Here’s a letter the US Labor Department sent to Wells Fargo recently. (I had to screenshot it in parts, which is why it’s broken up here):

The Labor Department sent a similar letter to Microsoft:

There is no chance at all that a Biden administration Labor Department would investigate major corporations for anti-white discrimination. Keep that in mind. Naturally, there has been negative press coverage. For example:

Samuel Bagenstos, a law professor at the University of Michigan who served in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division under President Barack Obama, called the Labor Department’s letters “a perversion of what they were set up to do.”

“If you look at what Microsoft says it’s doing, they’re making sure that they have a sufficient pipeline of people, so that when it comes time to make promotion decisions, they’re not arbitrarily excluding African Americans and minorities from management positions,” Bagenstos said.

Bagenstos, who served as a law clerk for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg when she sat on the Supreme Court, said that’s what the law requires.

“I think the best way to think about this is another one of those Trump culture war acts that are being taken right before the election,” he said.

Bull. Here is a link to the letter from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella to the company’s employees that drew the Labor Department’s attention. Excerpt:

And look, this is typical of how the Left handles things: if you raise an objection to this phony “diversity” stuff, then if you aren’t a bigot, then you are at least engaged in “culture war” nonsense.

Bloomberg’s biased report on this investigation features condemnation of the Trump administration for the Labor Department inquiry, but nowhere quotes from the actual Microsoft statement that triggered it. If all you knew about the investigation was what Bloomberg reported, you would have no idea that Microsoft actually appears to be intending to discriminate against non-black employees. Woke Capitalism and Woke Media are all committed to defending the Narrative, no matter what.

The Labor Department’s letter to Wells Fargo announcing the investigation says it was triggered by this June statement by the bank’s CEO Charles Scharf. Excerpt:

How is this not evidence of structural racism? How is Wells Fargo going to double black leadership in five years without actively hiring and firing people on the basis of race? Senior leaders are incentivized to hire based on race (“improving diverse representation”), or lose compensation.

According to theorists of “antiracism” like Ibram X. Kendi, any time you see fewer blacks within an institution (unless we are talking about professional sports, I suppose), that is conclusive evidence of racism. Racial discrimination is the only explanation. It could not possibly be that, for example, fewer blacks chose to study finance (Wells Fargo), tech (Microsoft) or in related fields that would have brought them into the workplace at those particular companies. Only racism explains it. As Kendi writes in his megaselling book How To Be Antiracist:

Racial inequity is when two or more racial groups are not standing on approximately equal footing. Here’s an example of racial inequity: 71 percent of White families lived in owner-occupied homes in 2014, compared to 45 percent of Latinx families and 41 percent of Black families. Racial equity is when two or more racial groups are standing on a relatively equal footing. An example of racial equity would be if there were relatively equitable percentages of all three racial groups living in owner-occupied homes in the forties, seventies, or, better, nineties.

A racist policy is any measure that produces or sustains racial inequity between racial groups. An antiracist policy is any measure that produces or sustains racial equity between racial groups. By policy, I mean written and unwritten laws, rules, procedures, processes, regulations, and guidelines that govern people. There is no such thing as a nonracist or race-neutral policy. Every policy in every institution in every community in every nation is producing or sustaining either racial inequity or equity between racial groups.

More:

The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.

This is what Microsoft apparently believes. This is what Wells Fargo apparently believes. This is what they are committed to doing: discriminating against non-black employees to fit this ideological idea of antiracism.

The Trump Administration is calling them out for it, and forcing them through this investigation to explain how their intention to discriminate against non-blacks in hiring and promotion is legal.

This is one reason why elections matter. The corporate elites under Woke Capitalism are committed to  implementing systemic anti-white, anti-Asian, anti-Latino racism in the workplace. They are bigots — but they’re bigots for the Left, so it’s okay.

Interestingly, the Wells Fargo CEO got in trouble recently:

Wells Fargo CEO Charles Scharf apologized Wednesday for comments he made suggesting it is difficult to find qualified Black executives in the financial industry.

