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Exploits: Kaspersky Idents CIA's New Malware
by grarpamp 29 Apr '21

29 Apr '21

https://therecord.media/security-firm-kaspersky-believes-it-found-new-cia-m… Cybersecurity firm Kaspersky said today it discovered new malware that appears to have been developed by the US Central Intelligence Agency. >From a report: Kaspersky said it discovered the malware in "a collection of malware samples" that its analysts and other security firms received in February 2019. While an initial analysis did not find any shared code with any previously-known malware samples, Kaspersky has recently re-analyzed the files and said it found that "the samples have intersections of coding patterns, style and techniques that have been seen in various Lambert families." Lamberts is the internal codename that Kaspersky uses to track CIA hacking operations. Four years ago, after WikiLeaks exposed the CIA hacking capabilities to the public in a series of leaks known as Vault7, US security firm Symantec publicly linked the Vault7 hacking tools to the CIA and the Longhorn APT (another industry name for Lamberts).

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DAN KAMINSKY DIES FROM VACCINE
by b0z0＠SDF.ORG 28 Apr '21

28 Apr '21

https://twitter.com/dakami/status/1374107732500905985 https://twitter.com/dakami/status/1381716799905886210 https://twitter.com/dakami/status/1383695209687502849 https://twitter.com/dakami/status/1383704252963459079 https://twitter.com/BlackHatEvents/status/1386021366424506370 https://imgur.com/a/qcorhsh b0z0(a)sdf.lonestar.org SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org

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Cryptocurrency: GovCorp Digital Currencies = Weaponizable Money, For Them, Against You
by grarpamp 27 Apr '21

