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Comment by ocdtrekkie | Hacker News Reader

I'm honestly curious if this is part of like a Russian misinformation campaign. I can't imagine China would be involved (it looks bad for them), and this feels like maybe an attempt by a foreign power to manipulate the market in the US by messing with our media. I'm curious if Bloomberg's interviews were done in person with all of their corroborating sources or if VoIP or email was heavily in use for these.

The idea that someone put in place an extensive, intentional plan to create a false story is perhaps the only way that all sides of this could be acting in good faith.

Troll farms have, at the very least, exacerbated conspiracy theories like Pizzagate or QAnon, which very few people are likely to find credible. But the step up from that, the truly masterwork level of that, would be to fabricate a story that comes from an incredibly reliable source, that truly leaves the reader unsure of who to trust and what the reality is.

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There’s something going on here. I think the denials from Apple and Amazon are strong evidence that Bloomberg’s story isn’t the end of it if it’s even true in the first place, but it’s entirely possible that there are other layers to the other story that explain the evidence that Bloomberg and their sources have seen.

And, regardless of the factual accuracy of this specific story, the overall question of supply chain security, particularly when it entails depending on geopolitical rivals, is an important one.

> it’s entirely possible that there are other layers to the other story that explain the evidence that Bloomberg and their sources have seen.

I wonder if it could be a hypothetical - it's the sort of thing I could imagine coming up in a war games-like scenario (what would happen if China chose to use its access to compromise our supply lines?), and it was mis-relayed to Bloomberg or the documents they have seen (the sources or Bloomberg) do not clearly identify it as such.

Maybe a stretch, but I'm struggling to reconcile Bloomberg's story with the explicit denials.

What if the attack was so bad that none of the tech companies want to admit it?

What? Maybe the denials are just honest.

I'm not sure why this is getting insta-downvotes. While there's no evidence to support it, there could be circumstantial logic to it. One government would very much like to divert focus onto the other, if possible, especially in a climate where they'd prefer to have the issue of election interference trumped by a trade war.

Lots of countries dislike each other. There's no reason to suspect that this is a "Russian misinformation campaign" and suggesting as much is just making things up to push xenophobic anti-Russian conspiracy theories. No different than the "QAnon" and "Pizzagate" conspiracies that the OP is deriding.

It was recently discussed in the news that Russian trolls may have exacerbated drama over The Last Jedi. Which is to say, there seems to be significant interest by those groups in sowing discord and distrust among Americans, not just interfering with the election itself.

I don't hold any given concern against the Russian people, or people who have Russian roots who live here. But pretending the Russian government isn't actively interfering with our media would be intellectually dishonest.

What was "recently discussed in the news" does not necessarily have any truth value.

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