resourced national security strategy. In so doing, Project 2025’s proposals would fundamentally undermine America’s national and economic security, and ordinary Americans will pay the price.

The far-right project seeks to “reorient the U.S. government’s posture toward friends and adversaries alike … represent[ing] the most significant shift in core foreign policy principles and corresponding action since the end of the Cold War.” This reorientation makes all Americans less safe.

Gutting agencies protecting Americans against foreign threats

:{Project 2025 advocates for staffing the National Security Council and Situation Room with individuals whose primary qualification is political fealty, putting the country in a tremendously vulnerable position. Its proposals would replace nonpartisan career national security officials with partisan operatives, placing a future president immediately on the back foot in responding to world events and leading to confusion and mistrust worldwide. On Inauguration Day, Project 2025 recommends reassigning “nonessential” National Security Council staff to their home agencies, including military officers, intelligence analysts, and diplomats, leaving the White House unprepared to fully engage the U.S. departments of Defense, State, Homeland Security, and Justice, as well as the Intelligence Community.

Similarly, Project 2025 recommends recalling career foreign service ambassadors serving in the nation’s most consequential postings if they have not demonstrated significant loyalty to the incoming president. The lack of experience or knowledge many of those political ambassador appointees bring, as well as the embarrassing and, at times, costly consequences that result—already makes the United States an outlier in the developed world. Further entrenching this practice would be a significant blow to international relations.}:

Perhaps worse, Project 2025 would politicize the military chain of command and U.S. intelligence agencies. It recommends the White House review all senior military general officer and flag officer promotions to ensure they align with domestic political priorities, and to replace career intelligence officers at the Central Intelligence Agency with new hires more committed to the president’s agenda.

Project 2025 would also directly undermine the safety of ordinary Americans and the security of the country’s democratic system. Rather than seek to reform and improve federal agencies, Project 2025 recommends that the next administration eliminate the Department of Homeland Security and many of its component offices; eliminate and privatize the Transportation Security Administration; and eliminate the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s (CISA) (CISA) Cybersecurity Advisory Committee and limit CISA’s ability to support states on election security. Eliminating these agencies would put security of air travel, ports, and rails at risk and would prevent CISA from helping state and local governments and private companies defend against attacks from foreign adversaries.

Benefiting America’s adversaries

Project 2025 advocates for “transforming” NATO by handing over lead responsibility to deter Russia’s authoritarian aggression to European allies and pulling back U.S. forces—and effectively U.S. political commitment—from Europe. This proposition would endanger American security and prosperity and signal to allies and adversaries around the world that the United States is at best inconsistent, and at worst unreliable. America’s alliances have been singularly important in deterring aggression. Were deterrence to fail, the United States would need the help of allies to prosecute any future great power war with its adversaries, whether China or Russia. But alliances require trust, durability, and respect. Although the United States should continue to encourage greater self-reliance among NATO members, the U.S. and its allies should carefully coordinate any future reorientation to prevent a weakening of NATO’s collective defense, lest it encourage further Russian aggression.

On Iran, Project 2025 advocates a markedly more confrontational stance, denigrating diplomacy and the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in favor of barely veiled advocacy for regime change. The document outlines a new security architecture in the Middle East that builds on the Abraham Accords but undermines those efforts by deliberately making no mention of the Palestinian people and promising to defund the Palestinian Authority—a sabotage of any hopes for a Palestinian state. As the past year has tragically demonstrated, continued neglect of the root causes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will only benefit Iranian proxy recruitment efforts and risk continued violence, including attacks on American troops and installations.

Placing the United States in direct confrontation with China

While China will be the United States’ most consequential competitor for the foreseeable future, Project 2025’s policy prescriptions would exacerbate current conflicts and create new ones. The strategy outlined in Project 2025 would be profoundly expensive, financially and diplomatically. It would set back support and cooperation from regional allies, perversely encourage rather than deter military conflict, and create insecurity and instability across the globe.

Project 2025 has a myopic, militarization-first view of the U.S. security strategy toward China—ramping up funding for all four branches of U.S. conventional forces even as the Pentagon has repeatedly failed to pass audits of money already appropriated; spending heavily to field newer, more destabilizing kinds of nuclear weapons and rejecting arms control engagement; creating new mandates for offensive cyber operations; and instructing the U.S. Space Force to impose America’s will to dominate the space domain. Project 2025 even dangerously calls on U.S. special operations forces to depart from its counterterrorism mandate to counter China’s Belt and Road Initiative infrastructure investment projects.

