In this exact moment, USA is hacking Brazillian elections. Meta is shadowbanning one of the candidates. People don't know what is happening. A small filter in Meta AI blocking image generation for one of the candidates is now generating an uproar.
American Big Tech is a menace for all democracies around the world.
The US is meddling in European elections as well, supporting extreme "right wing" parties across the continent. Entirely ignoring democracy issues.
Inside the US, you have a remarkable lack of serious reporting and common-meaning-generating discussion. Filter bubble echo-chambers are extreme to the point of constituting entirely incompatible realities.
Those distortions aren't random either, they clearly serve a specific goal. Having people scoff at "conspiracies" even when they're facing them dead-on is a surprisingly effective trick.
> American Big Tech is a menace for all democracies around the world.
Wait, aren't that is exactly the definition of the democracy? When the people use all information there is (even if American Big Tech, or China, or Russia, or Soros, or world‑controlling pedo cabal have not very uniformly media coverage of the election process) to make their own decision?
After 4 vomitous years of "Russia hacked our elections" eventually boiling down to basically $10k spent on facebook ads I'm not sure I can handle more of this.
There are real ways to secure our elections but the end result is that it's insecure by design. The states who run the elections seem perfectly happy to run them with the current level of (in)security.
As a Canadian, it's pretty mental to see this kind of hijinks from over the border. Nobody's ever had any concerns about the security of our elections. Paper ballots and volunteers and it all just works. Why do you need machines? Why is there so much drama? It's not rocket surgery, it's literally counting, it's barely math. Photocopied forms and a sharpie.
Can’t countries make it illegal to sell political ads to social media corps? Can countries block social media tools nation wide if they are concerned?
The people obviously don’t care very much if they are still using these products.
I think we are past the point of complaining. People should just log off permanently and countries who care legislate. But stop complaining. Do something or don’t.
I think the strongest point out of this was that the US populace is a dangerous vector for our adversaries.
In 5th gen warfare, the battlefield can be kinetic or information, and might be all around us and omnipresent.
What we're guessing at without this decade's version of a Snowden leak is what the equities of the US military are in this. Are we playing defense, offense, and where? Is the answer just, "yes"?
What about our adversaries, or more importantly, _who_ are our adversaries?
Consider just the usual 3 who are in the news: Russia, China, and Israel:
There's so little that's public about these wars and so little traction in the mindshare of the electorate, you'd wonder if it was real if you just talked to random people.
The Supreme Court decided our President in 2000. I think the secret is that Alphabet agencies don't actually care about elections - otherwise it would have not reached the Supreme Court. If I was an Alphabet agency, instead of choosing a predetermined fate and faking things, I would admit I was weak if I could not handle any outcome. That is the joke I think the Alphabet agencies pull. They could force things to go their way, but that would breed weakness in themselves for being unable to handle events that do not, and they know it.
Social media? It’s clear to me it’s been all media for a long time. The right and conservative media have sane washed so much egregious behavior since 2016 it is literally unbelievable. Try to go back to 2015 mindset and consider anything that’s occurred since.
And the left? They’ve been driving over cliff after cliff. Left and right cable news are on the take, they have to be. Individuals obviously, not the networks.
And it also conveniently omits the monstrosity that was the Russian intervention in the 2016 election that precipitated all this and instead claims "the Trump admin never substantiated..." Like yeah, that's part of the original problem!
Where was this guy when cybercom destroyed the Internet Agency's computers and sent them personalized text messages in a highly publicized attack?
Of course he did not 1:1 predict Trump, but things such as "flood the zone with shit" is exactly what Yuri spoke about, just using different words e. g. informational overload or the corresponding russian words. And what he also didn't expand on enough, IMO, is corruption. Putin bets a LOT on corruption. Imagine if Trump were not corrupt - Yuri's prediction would not come to fruition. You need a rotting egg for leverage, and who knows what kompromat exists on the orange, clueless man.
1. Republicans win in midterms. Trump: "I defended democracy!"
2. Republicans lose in midterms. Trump: "The election was rigged by the evil Democrats!"
Recall that the whole basis of the Jan 6 insurrection was that he made the same "rigged" claim. He's already laying the foundation to claim "rigged" this time too, unless it conveniently benefits his party.
