18 ms·

IMF, 10 countries simulate cyber attack on global financial system

167 points by pueblito 5y ago

desine 5y ago
People don't tend to accept rapid, life-altering changes, unless it's solving a crisis. We wouldn't have accepted lockdowns, face masks, and vaccine passports without a pandemic to justify them. Masses of people would likely push back against CBDCs, unless they came in to fix and solve a crisis. A collapse of the electronic financial system would justify this.
- trumpablehump 5y ago
  [flagged]
gjsman-1000 5y ago
Huh... maybe I'm getting confused but I could have sworn that my "vaccine-hesitant" friends were saying the IMF had been running (with others) simulations of a virus outbreak since 2010-ish, as part of the reason this was a "plandemic." However, if a cyber attack does happen a few years from now that takes out the global financial system... it'll definitely make me a little queasy.
- donkarma 5y ago
  Long BTC?
  - worstestes 5y ago
    Ah yes, because if the global financial system crashes we’re assured that BTC will be even more relevant!
    - chana_masala 5y ago
      I'm not convinced either way - but why are you convinced that it won't be?
- thr0wawayf00 5y ago
  It's a really sad age we live in when acting responsibly and aiming for maximum preparedness is met with cynicism and conspiracy, not to mention this is SOP for most companies with critical IT infrastructure. So we should be weary about any company that runs disaster recovery exercises? We just saw another AWS outage take many significant services offline a couple weeks ago.
  - gjsman-1000 5y ago
    No - it's that if you talk to these "vaccine-hesitant" friends the idea is that the IMF and others want something bad enough to happen (COVID, Cyberattack) so that they can tackle wealth inequality, climate change, the like. Cyberattack simulations is because COVID didn't work as well as they thought. Which I think is a very cynical take - but I'm not exactly thrilled with some of the statements of these organization's leaders.
    - thr0wawayf00 5y ago
      I just can't understand why an organization like the IMF, which has a major financial incentives in maintaining the current system and a tremendous amount of power, would just blow it all up. Just like most conspiracy theories, the idea just doesn't make sense once you get past the sensationalism. What kind of power are they seeking that they don't already have?
      - gjsman-1000 5y ago
        I wish I could say - you'd need to ask them, I guess. I will say that I have noticed that people care far more about the IMF and others than they did pre-pandemic.
        thr0wawayf00 5y ago
        It's mostly a rhetorical question, because the answers that conspiracy communities come up to basic questions like that often involve insane and fantastical misdirections like pedophilia.
- cinntaile 5y ago
  I certainly hope that institutions run these kind of simulations. It's one of the best ways to identify critical flaws in preparation plans that need to be mitigated.
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  We simulate all sorts of plausible scenarios. They're only valuable if the scenarios are realistic enough to be applied to potential real-world stuff. The risk of a pandemic was clear enough that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contagion_(2011_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contagion_(2011_film) got made about the same time. It ticked pretty much all the boxes - China as origin, people thinking it's a bioweapon, contact tracing, politicians reluctant to take quarantine measures, panic buying, unrest, bat-borne virus, conspiracy theorists and antivaxxers, etc. It's a hell of a movie to watch in 2021.
- diab0lic 5y ago
  > However, if a cyber attack does happen a few years from now that takes out the global financial system... it'll definitely make me a little queasy. Both global pandemics and cyberattacks are plausible events. This is the true cause of both the simulations and the events occurring. It is incredibly improbable that the IMF thinking of them and simulating them had anything to do with them happening.
- hobs 5y ago
  You never see an emergency without an ambulance showing up, did you think that the EMT's are the real villains! This is a truly simian approach at pointing the finger at people who plan on preventing disaster because simply uttering its name causes it to be.
  - gjsman-1000 5y ago
    I never said I defended it - I'm saying that it would make me a little uncomfortable.
    - GavinMcG 5y ago
      Don't spread it by bringing it up here, then.
  - mbg721 5y ago
    Not all risk mitigation measures are wise. We got to this point by willfully ignoring that, and now, unsurprisingly, the people who got shouted down don't trust anybody.
  - mistrial9 5y ago
    "loutish"
- wowokay 5y ago
  I'm still confused, is Ethan Hunt involved,
  - Findecanor 5y ago
    Because a "simulated cyber attack on the global financial systems" would fit so well into the fictional world of the Impossible Mission Force. Personally, I'd prefer a timeline in which Jim Phelps isn't a traitor though, and in which the IMF operated more on teamwork than on depending on heroic acts of a single operative.
- crisdux 5y ago
  I wonder if these simulations do more harm. Like it gives people a false sense of security and locks them into a strategy. I think the best illustration for this is covid. Our leaders and experts threw away the pandemic playbook and replaced it with this new strategy of using novel precision vaccine technology and having a near singular focus on getting people vaccinated. As time goes on, it seems more and more like a failure. But we are basically stuck. We are not responding to ANY signals that this is a bad strategy. We need strategy that has the ability to be flexible. It needs to be based on outcome. These simulations incorrectly teach people that the strategy is the goal, instead of aiming towards an outcome. For example, reducing hospitalization and deaths isn't the goal with current covid policy. The goal is to vaccinate as many people as possible.
