Payback Time for the Spooks Who Cried Wolf

We've been bombarded with this Russiagate bullshit since 2016. So that, when people started accusing China of spying a few days ago, it was a yawn. But, in fact - in the real world - the Chinese have been running an unbelievably sophisticated computer hardware spying operation. They embedded spy chips the size of a grain of rice into server boards, which were then installed by many corporations, including Apple and Amazon.

ON EDIT: I have been convinced by evidence that this whole story is yet another psyop to get more money for the MIC. See ChezJfrey's comment below.

So, IMHO, you should just be aware that TPTB will make up this level of bullshit and try to peddle it.
END EDIT.

How small are we talking? This small:

And it got even more sophisticated than that:

In one case, the malicious chips were thin enough that they’d been embedded between the layers of fiberglass onto which the other components were attached, according to one person who saw pictures of the chips. That generation of chips was smaller than a sharpened pencil tip,

Basically, such an embedded part would be completely invisible without some kind of x-ray scan of the board.

And, the Chinese can do that because something like 95% of all PCs in the world are now manufactured in China. China, the home of counterfeit everything, the place where patents mean nothing, the place where copyright means "copy right(correctly)". Its going to be interesting to see how the "no downside to outsourcing" crowd tries to spin this one.

The problem under discussion wasn’t just technological. It spoke to decisions made decades ago to send advanced production work to Southeast Asia. In the intervening years, low-cost Chinese manufacturing had come to underpin the business models of many of America’s largest technology companies...

Over the decades, the security of the supply chain became an article of faith despite repeated warnings by Western officials. A belief formed that China was unlikely to jeopardize its position as workshop to the world by letting its spies meddle in its factories. That left the decision about where to build commercial systems resting largely on where capacity was greatest and cheapest. “You end up with a classic Satan’s bargain,” one former U.S. official says. “You can have less supply than you want and guarantee it’s secure, or you can have the supply you need, but there will be risk. Every organization has accepted the second proposition.”

In the three years since the briefing in McLean, no commercially viable way to detect attacks like the one on Supermicro’s motherboards has emerged—or has looked likely to emerge. Few companies have the resources of Apple and Amazon, and it took some luck even for them to spot the problem. “This stuff is at the cutting edge of the cutting edge, and there is no easy technological solution,” one of the people present in McLean says. “You have to invest in things that the world wants. You cannot invest in things that the world is not ready to accept yet.”

The Big Hack: How China Used a Tiny Chip to Infiltrate U.S. Companies

These spy chips were found as long ago as 2015, but everyone involved - corporations, the government, spooks - have kept quiet about it. Even with this major article, obviously OKed from the top, published in Bloomberg, Amazon and Apple dispute the details; and the Chinese-heavy US company, SuperMicro, that is at the heart of the scandal denies everything as does the Chinese government. As usual, we peons will never know the complete truth.

The transmission chain of this hardware virus is another embarrassment for our spook establishment.

The story begins with a Silicon Valley startup called Elemental. Founded in 2006...Elemental went about building a "dream team" of coders who designed software to adapt the super-fast graphics chips being designed for video gaming to stream video instead. The company then loaded this software on to special, custom-built servers emblazoned with its logo....In 2009, the company received its first contract with US defense and intelligence contractors, and even received an investment from a CIA-backed venture fund.

Elemental also started working with American spy agencies. In 2009 the company announced a development partnership with In-Q-Tel Inc., the CIA’s investment arm, a deal that paved the way for Elemental servers to be used in national security missions across the U.S. government. Public documents, including the company’s own promotional materials, show that the servers have been used inside Department of Defense data centers to process drone and surveillance-camera footage, on Navy warships to transmit feeds of airborne missions, and inside government buildings to enable secure videoconferencing. NASA, both houses of Congress, and the Department of Homeland Security have also been customers. This portfolio made Elemental a target for foreign adversaries.

Like many other companies, Elementals' servers utilized motherboards built by Supermicro, which dominates the market for motherboards used in special-purpose computers. It was here, at Supermicro, where the government believes - according to Bloomberg's sources - that the infiltration began. Before it came to dominate the global market for computer motherboards, Supermicro had humble beginnings. A Taiwanese engineer and his wife founded the company in 1993, at a time when Silicon Valley was embracing outsourcing. It attracted clients early on with the promise of infinite customization, employing a massive team of engineers to make sure it could accommodate its clients' every need. Customers also appreciated that, while Supermicro's motherboards were assembled in China or Taiwan, its engineers were based in Silicon Valley. But the company's workforce featured one characteristic that made it uniquely attractive to China: A sizable portion of its engineers were native Mandarin speakers. One of Bloomberg's sources said the government is still investigating whether spies were embedded within Supermicro or other US companies).

- Zero Hedge, Explosive Report Details Chinese Infiltration Of Apple, Amazon And The CIA

There is so much garbage being swept under the rug here that one does not know where to begin.

First, the CIA itself, through its subsidiary In-Q-Tel, gave the greenlight to using these boards throughout the MIC.

Second, this was first discovered under Obama, but kept top, top secret. Couldn't have a spy scandal undermining the Dems and their golden boy funders from Silicon Valley. But, we can have two years of bullshit about Russian spying. The takeaway for me is that the government keeps real spy scandals secret - at least until the opposition realizes we are onto them. Therefore, Russiagate is not a real spy scandal.

Third, it took the resources of Amazon and Apple, the biggest computer operations on the planet to even find this spyware. The other 30 companies that were infected didn't have a clue until A&A and the CIA told them. We are as defenceless against this kind of attack as the US Navy is to hypersonic missiles.

Finally, as the article says, this kind of hardware spying is very hard to pull off; it depends on having control of the supply chain - something only the Chinese have. So, we can expect this game of spy-vs-spy to go on forever. But, hey, go right out and buy that Internet of Things toy to run your appliances. Don't worry that the Chinese might pull the equivalent of a "West Point synchronized toilet flush" on some place in the US. Just buy the corporate spyware toy, and don't even think the toy itself could be infested with Chinese spyware.