And many years later ex-democrat operatives are releasing evidence of fake votes, vote rescans, copy-machine votes and the mainstream media refuses to air any of it. Doesn't fit the established narrative.
it’s a lot harder to do a third term or a “coup” when you don’t have a majority support. i don’t have faith in many republican officials but i would bet many would not tie themselves 59 the sinking ship of trumpism, especially absent a heir apparent
The idea that foreign influence campaigns on American voters should be stopped is just a slightly disguised version of the idea that American voters have too much free speech and too much democracy. Which is a defensible position (I don't currently agree with it, but it's defensible), but I wish that the people who call for stopping foreign influence campaigns would just come out and state that this is indeed their position. Then we could have an honest conversation. They could, for example, argue that American voters are on average too ignorant, too stupid, or too prone to vote in destabilizing ways to be trusted to have free access to information. Or they could take it further and just plain say that we should limit who can vote or what can be voted for so that our politics stays within a given "acceptable" window. I would argue that whatever the American voters' tendencies might be, in the current political climate at least, I still prefer free access to information. Would I still value free access to information over keeping voters a certain "safe" way if it meant that some people would get elected who would actually put me in a concentration camp because of my political opinions or ethnicity? No. But we're nowhere close to that, since America has strong norms of civil liberty, so even people who want to put others in concentration camps because of their political opinions or ethnicity have a tough uphill climb if they want to actually do it.
In any case, I just find arguments that are along the lines of "it's not really free speech restriction, your free speech isn't restricted by not being able to see foreign propaganda" to be beneath contempt.
Personally I want to be able to see even foreign propaganda that is false. But attempts to curtail foreign propaganda lead to situations where even foreign propaganda that is true would be curtailed. And that is even worse. If some foreign government hacks the US government and dumps a bunch of compromising information about US politicians online, you'd best believe that I would like to see it.
Ideally, a patriotic, nonpartisan, civilian group would monitor large social media networks and outlets for evidence of direct funding from foreign sources, or parroting of information from known foreign propaganda networks. Then at the least, have a public database of (public) accounts and sites known to be under this influence.
It seems naive to think that there aren't massive information warfare campaigns targeting all political wings in the United States, and that no looking should be done to uncover it.
The military and CIA can muck with explicitly foreign actors, but they shouldn't be doing any kind of domestic law enforcement. Really bad precedent.
X has made UI changes and API restrictions that make it much harder and slower to see just how many accounts commenting under a tweet are bots. It is not in X's commercial interest for the public to know that. You can still efficiently track bot accounts through Nitter, for instance, but that is a workaround that X itself does not authorize. Any monitoring org faces an uphill battle.
I don't know how many people read the article there are concerning things in there but there is also significant discussion of regular old CyberCom activities such as malware research and what not.
What we need to understand is that cyberspace has opened up another theater of Operation and one that the nations enemies actively use against it, because of our free and open culture of speech.
I'll also point out that throughout the article it points how the operation was authorized by Obama, appealed for bt democratic senators trying to stop "disinformation" and prevent election "interference" as well as Republican presidents.
The fact of the matter is almost everything you see or read on the Internet is not organic but is parroting a prepared position for someone trying to influence you. Benignly to buy things, less benignly can be foreign actors attempting to distablize or so discontent amongst a potential geo-political rival. And this isn't new either, all the way back in in WW1 Germany was supporting and supplying Irish rebels. This is how the great game is played unfortunately.
The solution will be found by building bridges, getting to know people in the real world and reducing the influence of cyberspace on your life.
> I'll also point out that throughout the article it points how the operation was authorized by Obama, appealed for bt democratic senators trying to stop "disinformation" and prevent election "interference" as well as Republican presidents.
This is a culmination of everything post-9/11. The lesson for administrations is to not create institutions that will be weaponized by future administrations — against your party too, if you won't think about the citizens. Decentralization has been our saving grace.
If they disturb the election then the USA is de-facto a military junta.
Which in a way they are since Big Tech is calling the shots. Pretty
interesting to see how easy it was to overthrow the US system. It's
a lesson for other democracies too - build a resilient system. Many
years ago people said "nah, Putin does not destabilize democracies".
