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Cyber Attack, Possible Serious Breach, at U.S. State Department
- mark_l_watson 5y agoI have seen the cost per day of being in Afghanistan as $300 million, each day, for 20 years. While that greatly increased stock price for defense contractors, there seems in retrospect to be little other value for that money. More of that tax money should have been devoted to cybersecurity, stem education, and even physical infrastructure that would safeguard water and food supply. I am not naïve, I understand that both political parties are controlled by corporate/Wall Street interests. Still, you would hope that our elected officials could perhaps accept fewer kickbacks and function more in the interests of the American tax payer and not serve those financial interests who pay to get them elected and control them. Really a sad situation. President Eisenhower was a good guy, and he nailed it when he warned the American public about the military industrial complex. /rant
- nickff 5y agoI think it’s a bit naive to expect that a government which wasted a huge sum of money would have achieved great things with that money if not but for that one event. A more realistic assessment would be that they’d just waste it a different way.
- beamatronic 5y agoLet's waste it in a way that educates people, feeds them, and provides for their basic health care needs.
- bellyfullofbac 5y agoFunny how the money went to (at least an attempt to) build schools in Afghanistan instead. That country has/had free universal healthcare coverage. Time for Alanis Morissette to male version 3 of "Ironic"...
- AnimalMuppet 5y agoSee, the thing about waste is that it doesn't actually achieve what it claims that it's going to achieve. So wasting it on education isn't going to result in more actual education. (And yes, I know it isn't binary. It can be 70% waste and still produce 30% education, which is 30% more than we would have had - which I think is your point. It's still 70% waste, though.) Maybe the answer is to stop letting government spend huge amounts of money, and let the people do so instead?
- TheOtherHobbes 5y agoAnd how is that supposed to work? In detail please. With examples of how it has had successful outcomes in the past. Compared to - say - landmark programs like ARPA in the 60s and 70s. The problem isn't the spending, it's the capture that diverts the spending to useless pork instead of best-in-world investment and R&D. The US used to be quite good at that. Now it isn't.
- SantalBlush 5y agoThis is the wrong takeaway from the whole ordeal. It was largely so-called fiscal conservatives who were very in favor of invading Afghanistan in the first place. Their reasoning was that military defense is one of the few legitimate functions of a government, and since 9/11 had just happened, well, of course we needed more defense. Now that trillions of dollars have been thrown in the trash, they want to pretend this is a teachable moment about goverment waste in general, when it was really their waste. George W. Bush was a two-term president, and his pro-small-government voters share the credit for this fiscal disaster; nobody gets to spin this as a warning against big government. That money absolutely could have been put to much better use in other programs.
- swader999 5y agoMost Republicans and Democrats including Biden voted for it.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- l332mn 5y agoOver a 100 years ago this was part of Lenins analysis of capitalism, and the closely connected aspect of imperialism, both military and economic. This is not new, it has been a central part of a Marxist (in particular Marxism Leninism) understanding of the world in its economic expression long before it became obvious to Eisenhower. The value of that money is the continued global class oppression by the international financial bourgeoisie, and the US-lead western hegemony. The Afghanistan stalemate served several purposes as I see it. 1) To funnel money to the military industrial complex. 2) To contain China's Belt and Road initiative. 3) To maintain an active military presence in oil producing regions in order to dominate and control trade and to ensure supply (same for Iraq and Libya).
- neartheplain 5y agoIf only Brezhnev had listened. Or were you talking about the American invasion?
- l332mn 5y agoAmerica's invasion. BRI wasn't a thing back then. Also, the USSR was invited by the Afghanistan government to contain a rebellion, it wasn't an aggressive (imperialist) invasion.
- neartheplain 5y agoMy comment was sarcastic. Your points about the imperialist "Afghanistan stalemate" fit the Soviets equally well with only minor modifications.
- l332mn 5y agoHow? The planned economic system of USSR means that wartime production is a net economic loss serving no financial purpose. In contrast with the capitalist system, where war serves as a basis for the transfer of capital to the war profiteers, i.e. the national bourgeoisie. The comparison is invalid.
- s5300 5y ago> cybersecurity, stem education, and even physical infrastructure that would safeguard water and food supply. ...But then there would be less people dumb enough to not raise issue to the provoking of non-stop wars that funnel money into the military industrial complex They're not going to work against their own interest, you surely know.
- pessimizer 5y agoImperial overstretch is what happens when suppliers to the military become so powerful that they get to decide when to go to and when to withdraw from war. Their motivation is to keep fighting and to never actually win. Eventually it unwinds like a ponzi scheme.