  - cinntaile 5y ago
    What is the pandemic playbook and how does the current response differ? People running these simulations are obviously focused on outcomes, that's why you run these simulations in the first place. Simulations allow you to find flaws in your preparations, but it doesn't make your preparations flawless. You try to minimize your outcome downside risk .
    - crisdux 5y ago
      Folks need to understand that our current strategy is quite revolutionary. Basically everything goes against previous guidance. We've redefined illness to now mean positive pcr test. Wide spread testing of asymptomatic people, lockdowns, travel restrictions, medical passports. Vaccinate everyone with little regard for safety or necessity. Ignore natural immunity. Ignore outpatient treatment. Impose a systematic campaign of censorship, deception and propaganda. Noble lies and dishonesty are accepted. Informed consent is thrown away. Nearly every major tenant of our current strategy is anti science and is resulting in more suffering. It is not obvious that these people who run these simulations are focused on positive outcomes on behalf of the population.
      - chana_masala 5y ago
- andruby 5y ago
  are you (or your friends) confusing the IMF (International Monetary Fund) with the WHO (World Health Organisation)?
- lettergram 5y ago
  I tend to take every theory seriously. I think it’s important to do so, to either prove or disprove. I also often find “conspiracy theorists” are the most educated on a given topic. That’s not to say I often agree. But it’s a really interesting exercise to explore their theories. You’ll often learn an abundance yourself. I did that recently regarding the election hacking claims: https://austingwalters.com/mike-lindell-and-china-hacking-american-elections/ https://austingwalters.com/mike-lindell-and-china-hacking-am... I ended up narrowing down who it was who was perpetrating the claims and validated my theory it’s probably BS. In this case, the WEF and IMF have a lot of the same participants and have run hacking simulations. That seems reasonable to me imo. That said, it’s fairly clear why people believe there’s a conspiracy with the IMF — https://quotefancy.com/quote/1275693/Henry-Kissinger-Who-controls-the-food-supply-controls-the-people-who-controls-the-energy https://quotefancy.com/quote/1275693/Henry-Kissinger-Who-con... There’s probably something there, but it’s not clear the cyber attack simulations are anything related to a conspiracy. China and the west’s adversaries have a pretty clear incentive to replace / destroy the IMF. They could do that via hacking.
- nomdep 5y ago
  You misspelled “morons”
- trumpablehump 5y ago
  Same here! If a cyber attack happened in a way that this simulation explored, it would mean that people have been ignoring early warnings. That would be beyond stupid of those who could have prevented it.
- choward 5y ago
  Have you heard of event 201? I'm not a conspiracy theorist but this is quite the coincidence. They simulated a pandemic in October 2019 and one of the things they focused on was "misinformation". There are too many similarities to the current pandemic to list. The world economic forum and Bill Gates sponsored it. https://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/event201/about https://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/event201/about
  - GavinMcG 5y ago
    "Too many to list"? It's a pandemic simulation--there aren't that many variables to manipulate. And misinformation was already a huge talking point several years ago, after the 2016 election and the Mueller report. Saying you're not a conspiracy theorist and then suggesting a conspiracy is a little discordant, to say the least.
    - choward 5y ago
      Questioning things isn't a bad thing. I consider a conspiracy theorist to be someone who believes theories are fact. I'm just saying I don't know. I don't think the pandemic was planned but it's good to keep an open mind. I'm more skeptical about the response to the pandemic than the origins. I know "misinformation" was being thrown around for years. The Mueller report and 2016 election are great example of the media spreading misinformation. Most of the Russia-gate stuff has been debunked by now including the Steele dossier recently. I actually believed a lot of that stuff at first because I hated Trump so much. In case you missed this: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/analyst-who-worked-steele-dossier-arrested-part-trump-era-doj-n1283197 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/analyst-...
Proven 5y ago
wallacoloo 5y ago
what exactly did they simulate? from the scant details on the article, this sounds more like a training exercise than a simulation, to me.
- KineticLensman 5y ago
  "All but war is simulation" The military sometimes use the term 'simulate' to mean what soldiers do during training or mission rehearsal, not just in the sense of running a simulation system (although training may obviously be supported by a simulator)
- markstos 5y ago
  Amazon is down again, they won!
- Macha 5y ago
  I assume this is like a bank stress test - they don't literally withdraw a bunch of deposits and call in a bunch of obligations, instead they just have auditors do a bunch of what if scenarios and calculations of what would happen if that happened
- beermonster 5y ago
  A dress rehearsal of business continuity and/or cyber incident response management ?
alecco 5y ago
What if instead of all this headline seeking nonsense governments addressed the problem of hundreds of millions of vulnerable IoT devices?
- edoceo 5y ago
  Too practical. Just making the world better doesn't let you pad your resume or put your fingerprint on some recent hotness. Sadly, infrastructure work is largely ignored - until it isn't - and then the failure is all your fault!!
- PeterisP 5y ago