Scharf said in a memo to employees “there is a very limited pool of Black talent to recruit from” in corporate America. The memo was written in June, but became public only this week.

The comments and similar statements made in a Zoom meeting, reported by Reuters, led to an intense backlash in Washington and on social media.

“Perhaps it is the CEO of Wells Fargo who lacks the talent to recruit Black workers,” said Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez of New York, on Twitter.

Scharf on Wednesday said in a prepared statement that his comments reflected “my own unconscious bias.”

What if Scharf was right? What if there really is a lack of qualified black executives in the financial industry? What if Scharf was telling an ideologically inconvenient truth? How can we know? A decade or so ago, when I was working in newspaper journalism, media managers were constantly trying to hire black and Latino journalists, but there were so few qualified ones. There could be any number of reasons for that, but it was the truth (maybe things have changed over the last decade since I worked in the MSM). I saw personally how hard media managers worked to find qualified minority journalists. The friends and colleagues I had within the industry took this very seriously, and genuinely agonized over it. But you cannot force people to go to journalism school, any more than you can force them to study finance. The world is not a machine.

The entire corporate field of “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion,” and most especially the word “antiracist,” depend on the falsification of language. If the ideologues are going to get people to accept their schemes against their own interests, and against the interests of fairness and justice, they often have to lie about what they’re doing through the manipulation of language. Here’s a passage from Live Not By Lies in which a Polish historian, Pawel Skibinski, tells me that the postcommunist generation is particularly vulnerable to this:

Skibiński focuses on language as a preserver of cultural memory. We know that communists forbade people to talk about history in unapproved ways. This is a tactic today’s progressives use as well, especially within universities.

What is harder for contemporary people to appreciate is how we are repeating the Marxist habit of falsifying language, hollowing out familiar words and replacing them with a new, highly ideological meaning. Propaganda not only changes the way we think about politics and contemporary life but it also conditions what a culture judges worth remembering.

I mention the way liberals today deploy neutral-sounding, or even positive, words like dialogue and tolerance to disarm and ultimately defeat unaware conservatives. And they imbue other words and phrases—hierarchy, for example, or traditional family—with negative connotations.

Recalling life under communism, the professor continues, “The people who lived only within such a linguistic sphere, who didn’t know any other way to speak, they could really start believing in this way of using words. If a word carries with it negative baggage, it becomes impossible to have a discussion about the phenomenon.”

Teaching current generations of college students who grew up in the postcommunist era is challenging
because they do not have a natural immunity to the ideological abuse of language. “For me, it’s obvious. I remember this false use of language. But for our students, it’s impossible to understand.”

Every manager or employee at Wells Fargo and Microsoft who does not believe in the new ideology — who thinks it is unjust, or harmful to the company’s business — will have to live by lies if they want to keep their job. The only force powerful enough to hold these powerful Woke Capitalists accountable for unjust and discriminatory employment practices is the federal government.

For as long as it is willing to do so, anyway.

theamericanconservative.com

Whitney WEBB

With nearly 6 million Americans unemployed and regular bouts of layoffs in the U.S. tech industry, major American tech companies like Google, Microsoft and Intel Corporation are nonetheless moving key operations, billions in investments, and thousands of jobs to Israel — a trend that has largely escaped media attention or concern from even “America first” politicians. The fact that this massive transfer of investment and jobs has been so overlooked is particularly striking given that it is largely the work of a single leading neoconservative Republican donor who has given millions of dollars to President Donald Trump.

To make matters worse, many of these top tech companies shifting investment and jobs to Israel at record rates continue to collect sizable U.S. government subsidies for their operations while they move critical aspects of their business abroad, continue to layoff thousands of American workers, and struggle to house their growing company branches in Israel. This is particularly troubling in light of the importance of the tech sector to the overall U.S. economy, as it accounts for 7.1 percent of total GDP and 11.6 percent of total private-sector payroll.

Furthermore, many of these companies are hiring members of controversial Israeli companies — known to have spied on Americans, American companies, and U.S. federal agencies — as well as numerous members of Israeli military intelligence as top managers and executives.