----

Bottom line here: this country is fucked. We gave away our manufacturing base to our biggest competitor. That competitor has six millenia of historical experience dealing with spying, double-crossing, and otherwise defeating "exterior barbarians" such as the US. We have spent thirty years inviting their best and brightest to come here for school and work, never thinking that its really easy to hide spies among a massive population that can communicate in a foreign language whose speech and writing are completely opaque to 95% of the US population. (We apparently have learned nothing from our debacles in Viet Nam and the MENA, where our lack of local language skills made us deaf and blind.)

Meanwhile, our populations are marinating in totally fictitious news narratives (now including blatant censorship) and being dumbed down ever further by smartphone and videogame addiction.

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arendt's picture

People saying that its technically infeasible and offering technical reasons why:

“Hardware is just so far off the radar, it’s almost treated like black magic.”

Yeah yeah, you just want us to be ignorant sheep.

I would want to know exactly how they propose that the 'installed chip' 'altered the operating system’s core' (whatever the **** that is supposed to mean - the BIOS? the OS? How did it know which OS was installed?) otherwise I'm calling it ********.

*********

agree. hardware is black magic except to hardware designers, and there are lots of us. the photo is bogus, the concept ridiculous. this makes about as much sense as that scene where jeff goldblum writes a virus for an alien ship that blows the whole thing up. fantasy of non tech writers.

*******

This little chip is ostensibly a signal conditioner of some kind. It may be connected to a JTAG or 2-wire serial bus which is used to initialize it. That bus may be shared with an EEPROM from which some initialiazation routine is loaded into memory. Maybe it could override what's being read from the EEPROM.

I'm not saying that's exactly what it did but that's just an example of how to think about it.

Just because the article has been dumbed down for non-EEs and to hide secret details, and has a generic picture, doesn't mean it couldn't happen. Use your imagination, think of what you could do with unlimited $, knowledge of the hardware and firmware on the device, and the ability to substitute parts further up the supply chain.

*******

JTAG would be easily scanned and extra components or etching is gonna be kind of obvious when you check your circuit diagram against what you got. I don't think you could even have a chip as small as a conditioner with all of that functionality either.

If I was thinking like a *****, the easiest solution would be to just to patch the BIOS or use some similar software solution - no obvious external signs, plausible deniability as long as you don't name it NSAKEY or something, much more flexibility than hardware.

*******

The article implied that it was modifying cache to insert bogus controls.....but that is ridiculous. If you sat in the pathway for cache, you wouldn't even be able to discern data from instructions, much less modify either in a manner that made sense.

No, this is BS. If you want to take over somebody's computer, either for control or for data retrieval, the way to do it is by modifying the OS. Virus generation and detection is old news, though, and not likely to incite excitement.

Also the photo: look at the chips & the traces. there are standard smt parts of several varieties...implying that the vertical dimension is about 4". The electrolytic caps are a bit under half inch dia. If this was a miniature "grain of rice" assembly, it would imply that they scaled down the whole shebang of all those chip types proportionally by 100x or so. preposterous. The fantasy they are talking about would be an ASIC, and any photo would be boring -- just a single isolated chip. This photo is a stock photo of something macroscopic. Probably a power converter, given that the heat sinks are larger than the board itself.

There is another (typically) ZH contingent that say the whole thing is cover for the fact that the Israeli shop that now is the designer of all Intel CPUs is installing its spyware right into the design.

******

I have to admit that the whole "we (Bloomberg) are reporting on this ultra top secret CIA investigation, but we have no real proof to offer except unsourced pictures." Has a certain smell to it. Nevertheless, Amazon did sell off its Chinese subsidiary and Apple dropped SuperMicro - all well before this story broke.

So, I'm thinking there is something going on, but we still don't know what.

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and a ploy for, "we need more resources to combat!"

First: Only an idiot would fail to entertain the notion that a major foreign supplier wouldn't interject some form of surveillance advantage into military/war products they produce for another nation...especially one that has historically and recently posited them as hostile, like the U.S. v. China.

Second: Yet, despite the hostility, the U.S. inexplicably continues to source their DoD products from said nation?

Third: The U.S. does the same thing with Russia and rocket engines.

Fourth: The entire U.S. DoD contractor network sells/buys tech from just about every other "hostile" nation.

Fifth: This is "against the law," and is "investigated" all the time, yet the only "punishment" is no prison time, continued contracts...fines. Yet those fines are akin to levying $100 per $100,000 profits from each "illegal" sale. How is that a deterrent? It's not, it's just a ploy to make any low-level, good grunts, doing the proper bureaucracy and investigation to believe they are working hard to maintain law, yet the high-level schemers, insiders, money-makes make a killing on the profits, stock boosts and power brokering.

Sixth: By periodically allowing these "bombshell revelations" the resound is, "OMG! We need more resources, funding, departments to combat this...send your tax money!"

Heck, the Chinese chip thing is not even the first. Go back to 2011: https://www.businessinsider.com/navy-chinese-microchips-weapons-could-ha...

There are hundreds of these ploys...take 9/11. The official Commission report states that failures in bureaucracy and communication made finding needles in the haystack too difficult. The solution was to exponentially increase the haystack via mass-surveillance, and to increase the bureaucracy to include more departments (DHS), more potential for communication snafus, etc. More, we need more!

Check out the ITAR investigations and how they work. The biggest contractors, such as, Raytheon, BAE, Lockheed, Northrop, L3, etc., continually sell their wares and info to many proscribed, 'enemy' states, literally thousands of cases, where the DOJ merely fines them and allows business-as-usual with the U.S. government. Similarly, the war on drugs has shown us the Fast/Furious technique of supplying both sides of suppposed conflict. Or the protection and reimbursement of the Afghan poppy growers to resurrect the heroin trade that the Taliban had very nearly eradicated from the country that once again, with U.S. help, now supplies the majority of the world's supply. U.S. history is rife with pro-Saddam/anti-Saddam, anti-Al Qaeda/pro Al Qaeda, pro-mujhadeen/anti-mujhadeen type examples...for decade upon decade. Supplying both sides is the utmost business sense.

And in order to combat this "bombshell revelation" these same entities we've supplied with our best tech (or, in this scenario, supply us with mal-tech), will undoubtedly require more "defense."