- JKCalhoun 5y agoFrom your own argument: why would they ever decide to withdraw from war?
- edoceo 5y agoMore time for golf
- AnimalMuppet 5y agoBecause the people are getting too angry, and might start to actually look at what's going on?
- MonkeyClub 5y agoBut in practice the people are getting more complacent -- perhaps more individualistic, or more overburdened with livelihood concerns, and there's a massive clout of PR to dissuade anyone from thinking that war is, actually, a bad thing. I'm thinking of "thank you for your service", and the general sentiment of sympathy for veterans. Surely they're not imperialistic red shirts fighting for an evil king supported by a bunch of robber barons, nor are they mercenaries fighting a runaway proxy war, are they? Though they do get paid to go overseas and murder foreign nationals, while the local branches of the government are putting the screws on us with more militarized policing, more surveillance, and less liberties, since there's an ever-growing world-wide network of anti-American sentiment, and the terrorists may be hiding in that house in the cul-de-sac. Not to mention a generally declining education system, coupled with rising groupthink, PC, and patriotism. With all these factors in effect, assisted by a ton of PR, joining the army to go kill for the industrialists isn't socially unacceptable at all -- it's a career choice, and there's no critical thinking available to either the aspiring soldier or their social circle to indicate any other possibilities. One would wonder how we burned through all that pro-American goodwill, if there was really anything to wonder about the whole deal.
- taurath 5y agoThe list of things we could have achieved with that money is what is the most distressing. Make a countrywide high speed rail system. Universal free preschool Universal free college (Edit: for scale rather than an example of necessarily a good) Paid off half the mortgages in the US The list goes on and on. Let nobody say we don’t have money for improvements to our society.
- pclmulqdq 5y agoHow about lowering taxes and giving that money back to people?
- misiti3780 5y agoWhy would the US government pay off peoples mortgages? Surely you don't think that is viable thing to spend public money on? To be clear, I think the other ideas are great, except that one.
- gruez 5y ago> Why would the US government pay off peoples mortgages? Surely you don't think that is viable thing to spend public money on? Yeah that's a dumb idea. All that would do is cause houses to be even more expensive.
- taurath 5y agoI’m not saying it should by any means, only to appreciate the sheer scale. There are of course way better ideas.
- FpUser 5y ago>"Universal free college" This would greatly increase the amount of critically thinking population. I do not think it lines up well with what the government and elites want.
- coldacid 5y ago>This would greatly increase the amount of critically thinking population. I wish I were as optimistic as you.
- mlosgoodat 5y agoMeanwhile, the people of the country “by, of, and for the people…” stroll into corpo HQ and login every day. You don’t HAVE to commit code to a git repo they control. The socio-political reality isn’t like 100 years ago. As soon as Wall Street is seriously threatened by a worker related revolt, laws change. Keep the laptop shut and DON’T “job from home” (work is not the same as a social job). But come now, let’s all coalesce around a VC incubators forum instead. If the US is truly a nation of free people, why do they keep doing as they are told?
- FpUser 5y ago>"If the US is truly a nation of free people, why do they keep doing as they are told?" It is not and it never was. It is relatively better than some others. that is all about it. Not a single country can claim what you just said.
- OminousWeapons 5y ago> If the US is truly a nation of free people, why do they keep doing as they are told? They want to and choose to. Working for those entities gets you paid and (at least theoretically) raises your quality of life if you don't have a lot of money. Fighting the man gets you a life of hardship and pain. For some people it is worth it but for most its not. Most people care more about their own well being than that of others; I don't think that is news or even a particularly offensive statement.
- nicoffeine 5y agoThrough 2050, the cost could be closer to 6.5 trillion in interest alone for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is the first set of wars that were not funded by raising the top tax rate. Our grandchildren will be paying for for these mistakes long after the architects of this catastrophe are dead. "Overall, the U.S.' net interest costs — payments the federal government sends to investors and public debt holders minus interest it collects — are rising. That includes the interest on borrowing to fund the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Net interest is projected to widen to 2.7% of GDP in 2031, up from 1.3% in 2024, according to a July report by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office." [1] As a point of reference, we spent 2.5% of GDP for a decade to pay for the Apollo missions. [1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/afghanistan-iraq-wars-debt-6-trillion-interest/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/afghanistan-iraq-wars-debt-6-tr...
- gruez 5y ago[deleted]
- someperson 5y agoYour plot shows the MSCI Aerospace/Defence index did far better than the S&P 500.
- stefan_ 5y agoThis doesn't seem to show what you think it does at all.
- samvega_ 5y agoDoes that account for the extraction of dividends?
