Re: The Empire Strikes Back: Part 1

[Arrigo Triulzi <arrigo () alchemistowl org>]

On Feb 13, 2014, at 03:48, Dave Aitel <dave () immunityinc com> wrote:
> But the majority of the speech was historical precisely because it echos the unseen successes of today's Intelligence 
> Community (IC). In particular, nuclear threats from Iran and others have been thwarted. Cyber threats that attack the 
> very heart of our economy and infrastructure are held back, and the evolution of fully networked warfare is what 
> defeated Al Qaeda. His speech also called out our allies for their weirdly pandering holier than thou drama queen 
> public reactions to the Snowden documents.

Nuclear threats by Iran were not thwarted by the IC but by the so-called P5+1 bending backwards and agreeing a 
framework which still allows Iran to breakout if they so desire.  So much that the Israelis were rather miffed at the 
agreement which the US accepted just because they needed at least one foreign policy win to pretend they have a plan. 
You can dream on that the IC was central to this but in effect the change of diplomatic pace given by the underlying 
support of the IRGC to the new president, a clear aim at undermining the rather weak "there must be more sanctions" 
reasoning of the USA and playing the Russia vs. USA card very well.

> The next step will be commercial - a message from the IC to the US corporations currently whining the most (Google 
> and Microsoft, in particular) that if they want to protect themselves from China, they have one partner, and one 
> partner only. Look for something like the Mandiant APT1 paper to come out soon, but bigger, and better. :>

That, read with European eyes, is a veiled threat delivered on behalf of the NSA, a bit like the creative Kaspersky 
analysis of The Mask carries a subtle undertone to those companies in a couple of nations which did not hand them the 
sploits they wanted.

Given the previous iterations of creative Powerpoint usage (the mythical "bioweapon trailers" come to mind but also the 
Iraqi nukes) I am sure that a suitable plot can be concocted to scare Google and Microsoft into line.

An initial list of Hollywood-ready plots for Fox News:

1) Sergei Brin saved from Polonium tea / Bulgarian umbrella / other Eastern European or "bad Russian" attempt,

2) The malaria research for the Gates Foundation hits a major setback, something like a nice scandal about faking data, 
but the white knights come in and prove the data was hacked by the bad <pick suitable opponent> which could have been 
prevented by using crypto approved by the NSA to store the data,

3) Google Docs found to harbour secret documents on the US Pacific pivot stored by Chinese-American citizens which 
could have been stopped earlier had Google not moved to pure SSL.

I am sure we can imagine a few more.

Arrigo

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