  Those millions of vulnerable IoT devices don't have that much of an impact to strategic infrastructure, even compared to just individual separate ransomware incidents at large organizations.
- pjmorris 5y ago
  If someone pwns your IOT device that's your problem. If someone pwns the SWIFT network, that's the financial system's problem. borrowed from... "If you owe the bank $100 that's your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that's the bank's problem." - J. Paul Getty
  - nradov 5y ago
    Except that an adversary can use a large botnet of pwned consumer IoT devices to conduct DoS attacks against the financial system (and other critical infrastructure).
    - alecco 5y ago
      Thanks, that was the point I thought would be obvious for HN crowd. Also unprotected IoT devices provide ways to protect the attackers.
    - namibj 5y ago
      SWIFT runs on dark fiber, or at least MPLS circuits, not the public internet.
sigmaprimus 5y ago
I find it amazing how so many people don't know that the IMF is an NGO made up of a few wealthy people. I suspect the "Financial System" being referred to is the SWIFT system and chances are in the next few years it will be replaced by a new Sino-Russian system backed by Saudi oil. No cyber attacks will be needed to bring SWIFT down, just a few too many sanctions being wielded like cudgels by over eager bureaucrats trying to impose their "Morality" on the rest of the world. I suppose it is possible that is the point, they want to be prepared for the backlash sure to follow when the Greenback is no longer the reserve currency.
- ericmay 5y ago
  > and chances are in the next few years it will be replaced by a new Sino-Russian system backed by Saudi oil. Who will they trade with? Themselves? Will Saudi Arabia join in when it means the US abandons them, stops selling weapons, and takes other punitive economic measures? Cryptocurrency is a much greater "threat" to these systems, but even then it's more of a threat to countries with poor quality or unstable currencies. > when the Greenback is no longer the reserve currency. It's just a fancy title. Dollar is the reserve currency, but Euro, Pound, Yen, etc. are all reserve currencies too. It's not some sort of designation bestowed upon the dollar from which the downfall of America will lead to it losing such status, it's just what central banks and governments hold in reserve. If the US dollar loses market share (if you'll allow here), it'll probably drive up the value of dollars since the US federal reserve no longer has to print dollars to help maintain global liquidity. The whole RESERVE CURRENCY thing is just FUD.
  - sigmaprimus 5y ago
    >>>Will Saudi Arabia join in when it means the US abandons them... The Saudis have already entered a mutual defense pact with Russia >>>It's just a fancy title. Dollar is the reserve currency, but Euro, Pound, Yen, etc... Actually it isn't, that is why sanctions work so well, Russia and China just entered into an agreement to trade directly between themselves without converting to USD first. It wont be long before Syria, Iran, North Korea, Argentina, Cuba and several African nations join the fray. Not to mention a large number of other out of favor political leaders that are sick of US led regime change or coup attempts constantly testing them..Think Bolsonaro, Duterte, Aung San Suu Kyi. These are the countries that hold the resources needed for a productive world and soon enough the rest of the world, including the West will be forced to follow them into an new non US hegemonic world, regardless of the number of guns and bombs Uncle Sam has.
lr1970 5y ago
The West is threatening to cut Russia from SWIFT financial transactions network. Russia is threatening back with a "strong response" that, for example, could come in a form of a cyber attack. It never hurts to be vigilant and test the financial system just in case.
- deepstack 5y ago
  > Russia is threatening back with a "strong response" that, for example, could come in a form of a cyber attack. Really not need, they will just build their own. Believe Japan is already allowing them to use their banking clearing system. I'm sure they and China already have one. All this cyber attack stuff are really not worth while when country can just build their own SWIFT type of system.
  - desine 5y ago
    Isn't Japan also on it's own banking system? You can't use USA Credit/Debit cards most places? Makes sense they would also allow Russia's "third party" option.
  - newsclues 5y ago
    Russia already have a swift alternative https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPFS https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPFS
- foverzar 5y ago
  Is Russia even threatening anything back on that particular matter? Besides, it's not "the West" who wants to cut Russia out, it's only the US. European politicians don't seem to be that supportive of this idea and they are the ones who have legal power here, not the US. Tbh, it seems to me that Russia would actually profit in the long-term from yet another US illegal abuse of SWIFT. They already provide their own ISO 15022/200022 compatible solution, cheaper and decentralized https://www.cyberft.com/ https://www.cyberft.com/ Creating further inconvenience for business would simply drive them to consider additional diversification and redundancy, given that there are alternatives.
motohagiography 5y ago