27 Apr '21

https://www.aier.org/article/make-no-mistake-programmable-digital-currencie… Make No Mistake: Programmable Digital Currencies Are Weaponizable Money https://mises.org/library/free-money-miracle https://edition.cnn.com/2020/12/04/economy/china-digital-yuan-currency-intl… https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-creates-its-own-digital-currency-a-first… https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/08/27/754323652/the-strange-unduly-… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demurrage_(currency) http://www.naturalmoney.org/NaturalEconomicOrder.pdf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%C3%B6rgl https://ir.uiowa.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1600… https://online.ucpress.edu/scq/article-abstract/90/3/307/87429/The-Anaheim-… https://www.aier.org/article/supply-siders-losing-ground-in-the-white-house/ https://www.aier.org/article/lets-please-not-insult-stimulus-by-calling-thi… https://www.aier.org/article/the-road-to-serfdomvia-credit-markets/ https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/shared-sacrifice https://www.npr.org/2017/10/27/560308997/irs-apologizes-for-aggressive-scru… https://finance.yahoo.com/news/fed-officials-on-the-fence-about-adopting-di… https://goldswitzerland.com/patient-zero-of-the-bubble-pandemic-alan-greens… In the end, sadly, the only thing “trickling down” from Greenspan’s “wealth effect” policies have been the debased dollars in your hip-pocket not the Fed “having your back.” https://www.goldmoney.com/research/goldmoney-insights/why-interest-rate-man… To have monetary planners drawn from central banks and their governments directing economic activity through the selective application of CBDCs would be the final nail in the coffin for personal freedom. Make No Mistake: Programmable Digital Currencies Are Weaponizable Money Authored by Peter Earle via The American Institute for Economic Research, Earlier this year, China began to roll out a project that had long been in the works - a digital version of its currency, the yuan, is now being used in four Chinese cities. The Chinese government sees two major potential benefits to the experiment: a tangible challenge to the U.S. dollar’s global ubiquity, and a way to control how Chinese citizens spend their money. As a government-issued currency, the digital yuan can be manipulated and monitored in a number of ways. Importantly, it is programmable. Writes The Wall Street Journal, “Beijing has tested expiration dates to encourage users to spend it quickly, for times when the economy needs a jump start.” Although the concept of a currency which is artificially inflatable/deflatable on demand seems novel, it has its roots (as do so many concepts) in the theorizing of a long-dead economist. A German entrepreneur by the name of Silvio Gesell witnessed Argentina’s 1890 financial crash firsthand. The ensuing unemployment, poverty, and economic stagnation convinced him that something needed to change. Such crises occurred, he theorized, because people hoarded money out of fear and brought business to a halt, argued Gesell––this he dubbed “poverty amid plenty.” To encourage quicker spending, disincentivize saving, and therefore avoid more catastrophic financial crashes, Gesell proposed money with an expiration date. “Currency Reform as a Bridge to the Social State,” his first published work, detailed a system in which paper bills would expire unless they were stamped––renewed––for a fee. This ultimately meant that holders of money incurred a demurrage cost, which is the cost of holding a given currency. Because of Gesell’s proposed renewal fee, savings had a negative interest rate. He called this Freigold, or “free money.” Speaking of his system’s perceived benefits in The Natural Economic Order, Gesell wrote, Only money that goes out of date like a newspaper, rots like potatoes, rusts like iron, evaporates like ether, is capable of standing the test as an instrument for the exchange of potatoes, newspapers, iron and ether. For such money is not preferred to goods either by the purchaser or the seller. We then part with our goods for money only because we need the money as a means of exchange, not because we expect an advantage from possession of the money. So we must make money worse as a commodity if we wish to make it better as a medium of exchange. At a time when nations were largely on the gold standard, Gesell’s idea was unorthodox (and unpopular). Gesell died in 1930, having never seen his monetary system realized. But just two years later, in the deepest depths of the Great Depression, a handful of small and medium towns in the United States and Europe looked to his proposal to soothe their economic distress. The best-known of these cases was the small town of Wörgl, Austria, in which town official Michael Unterguggenberger convinced Wörgl to issue stamped money known as “Certified Compensation Bills.” The experiment came to be known as the “Miracle of Wörgl,” reflecting the town’s success in reducing unemployment and the relative ease with which Wörgl weathered the Depression compared to the rest of Austria. Hawarden, Iowa, and Anaheim, California, inspired by Wörgl’s experience, soon enacted similar policies. But it must be said that Wörgl’s experiment was likely successful because it, similar to the currency itself, had an expiration date. After just one year, the town put the project to rest. As Jonathan Goodwin wrote, “Once the taxes in arrears were completely paid and when people had paid enough taxes in advance to feel safe and comfortable (at some point they would stop paying forward), the scrip would lose a key part of its attractiveness.” Of course, even if consumption drove economic growth (and there are a number of both economic and reductio ad absurdum arguments that point out the flaw in that concept), the idea of money that can be coded to decay at tailorable rates is disconcerting. Chinese Yuan spot (40 years) (Source: Bloomberg Finance, LP) Central banks are monetary central planners, and the many criticisms that apply to central planning in every other field apply here as well. Their insularity, the blizzard of information they face, and political manipulation result in a preponderance of erroneous, ineffective, or