This massive transfer of the American tech industry has largely been the work of one leading Republican donor — billionaire hedge fund manager Paul Singer, who also funds the neoconservative think tank American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the Islamophobic and hawkish think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC), and also funded the now-defunct Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI).

Singer’s project to bolster Israel’s tech economy at the U.S.’ expense is known as Start-Up Nation Central, which he founded in response to the global Boycott, Divest and Sanctions (BDS) movement that seeks to use nonviolent means to pressure Israel to comply with international law in relation to its treatment of Palestinians.

This project is directly linked to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who in recent years has publicly mentioned that it has been his “deliberate policy” to have former members of Israel’s “military and intelligence units … merge into companies with local partners and foreign partners” in order to make it all but impossible for major corporations and foreign governments to boycott Israel.

In this report, MintPress identifies dozens of former members of an elite Israeli military intelligence unit who now hold top positions at Microsoft, Google and Facebook.

Singer’s nonprofit organization has acted as the vehicle through which Netanyahu’s policy has been realized, via the group’s close connections to the Israeli PM and Singer’s long-time support for Netanyahu and the Likud Party. With deep ties to Netanyahu, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and controversial tech companies — like Amdocs — that spied on the American government, this Singer-funded organization has formed a nexus of connections between the public and private sectors of both the American and Israeli economies with the single goal of making Israel the new technology superpower, largely at the expense of the American economy and government, which currently gives $3.2 billion in aid to Israel annually.

Researched and developed in Israel

In recent years, the top U.S. tech companies have been shifting many of their most critical operations, particularly research and development, to one country: Israel. A 2016 report in Business Insider noted that Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon and Apple had all opened up research and development (R&D) centers in recent years, with some of them having as many as three such centers in Israel, a country roughly the size of New Jersey. Other major tech companies that have also opened key operation and research centers in Israel include Sandisk, Nvidia, PayPal, Palantir and Dell. Forbes noted last year that the world’s top 10 tech companies were now “doing mission-critical work in Israel that’s core to their businesses back at HQ.”

Yet, some of these tech giants, particularly those based in the U.S., are heavily investing in their Israeli branches while laying off thousands of American employees, all while receiving millions of dollars in U.S. government subsidies funded by American taxpayers.

For example, Intel Corporation, which is the world’s second largest manufacturer of semiconductor computer chips and is headquartered in California, has long been a major employer in Israel, with over 10,000 employees in the Jewish state. However, earlier this year, Intel announced that it would be investing $11 billion in a new factory in Israel and would receive around $1 billion in an Israeli government grant for that investment. Just a matter of months after Intel announced its major new investment in Israel, it announced a new round of layoffs in the United States.

Yet this is just one recent example of what has become a trend for Intel. In 2018, Intel made public its plan to invest $5 billion in one of its Israeli factories and had invested an additional $15 billion in Israeli-created autonomous driving technology a year prior, creating thousands of Intel jobs in Israel. Notably, over that same time frame, Intel has cut nearly 12,000 jobs in the United States. While this great transfer of investment and jobs was undermining the U.S. economy and hurting American workers, particularly in the tech sector, Intel received over $25 million dollars in subsidies from the U.S. federal government.

A similar phenomenon has been occurring at another U.S.-based tech giant, Microsoft. Beginning in 2014 and continuing into 2018, Microsoft has laid off well over 20,000 employees, most of them Americans, in several different rounds of staff cuts. Over that same time period, Microsoft has been on a hiring spree in Israel, building new campuses and investing billions of dollars annually in its Israel-based research and development center and in other Israeli start-up companies, creating thousands of jobs abroad. In addition, Microsoft has been pumping millions of dollars into technology programs at Israeli universities and institutes, such as the Technion Institute. Over this same time frame, Microsoft has received nearly $197 million in subsidies from the state governments of Washington, Iowa and Virginia.