Well, guess you know see how deep corruption is. It's a bit like in
the movie Invasion of the Body Snatcher (both the first two movies
are great; the first one was more with commie-vibes, and more disturbing
in that way, whereas the second was a bit more with horror-vibes and
an epic end scene with Donald Sutherland).
the US Government and particularly the military cannot keep secrets the more people are involved
even classified stuff gets out because people brag
I'm not saying this isn't a possible scheme, I'm saying the press will find out very quickly
Plus every state is different system, mostly
What we should be talking about is the clear and documented fact the current administration has outright ignored 250 court orders, including deporting one person three times despite being ordered not to and then ordered to return them
Because after the election, that's when they go scorched-earth and ignoring court orders like cutting down nearly 500 trees in a single day rush before they are caught, well that's nightmare fuel
The title is clickbait. This is important to point out because this, at the minimum, it severely degrades public's perception of how smart, intelligent, qualified the individuals at CYBERCOM are.
I am unaware of who Klippenstein is and whether he's left or right leaning. This article via HN is my first exposure to him, but without any context at all, just by reading the article, I can figure out he's very left leaning.
Why does that matter?
It matters because journalism in 2026 has turned from reporting facts into appealing to a certain spectrum of an audience. It's no longer about providing facts of the matter but about leading an audience to a conclusion that they already had in their minds and re-enforcing it. This is the same echo chamber loop journalists accuse social media of but they are guilty of the very same.
---
First, Klippenstein (seems to) imply that it was the Trump administration that began claims of Russian intelligence interference.
Not so. In October 7, 2016 - the Obama administration, via both Department of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence, publicly attributed compromises of political organizations’ emails to the Russian government, connecting the subsequent disclosures to Russian-directed efforts. This was a government intelligence attribution and not merely a statement from the Democratic Party or Clinton campaign
Next, Klippenstein (seems to) imply that CYBERCOM is running the show here. That's not how INT works - CYBERCOM complements, and doesn't replaces FBI/DHS, while CIA is itself foreign focused. CYBERCOM’s role also includes disrupting foreign cyber operations, not just merely investigating them.
Now a very noble interpretation of Klippenstein is he's describing a bipartisan willingness to restrict speech in the name of election security - that his central objection is to the government’s intervention in political expression, not exclusively to which party controls it.
This is a fair argument but if there's foreign intelligence interference, that brainwashes the American public, making them draw conclusions that are factually invalid, whose responsibility is to atleast point that out?
The DoW has, at its disposal, incredibly advanced intelligence dissemination tools (as a requirement for INT operations) that are a great fit for this usecase. Should not the American public, who pay for all of it, not make use of it?
bias does not imply incorrect or factually inaccurate. "trump assassinated world leaders and triggered a full blown war in iran" is not bias. its factually accurate. That it breaks with someones worldview is not bias. And we need to stop pretending that adhering to objectivity is "bias".
By that definition, all medical science is "biased". And until the current administration, it wasnt. Requiring people making claims to demonstrate it with repeatable methods is not "bias".
If the claims in the article are true, military assets are taking direct action, not merely backing up domestic law enforcement.
>whose responsibility is to at least point that out?
Not the military. I agree that work needs done but when you dance close to taking down sites or possibly removing actual human Americans' posts surreptitiously, it should be done with civilian mechanisms and with oversight.
Where did I call it election interference? It's a bribe - this payment was never a campaign promise. The GOP (rightfully) hates it.
We are in agreement that the #1 concern for the midterms is that Americans will vote honestly. Trump was removed from office by honest voters, after his failed attempts to malign them.
Pre-emptive dismantling any defense of that behavior:
If it were really a good idea; if it were really supported by Congress and people really needed it, the ruling party with Present + Congress wouldn't condition it on them winning more elections.
Any comparison to policies like "elect me and get free education and free healthcare" are statements based on policy positions, and usually coming from people who don't have the power to make that happen alone. Trump and GOP have the power right now to try to do what he said, but they won't.
When Biden was elected, actual laws were suspended, like ballot harvesting and signature verification, by judges in multiple states. Mail-in voting combined with these two things allowed what was essentially legalized cheating in the election.
There was much more than this as well and it was well documented in a Rolling Stone article after the election.
Now that someone you don't like might use these same tactics, you want to stop the 'cheating'.
Get in line with the Republicans and others that lost their jobs and livelihood over having this opinion.
I will echo the statement of the security community during that time that our elections are the most safe and secure in the history of the United States.
Want evidence? ................... (this is what we got after Biden won, along with massive bannings and shutdown of online speech). I stopped taking many in the security community seriously after this when they can be swayed so easily by public opinion.
They are nothing more than political hacks with no integrity.
The vote totals from that election are...odd. Somehow Biden got about 28% more votes than any US election in history and about 24% more votes than you would expect in that election. That's way outside the error bars. As in 5 sigmas or more. Other than that, I have nothing but only because I don't go down this specific rabbit hole.