The point of a simulation isn't for technologists to practice business continuity and recovery plans, it was for executives to determine who they align with once their primary stakeholder relationships fail. When you think of what such a coordinated attack would look like, and by who, the only plausible scenario to me is a Russia/China axis setting up a SWIFT alternative for client states and then attacking the US network as a way to ride to the rescue with the new one and use it as a forcing function to overcome switching costs. Otherwise, the economics of mere vandalism at that scale don't make sense. They'd broadcast their intentions anyway if that were the case. (e.g. de-dollarization, China's SDRs, etc.) I don't think they're ready yet. There is a cynical view that this was related to a trial run to determine whether retail deposits could be shifted to a U.S. Fed and ECB or other temporary* liquidity facility, but the failure of the US admin to install its favored comptroller of currency nominee, who would be supportive of the scheme, has reduced its momentum. I don't know that this was part of the simulation, but shift from a monopolar world and the vacuum it has created means we're literally in an age of conspiracies, so it's one of those 'when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro' situations. When it clicks that "cyber" just means governance, these exercises become a useful signal for overarching power plays. Imo, the real threats to the "global financial system," aren't really to it at all, as cyber is a tactic in support of other co-ordinated activities to destabilize individual governments by undermining civilian infrastructure. I would interpret these exercises as more of a war games demonstration for policymakers who may be thinking about supporting populist national policies in their countries and deviating from the emerging hegemon.
- analyte123 5y ago
  I think you're missing something from the cynical view, which is that basically everybody has to lock down their subjects' deposits at the same time to avoid capital flight while they're overhauling the system - for example a "coordinated bank holiday...and coordinated delinking from major currencies". It's an opportunity for executives to learn exactly who to call and what types of actions they might be expected to take in a major banking crisis, whatever the trigger.
- JacobThreeThree 5y ago
  SWIFT alternatives have already been set up. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPFS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPFS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-Border_Inter-Bank_Payments_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-Border_Inter-Bank_Paymen...
an9n 5y ago
epgui 5y ago
"One European financial official said that in the case of such of an attack, his country would not wait 10 days to act." Since roughly January 2020, as a life scientist, my confidence in pretty much all of the world's governments' abilities to act quickly and/or in concert, in the face of an emergency, has gone from maybe ~60% to near 0%.
- cal5k 5y ago
  You'd think this would be a wakeup call as to the value of limited government, but I'm not sure that's the message everyone is getting. Bureaucracies are generally incompetent in direct proportion to their size.
  - brnt 5y ago
    > Bureaucracies are generally incompetent in direct proportion to their size. Or so a particular group of wealth owners would like to have us believe. Fortunately, not everyone is drinking this koolaid.
    - frebord 5y ago
    - e40 5y ago
      > Fortunately, not everyone is drinking this koolaid. This narrative has been pushed for many decades, since the 70's. I once saw a great post on reddit that gave tons of examples of government working. Really wish I saved that.
    - cosmojg 5y ago
      I wouldn't mind if the government was slimmed down to being little more than the IRS, military, and a few regulatory bodies with either the current progressive tax system (better yet, that of the 70s) or a land value tax (at least 85%) with all of the proceeds redistributed equally among the population (i.e., UBI). Oh, and Pigovian taxes (e.g., carbon taxes). Lots and lots of Pigovian taxes. I don't think I needed to drink any koolaid to come upon this political stance, although I may have seen a cat or two.
blurbleblurble 5y ago
Has anyone else thought about the risks of one or more national actors doing macro scale pump and dumps of cryptocurrencies combined with viral memes targeting populations of their adversaries tricking them into buying the top/selling the bottom?
- inter_netuser 5y ago
  You’ve just described the daily status of crypto. However, it is apparently much more robust than traditional finance. Rapid drops of 50%+, that would be devastating if it were to happen in sp500 or bond markets, did not destroy crypto markets despite huge amounts of high leverage. Maybe it is too small to matter still, but either way I would much rather worry about traditional finance.
qeternity 5y ago
The US may be overplaying its hand, but it's certainly not as cut and dry as the comments would have you believe. Russia and China are only allied around their common enemy, the US. Don't believe for a second that these two nations wouldn't throw each other under the bus if it furthered their respective causes.
- peakaboo 5y ago
  You and me have much more incommon with Russian or Chinese people than we have with our corrupt and shitty leaders. Never forget that. The 99.99% of us are just humans together and we don't want to fight anyone.
  - hnthrowaway0315 5y ago
    This is a view that I think everyone of us should have. The elites manipulate us by waving various flags and nationalism is one of them. Don't get me wrong that Nationalism is useful when the whole country is under invasion or something, but so far this is not happening for most of the countries out there. I'd rather segment people by the class they are in.
  - randomopining 5y ago
    Of course. Commoners have more in common with each other than the elites. But which system is better for the health of society etc? The autocratic corrupt spying apparatus gov? Or the falted, less efficient, but generally much much more open and representative gov of the US?
    - wallacoloo 5y ago
      > The autocratic corrupt spying apparatus gov? replace “autocratic” with “unelected”/unaccountable and you get the NSA.
      - randomopining 5y ago
        If you think the NSA is bad (lol), imagine once you find out about the FSB and the huge apparatus of the CCP.
temptemptemp111 5y ago
LaserHodl 5y ago
internet pandemic => internet lockdowns => internet passports. Is this Covid's digital counterpart in making way for Social Scoring Governance to be imported to the West?
mrtri 5y ago

