The Pivot: Nuke To Cyber

Sitting here monitoring the situation, with the activation of the nuclear ready forces in Russia by Putin, I had to game things out a bit and wanted to share.

Short of a tactical nuclear strike, and then escalation, Putin may turn to the cyber arena instead come Tomorrow or later this week in reprisal for his being cut off from SWIFT, as well as other pressures that are coming to bear today. In the last few minutes, I have also seen Sweden sending lethal aid as well as other warfare equipment, Switzerland freezing Russian assets, British Petroleum pull out of Rosneft, and others around the globe starting to make Putin and Russia a pariah state.

These actions, mostly financial, are already wreaking havoc on his economy, but the more of them that come to play, the more cut off he will be to even prosecute his war…. Except maybe his cyber, war. Which brings me to the point. Come Monday, we may see reprisal attacks that generally, will not be considered, or haven’t been in the past, as reasons for kinetic responses.

As such, expect that soon we may see DDoS attacks on financial infrastructure, Ransomware attacks, Wiper attacks, and general detonation of malware. If you are in the FI space as a defender, get ready. If not, be aware that all of these actions could have effects on your business and your personal lives.

Be ready.

K.

Russia Insider & The Mainstreaming of Russian Propaganda Narratives Into the Republican Party

I had a conversation today with <REDACTED> and while discussing all of the things happening around Ukraine and Russia, they mentioned a site that was one of many, that pretty clearly showed how the Russian talking points had been injected into the Republican party by propaganda online. The site, Russia Insider, sounded familiar to me when they mentioned it, and sure enough while I was on the phone with them, I looked up my old post from 2018.

What prompted this was a question I had about just how the Republican party had become so inured with Russian talking points as to now make many of them outright Putin propagandists. The response I got was in essence this; “Russia portrayed themselves as Christian, Anti Gay, and Strong” and then the mention of the Russia Insider was made as one of the sites that blatantly mouths these talking points. This now, all made perfect sense for me and I will outline it for you simply here and now.

1. Russia begins the propaganda with sites like RT but, slides into others like Russia Insider

1. They put out articles/propo on the very things that the Trumper’s love, strong men, God, Guns (Maria Butina) and hate.
2. They help Trump, become the President of the United States
3. Trump in turn, is Trump, and normalizes the language and behavior

And there you have it. Because Trump was in love with Putin, and surely had propo campaigns in synergy with all this aimed at his followers, it all worked in concert, and the base ate it up. All of these machinations culminate in today’s Republican love of Putin and the complete flip of the Republican ethos from American values, to Putin and Oligarchy.

Think on that. Take a look at the Russia Today site, and see from the articles what I am talking about. This is of course one site of many, but, it is also of interest to me because this guy lived here in my state and if you read the post on him, was just spinning this all up in 2018. Futher reading on Charles Bausman shows that since I looked into him, The Southern Poverty Law Center has been writing about him as well. It seems that on 1/6/21 Charles was at the Capitol, and then rushed off to Moscow….

Interesting that eh?

Just something to think about while you all watch the impending war in Ukraine, and the furthering of Putin’s agenda. All the while, this and other propaganda is being mainstreamed into the Rrepublican party.

I am thinking that we need to change the Rrepublican logo from the Elephant to that gif of Putin riding a bear….

Smoke em if you got em kids….

K.