Though Israeli politicians and tech company executives have praised this dramatic shift as the result of Israel’s tech prowess and growing reputation as a technological innovation hub, much of this dramatic shift has been the work of the Netanyahu-tied Singer’s effort to counter a global movement aimed at boycotting Israel and to make Israel a global “cyber power.”

Start-Up Nation Central and the Neocons

In 2009, a book titled Start Up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle, written by American neoconservative Dan Senor and Jerusalem Post journalist Saul Singer (unrelated to Paul), quickly rose to the New York Times bestseller list for its depiction of Israel as the tech start-up capital of the world. The book — published by the Council on Foreign Relations, where Senor was then serving as Adjunct Senior Fellow — asserts that Israel’s success in producing so many start-up companies resulted from the combination of its liberal immigration laws and its “leverage of the business talents of young people with military experience.”

“The West needs innovation; Israel’s got it,” wrote Senor and Singer. In a post-publication interview with the blog Freakonomics, Senor asserted that service in the Israeli military was crucial to Israel’s tech sector success, stating that:

“Certain units have become technology boot camps, where 18- to 22-year-olds get thrown projects and missions that would make the heads spin of their counterparts in universities or the private sector anywhere else in the world. The Israelis come out of the military not just with hands-on exposure to next-gen technology, but with training in teamwork, mission orientation, leadership, and a desire to continue serving their country by contributing to its tech sector — a source of pride for just about every Israeli.”

The book, in addition to the many accolades it received from the mainstream press, left a lasting impact on top Republican donor Paul Singer, known for funding the most influential neoconservative think tanks in America, as noted above. Paul Singer was so inspired by Senor and Singer’s book that he decided to spend $20 million to fund and create an organization with a similar name. He created the Start-Up Nation Central (SUNC) just three years after the book’s release in 2012.

To achieve his vision, Singer – who is also a top donor to the Republican Party and Trump – tapped Israeli economist Eugene Kandel, who served as Netanyahu’s national economic adviser and chaired the Israeli National Economic Council from 2009 to 2015.

Senor was likely directly involved in the creation of SUNC, as he was then employed by Paul Singer and, with neoconservatives Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan, co-founded the FPI, which Singer had long funded before it closed in 2017. In addition, Dan Senor’s sister, Wendy Singer (unrelated to either Paul or Saul), long-time director of Israel’s AIPAC office, became the organization’s executive director.

SUNC’s management team, in addition to Eugene Kandel and Wendy Singer, includes Guy Hilton as the organization’s general manager. Hilton is a long-time marketing executive at Israeli telecommunications company Amdocs, where he “transformed” the company’s marketing organization. Amdocs was once highly controversial in the United States after it was revealed by a 2001 Fox News investigation that numerous federal agencies had investigated the company, which then had contracts with the 25 largest telephone companies in the country, for its alleged role in an aggressive espionage operation that targeted the U.S. government. Hilton worked at Microsoft prior to joining Amdocs.

Beyond the management team, SUNC’s board of directors includes Paul Singer, Dan Senor and Terry Kassel — who work for Singer at his hedge fund, Elliott Management — and Rapheal Ouzan. Ouzan was an officer in the elite foreign military intelligence unit of Israel, Unit 8200, who co-founded BillGuard the day after he left that unit, which is often compared to the U.S.’ National Security Agency (NSA). Within five months of its founding, BillGuard was backed by funding from PayPal founder Peter Thiel and former CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt. Ouzan is also connected to U.S. tech companies that have greatly expanded their Israeli branches since SUNC’s founding — such as Microsoft, Google, PayPal and Intel, all of which support Ouzan’s non-profit Israel Tech Challenge.

According to reports from the time published in Haaretz and Bloomberg, SUNC was explicitly founded to serve as “a foreign ministry for Israel’s tech industry” and “to strength Israel’s economy” while also aiming to counter the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions (BDS) movement that seeks to use a nonviolent boycott to end the illegal military occupation of the West Bank and Israeli apartheid, as well as the growth of illegal Jewish-only settlements in occupied Palestinian territory.

