Breaking things

The Intercept broke the world... And it wasn't just Winner's world

There's journalism with sources and then there's this. I want to explain in my own words the world the people who work in such fields live in and hopefully make some humans out of this before they are smeared beyond recognition.

We're flawed broken and damaged human beings, the lot of us. That's the point of human upbringing in a way and its critical flaw. Keep that in mind, even the worst of us were once human, even the dumbest of us had once the capacity of being remarkable.

And in this story the Intercept are dumb. Exceptionally so.

The story broke that a US internal intel document was leaked to the Intercept detailing the way a Russian Cyber Intelligence unit got access to the voting infrastructure in several US areas.

That alone should send ripples through the world. But it didn't - people didn't connect the dots. The rest however was an exercise of civilians working a classified field without any self-awareness. And again I am not thinking Winner here.

This is where the problems emerge. Winner was communicated to via her work station and no one questioned if this could be real bad for her. The Agencies were contacted to ask about the report and what should be hidden. They said yes, almost all of it should be hidden. So the Intercept did not do that and had a partially redacted version printed. Then they also printed an open scan of the copy. People think she was caught by the print. That was corroborating evidence, even when she accessed the file the system kept a log of that. When she moved the file, a log existed of that, when she sent a mail, that mail was tracked there. It was just an extra bit on top of the sunday of sad delight.

So Winner was arrested and confirmed all of it on the day of her arrest. She knew she couldn't dodge questions. Not a single point to lie about, they had all her logs. She had signed the papers and had read them. This is why I point that the only non civilian I see is her. She could have done a naive and stupid thing. And some of her posts that are now floating on the net link to naivety. Or she didn't care. She saw the thing that shook her core and pushed her over the edge already and didn't care who knew.

Maybe she had made her peace with it or maybe she was naive and didn't think it would hit this fast because the Intercept threw her under the bus for clicks in a heartbeat. If I meet her ever I'd ask and tell you. Or maybe I won’t.

Her arrest meant something else though. You're not taking that away. The story is true, the report is legit. The data is fact. Gratz.

You also leaked enough data for the Russian Intelligence Agency to know the social security numbers of its people who got caught in the act. Which means these people are no longer compromised by the US. They are dead weight.

It's a bomb shell but maybe the US wanted to keep it a secret to a point they got the marching orders and had a stronger case. All Cyber Intelligence operations are essentially offense. There are mind-set differences, Russia as shown barges in, the US focuses on creating vulnerabilities and fostering sources. This could have been one source but now that intel source is gone, for good. Russian agents who were compromised in the past have ended up dead, it doesn't have to be direct orders it could be superiors or higher officials trying to second guess the thought process of the Kremlin and to pre-empt their wishes. A system like the Russian one where there's a struggle for favours in the high echelons and who gets the ear of the Russian Presidential Administration breeds such institutional peculiarities. Also life is negotiable in Russia, just read stories from the timid side of the administration of the federal prisons system where a colonel killed his subordinate so his stealing didn't become public.

And if people want to hit Winner for being a contractor. No she wasn't, she was young, but what's the right age for you to train a language specialist ? 50 ? No, you get them in the special school at 18-9 and then assign them to a unit with clearance. She wasn't a contractor, she was Air Force SIGINT who got made redundant in some way but was valuable to the service and got rehired through a subcontract and continued to work her post. She was military. If you're a vet trashing her for that, sorry your service's baseline isn't higher than her mind set. It's actually lower.

The gift of Winner is that through admitting at face value when she was caught and getting arrested for it you have the proof the voting was subject to tampering. Enough to swing elections? Who knows. This who knows is why the IC didn't want to go with it as a government structure, it's too much on an institution to push into the public view. Winner was one person, her choices, her consequences and her body behind bars.

To a person, voting could be an echo of that exact thing. Your vote, your choice, that vote was the integral part of the election in November. And this report was evidence that the process was tampered in a way that could change the vote. If you have the voter file with past voting habits and current registered voters you can do target purging. In some states 15 k people being purged the day before the vote can change a lot in others 120 k could change a lot. Did it happen to that extent? Unknown. But when people internalise that “Unknown” doesn't mean yes or no but a “Maybe” that's when you have a tent city permanently in front of 10 Pennsylvania avenue. 

