The Smoke Eater For Jan. 8, 2020
"Animal House," Mike Pompeo is a bad liar, and cyber war.
Good morning. Today is Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2020, this is The Smoke Eater, and there’s a reason geeks and freaks scream, "Hack the planet!"
Quick Hit
Iran launched a ballistic missile strike at bases in Iraq, but it's foreign minister says it's not looking for a fight. Mike Pompeo got called out for trying to gaslight Andrea Mitchell about Trump's threats to Iran. Defense officials are finally taking dystopian science fiction seriously and warning about a cyber war.
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Enter the Deathmobile
Last night Iran launched ballistic missile strikes at two bases in Iraq that house U.S. troops. The attacks, according to Tehran, were "revenge" for the U.S. killing the head of the Quds Force, a branch of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. Senior officials from the U.S., Iraq, Australia, Britain, Denmark, Poland and Sweden, who all house forces at the respective bases, report there we no fatalities. In a tweet reminiscent of the riot at the end of "Animal House," Trump said, "All is well," adding, "So far so good! We have the most powerful and well equipped military anywhere in the world, by far!" Trump is expected to make a public address later this morning.
Adding to the black comedy of our current news cycle, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif later tweeted that Iran did "not seek escalation of war." The state-run Fars news agency initially reported the strikes on al-Asad air base and a base in Irbil, located in Western Iraq and Northern Iraqi Kurdistan, respectively, killed as many as 80 U.S. service members. Shortly after the launching the strikes, the IRGC pushed a message through its Telegram channel saying retaliatory attacks on Iranian soil would be met with a "third wave of operations" targeting Haifa, Israel and Dubai, U.A.E.
During a testy press briefing yesterday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo defended the Trump administration's killing of Iranian Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani as "entirely legal," but declined to present evidence. After being pressed by NBC's Andrea Mitchell about Trump's threat to attack Iranian cultural sites, Pompeo argued that Trump, "didn't say he'd go after a cultural site," despite multiple press reports to the contrary. Mitchell responded with a less than subtle piece that called Pompeo, "the most powerful secretary of state in decades," and noted how Pompeo, "has declined to furnish any emails or other State Department documents to House investigators, a posture that severely damaged morale among foreign service officers."
Fact Check: In light of a bad meme that's been floating around, Snopes has a fact-check about that Pompeo "rapture" speech. Pompeo has made no secret about mixing his personal religious beliefs with his hard-right politics, and he said he'd fight for Jesus until the rapture, but the speech is being taken out of context.
The State Department is urging Americans not to support Iranian resistance groups, like Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK), as they could be "counterproductive." MEK has long had ties to conservative politicos and nuts, like Rudy Giuliani and Newt Gingrich, who tend to whisper in Trump's ear.
All Your Base!
The DHS is warning IT nerds to make sure their systems are secured, but a more serious warning has been sent to state and local cyber security officials from the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center, an advisory group for state and local governments, according to StateScoop. Beyond making sure the backdoors are locked, the warnings are advising IT professionals keep their eyes open for "destructive malware with intent to disrupt U.S. critical infrastructure."
Vice's David Gilbert points out that Iran has launched cyber attacks against the U.S. before, and the most likely targets aren't large government agencies or big businesses. Cyber attacks from independent and state-sponsored actors have shown it's possible to hold a city like Baltimore or Atlanta hostage with ransomware, breach critical infrastructure systems like election software, use worms like Stuxnet shutdown a nuclear centrifuge, take control of dam in upstate New York, or even a power grid in Oregon. Sarah Fischer writes for Axios that Iran has also spent years building a sophisticated propaganda machine to peddle disinfo and further its foreign policy goals. The campaign has pushed B.S. across social media platforms by using spoofed websites and nerds warn that can brainwash people, even if it’s ripped down.
While most of us were reporting on the Iranian-back militias trying to storm the US embassy in Baghdad on Dec. 30, some Iraqis wondered how the hell so many people were able to flood The Green Zone. Irfaa Sawtak writes one of the most fascinating things about Iraq has been the cultural revolution since the fall of Saddam and the Baathists. This new nationalism created a thriving art scene that helped break down long standing gender and social norms.
Out Of Left Field
Dave Weigel reports Tom Steyer's multi-million dollar Iowa ad blitz hasn't necessarily translated to the kind of support a candidate might hope for, and the sudden focus on foreign policy has sent many 2020 campaigns reaching for their crib notes. This has had all sorts of side-effects, but the only one I'll point out is the laughable snub Sen. Elizabeth Warren delivered to a wannabe talking head.
The Daily Beast took a deep dive into the far-left (and far-right) conspiracy theory that former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg is a super-double-secret CIA agent. The NSA V-chip in my brain (that I'm not supposed to know about) tells me this an incredibly stupid meme being pushed by equally stupid people who should all be embarrassed for being so damn stupid.
In the real world, Buttigieg's inability to secure delegates in the Chicago area, four of the most ethnically diverse districts, suggests the campaign's trouble with black and Latino voters is getting worse. HuffPo explains that Illinois voters elect not just presidential picks, but also DNC delegates associated with campaigns, "meaning each campaign needs to find 101 people willing to serve as a delegate -- at least three in each of the state's 19 congressional districts, with additional delegates in more heavily Democratic districts." Finding delegates is tedious, and the state party automatically assigns delegates if a campaign nets 15 percent of the vote anyway, but an inability to tap people isn't a good sign. Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren both filled every slot, while Joe Biden filled all but three. Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Andrew Yang each filled 60 slots, and Butters filled 53 slots. While Buttigieg's campaign HQ is only a short drive from Chicago, it still seems like his campaign took a detour from Pawnee to avoid the South Side.
Buzzfeed has some damn fine reporting on the PR companies being hired to spam disinfo across social media and inboxes. These mercenary troll farms will sell everything from penis pills to political hit jobs for the right price, and their business spans the globe.
Andrew Bosworth, the lead at Facebook's virtual and augmented reality division, warned employees in a Dec. 30 memo that -- "as a liberal" -- he didn't think it was a good idea to tilt the scales in the favor of Trump by overplaying the company's hand in governing political speech. Bosworth attempted to make his argument with a bunch of tortured analogies, like Frodo offering The Ring to Galadrial in Lord of the rings, and likening Facebook to sugar and bacon (as opposed to nicotine). The reporter who broke the story, Kevin Roose, then went ham on Twitter and pointed out the convoluted arguments Facebook's brass seems to make whenever they're caught pissing on their flip-flops.
The always on-point Charlie Warzel has a scathing op-ed this morning that takes aim at Facebook's new "deep fake" policy, and it's habit of bending over backwards to let politicians says whatever they want (even if it's a clear violation of the TOS). "It’s perfectly fine to lie, harass and manipulate by the millions online," Warzel writes, "provided you are an elected official or fall into the amorphous loophole of 'newsworthiness.' It’s the one protected class of people who can get away with behavior that would see others banned."
One More Thing...
Ace attorney Ken White has a good piece in The Atlantic on depression and suicide following bombastic statements from a petty right-wing blow hard who was once BTFO'd by the late David Foster Wallace back in 2005. The forgettable talk radio host called people who commit suicide cowardly; White suggests one imagine they are trapped in the worst moments of their life (think Groundhog Day) until finally succumbing to the unbearable pressure. "Resisting that, persevering, excelling, creating art when you feel that way, like Wallace did," White writes, "That’s goddamned epic."
OK, now here's your warm fuzzies: BABY KOALAS!
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