Tag: news

Authored by Daniel Lazare via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you can’t fool all the people all the time. So said Abraham Lincoln – maybe. But whoever it was forgot to mention an important corollary: fun as it may be to pull the wool over people’s eyes, you’ll writhe in agony for an equal period once the truth emerges and the fraud is exposed.

This is the significance of Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s devastating report on the FBI investigation of Russiagate suspect Carter Page.

For years, the FBI and its allies in the Democratic Party have had a grand time pillorying Page as the centerpiece of a gigantic Kremlin conspiracy to help Trump win the White House and bend America to its will. Thousands of headlines about this or that bombshell revelation, scores of talking heads proclaiming that “the walls are closing in” – it was all so much fun that revelers barely paused when Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller’s announced last March that he was unable to “establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government.”

Sure, a few Democrats perked up. But they quickly decided that even though Mueller didn’t come up with enough evidence to prove collusion, that didn’t mean that he came up with no evidence at all. So the myth continued unabated.

But payback time is now upon us.  The Horowitz report is not some ordinary rebuke, but an epic assault that has left the FBI reeling. After fawning over the bureau for years, the New York Times tried to salvage a shred of self-respect by declaring that even though it “painted a bleak portrait of the FBI as a dysfunctional agency,” all was not lost because the inspector general uncovered “no evidence that the mistakes were intentional or undertaken out of political bias.”

This was incorrect. Horowitz made it clear in his Dec. 11 appearance before the Senate judiciary committee that while there was “no evidence that the initiation of the investigation was motivated by political bias,” the question gets “murkier” when it comes to subsequent FBI actions like withholding or doctoring evidence. Considering that FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith, the man who allegedly falsified evidence against Page, is a never-Trumper who once texted “viva le resistance,” it’s hard to see how bias could not have been a factor.

The inspector general lists seventeen “significant errors” the bureau made in applying for a secret surveillance warrant.

It failed to inform the court that Page had been a CIA informant for years and had been found to have been truthful throughout; that he told an undercover agent that he “literally never met” or “said one word to” Paul Manafort, his alleged co-conspirator, and that Manafort had never responded to any of his emails; that a source for ex-MI6 agent Christopher Steele’s famous “golden showers” dossier was known to be a “boaster” and an “egoist” who may “engage in some embellishment”; and that professional associates of Steele said he “[d]emonstrates lack of self-awareness [and] poor judgment” and “pursued people with political risk but no intelligence value.”

Steele, the man who turned US politics upside down, was a flake in other words while Page was more likely on the up and up. Yet the FBI assumed the opposite. Perhaps the most amazing section in Horowitz’s report concerns a Steele informant who confessed that reports of Trump’s sexual escapades in the Moscow Ritz Carlton were “just talk,” conversations he or she “had with friends over beers,” and statements made in “jest.” Yet the Steele dossier reported them as a real, and a credulous press lapped them all up. Steele’s supposed high-level Kremlin contacts, the source added, were individuals “who may have had access” – and, then again, may not have. Corroboration of Steele’s findings was meanwhile “zero.”

Yet this is the document that the FBI continued using to pursue Page and Trump and convince the public that collusion was genuine.

As devastating as all this is, US Attorney John Durham’s long-awaited report on the origins of Russiagate promises to be broader and even harder-hitting. On Dec. 9, he issued an unusual statement saying that he disagreed with Horowitz’s finding that the FBI was legally warranted in launching an investigation. This implies that maybe – just maybe – he’s come up with evidence that the intelligence agencies concocted the whole episode from the outset as skeptics have long suspected.

If so, the agony of those responsible for the Russiagate fiasco can only intensify while, for the rest of us, the fun has just begun. So lean back and enjoy the show. It going to be a doozy.

A Russian spy ship which had been been sailing off the coast of South Carolina and Florida for the past few days has been a source of alarm for US authorities who say it’s been operating in an “unsafe” and “erratic” manner.