Once that hits you're not making it go away. The election starts getting called by people illegitimate. And when the government is called illegitimate without certain proof it is or it isn't the strength of laws lanes. That’s legitimacy for you, it’s hard to come back from once it’s taken away. All of our concepts on governance stem off a broad internal understanding of what’s justified and what’s not. Our entire world held up on a concept you can't even touch. And when that’s gone, the world Breaks.

Except it already did. Last night.

The House of Assad

All the power in the world can't fix stupid, trust me, it's been tried

The narrative of the Assad paid cheerleaders complex and the industrialized Russian opinion re-enforcing conglomerates has floated a bunch of theories in the past years regarding the situation in Syria. (Send your poorly constructed hate mail to UsefulFoolCollectiveInbox@KremlinPetGoldfishSupportForMurder.com)

They speak of foreign intervention, money flowing into the opposition in incredible amounts and a global conspiracy against Assad. Assad's primary cheer force one does that to defend Assad from consensus on an intervention political or military. Russia does it to remove and discredit organizations that focus on moving the world toward an egalitarian rule of law structure where there's accountability and a clear division of power. Why would the leaders of a country ruled by a group that gathers in a dacha outside of Moscow to divide up state funds for each other do that? I will let you figure that one out on your own.

But that doesn't explain how you can easily describe the Regime as the House of Stupid, rather, it is based on their failure to understand what they had in their hands on the eve of 2011. There's the idea (by Lenin of all people) that a ruthless and determined enough regime supported by the security apparatus cannot be taken down. There's a subplot to that that became evident in the last 30 years but is less talked about. An election cannot remove a fully entrenched regime on its own. You have to be very dumb, thick and moronic to have control of all state wide organizations, to have them have vested interest in your position and still chose to go to war instead of to the ballot. Being called Assad helps I guess.

Let me give an example. In Bulgaria in 1989 a man on the stairs of parliament uttered the unspeakable, or something that sounded close enough to the unspeakable, ”Bring in the tanks”. The party collapsed. An election followed, and guess who won? The now rebranded party. The broad alliance of democratic forces was in second place only because of the large public appeal of one single figure Zhelyu Zhelev a long time dissident that was well known, giving him a ready public recognition. The alliance itself as a party proved flawed and incapable of really controlling the country's structures despite having power because those structures had lingering favours and deals with the politburo of the BKP. And the mastermind behind the new BSP happened to be someone with a key role in the last politburo of the BKP. Over the next 25 years BSP remained a dominant if diminishing force in Bulgarian politics and the parties who grew and fell during that time were either manned by parts of the BSP, or worked in a way that didn't disrupt either the patronage network around it or its entrenched interests, and the party remained a useful facade for the politburo successors who had transitioned into controlling vast areas of the Bulgarian formal and informal economy.

And here we go back to Syria and Assad. The boy blunder of the Assad family and his high-ranking councillors failed spectacularly in understanding what their position meant. If we review the situation in Syria and Libya and in Egypt we can find one common denominator in all of this. The people who demanded elected rule and democracy, and tried accountability and a start of a society where the law provides equal protection, ended up splintered in groups that would in the end not have enough mass in an election on their own to form a government. They also failed to establish coalitions in the short time they had with enough support to form a political agenda based on compromise and largely common goals. Even if you point at the fighting, it carries the same distinction. It is local and at best regional. Groups are in a similar way local or regional most of the times. Incidents and fighting are small and limited. Mergers came much later and even then it was usually a combination of several groups that stayed in the own areas under a new name

What does that tell us? Dissent in those places did not arise from an enormous foreign support across the board. Those were multiple local bottom up movements which agreed overall on an end to patronage and nepotism, on removing singular unrestricted control of the resources and the market, and on reducing corruption and nepotism by forcing elections and the accountability they bring.  You can in a similar way chart groups in Syria groups that fight against Assad, were local, tied to their area and had trouble communicating and coordinating. Apart from a few existing structures, like officers who defected and Kurdish organizations, it was only much later that other networks arise in Syria.