- jonplackett 5y agoThe further irony is, that this was EXACTLY Al-Qaeda's plan - to draw the west into a long, expensive war, providing endless recruitment opportunities: Those who suffer from it (each person you bomb makes > 1 person hate you) and also home grown lone wolf types in the US/UK/EU
- kabdib 5y agoI thought that 300M / day was an off-by-an-order-of-magnitude error. Nope, you're right. Wow. That really puts the expense into perspective.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- gccs 5y agoEisenhower waited until the very last days of his office to say something about it. He took no actions. He also neutered his speech by rewriting "congressional military industrial complex" to "military industrial complex". Yes, I appreciate he said something at all, but he could have done much much more. It reminds me of employees at Facebook leaving saying its so unethical what the company is doing, after having received massive pay for years.
- jessaustin 5y agoIf anyone could have killed the demon, surely it would have been a reelected president and 5-star "General of the Army". (It's not as though Truman the haberdasher would have had that sort of clout!) But that would have required years of work, and he was more interested in British Petroleum's plans for Iran. He may have been thinking of his son John's safety and career in the military (somehow John became a general). If they can't get to you any other way, they can always put the screws to your kids. Look at how many presidential (and presidential candidate) children have been awarded bullshit media jobs for which they have no qualifications or aptitude.
- jimt1234 5y agoMy guess is all the military contractors in Afghanistan are pivoting to "cybersecurity", and this is just marketing toward that. As one door closes, another one opens.
- csomar 5y agoThat’s a dangerous over-simplification. Multiple super-powers were at Afghanistan before the US. The place is strategic because it’s a gate to Russia and China. It’s also wrong to assume that the US will leave Afghanistan. They’ll either operate by proxy or re-deploy at a future date.
- oars 5y agoI thought $300m per day was an exaggeration. This is actually the figure, unbelievable. And thank you for putting the numbers in perspective with your mortgage example.
- mgh2 5y agoWhy is this comment at the top of the thread? [Sure, go ahead and bury me] It is only slightly related to the original article, the rant is just an opinion with no value than to instill anti-gov discourse. Is this what we say to the thousands of Americans who served and lost their lives over 20 years? To the sacrifices of their families to help Taliban oppressed girls/citizens crying for help? HN needs a dose of honesty. I come here for its value: the insights of the comments, but recently I find myself logging out and contributing less and less due to the quality decline. I get it, it is the pandemic and everyone needs a safe place to rant/express themselves- even Reddit's toxicity was given a refuge here. Hide in your pseudonyms and rant all you want, after all unlike the Afghans, you take for granted your freedom of speech. Hype crypto and anti-gov sentiment to gain from your pump and dumps, support cybercriminals (for all we know, you might be one of them) [1] Keyword "crypto", study the poster's profiles - throwaway accounts - safety or marketing? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28248188 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28248188 [2] Clue: keyword "Chamath" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28239900 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28239900 You are intelligent, so think: is government the real enemy? A word of caution, big tech might be leeching on your brain, brainwashing you with their ads to support their causes that ultimately lead to these sentiments in the 1st place. [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28258744 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28258744 [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28259153 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28259153 Peace out. PS: For the moderators, I still really appreciate your work and I know it is getting harder, this is more feedback than a critique. A really big thanks to you.
- hoppyhoppy2 5y agohttps://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1429173367643516936.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1429173367643516936.html
- zepto 5y agoI would like to see this corroborated somewhere other than in tweets from a fox news correspondent.
- bsenftner 5y agoAs long as it's only Faux News and just tweets... sure, ya, sure... <eyes roll>
- mark_l_watson 5y agoI would also. Still, I stand by my other comment in this thread that much more resources need to be devoted to cybersecurity and stem education - regardless if this particular story is true or not.
- pengaru 5y agoWell, there's this: https://news.yahoo.com/u-state-department-recently-hit-204040770.html https://news.yahoo.com/u-state-department-recently-hit-20404... > Without confirming any incident, a knowledgeable source told Reuters the State Department has not experienced significant disruptions and has not had its operations impeded in any way. not worth much
- elliekelly 5y agoThis is an impressive non-answer. It provides a fair bit of reassuring detail while saying absolutely nothing of value of at all. Was there a cyber attack? Wasn’t there? Either way this answer looks better in an article than “no comment” but still admits nothing that could come back to bite you.