It prompted an unusual US Coast Guard alert which warned boaters off South Carolina and Georgia to “use extreme caution”, especially given the Russian ship, the Viktor Leonov, is avoiding any communication or direct contact with other ships alerting them to its passage, CNN reports. Though not unusual, the ship also turned off its locator when it got near the US coast. 

“The United States Coast Guard has received reports indicating that the RFN VIKTOR LEONOV (AGI-175) has been operating in an unsafe manner off the coast of South Carolina and Georgia,” the Coast Guard bulletin said. 

“This unsafe operation includes not energizing running lights while in reduced visibility conditions, not responding to hails by commercial vessels attempting to coordinate safe passage and other erratic movements.”

“Vessels transiting these waters should maintain a sharp lookout and use extreme caution when navigating in proximity to this vessel. Mariners should make reports of any unsafe situations to the United States Coast Guard,” it added.

Other reports suggest it was operating near a US submarine base, before heading south again into international waters early this week. It’s been spotted most recently near the Bahamas, with the USS Mahan destroyer said to be shadowing the ship.

The Viktor Leonov has regularly patrolled in the Atlantic and Caribbean near the US coast since 2015. In 2017 Trump actually threatened to attack Russian ships that got too close, but no such incidents have materialized. 

“Hey, the greatest thing I could do is shoot that ship that’s 30 miles offshore right out of the water,” Trump said in that provocative January 2017 statement. “Everyone in this country is going to say, ‘Oh, it’s so great.’ That’s not great. That’s not great. I would love to be able to get along with Russia.”

Authored by Michael Kern via SafeHaven.com,

What happens when quantum computing hits the masses and becomes just as common as a smartphone? We may not have to wait that long to find out. It’s what comes next, according to Bank of America strategist Haim Israel.  Israel hails quantum computing as a revolutionary product for this decade, saying it will be as big as smartphones were in the 2010s. 

Scientists aren’t so sure, and not nearly as optimistic. Many equate quantum computing for the space race of the 1950s. We’re not quite there yet, either, but perhaps that’s because the government dropped the ball and things are only now picking up in the hands of big tech. 

So, still a long shot but it is a race for sure.

The U.S., China and Russia are all competing to achieve quantum supremacy. 

The scientists and experts involved don’t object to the race itself–just what the term ‘supremacy’. It’s a big dramatic for their tastes, and they would instead prefer to call it the “quantum advantage”.

But let’s back up here, with the basics: quantum computers refer to supercomputers using revolutionary technology that leverages the characteristics of quantum mechanics to solve certain problems faster than regular computers can.

The difference between quantum computers and existing ones means much faster processing speeds, and potentially solving problems and processing data that would take traditional machines millennia.

Proponents of the development of quantum computers state that quantum computer technology could lead to breakthroughs in self-learning artificial intelligence (AI), provide medical insights by simulating incredibly complex biological molecules, manage financial risk at banks…

It will also be able to simultaneously break all existing cryptographic keys while setting the stage for uncrackable quantum encryption. Exactly this point is why many nations–led by the U.S. and China–have taken a strong interest in quantum computing. 

The U.S., United Kingdom, European Union and China have each promised more than $1 billion of investment in quantum computing and related technologies. 

As for the U.S., it’s a crucial moment for America’s national security, which depends on winning the race to do what quantum computers will do best: decrypt the vast majority of existing public-key encryption systems. Last year, U.S. Congress adopted a bill aimed at accelerating the development of quantum computing. 

In October, Google claimed to have achieved a breakthrough by using a quantum computer to complete a calculation in 200 seconds on a 53-qubit quantum computing chip, a task it calculated would take the fastest current supercomputer 10,000 years. In doing so, it claimed it has achieved quantum supremacy. 

A competitor in the race, IBM thinks Google has overstated its achievement. For its part, IBM fired up its biggest quantum computer, a model with 53 qubits.

Earlier this month, Intel announced a quantum computing controller chip called Horse Ridge designed to shrink and simplify the hardware needed to communicate with quantum processors that house qubits.

Also this month, Amazon entered the race and announced it would partner with three firms to offer online access to prototype quantum processors.