In short in an election Assad could have, via his control of the priesthood administration, industry based advisory boards, close ties to Palestinian organizations and Levant wide groups, etc. created several systemic opposition parties that would follow orders and support the Baath party, and faced only minor small sized opposition groups and splintered entities which wouldn't have state wide appeal. If you stack the deck in a split between individual mandates and country and governate wide mandates, you ensure a super majority.  If he encouraged tribal leaders to form special parties with a guaranteed 1 seat for tribal inclusion he could have diluted the vote even further in his favour. These now very well paid and positioned tribal leaders would fight tooth and nail to defend their special status and the laws that ensured it, while the Assad regime could claim on the world stage they are fighting for everyone’s right to representation by giving a voice to the traditionalist minority in Syria. No one would read a fine print that would perhaps say that this applies let’s say only to 20 tribes with populations from 10 to 100 K, thus removing large portions of the vote off the board but only minor parts of that vote would be from constituencies voting Baath.

Instead the boy blunder ordered men to fire upon every group. He talked about foreign agents and described dissenting opinions on how to run the economy and grievances against inflexible agricultural policy as terrorism. People dislike the calls for partition and federalism, but when a regime turns to fight everyone everywhere, whether they call for more accountability or outright terrorism, the result is tens of factions across the country. They become insular and form around their centre of power, and via their armed units institute effective local rule. In Syria you have a mix of local councils being elected and areas being ruled by military groups directly, but those are generally separate and refer to small areas. Even the Kurdish areas are divided into cantons, larger than the other divisions, but again insular and separate.  Federalism and partition is the reality of Syria. Passing through areas being ISIS, Loyalist, YPG or Opposition means passing through areas with different legal codes, taxes, structures and pricing as well customs and duties at semi-neutral zones as checkpoints.  Syria is partitioned in all but name.  We didn’t do it. Assad did, and he keeps on doing it by relying more on militias that are now forming into networks that work like feudal warlords and fiefdoms, and are self-funding.

Furthermore, Assad ensured that his advantages against these groups were squandered early on.  Sure he had an army that was centralized, but he ordered them to fight everyone everywhere at the same time, or at least to keep a front with them. Congratulations to the boy blunder and the people speaking into his ear, they turned a political issue where they had all possible advantages into a military issue where they did the most possible to level the playing field for the other side.

Six years on people say, but Assad hasn't lost. Sure he has, he’s lost the ability to have a complete and bloodless dominating victory through a quick, free election he couldn't possibly lose because the Baath party was the controlling force in all state-wide organizations. He lost the structured organizations that paid lip service to the Baath party, and replaced them with warlords that when left without external enemies will turn on each other. He lost the entire Syrian economy. He lost any strength he had from assigning economic patronages with the decree to start private militias, militias who can freely take the goods they desire but cannot be disowned as he has no one else to fight in their place. The YPG/SDF conglomerate that in an election would have gained a minor party status and been easily co-opted now holds economic and military power that might soon rival all of the Assad holdings, including the warlords that pledge allegiance to Damascus, but do little to add to the budget. He let jihadi groups out with the hope would they taint the groups fighting him, and now he has in every part of his holdings sleeper cells that launch bombing attacks dispelling the illusion that he can bring safety or stability even in the areas ‘untouched’ by violence through his limited state security institutions. Additionally, those groups now have a narrative that their call for strict draconic sharia law implementation is going to stop his nepotistic patronage rule where the laws don't apply if you have connection. Sharia law carried out by zealots who employ murder on a daily basis to some is a lot more appealing than no law, that lets people with the right connections steal and kill and loot without consequences. The first terrorist organizations of the Middle East thought through terrorism they could remove luxury as a corrupting influence on their institutions and establish lawfulness in MENA in some degree and according to their perverted vision. The second generation is what Assad now emboldened in Syria and now is faced with a broken-up security force and country where areas that are painted as his on the map are not controlled by him in practice.  This second generation dismisses the idea that the state could be saved if you remove foreign/ luxury influence and calls for the complete destruction of the state and going back to a draconian past that never was through death and violence as a clean slate which has in their view some legal norm. Medieval as can be, but then again Assad's warlords are untouchable in their own fiefdoms and this is why sleeper cells continue to exist and grow in the loyalist coast. The only thing Assad hasn't lost thus far is his throne and his head. Everything else is pretty much gone. In insurgencies, the insurgents have a goal, don’t lose before the clock on the Regime they are fighting expires, the Regime has to win in a condition that grants it the ability to govern and hold the country afterwards. In that regard, the start of 2017 is for Assad much, much worse than 2016 even if he holds Aleppo and has cleared a lot of Latakia and the Damascus area.

And so goes the House of Dumb in 2017 to once more seek advice up its own inflated bum.