Since its founding, SUNC has sought to transfer tech jobs from foreign companies to Israel by developing connections and influence with foreign governments and companies so that they “deepen their relationship with Israel’s tech industry.” Though SUNC has since expanded to include other sectors of the Israeli “start-up” economy, its focus has long remained on Israel’s tech, specifically its cybersecurity industry. Foreign investment in this single Israeli industry has grown from $227 million in 2014 to $815 million in 2018.

In addition to its own activities, SUNC appears to be closely linked to a similar organization, sponsored by Coca Cola and Daimler Mercedes Benz, called The Bridge, which also seeks to connect Israeli start-up companies with large international corporations. Indeed, SUNC, according to its website, was actually responsible for Daimler Mercedes Benz’s decision to join The Bridge, thanks to a delegation from the company that SUNC hosted in Israel and the connections made during that visit.

Teaming up with Israel’s Unit 8200

Members of Israel’s signals intelligence Unit 8200 work under a Saudi flag. Photo | Moti Milrod

Notably, SUNC has deep ties to Israel’s military intelligence unit known as Unit 8200 and, true to Start Up Nation’s praise of IDF service as key to Israel’s success, has been instrumental in connecting Unit 8200 alumni with key roles in foreign companies, particularly American tech companies. For instance, Maty Zwaig, a former lieutenant colonel in Unit 8200, is SUNC’s current director of human capital programs, and SUNC’s current manager of strategic programs, Tamar Weiss, is also a former member of the unit.

One particularly glaring connection between SUNC and Unit 8200 can be seen in Inbal Arieli, who served as SUNC’s Vice President of Strategic Partnerships from 2014 to 2017 and continues to serve as a senior adviser to the organization. Arieli, a former lieutenant in Unit 8200, is the founder and head of the 8200 Entrepreneurship and Innovation Support Program (EISP), which was the first start-up accelerator in Israel aimed at harnessing “the vast network and entrepreneurial DNA of [Unit] 8200 alumni” and is currently one of the top company accelerators in Israel. Arieli was the top executive at 8200 EISP while working at SUNC.

Another key connection between SUNC and Unit 8200 is SUNC’s promotion of Team8, a company-creation platform whose CEO and co-founder is Nadav Zafrir, former commander of Unit 8200. In addition to prominently featuring Team8 and Zafrir on the cybersecurity section of its website, SUNC also sponsored a talk by Zafrir and an Israeli government economist at the World Economic Forum, often referred to as “Davos,” that was attended personally by Paul Singer.

Team8’s investors include Google’s Eric Schmidt, Microsoft, and Walmart — and it recently hired former head of the NSA and U.S. Cyber Command, retired Admiral Mike Rogers. Team8 described the decision to hire Rogers as being “instrumental in helping strategize” Team8’s expansion in the United States. However, Jake Williams, a veteran of NSA’s Tailored Access Operations hacking unit, told CyberScoop:

“Rogers is not being brought into this role because of his technical experience. …It’s purely because of his knowledge of classified operations and his ability to influence many in the U.S. government and private-sector contractors.”

In addition to connections to Unit 8200-linked groups like Team8 and 8200 EISP, SUNC also directly collaborates with the IDF in an initiative aimed at preparing young Israeli women to serve in Unit 8200. That initiative, called the CyberGirlz Club, is jointly funded by Israel’s Defense Ministry, SUNC and the Rashi Foundation, the philanthropic organization set up by the Leven family of Perrier-brand water, which has close ties to the Israeli government and IDF.

“Our aim is to bring the girls to this process already skilled, with the knowledge needed to pass the exams for Unit 8200 and serve in the military as programmers,” Zwaig told Israel National News.

Seeding American tech

The connections between SUNC and Unit 8200 are troubling for more than a few reasons, one of which being that Unit 8200, often likened to the U.S.’ NSA, closely coordinates with Israel’s intelligence agency, the Mossad, and is responsible for 90 percent of the intelligence material obtained by the Israeli government, according to its former commander Yair Cohen. Cohen told Forbes in 2016, that “there isn’t a major operation, from the Mossad or any intelligence security agency, that 8200 is not involved in.” For obvious reasons, the fact that an organization founded by an American billionaire is actively promoting the presence of former military intelligence officers in foreign companies, specifically American companies, while also promoting the transfer of jobs and investment to that same country, is very troubling indeed.