The authors of Project 2025 are right that competing with China will require resources, but—somewhat surprisingly, given the painful and recent memory of the costs of the conservative preference for military intervention (and spending)—Project 2025 places little value in the civilian side of the U.S. security strategy equation. Competing successfully with China will require diplomatic funding and vision; new development and finance tools designed to advance U.S. political and economic interests in a new kind of geopolitical competition; and investments in industrial, technology, and workforce development to bolster national strength and competitiveness. Project 2025 is dismissive of these ideas, doubling down instead on the mindset that had U.S. Marines dodging IEDs in Marjah while Chinese engineers made advances in quantum computing.

Project 2025 will benefit America’s adversaries

North Korea: With fanatical commitment to expanding the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal, Project 2025 effectively incentivizes North Korea to expand its own nuclear weapons program.

Iran: With the Iranian nuclear program revived by the scuttling of the JCPOA, Project 2025 would now boost Tehran’s recruitment efforts in the region by deliberately sabotaging any hopes for Palestinian statehood.

Russia: Turning away from decades-old alliances such as NATO, Project 2025 will weaken collective defense and embolden Russian President Vladimir Putin’s imperial designs.

China: Project 2025’s ham-handed demand that countries choose between China or the United States will push many to the well-resourced competitor, and its call for the United States to withdraw from multilateral bodies would surrender the field to China to expand and exert its influence.

Increasing the risk of nuclear war

At a time when the doomsday clock is already set closer to midnight than ever before due to “widespread and growing reliance on nuclear weapons,” Project 2025’s solution is to ramp up the U.S. nuclear arsenal. The United States and the Russian Federation have not been in a more precarious nuclear posture since the end of the Cold War. The lapse of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 2019 and the uncertain future of the New START Treaty, which is set to expire in 2026, further exacerbate tensions and raise concerns about a renewed arms race. In the Middle East, Iran is potentially days away from nuclear weapons capabilities after aggressively stockpiling uranium following the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the JCPOA. In East Asia, China has rapidly expanded its nuclear arsenal and advanced its missile technology, aiming to reach parity with the United States by the mid-2030s. North Korea has continued to enhance its own nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities, conducting frequent tests and increasing the range and precision of its systems.

Despite these risks, the playbook describes an aggressive expansion of the nuclear weapons programs as a top defense priority. There is scant mention of strategic arms control, and when it is mentioned—six times in the body text—it is done so derisively. Though framed as “deterrence,” this posture increases the risk of nuclear war. G7 leaders committed in Hiroshima, Japan, last year to pursue nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation, a pledge to which they recommitted at this year’s summit in Apulia, Italy. The Project 2025 agenda would turn back on those commitments, not only elevating the risk of nuclear conflict, but also putting the United States at odds with its strategic allies, who would be critical partners in case of conflict.

Failing to address climate security threats

Project 2025 calls for a “whole-of-government unwinding” of climate policy that would cause greater harm to U.S. national security. The proposal not only calls for a repeat of then-President Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, it would go one step further and pull the United States out of its parent treaty—the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)—entirely, which would make the United States the only government outside the UNFCCC and take the country completely out of the global rules and standards setting on climate action. Project 2025 also calls for the United States to withdraw all support for international climate finance, kneecapping vital climate finance institutions, chiefly the World Bank. These recommendations would amount to an abdication of global climate leadership during a critical decade for world action to stay within the 1.5 degree Celsius temperature rise limit to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

These actions would endanger U.S. national security. For one, climate change directly affects U.S. defense assets and installations worldwide, preparedness, and ultimately the defense budget. Rising tides, extreme weather patterns, and hotter temperatures all affect U.S. military bases, equipment, and personnel. The negative effects of climate change also bring massive financial costs; these climate damages strain federal, state, and local budgets, weakening the United States’ economic security. Climate change also contributes to conflict and instability worldwide, making it more difficult for the United States to respond and protect its interests and those of its partners. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has assessed that climate change will exacerbate geopolitical tensions through 2040, increasing the risk of internal or external conflict, particularly in countries least equipped to grapple with climate change. Perhaps most consequentially, dismantling climate policy would jeopardize not only U.S. national security but our very existence on Earth.

Damaging the United States’ ability to address global threats

Project 2025 contains policy proposals that impair the United States’—and the world’s—capacity to counter global threats such as pandemics, water, and food insecurity head on. The Biden administration has prioritized a science-based global health strategy, increasing bilateral partnerships and building global health capacity worldwide. Project 2025 would halt these efforts, promoting a unilateral approach that neglects global health needs. Project 2025’s authors argue that the United States should withdraw from the World Health Organization, citing failures during the COVID-19 pandemic and the promotion of “radical social policies.” However, leaving the room would remove U.S. leadership and influence on a potential pandemic accord. In addition, Project 2025 would roll back funding for critical global health programs under the guise of protecting families and children, defying global trends. By politicizing support for proven global health programs, Project 2025 makes Americans more vulnerable to shocks from health and humanitarian crises—key factors that also drive conflict and migration.