We taxpayers spend hundreds of billions each year for 'defense' in the form of these same DoD contractors. But the DOJ has found over the years thousands of instances where the primary contractors routinely sell their wares and know-how to pretty much everyone, including the 'enemy'...Iran, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt, etc.

http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/FedCrimes/story?id=4684907
http://www.dodig.mil/pubs/documents/DODIG-2012-135.pdf
https://www.pmddtc.state.gov/compliance/documents/OngoingExportCaseFactS...
https://www.pmddtc.state.gov/compliance/consent_agreements/pdf/NorthropG...
http://www.militaryaerospace.com/articles/2009/07/itar-violations-have-p...
http://friedfrank.com/siteFiles/Publications/ITAR%20Enforcement%20Digest...
http://investor.northropgrumman.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=112386&p=irol-newsAr...
http://web.stanford.edu/class/e297a/U.S.%20Defense%20Industry%20and%20Ar...

"BAE Systems ... settled a staggering two thousand five hundred ninety-nine charges.. The charges, which span from 1998 to 2011, concerned unauthorized brokering and related activities... The charges related to: (1) marketing JAS-39 "Gripen” military aircraft to Brazil, Chile, the Czech Republic, Hungary, the Philippines, Poland, and South Africa; (2) exporting "Hawk” Trainer aircraft to Australia, Bahrain, Canada, India, Indonesia, and South Africa; (3) marketing or exporting EF-2000 Eurofighter "Typhoon” aircraft to Australia, Austria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Greece, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, and Switzerland; (4) marketing three refurbished Type 23 frigates to Chile

DDTC initiated its investigation...alleging criminal conspiracy to violate U.S. federal laws...plea agreement capped a global criminal settlement involving both the U.S. Justice Department and the U.K. Serious Fraud Office, which followed a long-ranging international fraud and bribery investigation against BAE UK, and which resulted in a total of nearly $450 million in criminal fines..."

Northrop settled charges that, between 1994 and 2003, Northrop and its predecessor in interest, Litton Industries, Inc. (acquired in 2001), exported militarized versions of aircraft inertial navigation systems, as well as related software source code and defense services, to unauthorized end users, including in proscribed destinations.

One charge of exporting technical data in the form of software related to significant military equipment used for Air Force One without authorization to an end user in Russia.

Twenty-seven charges of exporting defense articles constituting significant military equipment, including technical data in the form of embedded software, without authorization to ITAR-proscribed countries; namely, Angola, Indonesia, China, and Ukraine.

Forty-six charges of exporting defense articles constituting significant military equipment, including technical data in the form of embedded software, without authorization to end users in Austria, Brazil, Brunei, Greece, Israel, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and Yemen.

One charge of reexporting defense articles constituting significant military equipment, including technical data in the form of embedded software, without authorization to end users in Romania, South Korea, Indonesia, and the United Kingdom.

Northrop also repeatedly defrauds the U.S. government in other ways:
http://www.whistleblowerlawyerblawg.com/2014/05/what-defense-contractor-...

"...top 20 largest payments made by defense contractors to resolve allegations of fraud, Northrop-Grumman made the list 4 times, coming in at 1, 3, 7 and 11."

Raytheon Company settled civil charges with the U.S. Justice Department concerning the unauthorized exportation of defense articles, technical data, and defense services to Canada and to Pakistan, and the unauthorized retransfer of defense articles through Canada to Pakistan, concerning the AN/TRC-170 troposcatter system.

Twenty-six violations, as follows:
(1) Fifteen charges of exporting defense articles and technical data without authorization (ITAR §127.1(a)(1)).
(2) Six charges of conspiring or causing the unauthorized exportation of defense articles or defense services (ITAR §127.1(a)(3)).
(3) Four charges of omitting material facts or making false statements on an export or temporary control document (ITAR § 127.2).
(4) One charge of willfully inducing, or aiding and abetting, ITAR violations (ITAR § 127.1(d)).

Penalty
$25 million

The action taken for transgressions? Merely some fines...a small discount in purchase price if you will. Nobody goes to prison for selling 'secrets', equipment and knowledge if they are part of the DoD network, so there is no disincentive, but a massive incentive through enormous profit/power. In the wake of the ITAR investigations, nobody from guilty parties like Northrop Grumman, BAE Systems, Lockheed, Boeing, L3, Raytheon ever went to prison for selling to the 'enemy'. And who are the big 3 contractors used today? They are in that above list; none of the "guilty" contractors are banned from further business. Rather, they get more business from the U.S. government.

Narus' enterprise deep-packet technology are used by the U.S. government at communication hubs (like AT&T) to spy on all network traffic? The same Narus, a DoD/NSA contractor, that also shares with this 'enemy' the precise technology in question in what is considered good business practice? The same Narus that has facilities in places like Italy, India, Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and China, Iran, Russia!
http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20060405005801/en/Narus-Gains-Entr...
http://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/andrei-soldatov/chinese-systems-a...
http://news.tmcnet.com/news/2006/04/05/1541853.htm

It's a sham. They play both sides, periodically introduce a scare that our defense has been undermined and therefore, the "solution" is to pour more into "combating" the problem...all while the problem is still liberally applied to the situation in the form of deliberately undermining actual security to of course provide insecurity and thus perpetuating additional need for more security. Fun times.

Reminds me of WWII and Nazi Germany; that played out the same way. Why not? It continues to work. The contradictions of what is allowed by DoD for the 'enemy' vs. what is traitorous for anyone else is vast and extensive:

Weapons, artillery and training given to Ho Chi Min of North Vietnam used against our French 'ally' is OK for U.S. gov.: http://www.historynet.com/ho-chi-minh-and-the-oss.htm

Working with Nazis of the German 'enemy' against our 'allies' in post-war WWII: http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB146/

IBM can have offices in the German concentration/execution camps like Auschwitz in WWII:

http://www.villagevoice.com/2002-10-08/news/the-ibm-link-to-auschwitz/
http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/328-121/10198-focus-ibm-at-...

JP Morgan/Chase can provide financing to Soviet since the 1920s, China since the 1940s and throughout the entire Cold War: http://www.jpmorganchase.com/corporate/About-JPMC/document/shorthistory.pdf

This "both sides" and "stoke the panic every once in awhile" is a good gig, if you can get it.

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@ChezJfrey
ChezJfrey, where have you been all our lives!

I know you've been here and have been writing so well, but this the truth that needs publishing far and wide. Bless you.

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@Linda Wood to a topic I had done a ton of research in the past. I also admit that I have not recently checked links are still valid, just to preempt the possibility some are now dead.