Particularly troubling is the fact that, since SUNC’s founding, the number of former Unit 8200 members in top positions in American tech companies has skyrocketed. Based on a non-exhaustive analysis conducted by Mintpress of over 200 LinkedIn accounts of former Israeli military intelligence and intelligence officers in three major tech companies, numerous former Unit 8200 alumni were found to currently hold top managerial or executive positions in Microsoft, Google and Facebook.

At Microsoft, managers for at least 15 of the company’s products and programs — including Microsoft’s lead managers for engineering, product strategy, threat analytics and cloud business intelligence — publicly listed their affiliation with Unit 8200 on their LinkedIn accounts. In addition, the general manager of Microsoft’s Israeli Research and Development Center is also a former member of Unit 8200. In total, of the 200 accounts analyzed, 50 of them currently worked for Microsoft.

Similarly, at Google, 28 former Unit 8200 members at the company were identified from their LinkedIn accounts. Among them are Google’s Engineering Director, its strategic partner manager, two growth marketing leads, its lead technical manager, and six product and program managers, including Google’s manager for trust and safety search.

Facebook also has several Unit 8200 members in prominent positions, though fewer than Google and Microsoft. MintPress identified at least 13 Unit 8200 alumni working for Facebook, including its director of engineering, lead manager for express wi-fi, and technical program manager. Notably, Facebook has spent the last several years collaborating with Israel’s government to censor Israel’s critics.

Of course, there is likely much more influence of Unit 8200 on these companies than this non-exhaustive analysis revealed, given that many of these companies acquired several Israeli start-ups run by and staffed by many Unit 8200 alumni who subsequently went on to found new companies and start-ups a few years or shortly after acquisition. Furthermore, due to the limitations of LinkedIn’s set-up, MintPress was not able to access the complete list of Unit 8200 alumni at these three tech companies, meaning that the eye-opening numbers found were generated by a relatively small sample.

This jump in Unit 8200 members in top positions in tech companies of global importance is actually a policy long promoted by Netanyahu, whose long-time economic adviser is the chief executive at SUNC. During an interview with Fox News last year, Netanyahu was asked by Fox News host Mark Levin if the large growth seen in recent years in Israel’s technology sector was part of Netanyahu’s plan. Netanyahu responded, “That’s very much my plan … It’s a very deliberate policy.” He later added that “Israel had technology because the military, especially military intelligence, produced a lot of capabilities. These incredibly gifted young men and women who come out of the military or the Mossad, they want to start their start-ups.”

Netanyahu further outlined this policy at the 2019 Cybertech conference in Tel Aviv, where he stated that Israel’s emergence as one of the top five “cyber powers” had “required allowing this combination of military intelligence, academia and industry to converge in one place” and that this further required allowing “our graduates of our military and intelligence units to merge into companies with local partners and foreign partners.” The direct tie-ins of SUNC to Netanyahu and the fact that Paul Singer has also been a long-time political donor and backer of Netanyahu suggest that SUNC is a key part of Netanyahu’s policy of placing former military intelligence and intelligence operatives in strategic positions in major technology companies.

Notably, just as SUNC was founded to counter the BDS movement, Netanyahu has asserted that this policy of ensuring Israel’s role as a “cyber power” is aimed at increasing its diplomatic power and specifically undermining BDS as well as the United Nations, which has repeatedly condemned Israel’s government for war crimes and violations of international law in relation to the Palestinians.

Building the bi-national surveillance state

A Google data center in Hamina, Finland. (AP/Google)

Top U.S. tech companies have filled top positions with former members of Israeli military intelligence and moved strategic and critical operations to Israel, boosting Israel’s economy at the expense of America’s, and SUNC’s role in this marked shift merits scrutiny.