- btown 5y agoNote also that the Reuters article specifically mentions that the source of their information about the breach is this exact tweet, and that they cannot independently verify. The overall Twitter feed of the Fox News reporter in question https://twitter.com/JacquiHeinrich https://twitter.com/JacquiHeinrich , while generally sticking to facts unlike some of her Fox News colleagues, nonetheless has a preponderance of tweets critical of the current administration. One should keep this in mind when deciding whether the reporter would have been incentivized to do thorough verification before choosing to share the word of an anonymous source that would paint said administration in a poor light.
- HenryKissinger 5y agoAfter the fallout of the SolarWinds hack, and the situation in Afghanistan, I'm afraid I don't want to know the answer to the question of what the climate is like inside the State Department at the moment.
- dougSF70 5y agoAfghanistan is known as the graveyard of empires. No western country has ever invaded Afghanistan and won. The British failed, the Russians failed, it was no surprise for the US to fail.
- dragonwriter 5y agoRussia isn’t Western; the rule is more general than you have stated.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y agoPast performance is no guarantee of future results
- mcguire 5y agoReally sucks for those Afghans who thought they could trust us, though.
- jessaustin 5y agoCurrent pleas for help notwithstanding, there were never very many such Afghans. The fact that someone temporarily worked for pay for the violent invaders who had violently taken over is not an indication of trust. An Afghan I met in 2005 really opened my eye on this.
- Omniusaspirer 5y agoWestern countries don't wage war in the way that lets you hold Afghanistan. Contrast with a successful historic conquering: "In the Mongol invasion of Khwarezmia (1219–1221), Genghis Khan invaded the region from the northeast in one of his many conquests to create the huge Mongol Empire. His armies slaughtered thousands in the cities of Kabul, Kandahar, Jalalabad etc. After Genghis Khan returned to Mongolia, there was a rebellion in the region of Helmand which was brutally put down by his son and successor, Ogedei Khan, who put all male residents of Ghazni and Helmand to the sword in 1222; the women were enslaved and sold. Thereafter most parts of Afghanistan other than the extreme south-eastern remained under Mongol rule as part of the Ilkhanate and Chagatai Khanate." (Wikipedia) Modern gentlemans agreement wars only really work between modern Westernized industrial societies. The idea that you could ever nation build in Afghanistan on a mere 20 year period was laughable even in 2001. It's possible results would have been different given a multi-generational timeline but when you aren't annexing the country it's hardly worth the effort.
- xvector 5y agoThe state department, hell, a big portion of the entire government is a joke when it comes to cybersecurity. This comes with the turf of refusing to pay competitive compensation. I'd personally love to help secure the government, but I'm not going to take a massive hit in QoL just for a sense of patriotism. During the Black Hat 2021 closing keynote, the Secretary of Homeland Security was begging for more cybersecurity engineers to join the government, but there was no acknowledgement of the compensation problem, which is one of their biggest roadblocks. It makes zero sense to whine about getting hacked while paying a fifth of the compensation of private industry. The government ought to put up or shut up.
- Seattle3503 5y agoFor me the issue is that I'd probably need to move to the East coast and work in a government office environment. I'd rather stay on the West coast.
- post_break 5y agoDon't they also struggle with their drug testing policy?
- OminousWeapons 5y agoAt least they are moving in the right direction. IIRC, in the past .gov had a policy saying you can't have used marijuana in the past 3 years or any other drug in the past 10. Now I think it's 1 year and 3 or 5 years respectively?
- wslack 5y ago> The government ought to put up or shut up. That requires congress to "vote to massively raise the salaries of bureaucrats." How do you suggest that happening? The media won't care about the distinction of it only being for security experts.
- OminousWeapons 5y agoYou see the same issues across government. I remember listening to Francis Collins, the head of the NIH, talk about the major problems in academic life sciences at my University. He opened by saying he wasn't there to talk about comp or funding which was amusing considering that every problem in the space ultimately tracks back to hilariously inadequate funding and comp.
- xiphias2 5y agoAssymetric warfare that the internet provides is extremely dangerous, as a country can never be 100% sure which country attacked it.
- nonameiguess 5y agoThis isn't exactly true. Forensic evidence is never 100% certain, but intelligence agencies can and do infiltrate hostile organizations either via remote signals surveillance or embedding actual human spies. In both cases, they obviously can't publicly reveal the source of information, but they can be certain.
- TomSwirly 5y ago> In both cases, they obviously can't publicly reveal the source of information, but they can be certain. Why do you trust these "intelligent" agencies, who have repeatedly shown their incompetence and dishonesty?
- aaronchall 5y agoPerhaps you'll think I'm crazy but... I have long theorized that State Department infrastructure is intentionally insecure to allow the dissemination of information or disinformation that we want foreign interests to get.