Trump also got a weird and very high vote total in the 2020 election. People just chalk this up to mail in voting. Perhaps, but the 2024 vote totals fell back into line with previous expectations on both sides for vote totals. Make of that what you will.
In this exact moment, USA is hacking Brazillian elections. Meta is shadowbanning one of the candidates. People don't know what is happening. A small filter in Meta AI blocking image generation for one of the candidates is now generating an uproar.
American Big Tech is a menace for all democracies around the world.
Cite?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49864642
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50082367 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50087140
The US is meddling in European elections as well, supporting extreme "right wing" parties across the continent. Entirely ignoring democracy issues.
Inside the US, you have a remarkable lack of serious reporting and common-meaning-generating discussion. Filter bubble echo-chambers are extreme to the point of constituting entirely incompatible realities.
Those distortions aren't random either, they clearly serve a specific goal. Having people scoff at "conspiracies" even when they're facing them dead-on is a surprisingly effective trick.
> American Big Tech is a menace for all democracies around the world.
Wait, aren't that is exactly the definition of the democracy? When the people use all information there is (even if American Big Tech, or China, or Russia, or Soros, or world‑controlling pedo cabal have not very uniformly media coverage of the election process) to make their own decision?
After 4 vomitous years of "Russia hacked our elections" eventually boiling down to basically $10k spent on facebook ads I'm not sure I can handle more of this.
There are real ways to secure our elections but the end result is that it's insecure by design. The states who run the elections seem perfectly happy to run them with the current level of (in)security.
As a Canadian, it's pretty mental to see this kind of hijinks from over the border. Nobody's ever had any concerns about the security of our elections. Paper ballots and volunteers and it all just works. Why do you need machines? Why is there so much drama? It's not rocket surgery, it's literally counting, it's barely math. Photocopied forms and a sharpie.
Can’t countries make it illegal to sell political ads to social media corps? Can countries block social media tools nation wide if they are concerned?
The people obviously don’t care very much if they are still using these products.
I think we are past the point of complaining. People should just log off permanently and countries who care legislate. But stop complaining. Do something or don’t.
> Can’t countries make it illegal to sell political ads to social media corps?
Countries can even make it illegal to hold elections, but that too will be incompatible with the democracy.
I think the strongest point out of this was that the US populace is a dangerous vector for our adversaries.
In 5th gen warfare, the battlefield can be kinetic or information, and might be all around us and omnipresent.
What we're guessing at without this decade's version of a Snowden leak is what the equities of the US military are in this. Are we playing defense, offense, and where? Is the answer just, "yes"?
What about our adversaries, or more importantly, _who_ are our adversaries?
Consider just the usual 3 who are in the news: Russia, China, and Israel:
Russia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_disinformation#Against...
China: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_interference_in_the_20...
Israel: https://quincyinst.org/research/the-eighth-front-inside-isra...
Mailers going out in Iowa, reportedly: https://x.com/DMRegister/status/2110328563211567310
There's so little that's public about these wars and so little traction in the mindshare of the electorate, you'd wonder if it was real if you just talked to random people.
American control social networks and is hacking democracies around the world: https://paydayreport.com/meta-censors-over-1-080-pro-lula-ac...
The Supreme Court decided our President in 2000. I think the secret is that Alphabet agencies don't actually care about elections - otherwise it would have not reached the Supreme Court. If I was an Alphabet agency, instead of choosing a predetermined fate and faking things, I would admit I was weak if I could not handle any outcome. That is the joke I think the Alphabet agencies pull. They could force things to go their way, but that would breed weakness in themselves for being unable to handle events that do not, and they know it.
No this isn’t about hacking voting machines, it’s about controversial defense work to stop outside foreign influence on social media.
Social media? It’s clear to me it’s been all media for a long time. The right and conservative media have sane washed so much egregious behavior since 2016 it is literally unbelievable. Try to go back to 2015 mindset and consider anything that’s occurred since.
And the left? They’ve been driving over cliff after cliff. Left and right cable news are on the take, they have to be. Individuals obviously, not the networks.
Where can I find a leftist cable news channel? Literally don't think they exist. MSNBC and CNN are as pro establishment as anything.
We’re down to a handful of breadtubers hiding from the Algorithm on Nebula, and some random podcasts.
Like this one the USA is doing? https://paydayreport.com/meta-censors-over-1-080-pro-lula-ac...