167 points by pueblito 5y ago

People don't tend to accept rapid, life-altering changes, unless it's solving a crisis. We wouldn't have accepted lockdowns, face masks, and vaccine passports without a pandemic to justify them. Masses of people would likely push back against CBDCs, unless they came in to fix and solve a crisis. A collapse of the electronic financial system would justify this.

trumpablehump 5y ago
[flagged]

gjsman-1000 5y ago

Huh... maybe I'm getting confused but I could have sworn that my "vaccine-hesitant" friends were saying the IMF had been running (with others) simulations of a virus outbreak since 2010-ish, as part of the reason this was a "plandemic." However, if a cyber attack does happen a few years from now that takes out the global financial system... it'll definitely make me a little queasy.

donkarma 5y ago
Long BTC?
- worstestes 5y ago
  Ah yes, because if the global financial system crashes we’re assured that BTC will be even more relevant!
  - chana_masala 5y ago
    I'm not convinced either way - but why are you convinced that it won't be?
thr0wawayf00 5y ago
It's a really sad age we live in when acting responsibly and aiming for maximum preparedness is met with cynicism and conspiracy, not to mention this is SOP for most companies with critical IT infrastructure. So we should be weary about any company that runs disaster recovery exercises? We just saw another AWS outage take many significant services offline a couple weeks ago.
- gjsman-1000 5y ago
  No - it's that if you talk to these "vaccine-hesitant" friends the idea is that the IMF and others want something bad enough to happen (COVID, Cyberattack) so that they can tackle wealth inequality, climate change, the like. Cyberattack simulations is because COVID didn't work as well as they thought. Which I think is a very cynical take - but I'm not exactly thrilled with some of the statements of these organization's leaders.
  - thr0wawayf00 5y ago
    I just can't understand why an organization like the IMF, which has a major financial incentives in maintaining the current system and a tremendous amount of power, would just blow it all up. Just like most conspiracy theories, the idea just doesn't make sense once you get past the sensationalism. What kind of power are they seeking that they don't already have?
    - gjsman-1000 5y ago
      I wish I could say - you'd need to ask them, I guess. I will say that I have noticed that people care far more about the IMF and others than they did pre-pandemic.
      - thr0wawayf00 5y ago
        It's mostly a rhetorical question, because the answers that conspiracy communities come up to basic questions like that often involve insane and fantastical misdirections like pedophilia.
cinntaile 5y ago
I certainly hope that institutions run these kind of simulations. It's one of the best ways to identify critical flaws in preparation plans that need to be mitigated.
ceejayoz 5y ago
We simulate all sorts of plausible scenarios. They're only valuable if the scenarios are realistic enough to be applied to potential real-world stuff. The risk of a pandemic was clear enough that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contagion_(2011_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contagion_(2011_film) got made about the same time. It ticked pretty much all the boxes - China as origin, people thinking it's a bioweapon, contact tracing, politicians reluctant to take quarantine measures, panic buying, unrest, bat-borne virus, conspiracy theorists and antivaxxers, etc. It's a hell of a movie to watch in 2021.
diab0lic 5y ago
> However, if a cyber attack does happen a few years from now that takes out the global financial system... it'll definitely make me a little queasy. Both global pandemics and cyberattacks are plausible events. This is the true cause of both the simulations and the events occurring. It is incredibly improbable that the IMF thinking of them and simulating them had anything to do with them happening.
hobs 5y ago
You never see an emergency without an ambulance showing up, did you think that the EMT's are the real villains! This is a truly simian approach at pointing the finger at people who plan on preventing disaster because simply uttering its name causes it to be.
- gjsman-1000 5y ago
  I never said I defended it - I'm saying that it would make me a little uncomfortable.
  - GavinMcG 5y ago
    Don't spread it by bringing it up here, then.
- mbg721 5y ago
  Not all risk mitigation measures are wise. We got to this point by willfully ignoring that, and now, unsurprisingly, the people who got shouted down don't trust anybody.
- mistrial9 5y ago
  "loutish"
wowokay 5y ago
I'm still confused, is Ethan Hunt involved,
- Findecanor 5y ago
  Because a "simulated cyber attack on the global financial systems" would fit so well into the fictional world of the Impossible Mission Force. Personally, I'd prefer a timeline in which Jim Phelps isn't a traitor though, and in which the IMF operated more on teamwork than on depending on heroic acts of a single operative.
crisdux 5y ago