In any case, I used to voraciously scour these types of topics during the "Snowden years" circa 2012-2014. I've posted similar screeds (I admit some of this was copy-paste from my saved originals) in various forums during those years, but to little avail. I've essentially given up this sort of research anymore, because frankly, most don't care.

I understand the mentality; we have little to no power to change anything, so we shrug and carry on. But, I also prefer not having blinders to the situation at hand; I refuse to be bamboozled into thinking that any of this is "real" anymore. It's a spectacle and farce used to manipulate perception.

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arendt's picture

@ChezJfrey

Because, if you had researched and written all that in one hour, you would be an AI. Smile

I've posted similar screeds (I admit some of this was copy-paste from my saved originals) in various forums

Your first post makes your point in excrutiating detail. Thanks. So, I think I need to go back and correct my OP - that basically this is another psyop.

One question: Is this a psyop from the Trump side, trying to move the focus from Russia to China (which is the priority that Team Trump has always had)?

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@arendt @arendt This strategy allows for a PsyOp of convenience.

I can't say for sure why/how the "target" of enmity-du-jour is decided. But I think the strategy allows for its use at any time, because that door is always there, and deliberately so. So in this case, if one wants to try teasing out the motive as a distraction from Russia to China, for purposes of sanctions, or whatever...well, good luck determining that. I think, rather, that even that is pointless and besides the point.

These people aren't stupid, yet I see over and over that people like to pinpoint the "stupid" decisions and rail about it, and bicker over how to get better decisions out of these people. Yet, going to my #1 and #2, for this specific scenario, and looking back at 2011, where Chinese chips were used and "discovered" to have backdoors. Why do we not see "hard questions" being grilled about how in 2011, these Chinese manufacturers were supplying USAF undermined chips, yet 7 years later, we are still using them for DoD stuff? And even if they were faced with these "hard questions," nobody thinks about how these super-smart, military minds just never thought that nation we continually clash with in South China Sea, "pivot to Asia" conflicts would have done stuff like this with products we purchase to combat them in the first place? They are not stupid.

The fact it was being done, and continued despite the 2011 revelation, I posit, is deliberate. Same with supplying them with tech (as seen by ITAR material) in the first place; same with obtaining our supply from "enemy" nations...it is all deliberate because it builds in the case where our supply is automatically undermined, or our competitor/enemy nations have the same tech, the same military capabilities, the same destructive power that can be used against us...so therefore, we periodically troll this fact out, and voila! We need more budget, more resources, more everything...all the time...forever. Nobody questions because we see the enemy with the weaponry and power, just like we have.

Further, the other alternative "solutions," a.k.a. sanctions against Russia and China. What has been effect so far? Russia became stronger and more independent and furthered their capabilities against the U.S. Same for China. So levying more sanctions on them will do what? Further strengthen them maybe? Well, gee isn't our government stupid? No, I contend this is also deliberate. Because if they keep getting stronger, and evidence of such is palpable and recognizable to many U.S. citizens, then again, we need more! They are a threat! The U.S. doesn't inadvertently, mistakenly shoot themselves in the foot; that is by design. Defeating the Taliban that eradicated opium, thereby flooding the world in more opium...Big Pharma, and voila! Now the "opioid crisis!" Gee, how stupid, eh?

Remember, we always need a viable and strong threat, to justify soaking more into "defeating" it. Then, again, further...why is this justification even necessary? We already know, from evidence, that the average U.S. citizen has zero effect/input into the decisions/actions of our Federal Government, yet despite that, they continue to try rationalizing and justifying this to us. Why? It has never mattered what we want or don't want, and we have no recourse. So what's the point?

Some may argue to get factions bickering and fighting among ourselves, over stuff we think we have no control over to begin with, and I think that is partly in the right direction; the grasshoppers figured that out.

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arendt's picture

@ChezJfrey

I mean, yes, I can totally accept what you are saying; and I have said similar things myself.

I think the strategy allows for its use at any time, because that door is always there, and deliberately so. So in this case, if one wants to try teasing out the motive as a distraction from Russia to China, for purposes of sanctions, or whatever...well, good luck determining that. I think, rather, that even that is pointless and besides the point...

Remember, we always need a viable and strong threat, to justify soaking more into "defeating" it. Then, again, further...why is this justification even necessary? We already know, from evidence, that the average U.S. citizen has zero effect/input into the decisions/actions of our Federal Government, yet despite that, they continue to try rationalizing and justifying this to us. Why? It has never mattered what we want or don't want, and we have no recourse. So what's the point?

Some may argue to get factions bickering and fighting among ourselves, over stuff we think we have no control over to begin with, and I think that is partly in the right direction; the grasshoppers figured that out.

The question for me is, if I accept how truly helpless, and essentially uninformed/ misinformed I am, then what is the point of even following how these aristo assholes are spending my tax dollars to enslave me and any part of the world that can't resist them? Why don't I just drop politics and go about my business. Then, when the MIC elephant stomps on me, I will just die quickly after having lived as happy a life I can manage in this formerly decent country.

Oh, and who are the "grasshoppers"? All I've got is "Grasshopper and ant"

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@arendt Difficult to see the point.

I've had a similar debate with my wife and have also seen commentary regarding Chris Hedges and his views; I think Hedges has actually dismissed any optimism he may have once had.

The massive polarization, and decline of any discourse, having now degraded to invective, everywhere, fails my test for recognizing any way out at this point. Also, even in the unlikely event of some mass agreement were to occur, who and how many can actually afford the time and risk to overturn and rectify this disaster? Not nearly enough, I'm almost certain. I have optimism where I can logically discern a path and workable strategy; I see none at this point.

Doesn't mean I'm correct, but that explains my pessimism.

Oh, and you are very close with Aesop! Derived from that very tale: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Bug%27s_Life

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QexXe9NWO8Q

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lotlizard's picture

@arendt  
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kung_Fu_%28TV_series%29

Where latter-day Star Wars fandom might say “padawan,” Kung Fu fandom said “grasshopper.”

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@ChezJfrey "Remember, we always need a viable and strong threat, to justify soaking more into "defeating" it." Just like Russiagate itself.