late policy choices, all of which bring about unintended consequences. At times, those unintended consequences become new crises, which demand further policy intervention. Given this inevitability, any expansion of policy armamentaria should be viewed with deep concern. This is true of China’s digital yuan, the Wörgl experiment, and any number of other unconventional monetary policy tools in use now or in the future. In the specific case of a currency engineered for customizable demurrage, pernicious applications come to mind immediately. The extent to which those are realizable, however, pivots upon a degree of theorizing as to how “targetable” the programmed change of purchasing power will be. (Because such a system will ultimately require the elimination of cash to be fully effective, the warnings associated with a closely-related unconventional monetary policy, negative interest rates, apply here as well.) A preliminary question is to what extent, or even whether, the induced loss of purchasing power will be communicated by the implementers of monetary policy. It is conceivable that in some nations the disclosure of an impending demurrage operation will be disseminated well in advance and will include specifics regarding the anticipated amount of change; other governments may be less forthcoming. This will likely derive as much from the authoritarian character of the state as from specific policy aims. Further, while in the 1890s the average farmer understood the basics of inflation and deflation (owing to their dealings in grains and other commodities), it may be difficult to expect the same of citizens in the modern age. By announcing that money will be debased by a discrete amount at a certain point in time, individuals, firms, and other institutions holding money––again, assuming these policies are applied on something akin to an M3 basis––will make decisions based not upon their tastes and needs, but rather upon the desire to convert money to another form in anticipation of the loss of purchasing power. The effect of individuals and large financial institutions singling out certain goods as stores of value under the artificial upward ratcheting of time preference would, as do most other forms of monetary tinkering, inevitably create price distortions and possibly shortages, depending on the availability of local goods and services. Should the ability to direct the demurrage be more precise, the implications are much starker. It is conceivable that financial institutions might make the case that their money (more precisely, money in their accounts) should be insulated from those policy measures, thus creating a corporatist monetary system: consumers and unfavored economic actors wrestling with concocted losses of purchasing power, economic elites, their firms, and other court favorites receiving, or being left with, unimpinged purchasing power. Exactly where the lines between the favored and not are drawn, and the occasions upon which they are invoked, are left to the reader’s imagination. A look at the influence exerted by both special interest groups and corporations on public policy is instructive. Chinese CPI (YoY, 10 years) (Source: Bloomberg Finance, LP) But this only opens the proverbial door. History is rife with examples of political initiatives which, however nobly intended or narrowly designed, became blunt tools of widespread oppression. Could a demurrage feature of a programmable digital currency, nominally designed to spur consumption and increase monetary velocity, not ultimately become a broad punitive instrument? It could serve as an intermediate form of a fine for misdemeanors or other legal sanctions: Rather than forfeiting a lump sum, a violator’s account balance could be rigged for an accelerated loss of purchasing power. The argument in support of such a measure may well be that it punishes wrongdoers virtuously, afflicting the health of their bank balance whilst “supporting the economy” or “fostering economic growth.” Although it tempts speculation of a particularly Orwellian tenor, one may imagine––I stress the term imagine as distinct from predict or expect, as this is not a conspiracy theory––the tying of anything from mandatory insurance coverage to getting vaccinated to compulsory voting to be enforceable under the threat of individually-targeted monetary penalties. Whether or not such a measure would fall under the legal category of a Bill of Attainder would also, likely, be a matter of considerable controversy. A state determining that its populace is insufficiently supportive of a military campaign may decide that hardships are not being sufficiently shared: A sudden, unannounced attack on bank balances resulting in an immediate loss of purchasing power could be imposed to align interests. Could a failure to consume certain goods––say, domestic versus foreign––trigger a government-decreed, disciplinary lopping of an offender’s bank balances? In the same way that a former president allegedly used the Internal Revenue Service to terrorize and harass political opponents, a currently innocuous programmable digital currency may, over time, morph into nothing less than weaponizable money. China, by launching its digital yuan project, is traversing new territory in the realm of authoritarian monetary planning. Unfortunately, this endeavor may not be an isolated experiment for much longer; already, officials with the U.S. Federal Reserve are engaging in research to build and test a digital dollar. Central bankers the world over, in fact, are signaling increasing openness to experimental policy initiatives. This particular project is still in its infancy, but one thing is certain regardless of differing cultures or political systems: Central banks of all colors are prone to the pitfalls of central planning and will necessarily inflict unintended consequences upon the populations they serve. Money, in its most basic form, is an irreplaceable facilitator of economic calculation and a social instrument making cooperation possible on a global scale. Policies of the sort which programmable digital currencies bring into the realm of possibility potentially turn those on their head, introducing new possibilities for intentional––and systematic––coercion.