I wonder if these simulations do more harm. Like it gives people a false sense of security and locks them into a strategy. I think the best illustration for this is covid. Our leaders and experts threw away the pandemic playbook and replaced it with this new strategy of using novel precision vaccine technology and having a near singular focus on getting people vaccinated. As time goes on, it seems more and more like a failure. But we are basically stuck. We are not responding to ANY signals that this is a bad strategy. We need strategy that has the ability to be flexible. It needs to be based on outcome. These simulations incorrectly teach people that the strategy is the goal, instead of aiming towards an outcome. For example, reducing hospitalization and deaths isn't the goal with current covid policy. The goal is to vaccinate as many people as possible.
- cinntaile 5y ago
  What is the pandemic playbook and how does the current response differ? People running these simulations are obviously focused on outcomes, that's why you run these simulations in the first place. Simulations allow you to find flaws in your preparations, but it doesn't make your preparations flawless. You try to minimize your outcome downside risk .
  - crisdux 5y ago
    Folks need to understand that our current strategy is quite revolutionary. Basically everything goes against previous guidance. We've redefined illness to now mean positive pcr test. Wide spread testing of asymptomatic people, lockdowns, travel restrictions, medical passports. Vaccinate everyone with little regard for safety or necessity. Ignore natural immunity. Ignore outpatient treatment. Impose a systematic campaign of censorship, deception and propaganda. Noble lies and dishonesty are accepted. Informed consent is thrown away. Nearly every major tenant of our current strategy is anti science and is resulting in more suffering. It is not obvious that these people who run these simulations are focused on positive outcomes on behalf of the population.
    - chana_masala 5y ago
andruby 5y ago
are you (or your friends) confusing the IMF (International Monetary Fund) with the WHO (World Health Organisation)?
lettergram 5y ago
I tend to take every theory seriously. I think it’s important to do so, to either prove or disprove. I also often find “conspiracy theorists” are the most educated on a given topic. That’s not to say I often agree. But it’s a really interesting exercise to explore their theories. You’ll often learn an abundance yourself. I did that recently regarding the election hacking claims: https://austingwalters.com/mike-lindell-and-china-hacking-american-elections/ https://austingwalters.com/mike-lindell-and-china-hacking-am... I ended up narrowing down who it was who was perpetrating the claims and validated my theory it’s probably BS. In this case, the WEF and IMF have a lot of the same participants and have run hacking simulations. That seems reasonable to me imo. That said, it’s fairly clear why people believe there’s a conspiracy with the IMF — https://quotefancy.com/quote/1275693/Henry-Kissinger-Who-controls-the-food-supply-controls-the-people-who-controls-the-energy https://quotefancy.com/quote/1275693/Henry-Kissinger-Who-con... There’s probably something there, but it’s not clear the cyber attack simulations are anything related to a conspiracy. China and the west’s adversaries have a pretty clear incentive to replace / destroy the IMF. They could do that via hacking.
nomdep 5y ago
You misspelled “morons”
trumpablehump 5y ago
Same here! If a cyber attack happened in a way that this simulation explored, it would mean that people have been ignoring early warnings. That would be beyond stupid of those who could have prevented it.
choward 5y ago
Have you heard of event 201? I'm not a conspiracy theorist but this is quite the coincidence. They simulated a pandemic in October 2019 and one of the things they focused on was "misinformation". There are too many similarities to the current pandemic to list. The world economic forum and Bill Gates sponsored it. https://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/event201/about https://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/event201/about
- GavinMcG 5y ago
  "Too many to list"? It's a pandemic simulation--there aren't that many variables to manipulate. And misinformation was already a huge talking point several years ago, after the 2016 election and the Mueller report. Saying you're not a conspiracy theorist and then suggesting a conspiracy is a little discordant, to say the least.
  - choward 5y ago
    Questioning things isn't a bad thing. I consider a conspiracy theorist to be someone who believes theories are fact. I'm just saying I don't know. I don't think the pandemic was planned but it's good to keep an open mind. I'm more skeptical about the response to the pandemic than the origins. I know "misinformation" was being thrown around for years. The Mueller report and 2016 election are great example of the media spreading misinformation. Most of the Russia-gate stuff has been debunked by now including the Steele dossier recently. I actually believed a lot of that stuff at first because I hated Trump so much. In case you missed this: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/analyst-who-worked-steele-dossier-arrested-part-trump-era-doj-n1283197 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/analyst-...