And thanks for all that information. Hardly even surprising anymore. I personally have pretty much stopped using the "stupid" excuse for our owners as it is more obvious every day there's always a purpose behind their "stupidity." They may be psychopaths, in my opinion they most certainly are, but they damned sure are not stupid.

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Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur

@ChezJfrey
to change all of this. Knowledge is power. Your ability to bring your research to as many people as possible is very important. You are a treasure.

Antony Sutton of the Hoover Institution documented the transfer of U.S industrial technology to the Soviet Union in his three volumes, Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development: 1917–1930 (1968), 1930–1945 (1971), and 1945–1965 (1973).

In this article, he lists U.S. corporations in the Soviet Union in the 1960-1985 Period:

http://www.reformed-theology.org/html/books/best_enemy/appendix_f.htm

Appendix F:

U.S. Firms Trading with the Soviet Union
in the 1960-1985 Period

Company Product
AEC AtomicEnergy
Acme Mfg. Co. Machine Tools
Alcoa Aluminum
Allen Bradley Machine Tools
Alliance Tool & Die Corp. Machine Tools
Alliance Tool & Die Machine Tools
Allis-Chalmers Machine Tools
Allsteel Press Co. Machine Tools
Alpha Press Co. Non Ferrous Metals
American Can Co. Iron & Steel
American Can Co. Food Machinery
American Chain & Cable Machine Tools
American Express Services
American Magnesium Co. Metals Technology
Applied Magnetic Corp. Electronics
Ara Oztemal (Subsidiary of Satra Corp.) Trading
Armco Steel Steel
Atlas Fabricators Inc. Machine Tools
Automatic Production Sys.(Div. of Ingersoll-Rand) Motor Vehicles
Babcock & Wilcox Boiler Technology
Bechtel Construction
Belarus Equip. of Canada Ltd. Agriculture Equip.
Bendix Corp. Machine Tools
Besley Grinder Co. Machine Tools
Bliss, E.W. Div. of Gulf & Western Industries Motor Vehicles
Boeing Machine Tools
Boeing Aircraft Technology
Borg-Warner Machine Tools
Brown & Root Inc. Construction
Brown & Sharpe Mfg. Co. Machine Tools
Brunswick Corp. Machine Tools
Bryant Chucking Grinder Corp. Machine Tools
Burr-Brown Research Corp. N.A.
C-E Cast Equipment Machine Tools
Carborundum Co. Motor Vehicles
Carlton Machine Tool Co. Machine Tools
Carpenter Technology Corp. N.A.
Caterpillar Tractor Co. Agriculture Equip.
Centrispray Machine Tools
Century Data Electronics
* Chase Manhattan Bank Finance
Chemetron Corp. Machine Tools
Cincinnati Milacron Inc. Machine Tools
Clark Equipment Machine Tools
Cleveland Crane & Eng Machine Tools
Colonial Broach Machine Tools
Combustion Engineering Motor Vehicles
Comma Corp. Electronics
* Control Data Advanced Computers
Cooper Industries Inc. Petroleum Equipment
Cromalloy-Kessler Asso. Inc. Machine Tools
Cross Co. Machine Tools
D.A.B. Industries Inc. Prime Movers
Denison Div. of Abex Corp. Machine Tools
DoAll Co. Machine Tools
Douglas Aircraft Machine Tools
Dow Chemicals Chemicals
Dresser Industries Oil Tool Equip.
Dr. Dvorkovitz & Asso Non Ferrous Metals
E.I. dupont de Nemour & Co. Chemicals
E.W. Bliss, Div. of Gulf Machine Tools
Easco Sparcatron Machine Tools
Electronic Memories & Magnetics Corp. Electronics
El Paso Natural Gas Co. Gas Technology
Englehard Minerals & Chem. Corp. Machine Tools
Ex-Cell-O Corp. Machine Tools
FMC Machine Tools
Fenn Rolling Mills Co. Rolling Equip.
Fon du Lac Machine Tools
Ford Motor Co. Non Ferrous Metals
GMC Machine Tools
Gearhart-Owen Petroleum
General Dynamics Aeronautical Tech.
General Electric Petroleum Equip.
General Electric Machine Tools
General Tool Corp. Machine Tools
Giddings & Lewis Machine Tools
Gleason Works Motor Vehicles
*Gleason Works Machine Tools
Goddard Space Flight Center Machine Tools
Gould Inc. Motor Vehicles
Gulf General Atomic Atomic Energy
Gulf Oil Corp. Petroleum Equip.
Halcroft & Co. Machine Tools
Harig Products, Inc. Machine Tools
Hewlett-Packard Electronics
Holcroft & Co. Motor Vehicle
Honeywell Computers
Honeywell Information Systems Electronics
Hudson Vibratory Co. Mechanical Equip.
IBM Machine Tools
IBM Computers
IBM Electronics
Ingersoll Machine Tools
Ingersoll Milling Machine Motor Vehicles
Ingersoll Rand Co. Machine Tools
*International Computers Electronics
Intel Corp. Electronics
International Nickel Nickel Technology
International Harvester Machine Tools
Irving Trust Co. Finance
Itel Electronics
Jones & Lamson (Textron) Machine Tools
Joy Mfg Drilling Equip.
Kaiser Aluminum Non Ferrous Metals
Kaiser Aluminum & Chem. Corp. N.A.
Kaiser Industries Corp. Machine Tools
Kearney & Trecker Corp. Machine Tools
Kennametal Inc. Machine Tools
Kingsbury Machine Tool Corp. Machine Tools
Koehring Co. Machine Tools
LaSalle Machine Tool Co. Machine Tools
Leasco Electronics
Leesona Corp. Textile Equip.
Libby-Owens-Ford Co. N.A.
Litton Indust. Int'l. Mach. Tool Syst. Group Machine Tools
Lockheed Aircraft Technology
Lummus Corp. Oil Technology
McDonnell Douglas Aircraft
Micromatic Hone Machine Tools
Minnie Punch & Die Co. Machine Tools
Modicon Corp. Machine Tools
Monarch Machine Tools
Monsanto Chemical
Moore Special Tool Co. Machine Tools
NBS Machine Tools
National Engineering Machine Tools
NED's Reactor & Fuel Mfg. Fac. Atomic Energy
Norton Co. Grinding Equip.
* Occidental Petroleum Major factor in complete plants
Pneumatic Tool Co. Machine Tools
Pratt & Whitney Machine Tools
Pullman Corp. Machine Tools
RCA Electronics
Raycon Corp. Machine Tools
Raytheon Electronics
Reynolds Metals Co. Metals
Rockwell International Machine Tools
Sikorsky Aircraft Aircraft
Singer Co. Machine Tools
Snow Mfg. Co. Machine Tools
Sorbus Inc. Electronics
Spectra-Physics Inc. Electronics
Speedram Corp. Machine Tools
Sperry Rand Machine Tools
Standard Oil Oil Technology
Sundstrand Corp. Machine Tools
Swindell-Dressler Co. Motor Vehicle
Swindell-Dressler Co. Machine Tools
Systrom-Donner Corp. Electronics
Technic Inc. Non Ferrous Metals
Tektronix Inc. Electronics
Teledyne Landis Machine Tools
Teledyne Pines Co. Prime Movers
Tenneco Chemicals
Texas Eastern Transmission N.A.
Textron Inc. Machine Tools
Udylite Corp. Machine Tools
Univac Electronics
V&O Press Machine Tools
VSI Automational Assembly Inc. Machine Tools
Varian Electronics
Verson Allsteel Press Co. Machine Tools
Waveteck Electronics
Wells-Index Corp. Machine Tools
Welt Int'l Corp. Trade
Western Industrial Prod. Corp. Machine Tools
Xerox Corp. Electronics
Young & Bertke Co. N.A.