And it also conveniently omits the monstrosity that was the Russian intervention in the 2016 election that precipitated all this and instead claims "the Trump admin never substantiated..." Like yeah, that's part of the original problem!
Where was this guy when cybercom destroyed the Internet Agency's computers and sent them personalized text messages in a highly publicized attack?
Cite?
Outside? What if you can directly manipulate the inside?
It is to me shocking how few have listened to Yuri:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yErKTVdETpw
Of course he did not 1:1 predict Trump, but things such as "flood the zone with shit" is exactly what Yuri spoke about, just using different words e. g. informational overload or the corresponding russian words. And what he also didn't expand on enough, IMO, is corruption. Putin bets a LOT on corruption. Imagine if Trump were not corrupt - Yuri's prediction would not come to fruition. You need a rotting egg for leverage, and who knows what kompromat exists on the orange, clueless man.
One year ago. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooXAyprJohY
It's good that we now have a recorded timeline for history...
This is so lacking in specifics. How exactly is the military "targeting" Americans? The article provides no examples
Coming from the same people that pushed the Russia-collusion hoax?
Two scenarios:
1. Republicans win in midterms. Trump: "I defended democracy!"
2. Republicans lose in midterms. Trump: "The election was rigged by the evil Democrats!"
Recall that the whole basis of the Jan 6 insurrection was that he made the same "rigged" claim. He's already laying the foundation to claim "rigged" this time too, unless it conveniently benefits his party.
And many years later ex-democrat operatives are releasing evidence of fake votes, vote rescans, copy-machine votes and the mainstream media refuses to air any of it. Doesn't fit the established narrative.
k
You're scenario 1 is wrong. He has literally said every election he's been in has been rigged, even the ones he won.
Not only elections, anything he thinks he should win is rigged: Emmy awards, Nobel Peace Prizes, probably a lot more.
Fair point. "It was rigged against me, but I still won because of how great I am!"
I said it right after his election in 2016 and I'll say it again now: he will never leave office peacefully.
At the very least I expect riots and some attempt at a January 6th repeat. People will die, police or rioters or both.
This is what people voted for (including all the ones who didn't vote for various dumb reasons), so I'm just getting popcorn.
it’s a lot harder to do a third term or a “coup” when you don’t have a majority support. i don’t have faith in many republican officials but i would bet many would not tie themselves 59 the sinking ship of trumpism, especially absent a heir apparent
And your old as fuck
The idea that foreign influence campaigns on American voters should be stopped is just a slightly disguised version of the idea that American voters have too much free speech and too much democracy. Which is a defensible position (I don't currently agree with it, but it's defensible), but I wish that the people who call for stopping foreign influence campaigns would just come out and state that this is indeed their position. Then we could have an honest conversation. They could, for example, argue that American voters are on average too ignorant, too stupid, or too prone to vote in destabilizing ways to be trusted to have free access to information. Or they could take it further and just plain say that we should limit who can vote or what can be voted for so that our politics stays within a given "acceptable" window. I would argue that whatever the American voters' tendencies might be, in the current political climate at least, I still prefer free access to information. Would I still value free access to information over keeping voters a certain "safe" way if it meant that some people would get elected who would actually put me in a concentration camp because of my political opinions or ethnicity? No. But we're nowhere close to that, since America has strong norms of civil liberty, so even people who want to put others in concentration camps because of their political opinions or ethnicity have a tough uphill climb if they want to actually do it.
In any case, I just find arguments that are along the lines of "it's not really free speech restriction, your free speech isn't restricted by not being able to see foreign propaganda" to be beneath contempt.
Personally I want to be able to see even foreign propaganda that is false. But attempts to curtail foreign propaganda lead to situations where even foreign propaganda that is true would be curtailed. And that is even worse. If some foreign government hacks the US government and dumps a bunch of compromising information about US politicians online, you'd best believe that I would like to see it.
Cool, this isn't concerning..
Ideally, a patriotic, nonpartisan, civilian group would monitor large social media networks and outlets for evidence of direct funding from foreign sources, or parroting of information from known foreign propaganda networks. Then at the least, have a public database of (public) accounts and sites known to be under this influence.
It seems naive to think that there aren't massive information warfare campaigns targeting all political wings in the United States, and that no looking should be done to uncover it.
The military and CIA can muck with explicitly foreign actors, but they shouldn't be doing any kind of domestic law enforcement. Really bad precedent.
