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Comment by MBCook | Hacker News Reader

Oh, are they finally apologizing (or providing proof for) their story The Big Hack about chips the size of a grain of rice China puts in computers made by Dell and Apple and others?

No? Not a word about it?

It’s almost like they’re continuing to pretend that their giant journalistic screwup doesn’t exist.

Don’t care. ‘Are articles are too long’. How about yours articles are untrustworthy?

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Some bloggers (well gruber at least) still bring this up any time they newly cite Bloomberg. It does defy explanation that the publication has not been able to offer proof of the claims from that article or simply rescind it.

They should continue to bring it up, every time, until the story is rescinded.

Bizarre thought just hit me.

What if they are correct, and stumbled onto the same trail the FBI has, and the FBI gave them an order to not discuss it anymore due to a pending investigation with national security repercussions?

Given how BB has just walked away from this article - no rescinding, no nothing, I think it's a possibility.

They weren't correct. It was all a lie by Bloomberg. The scenario in the article was already disclosed as a rough hypothetical for expository purposes. The pictured component was a passive device that wouldn't be usable in any sort of hack with inserted digital electronics.

sorry, but it sounds like a conspiracy theory

Because it is. It has been proposed though. I think the only way this could be true is if Tim Cook and many security folks at Apple either failed to detect the exploit, or they did and are all "in on it" and essentially lying about adherence to a core company value.

The requirement of perfect secrecy and vast involvement in a lie is what typically weakens conspiracy theories as not realistic.

Who says they are all in on it?

And media has held back articles several times due to govt request - maybe this one just got through.

Not saying I'm right - only saying it's possible.

Because it would require hardware, network and general security engineers to perform the investigation. And along with that would be a dozen aides or delegates to these professionals that would be very familiar with the investigation.

It would be obvious if the results were opposite what Cook said publicly, or if the investigation was suddenly stopped and made inconclusive.

Apple would also be counting on the US government and Bloomberg to not leak "the truth" so that Tim Cook's statement would not be revealed as a lie.

The idea offers intrigue but doesn't pass any kind of reasonable pass of consideration.

You are assuming that Apple would know. Am I missing something?

I think in your idea, the exploit is real and known by LE and Bloomberg. However, Apple was not able to find this out, even though it was real. Is that the case? If so, it would suggest the FBI is allowing Apple to unknowingly use compromised systems?

I'd love to be corrected with primary source but as far as I can ingest from all the recent article's I'm reading, Bloomberg is also the only source that started the whole China is falsifying its covid numbers narrative based on what "the U.S. intelligence community concluded in a classified report to the White House, according to three U.S. officials.

The officials asked not to be identified because the report is secret, and they declined to detail its contents."

This was then parroted in all the other major publications.

(I'm not counting things like Pompeo just saying stuff https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/intervie...)

>https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/04/china-wuhan-revises-c...

Here’s a very unbloomberg source article that says that China underreported deaths by 50%.

Not sure if you read the article you're linking. I'd say it's demonstrating the inverse if what you're saying, i.e. china is so not 'falsifying numbers' that it went back in time to tally cases that never made it into the hospitals for accuracy.

I don't know if many countries progressed to the stage of being able to look back to revise and reshare adjustments on previous statistics.

If just number jumps are your thing, you'd have more fun with the 100% jump in china cases when they revised the definition of confirmed cases as anyone with glassy spots in their lungs from CT scans but without viral tests yet.

Alternatively; they were called out, and the discrepancy between the reality and reported was too wide, they had to do something.

I think people have trouble grasping the concept of exponential growth.

Bloomber overcorrected after firing Josh Topolsky and pivoted into clickbait.

https://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2015/07/bloomberg-fires...

What astounds me is not only have they not apologized, they haven't even done a back-page, quiet retraction. They still present the story as if it's "News".

I agree, publishing a story with such a strong claim and then having nothing to come out of it... That's insane. It seems like they had no evidence of anything and just went by hearsay despite having very high ranking people in the involved companies denying their claims completely and categorically.

It's unfathomable to me that they would dare publish something like that without having an ironclad case and even more damning that they never even bothered to retract it.

Are you sure they didn't receive an NSL over the issue?

They should have been sued, and not from a being petty perspective. Libel laws are a huge part of what keeps the media trustworthy.

I'm also curious why they were not sued, and tbh that makes me wonder...

Libel usually requires publishing something that you know is false. I'm inclined to believe that the reporter/editor thought the story was true for whatever reason (and sufficiently so that they doubled down at one point). Presumably any "evidence" was of a nature that they couldn't make public for some reason, e.g. shielding sources.

To be clear, I'm definitely of the belief that this was a screwup even if the reporter/editor still believes the story was accurate. Based on what is known, it certainly seems to be false.

A court case is the only way for a judge to privately review the purported evidence and make a determination if that evidence actually exists and was sufficient for the story to go forward (even if ultimately false) or if it was shaky at best or entirely fabricated at worst - otherwise any paper could publish anything based off of "anonymous sources."

I'm all for journalistic freedom and anonymity of sources; I'm not saying they have to unmask their sources but they definitely have to be able to provide - confidentially to a judge or a mutually agreed upon third party - something to substantiate their allegations.

Yep. I still don't understand how this didn't completely blew up. That was a gigantic story that basically turned out to be complete BS, I haven't read anything by Bloomberg since.

It is, indeed really hard to take micro-scale editorial corrections like this while they leave unresolved what is at BEST an eggregious lapse of editorial judgement.

This is a good point. Ever since that mess, I've looked at every bloomberg.com link and not clicked on it. Why bother?

Matt Levine is still worth reading.

that was a long and mediocre intelligence story

Is this what state-fed misinformation looks like?

Possibly, but just as Bloomberg cannot prove legitimacy of their story, your claim is equal in that regard.

So, best to not speculate and conspire.

> It’s almost like they’re continuing to pretend that their giant journalistic screwup doesn’t exist

It's exactly like. They did not publish a retraction because they stand behind what they wrote. But as long as they keep it short...

They stand behind what they wrote despite every company mentioned publicly insisting the claims were BS, despite no evidence being presented then or now, despite the fact that it actively hurts their integrity?

Why would they do that?

That's a million dollar (or more) question I guess. But seeing how they stand behind such nonsense I can't help but call into question every single one of their articles. Every one of them could be "The Big Hack" and I wouldn't know it because it might be outside of any field I could make a reasonable assessment in, and they'd never retract it.

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