National Security

There is good cause for Americans to be alarmed and highly critical of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

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Last week Republicans seized on a Twitter post by Democratic freshman representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, which even some Democrats condemned as anti-Semitic. Suddenly even Jewish Democrats were accused of anti-Semitism in the GOP’s divisive messaging war for 2020. In the GOP framing, any criticism of Israel, in particular any criticism of their favorite far-right but … Read more

Trump administration leaves the door open for social media manipulation by foreign states of 2020 election

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This past week, it was reported that Trump’s DHS Guts Task Forces Protecting Elections From Foreign Meddling: Two teams of federal officials assembled to fight foreign election interference are being dramatically downsized, according to three current and former Department of Homeland Security officials. And now, those sources say they fear the department won’t prepare adequately … Read more

Donald Trump is the greatest national security threat to the United States

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In the chaos theory of governance of the Trump administration, so much craziness happens every day that it is easy to overlook important events in the din of noise. Which is really the whole point of chaos theory. Trump wants to overwhelm the senses with the vast volume of his craziness every day so that no one thing he does can hold the attention of the public or the media for long in what used to be a normal news cycle, and the public eventually becomes numb to the sheer volume of his craziness and stops paying attention. This has led to the warning not to normalize Trump’s chaotic behavior (which the media has to a large degree).

But something happened this week which clarified that Donald Trump is the greatest national security threat to the United States.

The national security team which Trump himself appointed to lead the national security community — Trump repeatedly said during the 2016 election that he would “hire the best people” for his administration — testified under oath before the Senate Intelligence Committee on the Worldwide Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community, representing the work of thousands of professionals in the 17 U.S. intelligence agencies. The collective wisdom of the intelligence community in this threat assessment, and the testimony of the security chiefs under oath before Congress is that President Trump is wrong about every position he has taken on foreign policy.

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White House jeopardizes US national security with security clearances

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Earlier this week, Democrats opened an investigation of the White House security clearance process:

House Democrats are opening an investigation of the Trump White House’s security clearance practices and what they are calling “grave breaches” of procedure that allowed potentially compromised people to access the country’s most sensitive secrets.

The investigation, announced Wednesday by House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.), seeks both to expose why the White House allowed certain people with security clearance issues to continue to access sensitive information and to close those loopholes.

The panel also plans to challenge administration officials on why they have not been more responsive to congressional requests regarding the security clearance process, as required by law.

Among the people whose cases the panel plans to scrutinize are former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn, who recently pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russian officials; Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, who did not disclose several contacts with foreign officials on his security clearance forms; and former White House staff secretary Rob Porter, who was accused of spousal abuse.

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‘Collusion’ in plain sight: a compromised president is a national security threat

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This past week we learned from Paul Manafort’s attorneys that their client shared closely guarded campaign polling data with Russian (and Ukrainian) oligarchs who have close ties to Vladimir Putin. Paul Manafort shared 2016 polling data with Russian associate, according to court filing.

David Measer explains The real value of Paul Manafort’s polling data:

[I]t’s a mistake to treat polling data as mere briefing material; it’s actionable information. Those of us in advertising use it to decide who to target; to position the brands we represent as distinctive from other brands; to develop messaging and ads; and to knock competitors out of their positions in consumers’ minds. We’ve known since 2017 that the Russian disinformation campaign during the 2016 presidential election did the same thing — aiming different posts at people who indicated that they “liked” patriotism or lived in Ferguson, Mo.

Passing on this kind of information gives a partner the ability to reach audiences in a very personalized way. And if that partner is a foreign country intent on influencing voters, exploiting divisions and disrupting elections, the data is priceless. It gives them the tools to get pretty close to the holy grail of marketing: to be in the right place, at the right time, with the right message.

This would be the Russian troll farm run by Russian intelligence agencies whom the Special Counsel has indicted for interference in the 2016 election.

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