Intelligence Report on Russian Hacking | Hacker News Reader

Intelligence Report on Russian Hacking

nytimes.com

24 pointsjbegley27 comments

There is no evidence of hacking here.

U.S. Intelligence community is losing serious credibility _probably_ due to Obama administration's pressure. Claiming RT (A Russian News Source) manipulated the elections through their coverage is one of the worst arguments to pick. Especially after majority of the mainstream media has openly and aggressively supported one candidate during the whole pre election period. This is almost the equivalent of saying "don't mess into our own way of manipulating". Ridiculous.

These reports are not helping anyone but perhaps Trump.

The RT evidence is probably the only evidence they are able to declassify.

Lacking an actual war, and admitting that the intrusions were easy to pull off for a trained script kiddy, what can we do to punish the Russian regime for this? Ideally, we could hit only the oligarchs' interests, since dividing them from their general population will be the most strategically effective move when their economy is already taking a hit from low oil/gas prices.

Could just tell it like it is. I have yet to see this fully assembled in one place but it connects the dots pretty well.

Trump owes Blackstone/ Bayrock group $560 million dollars (one of his largest debtors and the primary reason he won't reveal his tax returns)

Blackstone is owned wholly by Russian billionaires, who owe their position to Putin and have made billions from their work with the Russian government.

Other companies that have borrowed from Blackstone have claimed that owing money to them is like owing to the Russian mob and while you owe them, they own you for many favors.

The Russian economy is badly faltering under the weight of its over-dependence on raw materials which as you know have plummeted in the last 2 years leaving the Russian economy scrambling to pay its debts.

Russia has an impetus to influence our election to ensure the per barrel oil prices are above $65 ( they are currently hovering around $50)

Russia can't affordably get at 80% of its oil reserves and reduce its per barrel cost to compete with America at $45 or Saudi Arabia at $39. With Iranian sanctions being lifted Russia will find another inexpensive competitor increasing production and pushing Russia further down the list of suppliers.

As for Iranian sanctions, the 6 countries lifting them allowing Iran to collect on the billions it is owed for pumping oil but not being paid for it. These billions Iran can only get if the Iranian nuclear deal is signed. Trump spoke of ending the deals which would cause oil sales sanctions to be reimposed, which would make Russian oil more competitive.

Rex Tillerson (Trump's pick for Secretary of State) is the head of ExxonMobil, which is in possession of patented technology that could help Putin extract 45% more oil at a significant cost savings to Russia, helping Putin put money in the Russian coffers to help reconstitute its military and finally afford to mass produce the new and improved systems that it had invented before the Russian economy had slowed so much.

Putin cannot get access to these new cost saving technologies OR outside oil field development money, due to US sanctions on Russia, because of its involvement in Ukrainian civil war.

Look for Trump to end sanctions on Russia and to back out of the Iranian nuclear deal, to help Russia rebuild its economy, strengthen Putin and make Tillerson and Trump even richer, thus allowing Trump to satisfy his creditors at Blackstone.

Sources: Time Magazine, NY Times, The Atlantic, The Guardian UK.

"Blackstone is owned wholly by Russian biollionaires". Source?

Actual source, though. The list of reputable news orgs is great, but I can find no sign that they ever printed this.

What I can find, is that Blackstone is publicly traded. 50.5% institutional, which for an American company with American owners is presumably not 100% Russian. And the rest? Fidelity, Morgan Stanley, and Janus are the largest holders. Not exactly "Russian billionaires".

http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/bx/institutional-holdings

This shows their involvement in managing Russian sovereign wealth lately. Note: their wealth management was directly impacted by US sanctions. Motive.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/23/business/dealbook/russian-...

True enough, and I did find that. But "managing money for" is not the same as - or even comparable to - "owned by". Blackstone manages money across East Asia, but is owned (almost?) entirely by Americans.

You can tell a story where Schwarzman's involvement with Trump and the Russian Direct Investment Fund constitutes a shady link to Sibur, a state-tied petrochem company. Those statements are all true; the rebuttal would be something like "all big companies in Russia are in some ways intermingled with the state; all companies which invest in Russia are at most two removes from Kremlin shadiness". I think that is probably also true, but it doesn't make this a non-issue for me.

Bayrock's ties are messier, certainly. They're also lower level on both ends, particularly since Trump's total involvement with them seems to be <$100 million, which makes that "$560 million in debt" claim laughable.

More importantly: Do you have any actual source for the claims in the previous post? You've pointed to some other topics, but the "owned wholly" and "$560 million in debt" claims seem completely baseless, and that source list was just the names of major publication.

What about this? FT went around and asked all the questions and got wildly different answers. Someone is not telling the truth.

https://www.ft.com/content/549ddfaa-5fa5-11e6-b38c-7b39cbb11...

The links to money laundering are fairly clear here.

https://www.ft.com/content/33285dfa-9231-11e6-8df8-d3778b55a...

But you're right. In the end it's impossible to tell for sure. The claim made is not fully substantiatable.

Bayrock has ties with Russian projects as well.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/former-mafia-linked-...

Thanks for putting all that together. But when I said "we", I meant the tech community. After all, it's our shitty infosec defaults and love for "disruption" of reliable mainstream information sources that got us in these situations.

Don't thank him - his sources don't contain his claims, which are false.

Check out Blackstone's financials. They're public, and the claim that it's wholly owned by Russians is laughable - it's largely held by US investment firms.

http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/bx/institutional-holdings

Largely bs. It has been going around multiple sites Blackstone is a public co. No source for $560mm. Bayrock is gone anyway. Putin's military is actually overstretched/weak, apart fr 8k nukes...heavily dependent on draftees. he's mainly on aggressive defense. he def wants sanctions lifted, tho. that part is right.

Any attribution for the claim re $560 million?

You mean "what can we do to further escalate this cold war that has previously brought both our countries to the brink of nuclear destruction".

Here is a proposal, let's secure our information technology and stop paying the NSA billions to actively weaken it or oppose secure systems as policy. Let us also in the spirit of the new year abandon this general obsession with global power projection and care more about what happens in Flint rather than Siberia or Mockba, I hear it's fucking cold there anyway.

Unfortunately, due to the electoral interference, in order to care about Flint, Michigan, we now have to get rid of a Kremlin-backed government who will be trying to "build the wall" while kids in Flint have lead-poisoning.

Who would "get rid of them?" The DOJ/FBI seem useless, except for their right wingers, which helped Trump & the Russians rather than see the Left take power for another 8 years. The House and Senate leadership seem frozen if not complicit. The most likely way out of this is yet another coup but who's left? So many policemen and members of the military support Trump, it isn't clear they'd follow orders, or even could maintain order if Trump were removed. And everyone knows the radical right wing has dumped some 300 million guns into the general population, and we know how a lot of them feel. So it looks like we're screwed for a while, but at least historians will have a ball with this in a couple hundred years.

Well, our incoming leadership is the beneficiary of the interference, so the US will do nothing to punish Russia.

Is HN really this pro-Trump or are the Russians here?

I don't get it either.

A report about hacking, a subject in the bleeping title of this site, has been buried from HN. There are now no active posts on the Intelligence Report on Hacker News. And the remaining dead/dupe/flagged posts all have anti U.S govt. rhetoric bubbled right to the top of the comment heap.

Since when is "show me evidence" anti govt rethoric? Now where did I put the keys to the fallout shelter...

You're just cherry-picking what you choose to believe. Or are you advocating the dismantling of all intelligence agencies? I mean if you don't believe their findings, what use are they?