*These are the key companies involved.

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If nothing else, this story is another example of how the overwhelming majority of us cannot possibly understand the truth or fiction of cyber claims by our government or media. We don't have enough technical knowledge of what they're talking about, and as the comments you cite demonstrate, even when writers appear to know something technical, they may disagree.

So the report you are presenting may mean our cyber security is vulnerable to manufacturers' control, or it may be a way of changing our view of who is the ENEMY from Russia to China, because the Russia thing has run its course. We're in no position to know.

So we have to go with what we do know, which is: CIA BAD.

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arendt's picture

@Linda Wood

...for the average person older than 60. For those younger than 30, I think they have a completely different take on tech. Its magic, but its always been there; so they have no problem with the fact that they do not understand the basic technology that runs their lives.

We don't have enough technical knowledge of what they're talking about, and as the comments you cite demonstrate, even when writers appear to know something technical, they may disagree.

The first microprocessor, the 4-bit word Intel 4040, introduced in 1974, had a total of 3,000 transistors (one third of one millionth of today's CPUs); and it could do useful work. Today, the transistor counts per chip are in the 10 Billion range. Here are some stats from January, 2017 - almost two years ago.

CPUs:
1st place goes to Oracle Sparc M7 Chip - 10,000 M transistors on a single chip
At 2nd place is Intel Xeon E5-2600 - 7,200 M transistors on a single chip

GPUs:
1st place - GPU100 Pascal with 15,300 M transistors.
2nd place - Fiji by AMD - 8,9oo M transistors.

FPGA:
1st place - Stratix 10 with 30,000+ M transistors.
2nd place - Virtex-Ultrascale XCVU440 - 20,000+ M transistors.

https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-maximum-number-of-transistors-on-a-sin...

With those transistor counts, even a serious-sized processor would be like one millionth of chip area.

The issue with the Bloomberg article is that, to know which part of the massive dataflows coming across gigabit links is the data you need to grab and manipulate would require a lot of smarts and a fair amount of memory. Not to mention, the device itself would have to be capable of transmitting and receiving at gigabit rates, which means it needs to catch bits, pack them up (de-serialize) into 4 or 8 or 16 bit words, do the calculation, then download (serialize) the result back to the serial bitstream, all while having a big enough memory to buffer the bitstream for long enough to do the calculation.

The more I sat back and thought about it, the more the whole concept seemed ridiculous. But, since I tend to believe things first and debunk them second, my initial reaction was OMG. When people started pointing out the "finding a password needle in a datastream haystack" problem, the story fell into a Maxwell's Demon category for me. But I'm a hardcore techie.

I can completely see how non-tech people are befuddled.

Yet, at the same time, it frustrates me that people use this intrusive, spying crap for more and more of their lives. People just don't seem to get that they are paying for their chains (of silicon), and that free shipping on Amazon is not worth a life of being spied on. When are people going to stop buying all this tech crapola? When are they going to demand laws that mandate they get to see or speak to a human instead of being bamboozled by a website or a voicemail tree?

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@arendt But software...hardware is out of my scope of knowledge.

But my initial thinking with this story was, "why bother with a separate, small, yet discoverable chip in the first place?"

The Chinese are already supplying processor chips, so the simpler, yet much more difficult-for-discovery approach, would be simply to use a processor already pinned, wired and in-control, which would make it far more difficult to detect any malfeasance. A story about "rice-sized, OMG! Look at the pic of what we found!" immediately struck me as a pseudo-hit-the-emotion-button-sounding-somewhat-plausible-plain-to-eye story.

So, without any further knowledge, my inclination was to figure the "bombshell" was simply a scare tactic for the masses that would be used as justification and rationale for some form of political hackery.

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arendt's picture

@ChezJfrey

Yeah, I'm an IT guy myself. But software...hardware is out of my scope of knowledge.

I'm not quite sure what it means? Does it mean that you just push buttons on a GUI?

BEGIN RAMBLING SET OF EXAMPLES:
A lot of scientific software has elaborate GUIs that insulate the scientists from the computing. For example, structural biologists use software that shows rotatable 3D views of proteins, that allows them to pick atoms or amino acids and move them about or substitute them or recalculate their energies - all without a clue what is going on inside the computer.

Another example would be database, where one knows the SQL command set and knows the basic Programmers Model of a database and knows Coad's Laws. However, DBs have gotten tricky in the internet world, what with NoSQL and many flavors of non-ACID. Neverthelss, I suppose all that is inside the Programmers' Model and not down in the software, much less the hardware.

Still, one would hope that people understand the difference between an application and an OS functionality, understand vaguely how internet routing happens (domain name servers, TCP/IP addresses). Cause if they don't they are going to be easy to fool with various kinds of malware. Oh, wait, they already are.
END RAMBLING SET OF EXAMPLES

I suppose people can think of a computer the same way as an automobile. They vaguely know how it functions, but they certainly know what its used for and how to use it. If it breaks, they take it to the mechanic.