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INQUIRER.net: Throat spray and hydroxychloroquine found to reduce risk of COVID-19 infection—Singapore study
by jim bell 27 Apr '21

27 Apr '21

INQUIRER.net: Throat spray and hydroxychloroquine found to reduce risk of COVID-19 infection—Singapore study. https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1423624/throat-spray-and-hydroxychloroquine-f…

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Censorship Silent non-Public [re: prediction of control user program]
by grarpamp 27 Apr '21

27 Apr '21

> I tried to send this to libtech but I don't seem to be able to At least two posts silently censored there this week alone, plus now perhaps or likely yours. Libtech et al are run by such censors, they censor libertarian, freedom, alternate views, refutations, and crypto speech, while permitting piles of lame job conference and paper posts. Libtech, cryptography, tor... all now silently cowardly, censored, and dead... any former ethos gone, now pro GovCorp force of death leftist "democracy", anti actual freedom peace love anarchy, quite possibly sold out. Sad really. Any system capable of predicting behaviour, is a system that will be abused to control fuck and enslave you. The only valid reason to discover and catalog the state of it, is to fight back against it until it is gone.

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[spam] [paranoia] tty stream
by Karl 27 Apr '21

27 Apr '21

does anyone recognise the UI element displaying this on tty1? It happened for maybe half an hour today on raspbian. Systemd was in graphical mode, but I mostly use the ttys. I haven't seen it before or since. https://youtu.be/TPKA_xgI8_8 note: if using youtube, we should move to freer alternatives, I think one might have been called peertube? unsure. Figuring out the unexpected system behaviors I experience seems good. Let me know if there are threads on this list I should be catching up on and replying to. It's hard to cover them all.

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SpyVeillance: Global Resource Systems Packet Forensics Saulino Pentagon AS8003 Neustar Tidewater Laskin
by grarpamp 27 Apr '21