X has made UI changes and API restrictions that make it much harder and slower to see just how many accounts commenting under a tweet are bots. It is not in X's commercial interest for the public to know that. You can still efficiently track bot accounts through Nitter, for instance, but that is a workaround that X itself does not authorize. Any monitoring org faces an uphill battle.
A monitoring org with subpoena powers is probably necessary.
There are already a bunch of NGOs that do exactly what you're describing. They are not particularly impactful.
Like the Constitution, it is just a suggestion, nothing but writing, unless the people who have sworn those oaths choose to act on them.
That's not what I meant. It's a reminder.
I don't know how many people read the article there are concerning things in there but there is also significant discussion of regular old CyberCom activities such as malware research and what not.
What we need to understand is that cyberspace has opened up another theater of Operation and one that the nations enemies actively use against it, because of our free and open culture of speech.
I'll also point out that throughout the article it points how the operation was authorized by Obama, appealed for bt democratic senators trying to stop "disinformation" and prevent election "interference" as well as Republican presidents.
The fact of the matter is almost everything you see or read on the Internet is not organic but is parroting a prepared position for someone trying to influence you. Benignly to buy things, less benignly can be foreign actors attempting to distablize or so discontent amongst a potential geo-political rival. And this isn't new either, all the way back in in WW1 Germany was supporting and supplying Irish rebels. This is how the great game is played unfortunately.
The solution will be found by building bridges, getting to know people in the real world and reducing the influence of cyberspace on your life.
> I'll also point out that throughout the article it points how the operation was authorized by Obama, appealed for bt democratic senators trying to stop "disinformation" and prevent election "interference" as well as Republican presidents.
This is a culmination of everything post-9/11. The lesson for administrations is to not create institutions that will be weaponized by future administrations — against your party too, if you won't think about the citizens. Decentralization has been our saving grace.
"The solution will be found by building bridges, getting to know people in the real world and reducing the influence of cyberspace on your life."
So that the physical agents can sway us?
>The solution will be found by building bridges
You can't be so naive that you think we can "build bridges" with North Korea (one of THE most prominent threat actors in the entire world).
they mean building bridges with other Americans, very obviously to me.
If they disturb the election then the USA is de-facto a military junta. Which in a way they are since Big Tech is calling the shots. Pretty interesting to see how easy it was to overthrow the US system. It's a lesson for other democracies too - build a resilient system. Many years ago people said "nah, Putin does not destabilize democracies". Well, guess you know see how deep corruption is. It's a bit like in the movie Invasion of the Body Snatcher (both the first two movies are great; the first one was more with commie-vibes, and more disturbing in that way, whereas the second was a bit more with horror-vibes and an epic end scene with Donald Sutherland).
the US Government and particularly the military cannot keep secrets the more people are involved
even classified stuff gets out because people brag
I'm not saying this isn't a possible scheme, I'm saying the press will find out very quickly
Plus every state is different system, mostly
What we should be talking about is the clear and documented fact the current administration has outright ignored 250 court orders, including deporting one person three times despite being ordered not to and then ordered to return them
Because after the election, that's when they go scorched-earth and ignoring court orders like cutting down nearly 500 trees in a single day rush before they are caught, well that's nightmare fuel
They can: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50087140
Large segments of people will never see the open secrets
So? Cambridge analytica did the same. Nobody seemed to care much in the US
Cambridge Analytica isn't funded by my taxes and can't put me in jail
Or have me shot.
And live stream it.
It'll be interesting to see where Zuck's loyalty lies if the Pentagon asks him to do so...
The title is clickbait. This is important to point out because this, at the minimum, it severely degrades public's perception of how smart, intelligent, qualified the individuals at CYBERCOM are.
I am unaware of who Klippenstein is and whether he's left or right leaning. This article via HN is my first exposure to him, but without any context at all, just by reading the article, I can figure out he's very left leaning.
Why does that matter?
It matters because journalism in 2026 has turned from reporting facts into appealing to a certain spectrum of an audience. It's no longer about providing facts of the matter but about leading an audience to a conclusion that they already had in their minds and re-enforcing it. This is the same echo chamber loop journalists accuse social media of but they are guilty of the very same.
---
First, Klippenstein (seems to) imply that it was the Trump administration that began claims of Russian intelligence interference.