I hate to think that computer tech is now as wrapped in mystery as autos are. Of course, half the reason autos are opaque is because of all the microprocessors inside of them, and the need to buy electronic diagnostic readers just to get a read on engine behavior.

Thing is, you drive your car for a couple of hours a day; you use a computer or computer controlled object (TV, game, cellphone, etc) for most of your waking hours. And its getting worse: QR codes all over the place, self-order kiosks in restaurants, self-checkout lanes in supermarkets, automatic checkout in creepy Amazon stores.

You seem a smart IT person. How do you cope with the increasing withdrawl of corporations behind a wall of hardware and software?

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@arendt

I'm not quite sure what it means? Does it mean that you just push buttons on a GUI?

I write software code, in languages such as C++ and C#. Compilers supplied in the tookit I might be using (e.g. Visual Studio, GCC, GNU) distill my code to lower level ASM and eventually to machine-level instructions to fit any particular CPU instruction set, but that's about all I know about that part of it.

When people are discussing what certain other chips, transistors, buses and such on a board do, I have no basis or knowledge about what may or may not be factual.

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arendt's picture

@ChezJfrey

C++ is a fairly complex object-oriented language, what with all the inheritance rules. It takes some skill to write efficient, readable, maintainable C++ code. Nobody writes assembler anymore. You can't optimize it for all the exotic datapaths in todays CPUs. So, you are as close to the metal as anyone gets these days (unless they are programming truly exotic hunks of custom hardware.)

As for the hardware side, well at least you are aware of chips, busses, etc as components of a computer. Again, hardware has gotten so complex that unless you are a designer, you are playing at the lego-block level of "which board has the functionality I need" or maybe "does this bus have the capacity I need to support all the boards plugged into it". If your app does not move massive amounts of data in a time critical manner, its perfectly fine to know nothing about the architecture of your machine.

Of course that's just my opinion, but I hope you take it positively.

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@arendt The dilemma has become time vs. breadth; as sophistication in techniques and overwhelming knowledgebase has increased, we have forced specialization required to keep up with demands.

For instance, in the beginning, I suppose it was easier to keep abreast of how a small, simple program is distilled into assembly, read through the resultant ASM to ensure the instructions met expectations...if one desired.

As time has gone on, and hardware/communication features expanded immensely, I can't do this for large, elaborate programs; I only dive into the assembly when a bug is encountered that is not easily discernible in the source. Also, as compiler optimizations have also expanded, to meet newer/better chip instruction features, new libraries to help ease front-end development/hiding many of the lower-level tasks that one used to continually program over and over, that now free up repeating tasks/reinventing the wheel each time, we have obfuscated code, hidden in a supplied library, that I no longer can see or look at.

Add in emerging/different communication protocols, handshakes, TCP, routing, dbs, etc., the knowledge to be "expert" in all areas is now too vast, so we specialize and only know, "enough to be dangerous" in those other areas, outside the scope of our personal endeavors.

That, of course, makes exploits and cheats in the fringes or touchpoints of those overlapping software/hardware points much more difficult to predict and/or mitigate in our solutions.

It's concerning, but I also don't see an easy way out because I don't have the time/energy, and I also don't presume I would even be capable of becoming an expert in TCP or networking, in conjunction with the software side of which I could probably claim I am an expert in; I feel there is too much to know.

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arendt's picture

@ChezJfrey

Add in emerging/different communication protocols, handshakes, TCP, routing, dbs, etc., the knowledge to be "expert" in all areas is now too vast, so we specialize and only know, "enough to be dangerous" in those other areas, outside the scope of our personal endeavors.

That, of course, makes exploits and cheats in the fringes or touchpoints of those overlapping software/hardware points much more difficult to predict and/or mitigate in our solutions.

It's concerning, but I also don't see an easy way out because I don't have the time/energy, and I also don't presume I would even be capable of becoming an expert in TCP or networking, in conjunction with the software side of which I could probably claim I am an expert in; I feel there is too much to know.

Ages ago I worked at Bell Labs (it seems most folks under the age of 30 never heard of it.) when the telephone network was the biggest computer on the planet. It had so many layers of routing, multiplexing, and control that no one understood the whole thing, and everyone realized that no one person could.

The BL solution was the "subject matter expert". If you were architecting a phone service that used white box A123, and you had no idea how A123 behaved, you got on the telephone book. You looked up what department built the A123, and you called some other labbie in that department. He would answer your questions, quite knowledgably.

At today's chip densities, plus Local Area Networking, plus the internet, just running a few PCs at a company has too much "stuff" for any one person to know it all. You can call up your vendor, if its someone like Dell or HP or Toshiba or IBM, but if you are using some hardware that they don't make, good luck. Welcome to the fingerpointing circle of doom.

So, I'm with you. The whole thing has become a Tower of Babel because all vendors - both hardware and software - want to maximize their market share. That's why the graphics chip vendor fights with the OS for who will control video display. That's why the OS fights with the PC hardware vendor for who controls the box. It is all a Hobbesian war, a complete nightmare. Most good coders tell me "go look up your problem on Stack Overflow" or some other "help" site, where some good advice is mixed in with big helpings of disdain and many useless solutions by people as clueless as you.

That's why its a field day for malware. And now they want to push money onto the internet so that they instead of robbing me of my time, they can literally rob me of my savings. BTW, this all got out of control when Wall St. got computerized.

Sorry for the rant; the problem is just beyond one person's grasp. And all the organizations that might have the reach to address it are owned by the people causing the problems.

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@arendt
about your concern about us consuming invasive gadgets. But as a non-techie, I'm at the level that experiences alarm when reading this part of what you posted:

Elemental also started working with American spy agencies. In 2009 the company announced a development partnership with In-Q-Tel Inc., the CIA’s investment arm, a deal that paved the way for Elemental servers to be used in national security missions across the U.S. government.

The CIA has an "investment arm"? And Elemental makes servers used in "national security missions across the U.S. government"?

This gadget could be nothing, for which there is a budget of an enormous something. Big Bucks. Big Nothing. The whole thing could be bogus. How would the American people ever know?