Proven 5y ago

wallacoloo 5y ago

what exactly did they simulate? from the scant details on the article, this sounds more like a training exercise than a simulation, to me.

KineticLensman 5y ago
"All but war is simulation" The military sometimes use the term 'simulate' to mean what soldiers do during training or mission rehearsal, not just in the sense of running a simulation system (although training may obviously be supported by a simulator)
markstos 5y ago
Amazon is down again, they won!
Macha 5y ago
I assume this is like a bank stress test - they don't literally withdraw a bunch of deposits and call in a bunch of obligations, instead they just have auditors do a bunch of what if scenarios and calculations of what would happen if that happened
beermonster 5y ago
A dress rehearsal of business continuity and/or cyber incident response management ?

alecco 5y ago

What if instead of all this headline seeking nonsense governments addressed the problem of hundreds of millions of vulnerable IoT devices?

edoceo 5y ago
Too practical. Just making the world better doesn't let you pad your resume or put your fingerprint on some recent hotness. Sadly, infrastructure work is largely ignored - until it isn't - and then the failure is all your fault!!
PeterisP 5y ago
Those millions of vulnerable IoT devices don't have that much of an impact to strategic infrastructure, even compared to just individual separate ransomware incidents at large organizations.
pjmorris 5y ago
If someone pwns your IOT device that's your problem. If someone pwns the SWIFT network, that's the financial system's problem. borrowed from... "If you owe the bank $100 that's your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that's the bank's problem." - J. Paul Getty
- nradov 5y ago
  Except that an adversary can use a large botnet of pwned consumer IoT devices to conduct DoS attacks against the financial system (and other critical infrastructure).
  - alecco 5y ago
    Thanks, that was the point I thought would be obvious for HN crowd. Also unprotected IoT devices provide ways to protect the attackers.
  - namibj 5y ago
    SWIFT runs on dark fiber, or at least MPLS circuits, not the public internet.

sigmaprimus 5y ago

I find it amazing how so many people don't know that the IMF is an NGO made up of a few wealthy people. I suspect the "Financial System" being referred to is the SWIFT system and chances are in the next few years it will be replaced by a new Sino-Russian system backed by Saudi oil. No cyber attacks will be needed to bring SWIFT down, just a few too many sanctions being wielded like cudgels by over eager bureaucrats trying to impose their "Morality" on the rest of the world. I suppose it is possible that is the point, they want to be prepared for the backlash sure to follow when the Greenback is no longer the reserve currency.

ericmay 5y ago
> and chances are in the next few years it will be replaced by a new Sino-Russian system backed by Saudi oil. Who will they trade with? Themselves? Will Saudi Arabia join in when it means the US abandons them, stops selling weapons, and takes other punitive economic measures? Cryptocurrency is a much greater "threat" to these systems, but even then it's more of a threat to countries with poor quality or unstable currencies. > when the Greenback is no longer the reserve currency. It's just a fancy title. Dollar is the reserve currency, but Euro, Pound, Yen, etc. are all reserve currencies too. It's not some sort of designation bestowed upon the dollar from which the downfall of America will lead to it losing such status, it's just what central banks and governments hold in reserve. If the US dollar loses market share (if you'll allow here), it'll probably drive up the value of dollars since the US federal reserve no longer has to print dollars to help maintain global liquidity. The whole RESERVE CURRENCY thing is just FUD.
- sigmaprimus 5y ago
  >>>Will Saudi Arabia join in when it means the US abandons them... The Saudis have already entered a mutual defense pact with Russia >>>It's just a fancy title. Dollar is the reserve currency, but Euro, Pound, Yen, etc... Actually it isn't, that is why sanctions work so well, Russia and China just entered into an agreement to trade directly between themselves without converting to USD first. It wont be long before Syria, Iran, North Korea, Argentina, Cuba and several African nations join the fray. Not to mention a large number of other out of favor political leaders that are sick of US led regime change or coup attempts constantly testing them..Think Bolsonaro, Duterte, Aung San Suu Kyi. These are the countries that hold the resources needed for a productive world and soon enough the rest of the world, including the West will be forced to follow them into an new non US hegemonic world, regardless of the number of guns and bombs Uncle Sam has.

lr1970 5y ago

The West is threatening to cut Russia from SWIFT financial transactions network. Russia is threatening back with a "strong response" that, for example, could come in a form of a cyber attack. It never hurts to be vigilant and test the financial system just in case.

deepstack 5y ago
> Russia is threatening back with a "strong response" that, for example, could come in a form of a cyber attack. Really not need, they will just build their own. Believe Japan is already allowing them to use their banking clearing system. I'm sure they and China already have one. All this cyber attack stuff are really not worth while when country can just build their own SWIFT type of system.
- desine 5y ago
  Isn't Japan also on it's own banking system? You can't use USA Credit/Debit cards most places? Makes sense they would also allow Russia's "third party" option.
- newsclues 5y ago
  Russia already have a swift alternative https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPFS https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPFS
foverzar 5y ago
Is Russia even threatening anything back on that particular matter? Besides, it's not "the West" who wants to cut Russia out, it's only the US. European politicians don't seem to be that supportive of this idea and they are the ones who have legal power here, not the US. Tbh, it seems to me that Russia would actually profit in the long-term from yet another US illegal abuse of SWIFT. They already provide their own ISO 15022/200022 compatible solution, cheaper and decentralized https://www.cyberft.com/ https://www.cyberft.com/ Creating further inconvenience for business would simply drive them to consider additional diversification and redundancy, given that there are alternatives.

