The evidence tying successive Trump campaigns and MAGA influencers to Russian intelligence and active measures operations is more solid than the efforts to connect DSA to Cuba www.kenklippenstein.com/p/after-poli...

So when the NIO Alternative Analysis (circled and highlighted in the released documents) claims the PRC intended to influence voters, the above FBI says the most reliable evidence says that is not true.

By December the FBI was clear on the fact that there was no evidence to support the idea that PRC officials sought to influence the election and that the minority report to the contrary misleadingly portrayed reliable reporting sources with the same credibility as dubious human sources

There is reporting that the PRC had plans to carry out an influence campaign including targeting specific officials, but that is not evidence of the maturity of that campaign (have they done any research on specific messages, for example), that it was ever executed or that it had any effect.

Not only did the 19 August 2020 NICA assess that the PRC did not interfere, it says if they did interfere, they would have used a hack and leak campaign which we know they did not.

Compare that statement with this contrast -- Russia is assessed as having multiple agencies directed by Putin to execute a campaign against Biden

The 19 Aug 2020 NICA clearly shows that the PRC was not trying to influence the outcome of the US election -- and there is a contrast in that document to what Russia was doing to undermine Biden's candidacy.

The claims about China producing US driver licenses is 1) uncorroborated, 2) the report notes that the alleged source of the address info -- TikTok -- does not collect address info, and 3) at scale this would have been easily detected

There is an email from the NIC that says there are some videos online that criticized President Trump's policies, denigrated him, and promoted division. However, Russia did the same about Biden at a larger scale and, w/o significant analysis, it beggars belief this could have impacted the election

And this released email from the State Department's INR on Sept 2, 2020 both highlights the analytical importance of distinguishing between promoting an issue and promoting a campaign -- and the CIA/NSA/INR/FBI consensus was the PRC wasn't interfering in the election

The declassified documents reference one side in an analytical disagreement between about PRC election interference. The claim that China was interfering is acknowledged as the minority position in the US IC. To understand who was right, we would need the other side of the debate.

To help this curious analyst out, it may be that a Chinese government department in some cases was attempting to influence an election outcome and in other cases only to push issues. You make that determination looking at overall meaning of the messaging in relation to assessments of PRC intentions

The attempted cyber attacks on the campaigns was assessed as an attempt to conduct espionage on campaign policy positions. The CIA WIRe from 1 July 2020 does not say they were successful or that this is part of a hack and leak operation. This describes espionage, not election interference.

The redactions create a false sense of sensitivity: voter files are routinely purchased by candidates campaigns. The PRC got these documents some of which is redacted. Here is an unredacted government document showing what is and isn't made public in those files. www.eac.gov/sites/defaul...

Flashback to 2020: The intelligence community found Russia was interfering to boost Trump's campaign and that led Trump to make Grenell, the current CIA director, the DNI. Trump was reportedly angry at the time b/c he knew Russian help made him politically vulnerable www.pbs.org/newshour/pol...

I've seen a lot of bed wetting by Australian media commentators and even some analysts that the US is no longer a reliable security partner. Between Trump's meeting with Albanese and the statements of his ambassador to Australia, that view could not be more wrong. www.msn.com/en-au/news/o...

If the Pentagon's position that Anthropic is a potential supply chain threat based on the opacity of AI models, then why are they using any AI models? This is not a claim unique to Anthropic. thehill.com/policy/techn...

Lots of commentators say the US has fundamentally changed to the detriment of its allies. But Just like America's allies, the American people are also alarmed. The administration has worse approvals for its alliance management than it even has on the economy. www.ipsos.com/sites/defaul...

In the words of Alexei Yurchak, "Everything was forever until it was no more"

It has taken some time for Congress to figure out the deepening Iran-Russian alliance. How much longer before US policy responds to this? www.rferl.org/a/us-iran-ru...

Why not Poland, they are one of the NATO countries outpacing US defense spending by GDP

Latvia and Estonia have compulsory national security classes that include weapons handling for high school students. I would love to see how my faculty's education committee handles a proposal to add weapons training to our national security classes. www.politico.com/news/magazin...

Russia is providing Iran a more diverse array of assistance to attack America and Israel than the US provides to Ukraine understandingwar.org/research/rus...

Walking away and declaring victory won't open the Strait of Hormuz. Iran seeks to use their control over the strait to inflict long term harm on the US and other countries. understandingwar.org/research/mid...

One of the lessons of Desert Storm was the need for a post-conflict vision of the outcome that accounts for the interests of allies and is less "U.S. centric" apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA...

In thinking about efforts to rally allies to help open the Strait of Hormuz, one might look to how George H.W. Bush rallied allies to build one of America's most successful international coalitions -- Desert Storm www.jstor.org/stable/27551...

This was more eloquent in the original Chinese. The PRC uses the same rationale to censorship speech. This is not remotely constitutional. It is disgraceful an FCC chair should have uttered this. www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...

steadystate1.substack.com/p/failure-to...

The intelligence Russia has been sharing is not minor, it is precise targeting information on US locations and assets -- locations that Russia has been hitting and inflicting significant damage on Americans www.thecipherbrief.com/interceptor-...