Hackers could shut down satellites – or turn them into weapons

William Akoto, University of Denver

SpaceX and other companies are rushing to put thousands of small, inexpensive satellites in orbit, but pressure to keep costs low and a lack of regulation leave those satellites vulnerable to hackers.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/your-regular-reminder-that-mcconnell-abetted-russian-election-interference-and-is-doing-it-again

Running interference for the occupier of the Oval Office, the execrable Rep. Steve Scalise is attacking Joe Biden, saying “Russian interference in America’s elections happened on Obama and Biden’s watch.” That’s “irrefutable” he says, pointing to a craptacular 2017 CBS News report from 2017 that vaguely references the “political difficulties” President Obama faced in addressing Russian hacking without once mention Mitch McConnell.

Those political difficulties were entirely of McConnell’s making. He’s the guy who, in reporter Greg Miller’s retelling, was fully briefed on everything the intelligence committee knew about Russian interference. He was told that Russia was intervening to hurt Hillary Clinton and help Donald Trump. And McConnell told the CIA, “You’re telling us that Russia is trying to help elect Trump. If you try to come forward with this, I’m not going to sign onto any sort of public statement that would condemn Russian interference. But I will condemn you and the Obama administration for trying to mess up this election."

McConnell doesn’t have that card to play in the lead-up to the 2020 election, another one that he appears to be just as committed to helping Russia fix. As we speak, McConnell continues to refuse to take up legislation to protect the next election, falling back on that old saw, “states’ rights.” His excuse is that “Democrats would like to nationalize everything” and that they “want the federal government to take over the election process because they think that would somehow benefit them.” It does happen to be true that clean elections in which all eligible voters are able exercise their franchise tend to result in Democrats winning. That’s McConnell’s tell right there—he doesn’t want a clean election.

McConnell also argues that the Trump administration did a “terrific job” in working with state and local officials in the 2018 election and asks, “Where is the applause for that?” That’s in spite of the fact that bipartisan attorneys general were pleading with a then-Republican Congress to give them some help just a few months before the election, alarmed at the threat they knew existed.

A week ago, the Democratic House passed an expansive election protections bill, with mandatory back-up paper ballots and post-vote audits to ensure that elections systems won’t be compromised by hacking. Democrats have got more legislation coming, hoping a barrage of bills will force McConnell to respond to bipartisan pressure to break his blockade. Thus far they haven’t been able to make a dent in his refusal to consider the bills.

McConnell’s obstruction might have something to do with the past big campaign donations he’s received from pals of Putin and the millions those same Russian oligarchs are pouring into his home state of Kentucky, in the form of capital investment in an aluminum plant. It probably has everything to do with the fact that he’s just about the least popular politician in the nation and that he’s up for reelection himself this cycle, and is underwater in his home state, with a “razor-thin” lead over a generic Democratic opponent.

So, no, Obama and Biden aren’t to blame for Russian interference in the 2016 election. Granted, Obama could have ignored McConnell’s threat and gone ahead with his warnings, but he was well aware of the lengths McConnell would go to to poison the election—he was right in the middle of McConnell’s blockade of the Merrick Garland Supreme Court nomination and knew that there are no depths to which McConnell will not sink. He’ll happily do it again to win.

---

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/06/trump-cyber-russia-power-hacking.html?via=section_recirc_recent

https://www.alternet.org/2019/05/new-report-shows-how-trump-and-mitch-mcconnell-have-teamed-up-to-thwart-efforts-to-secure-u-s-elections/

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s final report for the Russia investigation is full of elaborate details on Russian interference in the 2016 election, and members of Congress who have read Attorney General William Barr’s redacted version of the report are fearful that Russian operatives will interfere in the 2020 election as well. Various bills promoting election security have been proposed in the Senate, but according to an in-depth report by Vox’s Li Zhou, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has no interest in bringing them up for a vote.

Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri explained McConnell’s opposition last week, saying, “I think the majority leader just is of the view that this debate reaches no conclusion.” And according to Zhou, McConnell’s decision is driven, in part, by “Trump’s aversion to the subject, which the president sees as too closely tied to questions about the outcome of the 2016 election.”

Zhou goes on to say that “McConnell’s unwillingness to tackle election security” is not only “sending a political message,” but also, “has massive consequences.” And because of McConnell’s inaction on election security, Zhou asserts, the U.S. Senate “is now effectively promoting a do-nothing approach to a subject that Special Counsel Robert Mueller and countless national security officials have raised as a serious threat that requires additional action.”

Together, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar—one of the many candidates competing for the 2020 Democratic presidential primary—and Republican Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma recently co-sponsored an election security bill. And Zhou reports that opposition to their bill came from both McConnell and former White House Counsel Don McGahn. According to Klobuchar, McGahn “called Republicans about the bill, didn’t want them to do it,” while McConnell “also didn’t want the bill to move forward. So it was a double-edged thing.”