The company unveiled a new service called Amazon Bracket that lets enterprise customers explore how they could benefit from quantum computers by developing and testing quantum algorithms in simulations. 

Rigetti Computing, whose quantum computers join those from IonQ and D-Wave in Amazon’s Bracket service, unveiled a 32-qubit machine. 

But these ambitions will likely take decades of work, and some researchers worry whether they can deliver on inflated expectations. The most optimistic experts estimate it will take 5 to 10 years to construct useful quantum computers. More cautious ones predict 20 to 30 years. 

However, there is a wide community opposing the development of quantum computing or at least being uncertain that quantum computing will end up benefiting society. 

Scientific American posing what seems to be the biggest existential problem with quantum computing: “The billion-dollar question in the meantime is, how do we get useful results out of a computer that becomes unusably unreliable before completing a typical computation?”

Following the release of the DOJ Inspector General’s report revealing that the FBI deceived the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court in order to spy on former Trump campaign aide Carter Page, presiding FISC Judge Rosemary Collyer issued a rare public rebuke – while ordering the agency to clean up its act, and fast.

Collyer noted despite the FBI’s “heightened duty of candor,” officials fabricated evidence and concealed information from the court which harmed their argument that Page was an “agent of a foreign power,” fabricated evidence.

Because of this, the court is now concerned about “whether information contained in other FBI applications is reliable.”

Those involved in the operation to take Trump down, meanwhile, are scrambling to downplay the IG report while taking as little responsibility as possible. After the FBI first tried to pass the buck – insisting that the Page applications were legit since the FISA court approved them, former FBI Director James Comey’s feet were finally held to the fire by Fox News host Chris Wallace last weekend:

Watch @comey try to squirm out of Wallace’s question. Comey is a total snake and a liar. Just watch him try to lie with the cold, hard facts placed right in front of him:
pic.twitter.com/zeA54eQ1ip

— Eddie Zipperer (@EddieZipperer) December 15, 2019

The former FBI Director went into full boyscout mode when he chalked up the 17 ‘serious errors’ found by the IG to “real sloppy” work, adding “..I was overconfident in the procedures that the FBI and Justice had built over 20 years. I thought they were robust enough.”

Meanwhile, former CIA Director John Brennan acknowledged on Tuesday that “there were mistakes made” during the application process.

And former Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, has been using the old ‘we were just following orders’ line after it was revealed he and the other Obama-era IC heads were under investigation by US Attorney John Durham, telling CNN in October that he was just investigating what “the then commander-in-chief, President Obama, told us to do.”

Clapper appears to admit Obama instructed him to target the Trump campaign:

“Obama told us to do … assemble all the reporting that we could that we had available to us and put it in one report that the President could pass on to the Congress … ” pic.twitter.com/4YJcNqUYGa

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) October 8, 2019

And despite all that we now know, the Wall Street Journal editorial board asks; why hasn’t anyone been held accountable?

Judge Collyer’s order demands that the government, no later than Jan. 10, inform the court “in a sworn written submission” what it has done and plans to do to make sure future FISA warrant applications aren’t tainted. This is useful and is the first public evidence we’ve had that the FISA judges believe they were deceived.

Yet it also underscores how the FISA process dilutes political accountability. The FBI has tried to say its applications were kosher because a court approved them, while the court now fingers the FBI for deception. But so far no individuals have been held accountable, and the abuses would never have been discovered without the digging of former House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes. -WSJ

Indeed, the only person that might be held accountable was an FBI attorney – Kevin Clinesmith, who fabricated evidence in the Carter Page FISA app to say he wasn’t a CIA source, when in fact he was – with “positive assessment.”

And while Clinesmith was slapped with a criminal referral by the IG, he is far from the only person within the agency whose hands are dirty. Yet – as the Journal notes, nobody else has been held to account.

In closing, they write “Congress created FISA in the late 1970s to protect against previous FBI wiretap abuses. Clearly it hasn’t worked, and more bureaucratic hurdles won’t stop FBI officials who lie or alter email evidence. Injecting judges into secret executive-branch national security decisions was always a mistake, and now we know it abets abuse more than prevents it.”