That's the thing about the Russiagate saga. Based on a questionable private contractor, we're supposed to trust that they found absolutely identifying evidence of Russian cyber fingerprints and from there go to a $trillion in modernization of our nuclear weapons. Plus new submarines, because the new nukes don't fit the old subs.

How hard was that? Who can verify anything?

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arendt's picture

@Linda Wood

They function in a hermetically sealed environment and try to do everything in secret. When the CIA put out the request for its building in the 1950 time frame, it refused to tell the bidders how many people would work in the facility. That's how paranoid they are.

The CIA was started by traitors like the Dulles Brothers, who did business with the Nazis (John Foster), who made unauthorized peace deals with Nazi Armies (Alan), who hired ex-Nazis by the boatload for the CIA(Alan). If there is a way to hurt people with computers, they will find it.

The CIA has an "investment arm"? And Elemental makes servers used in "national security missions across the U.S. government"? This gadget could be nothing, for which there is a budget of an enormous something. Big Bucks. Big Nothing. The whole thing could be bogus.

As part of its paranoid style, the CIA seems to have developed its own independent computer spying capabilities, thereby duplicating the NSA, the DIA, and several other government agencies. I think the idea behind In-Q-Tel was to fund companies that produced hardware useful for the CIA. So, its no surprise that In-Q-Tel-funded Elemental sold products to the government.

The NSA has way more computing resources than the CIA; the DIA is in charge of military intel (by law). So, WTF did the CIA need such capabilites for? Well, to prevent all their dirty double dealing with false flags, funding ISIS, etc from being known by their competitors in the intel biz.

I doubt that all the money the CIA spent was wasted; and even funding Elemental was not wasteful. All spy agencies need really fast custom computers, and that's what Elemental was selling. Such computers have many uses. Its only how these machines are used that is wasteful, not the machines themselves. So, your observation that it could all be a "big nothing" applies to the entire Black Budget. Computers are nothing special in that regard.

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@arendt
with what you say here, except that saying the Dulles brothers did business with the Nazis is, I think, putting it mildly. The Dulles brothers were the attorneys who made the industrialization of Nazi Germany possible, who made the licensing of U.S. corporations to be exempt from the Trading With the Enemy Act for the duration of WWII possible, and who furthered the cause of fascism throughout the postwar period. They were not opportunists. They built and operated the Nazi war machine. They were key figures in the rise of Hitler from obscurity to power and plunder.

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arendt's picture

@Linda Wood

made the licensing of U.S. corporations to be exempt from the Trading With the Enemy Act for the duration of WWII

I thought that got suspended after Pearl Harbor. IIRC, didn't Prescott Bush's bank get busted for trading with the enemy. Of course, all they got was a fine and a cease and desist order. But, I thought we stopped shipping them stuff.

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@arendt
was indeed busted, in the sense that his money laundering enterprise for Nazi Germany was seized in 1942.

http://tarpley.net/online-books/george-bush-the-unauthorized-biography/c...

On Oct. 20, 1942, the U.S. government ordered the seizure of Nazi German banking operations in New York City which were being conducted by Prescott Bush.

FDR did however license corporations to finance, fuel, and maintain the German war effort for the duration of the war, and that is the subject of Charles Higham's book, Trading With the Enemy.

http://www.maebrussell.com/Articles%20and%20Notes/Trading%20With%20The%2...

Preface to the book TRADING WITH THE ENEMY: An Exposé of The Nazi-American Money-Plot 1933-1949 by Charles Higham
Delacorte Press - 1983

… A presidential edict, issued six days after December 7, 1941, actually set up the legislation whereby licensing arrangements for trading with the enemy could officially be granted. Often during the years after Pearl Harbor the government permitted such trading.

https://utdr.utoledo.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=http%253A%252F%252F...

WHAT IS PROHIBITED UNDER THE ACT
It is unlawful for any person in the United States to trade or attempt to trade directly or indirectly with or for the benefit of any person who is an enemy or ally of an enemy, unless authorized by license of the President (Sec. 3a)

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arendt's picture

@Linda Wood

At least have to read a skim of the book. HowTF did that happen?

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@arendt
to you wasn't very comprehensive. In terms of our shipping things to the German war machine, much of U.S. industrial support was through banking and financial services, through Switzerland, and oil, coal, steel, chemical, technical, and manufacturing facilities owned and operated by U.S. companies in Germany and the countries occupied by the Nazis. Standard Oil, General Electric, and others were multi-national, and Standard Oil owned the oil fields and facilities in Europe and Eurasia that serviced the German onslaught. Much oil was shipped however by Standard Oil from South America to Axis facilities in Europe, as well as from Mexico to Japan.

What Higham discovered and thoroughly researched, in the National Archives, in interviews with former Roosevelt administration officials, and in government documents openly available but ignored, is that Standard Oil, Chase Bank, and other major U.S. corporations built, fueled and maintained the German war effort for the duration of the war. It was not a secret among high level interests in the country. It was purged after the war through wrongful classification and through media efforts to conceal.

It's not surprising that we are talking about it now. We are aware that a powerful force in our government favors and arms the Saudi government, a psychopathic, murderous regime. Yet, we allow it. Will we join the Saudi onslaught onto the people of the Middle East? Have we already joined them by enabling them? This is similar to the 1930s, when there was no confusion about corporate support for Hitler. It was understood. The leaders of capitalist industry fully expected the United States to enter the war on the side of Germany. Why on earth would we not? We had done everything possible, and much that was financially impossible in the midst of a worldwide economic depression, to arm Germany to the point of being a threat to the world.

The enigma is not why Roosevelt allowed industrial treason. He was their candidate of course. The question is why he turned against them in waiting until Pearl Harbor to declare which side we were on. The seizure of Prescott Bush's enterprise showed that our Treasury Dept. and most if not all of the administration were loyal to the country, but the State Dept. was rife with corporate insiders, and Roosevelt was surrounded by fascists. On the one hand, this is difficult for us to understand. On the other hand, it is identical to what we are seeing today.

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arendt's picture

@Linda Wood

Thanks for the good brief summary. It makes FDR seem even more enigmatic than I already knew him to be. The man was one hell of a poker player.

Definitely going to be trying to find this book.

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@arendt get paid for our time waiting and waiting on those webs?

Seriously, companies are stealing our lives from us by forcing us to wait and wait (and that goes for retailers, too, who understaff).

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dfarrah