27 Apr '21

https://apnews.com/article/technology-business-government-and-politics-b26a… https://www.wired.com/2010/03/packet-forensics/ Verify and pin your pki certs... Global Resource Systems Packet Forensics Raymond Saulino Pentagon AS8003 Neustar Tidewater Laskin Defense Digital Service "This Is Massive": Shadowy DARPA-Linked Company Took Over 'Chunk' Of Pentagon's Internet In Inauguration Day Mystery A shadowy company set up last September linked to a DARPA / FBI contractor who peddled a 'lawful intercept' internet spy device to government agencies and law enforcement a decade ago, took over a massive portion of the Pentagon's idle internet addresses on the day of President Biden's inauguration, according to an in-depth investigation by the Associated Press. The valuable internet real estate has since quadrupled to 175 million IP addresses which were previously owned by the US Department of Defense - about 1/25th the size of the current internet, and over twice the size of the internet space actually used by the Pentagon. "It is massive. That is the biggest thing in the history of the internet," said Doug Madory, director of internet analysis at network operating company Kenntic. The company, Global Resource Systems, was established by a Beverly Hills attorney, and now resides in a shared workspace above a Florida bank. The company did not return phone calls or emails from The Associated Press. It has no web presence, though it has the domain grscorp.com. Its name doesn’t appear on the directory of its Plantation, Florida, domicile, and a receptionist drew a blank when an AP reporter asked for a company representative at the office earlier this month. She found its name on a tenant list and suggested trying email. Records show the company has not obtained a business license in Plantation. Incorporated in Delaware and registered by a Beverly Hills lawyer, Global Resource Systems LLC now manages more internet space than China Telecom, AT&T or Comcast. -Associated Press One name is linked to Global Resource Systems in the Florida business registry - that of Raymond Saulino - who as recently as 2018 was listed in Nevada corporate records as a managing director of a cybersecurity/internet surveillance company called Packet Forensics. According to the report, "The company had nearly $40 million in publicly disclosed federal contracts over the past decade, with the FBI and the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency among its customers." In 2011, Packet Forensics and Saulino, its spokesman, were featured in a Wired story because the company was selling an appliance to government agencies and law enforcement that let them spy on people’s web browsing using forged security certificates. The company continues to sell “lawful intercept” equipment, according to its website. One of its current contracts with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is for “harnessing autonomy for countering cyber-adversary systems.” A contract description says it is investigating “technologies for conducting safe, nondisruptive, and effective active defense operations in cyberspace.” Contract language from 2019 says the program would “investigate the feasibility of creating safe and reliable autonomous software agencies that can effectively counter malicious botnet implants and similar large-scale malware.” Saulino is also listed as a principal with a company called Tidewater Laskin Associates. Incorporated in 2018 (and sharing the same Virginia Beach, VA address as Packet Forensics - a UPS store - with different mailbox numbers), Tidewater obtained an FCC license in April 2020 for unknown reasons. Calls to the number listed on the Tidewater Laskin FCC filing are answered by an automated service that offers four different options but doesn’t connect callers with a single one, recycling all calls to the initial voice recording. Saulino did not return phone calls seeking comment, and a longtime colleague at Packet Forensics, Rodney Joffe, said he believed Saulino was retired. Joffe, a cybersecurity luminary, declined further comment. Joffe is chief technical officer at Neustar Inc., which provides internet intelligence and services for major industries, including telecommunications and defense. -AP And now a company linked to Saulino, which didn't exist before September, took control of a massive chunk of the Pentagon's internet space on inauguration day for unknown reasons. According to a terse and opaque explanation from the Pentagon's Brett Goldstein - head of the Defense Digital Service which is running the project, the military hopes to "assess, evaluate and prevent unauthorized use of DoD IP address space" and "identify potential vulnerabilities" in order to defend against cyber-intrusions by global adversaries who consistently infiltrate US networks - occasionally from unused internet blocks. What that has to do with Global Resource Systems is anyone's guess. Explanations for what the internet space could be used for are purely speculative, and include "honeypots" - machines set up with vulnerabilities laid as bait to draw hackers, "Or it could be looking to set up dedicated infrastructure — software and servers — to scour traffic for suspect activity." "This greatly increases the space they could monitor," said Madory. Why did the Pentagon choose Global Resource Systems - a company linked to a 'spooky' individual - on inauguration day? "As to why the DoD would have done that I’m a little mystified, same as you," internet pioneer Paul Vixie told AP. More via AP: Deepening the mystery is Global Resource Systems’ name. It is identical to that of a firm that independent internet fraud researcher Ron Guilmette says was sending out email spam using the very same internet routing identifier. It shut down more than a decade ago. All that differs is the type of company. This one’s a limited liability corporation. The other was a corporation. Both used the same street address in Plantation, a suburb of Fort Lauderdale. “It’s deeply suspicious,” said Guilmette, who unsuccessfully sued the previous incarnation of Global Resource Systems in 2006 for unfair business practices. Guilmette considers such masquerading, known as slip-streaming, a ham-handed tactic in this situation. “If they wanted to be more serious about hiding this they could have not used Ray Saulino and this suspicious name.” Guilmette and Madory were alerted to the mystery when network operators began inquiring about it on an email list in mid-March. But almost everyone involved didn’t want to talk about it. Mike Leber, who owns Hurricane Electric, the internet backbone company handling the address blocks’ traffic, didn’t return emails or phone messages. Despite an internet address crunch, the Pentagon — which created the internet — has shown no interest in selling any of its address space, and a Defense Department spokesman, Russell Goemaere, told the AP on Saturday that none of the newly announced space has been sold.

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Fwd: Public user prediction software?
by Karl 26 Apr '21

26 Apr '21

Hi tolerant cpunks, I tried to send this to libtech but I don't seem to be able to due to personal concerns. I'm now having a bout of amnesia and unlikely to resend it. Here it is if you guys would like it. ---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Karl <gmkarl(a)gmail.com> Date: Sat, Apr 24, 2021, 6:52 AM Subject: Public user prediction software? To: liberationtech <liberationtech(a)lists.stanford.edu> Mainstream reporting on targeted advertisement technology claim it can actually predict our behavior accurately enough to make it seem like it is surveilling us when it is not. It also seems to influence our behavior to make us easier to predict; this probably provides revenue to the advertisement algorithms. What is the state of public behavior prediction software? Is there any public tool that can help people understand this technology by playing with it?