A powerful American billionaire has built an influential organization with deep connections to the U.S.-Israel lobby (AIPAC), an Israeli company that has been repeatedly investigated for spying on the U.S. government (Amdocs), and the elite Israeli military intelligence unit (Unit 8200) that has used its influential connections to the U.S. government and the U.S. private sector to dramatically shift the operations and make-up of major companies in a critical sector of the U.S. economy.

Further consider that U.S. government documents leaked by Edward Snowden have flagged Israel as “leading threat” to the infrastructure of U.S. financial and banking institutions, which use much of the software produced by these top tech companies, and have also flagged Israel as a top espionage threat. One U.S. government document cited Israel as the third most aggressive intelligence service against the U.S. behind Russia and China. Thus, Paul Singer’s pet project in Start-Up Nation Central has undermined not only the U.S. economy but arguably U.S. national security as well.

This concern is further exacerbated by the deep ties connecting top tech companies like Microsoft and Google to the U.S. military. Microsoft and Google are both key military contractors — Microsoft in particular, given that it is set to win a lucrative contract for the Pentagon’s cloud management and has partnered with the Department of Defense to produce a “secure” election system known as ElectionGuard that is set to be implemented in some U.S. states for the 2020 general election.

mintpressnews.com

The overwhelming majority of the infections appeared in Russia. The ransomware hit about 1,000 computers at the Russian Interior Ministry, though the agency’s servers were not affected thanks to using the national Elbrus operating system instead of Windows.

The US Department of Homeland Security has not confirmed any attacks in the US on government targets or vital industries, such as hospitals and banks.

The malicious code exploits a Windows flaw patched in Microsoft's Security Bulletin MS17-010 in March. The malware is usually covertly installed onto computers by hiding within emails containing links, which users are tricked into opening. A single computer infected can end up compromising the entire corporate network.

The malware is alleged to have been leaked or stolen from the National Security Agency (NSA) to be reportedly distributed by the Shadow Brokers, which claimed to have hacked an NSA-linked team of hackers last summer.

The hints about alleged «Russia trail» have already appeared in Western media. According to NPR, the Shadow Brokers group, which is suspected of having ties to Russia, posted Windows hacking tools in April, saying it was a «protest» about US President Donald Trump. «A computer hacking group known as Shadow Brokers was at least partly responsible. It is claimed the group, which has links to Russia, stole US National Security Agency cyber tools designed to access Microsoft Windows systems, then dumped the technology on a publicly-accessible website where online criminals could access it – possibly in retaliation for America’s attack on Syria», writes the Telegraph.

Edward Snowden, the former CIA employee and NSA contractor, tweeted he was confident that the hackers used NSA tools. He believes that if the NSA had given an advance warning the hit structures and hospitals in other countries could have taken proper measures to repel the attack. Politico chimes in. «Friday's attacks could have been avoided if the NSA had simply told Microsoft about the flaw earlier, digital privacy activists argued», the prestigious outlet informs.

So, the National Security Agency tools were used, the NSA gave no warning and…Russia, the hardest hit by the attack, is to blame! The same song and dance as usual. Of course, nothing like evidence to go upon has been produced like in all other cases when Moscow was blamed for each and everything going wrong everywhere. It’s just that someone thinks that a group of hackers may have links to Russia and… nothing more. We’ve seen it before.

In reality, it’s an open secret that computers, routers and other equipment normally includes element of software that could be activated by US special agencies. Hackers simply found out how it works and decided to use it for personal gains. It shows that the NSA is working on powerful software to serve as a tool for global dominance.

The event demonstrates how important it is for major world powers to make cybersecurity top the international security agenda.

Today, no international law regulates cyber operations. The 2015 in The Hague showed there are few chances for signing an international agreement to monitor cyber activities. The only international effort so far to adopt a self-regulatory approach to non-aggression in cyberspace was initiated by the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in 2015. The details have been debates within the framework of the UN Group of Government Experts (GGE). Russia and China set an example for the world to follow by signing an agreement on information security in 2015.