motohagiography 5y ago

The point of a simulation isn't for technologists to practice business continuity and recovery plans, it was for executives to determine who they align with once their primary stakeholder relationships fail. When you think of what such a coordinated attack would look like, and by who, the only plausible scenario to me is a Russia/China axis setting up a SWIFT alternative for client states and then attacking the US network as a way to ride to the rescue with the new one and use it as a forcing function to overcome switching costs. Otherwise, the economics of mere vandalism at that scale don't make sense. They'd broadcast their intentions anyway if that were the case. (e.g. de-dollarization, China's SDRs, etc.) I don't think they're ready yet. There is a cynical view that this was related to a trial run to determine whether retail deposits could be shifted to a U.S. Fed and ECB or other temporary* liquidity facility, but the failure of the US admin to install its favored comptroller of currency nominee, who would be supportive of the scheme, has reduced its momentum. I don't know that this was part of the simulation, but shift from a monopolar world and the vacuum it has created means we're literally in an age of conspiracies, so it's one of those 'when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro' situations. When it clicks that "cyber" just means governance, these exercises become a useful signal for overarching power plays. Imo, the real threats to the "global financial system," aren't really to it at all, as cyber is a tactic in support of other co-ordinated activities to destabilize individual governments by undermining civilian infrastructure. I would interpret these exercises as more of a war games demonstration for policymakers who may be thinking about supporting populist national policies in their countries and deviating from the emerging hegemon.

analyte123 5y ago
I think you're missing something from the cynical view, which is that basically everybody has to lock down their subjects' deposits at the same time to avoid capital flight while they're overhauling the system - for example a "coordinated bank holiday...and coordinated delinking from major currencies". It's an opportunity for executives to learn exactly who to call and what types of actions they might be expected to take in a major banking crisis, whatever the trigger.
JacobThreeThree 5y ago
SWIFT alternatives have already been set up. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPFS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPFS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-Border_Inter-Bank_Payments_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-Border_Inter-Bank_Paymen...

an9n 5y ago

epgui 5y ago

"One European financial official said that in the case of such of an attack, his country would not wait 10 days to act." Since roughly January 2020, as a life scientist, my confidence in pretty much all of the world's governments' abilities to act quickly and/or in concert, in the face of an emergency, has gone from maybe ~60% to near 0%.

cal5k 5y ago
You'd think this would be a wakeup call as to the value of limited government, but I'm not sure that's the message everyone is getting. Bureaucracies are generally incompetent in direct proportion to their size.
- brnt 5y ago
  > Bureaucracies are generally incompetent in direct proportion to their size. Or so a particular group of wealth owners would like to have us believe. Fortunately, not everyone is drinking this koolaid.
  - frebord 5y ago
  - e40 5y ago
    > Fortunately, not everyone is drinking this koolaid. This narrative has been pushed for many decades, since the 70's. I once saw a great post on reddit that gave tons of examples of government working. Really wish I saved that.
  - cosmojg 5y ago
    I wouldn't mind if the government was slimmed down to being little more than the IRS, military, and a few regulatory bodies with either the current progressive tax system (better yet, that of the 70s) or a land value tax (at least 85%) with all of the proceeds redistributed equally among the population (i.e., UBI). Oh, and Pigovian taxes (e.g., carbon taxes). Lots and lots of Pigovian taxes. I don't think I needed to drink any koolaid to come upon this political stance, although I may have seen a cat or two.

blurbleblurble 5y ago

Has anyone else thought about the risks of one or more national actors doing macro scale pump and dumps of cryptocurrencies combined with viral memes targeting populations of their adversaries tricking them into buying the top/selling the bottom?

inter_netuser 5y ago
You’ve just described the daily status of crypto. However, it is apparently much more robust than traditional finance. Rapid drops of 50%+, that would be devastating if it were to happen in sp500 or bond markets, did not destroy crypto markets despite huge amounts of high leverage. Maybe it is too small to matter still, but either way I would much rather worry about traditional finance.

qeternity 5y ago

The US may be overplaying its hand, but it's certainly not as cut and dry as the comments would have you believe. Russia and China are only allied around their common enemy, the US. Don't believe for a second that these two nations wouldn't throw each other under the bus if it furthered their respective causes.

peakaboo 5y ago
You and me have much more incommon with Russian or Chinese people than we have with our corrupt and shitty leaders. Never forget that. The 99.99% of us are just humans together and we don't want to fight anyone.
- hnthrowaway0315 5y ago
  This is a view that I think everyone of us should have. The elites manipulate us by waving various flags and nationalism is one of them. Don't get me wrong that Nationalism is useful when the whole country is under invasion or something, but so far this is not happening for most of the countries out there. I'd rather segment people by the class they are in.
- randomopining 5y ago
  Of course. Commoners have more in common with each other than the elites. But which system is better for the health of society etc? The autocratic corrupt spying apparatus gov? Or the falted, less efficient, but generally much much more open and representative gov of the US?
  - wallacoloo 5y ago
    > The autocratic corrupt spying apparatus gov? replace “autocratic” with “unelected”/unaccountable and you get the NSA.
    - randomopining 5y ago
      If you think the NSA is bad (lol), imagine once you find out about the FSB and the huge apparatus of the CCP.

temptemptemp111 5y ago

LaserHodl 5y ago

internet pandemic => internet lockdowns => internet passports. Is this Covid's digital counterpart in making way for Social Scoring Governance to be imported to the West?

mrtri 5y ago