Not so. In October 7, 2016 - the Obama administration, via both Department of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence, publicly attributed compromises of political organizations’ emails to the Russian government, connecting the subsequent disclosures to Russian-directed efforts. This was a government intelligence attribution and not merely a statement from the Democratic Party or Clinton campaign
Next, Klippenstein (seems to) imply that CYBERCOM is running the show here. That's not how INT works - CYBERCOM complements, and doesn't replaces FBI/DHS, while CIA is itself foreign focused. CYBERCOM’s role also includes disrupting foreign cyber operations, not just merely investigating them.
Now a very noble interpretation of Klippenstein is he's describing a bipartisan willingness to restrict speech in the name of election security - that his central objection is to the government’s intervention in political expression, not exclusively to which party controls it.
This is a fair argument but if there's foreign intelligence interference, that brainwashes the American public, making them draw conclusions that are factually invalid, whose responsibility is to atleast point that out?
The DoW has, at its disposal, incredibly advanced intelligence dissemination tools (as a requirement for INT operations) that are a great fit for this usecase. Should not the American public, who pay for all of it, not make use of it?
bias does not imply incorrect or factually inaccurate. "trump assassinated world leaders and triggered a full blown war in iran" is not bias. its factually accurate. That it breaks with someones worldview is not bias. And we need to stop pretending that adhering to objectivity is "bias".
By that definition, all medical science is "biased". And until the current administration, it wasnt. Requiring people making claims to demonstrate it with repeatable methods is not "bias".
By choosing which facts to report you can be biased
If you report all crime by black people and no crime by white people, you are factually accurate in what you report but you are also biased.
If the claims in the article are true, military assets are taking direct action, not merely backing up domestic law enforcement.
>whose responsibility is to at least point that out?
Not the military. I agree that work needs done but when you dance close to taking down sites or possibly removing actual human Americans' posts surreptitiously, it should be done with civilian mechanisms and with oversight.
Why title and comments under article act as if that was bad?
if you don't trust the us military it's obviously bad, right?
Because the incumbent admin already attempted, and failed, to turn over election results once before.
I think the biggest fear amongst critics is that the election will be fair and honest.
Trump's too, hence his last-minute attempts at bribery: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/10/trump-dividend-midterms-gop....
What politician doesn’t bribe? Obama and Biden promised free healthcare, college, and yes, even cash.
Calling it out as election interference now shows a clear bias.
Where did I call it election interference? It's a bribe - this payment was never a campaign promise. The GOP (rightfully) hates it.
We are in agreement that the #1 concern for the midterms is that Americans will vote honestly. Trump was removed from office by honest voters, after his failed attempts to malign them.
Pre-emptive dismantling any defense of that behavior:
If it were really a good idea; if it were really supported by Congress and people really needed it, the ruling party with Present + Congress wouldn't condition it on them winning more elections.
Any comparison to policies like "elect me and get free education and free healthcare" are statements based on policy positions, and usually coming from people who don't have the power to make that happen alone. Trump and GOP have the power right now to try to do what he said, but they won't.
When Biden was elected, actual laws were suspended, like ballot harvesting and signature verification, by judges in multiple states. Mail-in voting combined with these two things allowed what was essentially legalized cheating in the election.
There was much more than this as well and it was well documented in a Rolling Stone article after the election.
Now that someone you don't like might use these same tactics, you want to stop the 'cheating'.
Get in line with the Republicans and others that lost their jobs and livelihood over having this opinion.
I will echo the statement of the security community during that time that our elections are the most safe and secure in the history of the United States.
Want evidence? ................... (this is what we got after Biden won, along with massive bannings and shutdown of online speech). I stopped taking many in the security community seriously after this when they can be swayed so easily by public opinion.
They are nothing more than political hacks with no integrity.
> Want evidence?
Yes. I do. Very much.
Do you have any?
You know they don’t.
The vote totals from that election are...odd. Somehow Biden got about 28% more votes than any US election in history and about 24% more votes than you would expect in that election. That's way outside the error bars. As in 5 sigmas or more. Other than that, I have nothing but only because I don't go down this specific rabbit hole.
Trump also got a weird and very high vote total in the 2020 election. People just chalk this up to mail in voting. Perhaps, but the 2024 vote totals fell back into line with previous expectations on both sides for vote totals. Make of that what you will.
> I have nothing but only because I don't go down this specific rabbit hole
I did 2 years ago, and you are right, you got nothing.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43512337
The published numbers are totally in line with recent voter activity in the States.
> our elections are the most safe and secure in the history of the United States.
Still worse than most other democracies.