The Russia-US cyber-security confidence-building package of agreements in 2013 foresaw similar cooperation and information exchange between the US and Russian computer emergency response teams (CERTs), the creation of a working group on emerging threats and the use of the existing nuclear hotline to communicate directly in a cyber crisis. It has never got off the ground and got stalled as the bilateral relations deteriorated in 2014.

Experts could join the process to give the suspended 2013 package a new lease on life. The meetings of working group could be resumed. A hotline between Moscow and Washington could be reactivated to prevent escalation of cyber incidents between the two countries. The parties could start working on the first-ever non-aggression pact in cyber domain. The national centers for reduction of cyber threats could play an important role allowing the military of the two countries to notify each other about the attacks on crucial objects of infrastructure. They were used in 2014 during the Russian preparation for the Winter Olympics in Sochi with the operations suspended the same year.

Russia and the US picked up the issue a year ago. They discussed drafting the norms and principles of responsible behavior in cyberspace and countering terrorism in the sphere of information technologies. It was a good start that to everyone’s chagrin happened to be just another one-time event. The initiative seems to be swept under the rug overshadowed by other issues. In April, 2017 a United Nations cybersecurity experts group in Geneva, where Russian and America officials had a chance to meet but it’s evidently not enough.

The recent cyberattack shows the time is right for intensifying international efforts to handle the burning problem. There is a hope. India is to host the 5^th Global Conference on Cyber Space (GCSS) in the last quarter of 2017, in which over 100 countries are expected to participate. The recent attack rings an alarm bell. The upcoming event offers an opportunity not to be missed. 

Powerful interests in America threaten alternative sources of news, information and opinion. 

Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter and You Tube announced plans for a joint Internet censorship database on the phony pretext of eliminating “extremist content.”

Their scheme threatens media and speech freedom, likely aiming for sanitized online content only, independent views censored, threatening writers like myself and many others.

Reporting and opinions diverging from mainstream views risk being labeled “fake news” or “extremist content,” a slippery slope toward undermining First Amendment rights altogether.

The above companies and other IT ones agreed on a code of conduct, pledging they’ll work with the European Commission (the EU executive body) to “sanction (and) criminalize individual perpetrators (of) hate speech” online.

The EU threatened “non-legislative” action if online “fake news” and “hate speech” aren’t removed in 24 hours – censorship legislation to follow if the “non-legislative approach” fails.

The new database is expected to be operating by early 2017 – complicit IT companies collaborating against online speech and media freedom. 

On Tuesday, tech giants involved said they “hope this collaboration will lead to greater efficiency as we continue to enforce our policies to help curb the pressing global issue of terrorist content online” – meaning whatever America’s deep state wants censored.

Pre-WW II Louisiana governor, senator and presidential aspirant Huey Long said fascism will arrive here “wrapped in the American flag.” In his book “Friendly Fascism”, Bertram Gross described a slow, powerful, “drift toward greater concentration of power and wealth in a repressive Big Business-Big Government,” Big Brother alliance.

In the 1930s, famed investigative journalist George Seldes saw it coming, expressing concern over “merchants of death” weapons and munitions makers, saying the “healthfulness of the(ir) business depends on slaughter. The more wars,” the more profits.

Novelist Sinclair Lewis said it’ll come during hard times, led by a charismatic, self-styled populist champion exploiting human misery.

Norwegian sociologist/mathematician Johan Galtung correctly predicted the 1979 Iranian revolution, the Soviet Union’s dissolution, various economic crises and the 9/11 attacks.

He now anticipates the demise of America’s imperial project by 2020, its global preeminence ended, fascism taking hold, resulting from endless US wars, along with unsustainable economic, social, military and political contradictions, its government headed for collapse, led by a “strong leader” – Trump.

Yet “(i)f he manages to apologize deeply to all the groups he has insulted and turns foreign policy (away) from US interventions (and endless) wars, a major revitalization” is possible…We’ll see,” said Galtung.

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