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Cryptocurrency: Thodex Exchange CEO Runs Off With $2B
by grarpamp 26 Apr '21

26 Apr '21

https://cryptopotato.com/ceo-of-a-turkish-crypto-exchange-thodex-reportedly… Not your keys, Not your coins. Develop, deploy, and use distributed cross-coin DEX. Dozens Arrested After CEO Of Turkish Crypto Exchange Flees With $2 Billion Turkish authorities have detained 62 people over alleged links to the Istanbul-based cryptocurrency exchange Thodex after its founder fled with a reported $2 billion in investors' assets, Turkish media reported. The suspects were apprehended in raids carried out in eight cities including Istanbul, Anadolu Agency reported on Friday. Police issued arrest warrants for 16 other people. The arrests come after nearly 400,000 users of a Turkish cryptocurrency exchange were left out of their accounts without being able to withdraw their funds. The platform’s website has been down for several days, while reports suggest its CEO has already fled the country with up to $2 billion. Bloomberg reported that Thodex, a Turkey-based crypto exchange, has ceased trading, citing an “unspecified partnership transaction.” The trading platform, founded in 2017, issued a statement explaining that all services will remain shut down for about five working days. However, the message reassured customers that they shouldn’t worry about their funds. In retrospect, they should. Approximately at the same time, though, users started to complain about their inability to access their own assets. As Crypto Potato notes, some took it to Twitter to complain about losing much of their net worth. A local #Crypto exchange where I'd ~20% of my entire trading capital got rug pulled -20 days no withdrawal (fiat & crypto) -Then the website went offline -Then the CEO run abroad I'm not broke, but it hurts... Alot It sucks, Even when u deal with regulated exchanges#Thodex — Feras_Crypto (will Never DM you First) (@FeraSY1) April 21, 2021 He wasn't alone: on Thursday, hundreds of thousands of users were unable to get access to their digital wallets. "We have started the legal procedures and lodged a complaint at the prosecutor's office," a lawyer for some investors said. Prosecutors were investigating the businessman on charges of "aggravated fraud and founding a criminal organisation". ÖNEMLİ DUYURU pic.twitter.com/3aBeJjFSYQ — THODEX (@thodexofficial) April 22, 2021 According to subsequent coverage the exchange’s chief executive officer and founder, Faruk Fatih Ozer had fled the country. Following news of Ozer’s alleged escape from Turkey, users of the local exchange hired a law firm to file a complaint against Thodex. Oguz Evren Kilic, representing an unspecified number of Thodex customers, confirmed the development, saying, “we have filed a legal complaint on Wednesday.” He speculated that the funds on the Turkish exchange could be worth “hundreds of millions of dollars,” as the exchange had 391,000 users. According to another report, Thodex’s CEO and founder has run away in Thailand with an estimated amount of roughly $2 billion. Overnight, Turkish security officials released a photo of Thodex founder Faruk Fatih Ozer going through passport control at Istanbul Airport on his way to Albania. Turkish security officials released a photo of Thodex founder Faruk Fatih Ozer going through passport control at Istanbul airport on April 22, 2021. On Friday, Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu made a phone call to his Albanian counterpart to request Ozer be captured and repatriated. At the same time, Turkish police raided the company's headquarters on the Asian side of Istanbul and seized computers and digital materials, press reports revealed. Turkish authorities also started procedures to issue an international warrant to arrest and extradite the missing founder of a cryptocurrency exchange, Anadolu Agency reported. In a message on the company's Twitter account, Ozer said he was abroad for meetings with foreign investors and would return home "in a few days and cooperate with judicial authorities so that the truth can come out". Subsequent updates indicated that this was a lie. In recent months, a growing numbers of Turks turned to cryptocurrency in a bid to shield their savings in the face of a sharp decline in the value of the Turkish lira and high inflation. The Turkish crypto market remains unregulated despite growing scepticism from President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government about its safety. Last week, Turkish authorities took a step to regulating the cryptocurrency industry, and as we reported last week, Turkey officially banned users from using cryptos as payment instruments starting April 30th. The government spent a massive $165 billion in foreign-exchange reserves over the past two years, effectively leaving its central bank without reserves Erdogan revealed on Wednesday, part of a futile effort to prop up the national currency. Concern about the country’s dwindling foreign-exchange reserves, which are negative when money borrowed by the government from private banks via swap agreements are factored in, has fueled concern about both lira and dollar deposits -- and pushed savers into alternative investment vehicles. Last Friday, the volume of trade in Turkish crypto markets tripled to over $1.2 billion from a week earlier, according to data published by coingecko.com, which tracks data on price, volume and market value on crypto markets. That compares with an average daily trading volume in the Turkish stock market’s benchmark index of about $3.1 billion. “One can establish a crypto exchange with just 50,000 liras (about $6,000) in capital,” Oguz Evren Kilic, a lawyer representing Thodex users, said by phone. “There’s a huge regulatory gap in this field.” Meanwhile, as Bloomberg reports, last month Thodex initiated a campaign to boost membership by offering millions of free Dogecoins to new registrants. Its website says 4 million of the coins were distributed, though many people have taken to social media to complain they never received them. In the latest development in this bizarre saga, in a statement published from an unknown location, Thodex CEO Faruk Fatih Ozer promised to repay investors and to return to Turkey to face justice after he did. “I was born as one of the three siblings of a civil servant,” Ozer said in his statement, adding that he’s a high-school dropout. As the company ran into financial trouble, he said he thought about either committing suicide or giving himself up to authorities, but both of those options meant clients’ assets would never be retrieved. “So I decided to stay alive and fight, work and repay my debts to you,” he said. “The day I repay all my debt, I will return to my country and give myself in to justice.” Narrator: "he won't return."