Zhou reports that “Trump’s position on such bills—and McConnell’s longstanding resistance to advancing them—could mean that they’ll remain stalled.” And when it comes to election security bills, Zhou writes, the Senate majority leader “is just fine following Trump’s lead.”

https://www.alternet.org/2019/04/how-corporate-media-is-preparing-to-repeat-the-mistakes-it-made-in-2016/

Continuing a firm tradition of admitting no mistakes in the 2016 campaign season, and certainly offering up no apologies for glaring errors that were made, most news organizations have played down the pivotal and almost jovial role they played in marketing Russian hackers who stole Democratic National Committee emails during the last presidential election cycle. The collective shrug comes in the wake of special counsel Robert Mueller’s 448-page report on Russian election interference, which offered up even more details regarding the brazen act of foreign sabotage. It was a campaign dirty-trick operation that only worked because the media so willingly played along as they piled on Hillary Clinton and hyped the stolen DNC emails as hugely important.

With the media’s stubborn insistence that they did nothing wrong in eagerly amplifying the work of Russian hackers, the threat looms for a repeat in 2020—and it’s not just hypothetical. For the third time in three years, House Democrats have tried to get Republicans to support a pledge not to use hacked materials against opponents in 2020. And for the third time in three years, Republicans have refused.

And there’s this:

Vice President Mike Pence refuses to answer if 1) he regrets using hacked emails during the 2016 campaign & 2) if he pledges not to do so in the next presidential campaign. He walked away upon attempted follow-up

...

---

https://www.propublica.org/article/the-curious-case-of-a-kentucky-cybersecurity-contract

---

https://www.c-span.org/video/?447455-1/after-words-malcolm-nance

After Words with Malcolm Nance

Former military intelligence officer Malcolm Nanceexamined cyber warfare and other tactics used by Russia to interfere with the 2016 presidential election. He was interviewed by Suzanne Spaulding, former Homeland Security undersecretary during the Obama administration

---

Who should be the next FBI Director? Jim Reese.

Never heard of him? In part, that’s why Reese is the right leader for the job. Unlike others now jockeying for the prestigious Pennsylvania Avenue position, Reese has spent his life outside the headlines.

Over the hills and far away — risking life, limb, and mind, in service of the United States.

A 25-year veteran of the Army, Lt. Col. Reese is a retired Delta Force operator. The military’s most elite special mission unit, Delta is tasked with the riskiest, most important missions. Reese has fought these battles on the ground and in the operations center.

During the Iraq War, he commanded a task force that hunted down al Qaeda and other terrorists. And within the special operations community, Reese’s reputation is legendary. Distinguished former Delta operator Dalton Fury once argued that Reese “quite possibly would have made Ulysses S. Grant appear wanting when it came to working through chaos, calming nerves, and demanding the best out of subordinates.”

I have the fortune of knowing Reese personally. And I fully concur with that tribute of his individual leadership skills. He is not just any mentor. Reese has no qualms issuing challenge alongside praise. He tells you when he believes you’re wrong. He believes that success requires a fidelity to introspection and durable outcomes.

That characteristic of fidelity offers the first reason why Reese would be a great pick for the FBI. He is a leader who would not buckle under political pressure, nor yield to public expectation. He would use his office to advance the FBI’s mission rather than his own persona.

He would not, for example, follow the tradition of some senior military and government leaders who spend their evenings attending lavish dinner parties at Washington embassies and hotels. And he would not waver in supporting FBI agents and analysts as they performed their necessary duties. Whether Trump or Pelosi, no politician could import political pressure onto a Director Reese.

But Reese would also innovate. Like any big organization, the FBI is ripe for reform. Establishing a successful global company after leaving the military, Reese would bring a blend of public and private sector thinking to bear. He could make the bureau more efficient and forward looking. That will be necessary in the years ahead.

For one, facing growing mistrust of our political system, the FBI should probably increase its staffing of political corruption details. The bureau might do well to transfer more lower-level counter-terrorism duties away from agents and towards local police-dominated Joint Terrorism Task Forces. Regardless, Reese despises static thinking. His is an open-door, if-in-doubt-innovate philosophy of two parts: “No. 1: Strive to be a good listener. You have to be a good listener and an active listener. No. 2, if in charge, take charge.”

The next FBI director needs to be able to inspire the trust of the organization and the American people. Reese is the man for the job. He might not be a political celebrity, but he is an intellectual warrior. He deserves an interview with the Department of Justice.

Tom Rogan (@TomRtweets) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a foreign policy columnist for National Review, a domestic policy columnist for Opportunity Lives, a former panelist on The McLaughlin Group and a senior fellow at the Steamboat Institute.