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SW That Elected Trump Based On SW That Elected Obama
by Karl 26 Apr '21

26 Apr '21

But when Trump was elected, the man who designed the software and the following excerpt was working for a military contractor to do so, rather than a political party. I'm having trouble continuing to read his book ;p > Insurgencies, by nature, are asymmetric, in that a few people can cause large effects. So catalyzing an insurgency within the belligerent’s organization requires first concentrating resources on a few key target groups. This is optimized by good profiling and identifying the types of people who are both susceptible to new ways of thinking and connected enough to inject our counternarrative into their social network. > > The most effective form of perspecticide is one that first mutates the concept of self. In this light, the manipulator attempts to “steal” the concept of self from his target, replacing it with his own. This usually starts with attempting to smother the opponent’s narratives and then dominating the informational environment around the target. Often this involves gradually breaking down what are called psychological resilience factors over several months. Programs are designed to create unrealistic perceptions in the targets that result in confusion and damage self-efficacy. Targets are encouraged to begin catastrophizing about minor or imagined events, and counternarratives attempt to remove meaning, creating an impression of confusing or senseless events. Counternarratives also attempt to foster distrust in order to mitigate an existing hierarchy or group when you begin to think that you are being used in some unfair way, or when events seem senseless or purposeless. You become less willing to accept setbacks, take risks, or comply with commands. > > But simply degrading morale is often not enough. The ultimate aim is to trigger negative emotions and thought processes associated with impulsive, erratic, or compulsive behavior. This moves a target from mild or passive resistance (e.g., less productivity, taking fewer risks, rumors, etc.) into a realm of more disruptive behaviors (e.g., arguing, insubordination, mutiny, etc.). This approach has been taken in South America, for example, to provoke disunity among members of narcotics operations, increasing the likelihood of information leaks, defections, or internal conflicts that erode a supply chain. The most susceptible targets are typically the ones who exhibit neurotic or narcissistic traits, as they tend to be less psychologically resilient to stressing narratives. This is because neuroticism can make a person more prone to paranoid ideation, as they tend to experience more anxiety and impulsiveness and place more reliance on intuitive rather than deliberative thinking. People high on the narcissism scale are susceptible because they are more prone to

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